ISLAMABAD: Aabpara Market, a crowded commercial zone located at the south west of sector G-6, Islamabad, along Khayaban-e-Suharwardy is the oldest market of capital city of Pakistan.
Many witnesses are still alive to recall their childhood memorised landscape of today’s Aabpara Market, but only few people can tell what is in the name of this market.
The sector G-6 was first a residential sector of capital city, where initially the government quarters were constructed to provide accommodation to government employees.
The occupants in these quarters were working in those government departments, which were transferred from Karachi to Rawalpindi following the decision to build new federal capital in Islamabad.
Most of the employees in these departments at that time belonged to West Pakistan or today’s Bangladesh.
An old inhabitant and former employee of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) state the nomenclature ‘Aabpara Market’ as a name of market after the name of a baby girl ‘Aabpara’, who was the first child of this locality, belonging to a Bengali family.
The old pictorial record of civic body also endorsed this historical fact as a picture of the wife of then CDA’s head is available in archive who visited the home of said baby girl ‘Aabpara’ to congratulate her parents.
The word “Aabpara” is a combination of two Persian words ‘Aab’ means water and Para means piece so if we look for the literal meaning, it is “the peace of water”.
What was before Aabpara? a historical reference tells that the father of great Sufi saint Shah Abul Latif Kazmi (Bari Imam), Syed Mehmood Shah, shifted his family from district Jhelum to Baghan village, presently called Aabpara.
At that time, it was a barren land and soon after the arrival of Bari Imam’s family, his father started farming and also kept some animals. The graves of the parents of this Sufi still existed on the greenbelt between the Kashmir Highway and Khayaban-e-Suharwardy.
It is pertinent to mention that being the first proper locality of capital city, the first ever primary school of the Islamabad was also established in this area.
The reasons whatsoever behind the name of this market, but currently it is the most mismanaged market due to the negligence of civic body, as it is currently with full of encroachments and building code violations. The city managers should revive this first market according to its actual plan.
