CHITRAL STATE A LEGAL HISTORY

Description

“Chitral State: A Legal History is a work of scholarship. The topics that it treats cover a wide canvas. It takes the story essentially up to the time that Chitral’s accession to the newly established Pakistan was formally accepted in early 1948, although, at least in form, princely rule was to last another two decades until 1969 when it came to an end. The book is well-researched, immensely readable, and draws on an extensive variety of sources (all meticulously referenced). As a member of the former princely family, born and brought up and still living in his ancestral home in Lower Chitral, the author is especially well-positioned to tell the story which unfolds in the pages of this book. The author’s reflections of the nature of society, both as an abstract legal concept and as it developed in early Chitral and on issues of paramountcy, draw heavily on his grounding in legal theory. This is above all a book to dip into and enjoy. Its appeal should be as much to the historian as to the lawyer. It is clearly a labour of love. It is partly an evocation of times past. It is also partly a desire to inform those, curious to know something of what it was that animated such an extraordinary part of the world, about a polity that no longer exists but has left many marks on contemporary Chitral.”