Lahori Khoji

Exploring the same old city!

The students of LUMS have developed this App as part of their assignment for a course on the history of Lahore designed by Ali Usman Qasmi. Azan Bin Zahid and Taimoor Ali – senior year students at the Computer Science department – developed the technical aspects of the App under Professor Suleman Shahid's supervision. In total, 32 students were divided into groups of 5, and each was assigned a particular gate. They were tasked with conceiving a walking trail for the gate, which required extensive research about the gate, its various neighborhoods, historical sites, and the residents' current lived experiences. The students read up on such classical texts about the history of Lahore as the works of Syed Muhammad Latif, Kanahya Lal, and Chishti to do their research and collect relevant information. They made several trips to the walled city, talked to the residents, explored the neighborhoods on their own, identified key sites, pinned them on google maps, and wrote historical notes about them. In their quest to find relevant information about the sites, the students were guided by Syed Faizan Abbas Naqvi.

Popularly known as Lahore ka Khoji, Naqvi is a young, local historian who knows the city like the back of his hand. Largely self-taught and mentored by Rao Javed Iqbal – another local historian with a passion for Lahore's built heritage and history – Faizan Abbas Naqvi has penned several books and pamphlets on Lahore’s historical sites and personalities associated with them. For the course on Lahore’s history, Naqvi worked closely with the students to supervise their research and curate their walking trails. He improved on the students' drafts, gave them tips about finding relevant sites in the walled city, and kept the students enthralled during our several walking tours with his encyclopedic knowledge about the city and its past. As a tribute to Naqvi, we have named the App 'Lahori Khoji' aka Lahore explorer - a title that his mentor, Rao Javed Iqbal, gave to him.

Please note that the bulk of the App is a product of research carried out by undergraduate students who are not professional historians. In case there is any factual or technical error or misinformation in the text, please let us know so that we can fix it.