Cultural Humility: A Visit to Lahore Fort and Badshahi Mosque

Award-winning cultural geographer Dr. Janel Curry visits Lahore Fort and Badshahi Mosque and is reminded of the value of taking the position of the learner and to live in a way that withholds judgment.

Whenever I live abroad I learn how little I know—of culture, history, and myself.  It forces me to take the position of the learner, and live in that space that demands that I withhold judgement.  The bifurcation of the world into two categories has become more and more difficult.  The developed and developing world categories are no longer clear to me.  LaGuardia airport is like a developing world airport and Islamabad airport is the image of the developed world.  I had back-up generators in both Pakistan and in New England for electricity outages.  I watched the Presidential impeachment hearings of the U.S. House of Representatives while in Pakistan where I heard stories of struggles with bribery and influence-peddling. 

The world has become shades of gray where I have difficulty answering the questions—what place have you lived that you love the most? Perhaps rather than shades of gray, I would say that the world has become places made up of different mixtures of colors woven into unique tapestries.  I am unable to untangle the colors and patterns into individual strands on which I can then make judgements.  I can only see them as wholes that I continue to try to understand on the journey to understand myself, my own culture, and others. 

In Pakistan I became acutely aware of how little I know of the Mughal period and of Islam in its many varieties.  Even before I arrived in Pakistan I had read The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts. The book is about the saving of ancient Islamic manuscripts in Timbuktu from radical strains of Islam that were foreign to the Islamic intellectual and religious tradition of the area that went back to the time when Timbuktu was a center of culture and trade.  The manuscripts included everything from medical treatise to histories of the region to copies of the Koran.  While in Pakistan I heard people make distinctions between indigenous Islam and imported Islamic culture.  I am so ignorant of non-western empires, histories, and religions.  How am I to ever understand?

A trip to the Lahore Fort and the Badshahi Mosque brought my lack of knowledge to the forefront.  Major historic sites in the city, they serve as recreational areas for families and school groups to visit, and also places for all Pakistanis to learn about their own rich history.  All major monuments, buildings and gardens of Lahore are of Mughal period.  The city became prominent after 1584, when the Emperor Akbar built a palace which is now the Lahore Fort.  It was rebuilt in the 17th century at the height of the Mughal Empire. The Badshahi Mosque which dates from the late 1600s was the last of the great Mughal mosques to be built.

I feel like a Fifth Grader…

history of it