Ahmad Hasan Dani

DR Dani was a scholar, historian, linguist, anthropologist and an archaeology and museum expert of sterling qualities and stature. He was the rare Pakistani who was respected around the world for his passion for history and the contribution he made to allied fields of knowledge. In a country where antiquities and the past are fading further into oblivion, he stood tall among the handful of petitioners for safeguarding and conserving cultural heritage. His passion for history was reciprocated by history itself when he became a part ofit as a key member of Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s team that excavated and completed the documentation of Moenjodaro in the 1940s. The Gandhara civilisation further up north, too, was among his beneficiaries in that he painstakingly documented the many sites and set up museums across Taxila and the Swat and Peshawar valleys. Rehman Dheri near Swabi was Dr Dani’s own find.The scholar’s spread of activities was as vast as his interests. Spanning an entire land mass from the sub-continent to eastern China, Afghanistan, Central Asia and going all the way to the steppes, Dr Dani was part of many global teams of experts who worked on archaeological sites in the whole region. In his last decades, and as long as foreign tourism was part of the Pakistan landscape, he became the darling of both tourists and foreign academics who came here to see or study the country’s antiquities. Mild in speech and manner and extremely forthcoming when questioned about any of his fields, Dr Dani voluntarily made himself available to such audiences. He was one of the reasons for the increase in European and Japanese study groups that came to Pakistan in droves throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He will be missed by all who have any enthusiasm for heritage and culture.