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Pausanias, a 2nd century Greek traveller, says J.A. Cuddon in The Penguin
dictionary of literary terms and literary theory, had written A guide to Greece.
In the following centuries, a number of travel accounts were written in Arabic,
Persian and other languages. Travelogues written by such globetrotters as
Hakeem Nasir Khusrau, Al-Biruni, Ibn-i-Jubayr, Ibn-i-Batuta (also spelt Ibn
Battuta) and Marco Polo are testimony that narrating the travel accounts has
been popular throughout centuries, though travelogues of Ibn-i-Batuta and
Marco Polo were dismissed in the beginning as ‘fiction’.
Yousuf Kambalposh left his native town Hyderabad (Deccan) in 1828 and
visited major Indian cities. He lived in Lucknow for a few years and learnt the
English language before embarking upon a journey to England in 1837.
Written in 1843, Ajaibaat-i-Farang first published from Delhi in 1847. This
being a very rare edition, its second edition published from Lucknow in 1873 is
often erroneously referred to as the first one. From Kambalposh to the
modern days, we have had a string of travel books. Some scholars have carried
out worthwhile research on the vast body of Urdu travel accounts. A few PhD
dissertations too have been written on Urdu travelogues but they remain
unpublished. Aside from works by Dr Mirza Hamid Baig and Dr Anwer
Sadeed, no detailed history of Urdu travelogues has been published. So
analysing and evaluating a large number of Urdu travel accounts, especially
the ones published during the past 20 years or so is a job still waiting to be
done. Also, many travelogues need to be analysed at length.
This is why Vaheed-ur-Rahman Khan’s new book Naqd-i-safar feels like a waft
of fresh air. It critically analyses and evaluates some selected Urdu
travelogues. Vaheed-ur-Rahman Khan, a scholar and humorist from Lahore, is
among those upcoming researchers who, I feel, are to play an important role
in the realm of Urdu research and criticism in the next few decades, though
there are quite a few scholars hailing from the young generation whom I have
great faith in as well, for example, Dr Baseera Ambreen, Dr Muhammad Abrar
Abdus Salaam, Dr Rafaqat Ali Shahid, Dr Khalid Nadeem, Dr Javed Ahmed
Khursheed Khan, Faizuddin Ahmed, Dr Pinky Justin, Dr Zulfiqar Ali Danish,
Khalid Ameen and Syed Tariq Hussain, to name a few.
Now coming to the book, it is divided into two parts: the first one analyses
Urdu’s 10 travelogues and the second one exclusively evaluates travelogues
written by Muhammad Khalid Akhter, a satirist. The first portion includes
pieces on the following travelogues: Ajaibaat-i-farang by Yousuf Khan
Kambalposh, Munh val kaaba shareef by Mustansar Hussain Tarar, Saat
samandar paar by Akhter Riazuddin, Nazar nama by Mahmood Nizami,
Maghribi Germany mein aik baras by Muhammad Kazim, Jerneli sarak by
Raza Ali Abidi, Maqaam-i-khilafat by Sir Abdul Qadir and Israel mein cahnd
roz by K Ashraf.