10 Historical Facts that our Textbooks forgot to mention

(Also published at Chowk.com)

1.No boats were burnt by Tariq Bin Zayad at Gibraltar.

Instead the boats were sent back to Morocco for re-enforcement. There is no mention of  any such incident in History books written at that time or after that. A compendium written about the conquest of Spain by Muslims, “Akhbar Majmooa fi fath-e-Undlus” doesn’t mention burning of boats by the Muslim Army.

Reference:- Tareekh ka Sabak by Maluana Waheedud Din Khan, Al-Risala books, New Delhi, p15)

  

2.Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, wrongfully known as Mujaddad(reformer), claimed his status to be 'equal to that of the prophet and higher than that of the companions' and for that he was imprisoned by Mughal Emperor Jahangir.

Refrence:- Annemarie schimmel, Islam in the subcontinent, sange meel publications, p92

3.Shah wali ulah wrote letters to Ahmad Shah Durrani to come and kill both Marhattas and Shias in Delhi.

Reference:- Sayyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, 'Shah Waliullah and his times', Ma'rifat publishing house 1980, page 306

4.The 1857 War of Independence was in fact a mutiny.it was no more than a localized uprising in some parts of India.Surendra Nath Sen, in his Eighteen Fifty Seven(Calcutta,1958) says “Outside Oudh and Shahbad there are no evidences of that general sympathy which would invest the Mutiny with the dignity of a national war”. R.C Majumdar, in his The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857(Calcutta,1963) declares that “it cannot be regarded as a national rising, far less a war of independence, which it never professed to be”.

Reference:- KK Aziz, Murder of History,Sang-e-meel Publishers, Chapter 2, p149

5.Quaid-e-Azam,Muhammad Ali Jinnah, did not acquire any degree of law from England.He was a barrister and a barrister  “is not an attorney and is usually forbidden, either by law or professional rules or both, from "conducting" litigation. This means that while the barrister speaks on the client's behalf in court, he or she can only do so when instructed by a solicitor”. 

Reference:- KK Aziz, Murder of History, Sang-e-meel Publishers, Chapter 2, p198

6.Allama iqbal didn't present the concept of of Pakistan in his Allah Abad Address (Muslim league papers) rather he strongly dissociated himself from the idea in his letter to The Times.

His exact words were 'i do not put forward a "demand" for a moslem state outside the British empire' and that 'No Indian Moslem with any pretence to sanity contemplates a Moslem state or series of states in North-Western India outside the British Commonwealth of nation as a plan of practical politics'

7.'Socialist Republic of Bengal' was the name suggested for an independent Bengal, agreed upon by M.A Jinnah, Hussein Shahid suharwardy and Sarat Bose(brother of Subhash  Chandra bose,the legendary freedom fighter)

 Refrence:-.Pakistan ki siyasi taarikh, by Zahid Chohdary, Jafar Hasan Zaidi.Idara Mutalia-Tareekh.

8.None of the present parts of Pakistan i.e Punjab,Sindh,Balochstan, KPK took any active part in the Pakistan movement.

Reference:- Dr Mubarik ali, views and interviews, fiction house,lahore.  p34

9.The punishment for criticizing two-nation theory(which was drowned in the bay of Bengal,way back in 71) is 10 yr.s imprisonment.

Reference:-(enforcement of sharia act 1991, gazzete of Pakistan,extraordinary,part 1)

10.  Karakorum Highway is NOT the silk road(Shahrah-e-Raisham) i.e  it is not a part of the legendary Silk Route to China about which Marco Polo, Wilhelm of Rubruck etc wrote about. How this fallacy got into our curriculum, lets hear it from Mr. Salman Rashid “Imagine a desk-bound, half-educated, bureaucrat of the minister of tourism who thought of cashing in on the newly built highway. What better idea than stealing some of the glamour and romance of the real Silk Road. The man probably reckoned that by so naming it, we’ll have tourists giving off the real item and thronging to our shores.

This pygmy did not realise that instead of this supposititious untruth, we could simply have billed this great highway as the eighth wonder of the world — which it truly is”

Reference:-  Salman Rashid, Myth of the Silk Road, Link: http://tribune.com.pk/story/199757/myth-of-the-silk-road/,The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2011.