If Patras Bukhari (1898-1958) has earned the title of a Great Literati of Urdu language on the basis of a single small booklet: Patras kai Mazameen, another book entitled: Thal of the Sindh Sagar Doab During Indus Age (2018) by Zuabir Shafi Ghauri must be considered as one of the most original contributions so far published on Pakistan archaeology by any an amateur archaeologist in this country. But, unlike Patras kai Mazameen, the book on the Prehistory of Thal is not a solitary contribution of Late Zubair Shafi Ghauri in an odd field (prehistory of Pakistan).  His first book Ravi Kinarai ki Harappayi Bastian (Harappa Period Settlements along the Bank of River Ravi, published by the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2005 was equally an original contribution on the question of extension of Harappan civilization in Rachana Doab and beyond. This was as important work as any other book written on a similar subject by stalwarts like Sir John Marshall, M. S. Vats and M. N. Majumdar. Like Majumdar’s Explorations of Sindh (1935), Ghauri’s book: Thal of Sindh Sagar Doab was also based on actual fieldwork carried out by the author himself and without any official support and/or guidance. Besides, this author’s first book: Ravi Kinarai ki Harappayi Bastian was probably the third book on any archaeology of Pakistan ever written in Urdu – the other two being Wadi-i-Sindh ki Tehzeeb by Idris Siddiqui (1959)  Aasaar-i-Qadeema ki Sains (Science) by Humera Aalam ( 1999)[1]. Although after Marshall and others, as mentioned above, I was the first Pakistani to establish beyond doubt in 1983 that the Indus civilization settlements had definitely crossed the River Ravi by my discoveries of two sites – one at Khadian Wala near Nankana Sahib in 1983 and Nari near Khushab on the west bank of River Jhelum in 2003 and several other Kot Dijian period sites in the Salt Range (1994), but the real credit of settling this issue on permanent footing by discovering 11 sites in one-go all along the right bank of River Ravi and then by writing a full book on it goes to this bureaucrat-turned amateur archaeologist.

[1] This last book in Urdu has now been supplanted by Amli Aasaariyat by Muzaffar Ahmad and Asif Mahmud Rana (2017).