PIRBABA DISTRICT BUNER

	PIRBABA DISTT. BUNER

 

 

 

Buner is known for it’s religious tourism, particularly an abode to Sufism. This district has quite a fascinating past. The mountainous range that is visible in the middle of the photo and where we are standing are ranges called ELUM. This range connects District Buner and District Swat. The Elum mountain starts it’s lowest peak at our village PIRBABA Buner and Stretches through it’s heightened peak idest loy Elum to descend to White Palace Murghazar Swat. To it’s north you pass towards jambel kokaray region of swat. And to it’s north east you pass sky scrapping caps of mountains to ascend towards Shangla par or Shangla top. Basically these three districts were part of the princely state namely Yousafzai State of Swat that stretched towards District Chillas. Kohistan, Buner, Shangla, Malakand and Swat were the entirety of state of swat.

As early as 260 B.C.E Ashoka the Great who was the Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty and ruled the entire sub-continent is said to have lived in the ELUM Mountain and post him this mountain became a Buddhist settlement.

This whole place used to receive snow before but now you will only see a white cloth during winters that covers half these ranges. The reason is mass deforestation of alpine cones forests. The following snap is a winter day of Pirbaba Buner. You’ll see snow mostly in months of December to February and the above photo is captured in hottest days of Buner summer. The deforestation is because the people do not have access to SUI GAS thus we are all still dependent on wood fire. In-fact we have the only wood-fire smoked pizza place in the whole Pakistan at an affordable rate, but it is still saddening to see all these majestic trees cut down and used for almost everything.

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Hazrat Syed Ali Tirmizi alias Pirbaba is centric to our settlement here. I am his descendent and our roots here go as back as 400+ years. He was a Sufi saint who came here from current Qunduz Afghanistan and was a Mughal Royal and a great commander who from earliest of his life diverted from his royalness to Sufism and hence this place is known across the nation by his name. Whenever somebody asked where I was from, no one knew where Buner was, they would confuse with Bannu or Bajaur, thus then I would have to either mention PIRBABA or just plainly say from Swat. Another post awaits a whole blog on struggles of Pirbaba and our lineage and how Buner is a district of saints. This was about our village called PIRBABA.

I hope this was somewhat interesting. Please provide your feedback if you are from my village and if you are not please tell if you would visit this place or have visited.

Thankyou