TO enjoy any LitFest, one needs to be a hyperactive octopus, with eyes and ears at the end of every tentacle. The Lahore LitFest 2025 the last in a trilogy before the abstinence of Ramazan offered a banquet of intellect, spread over four halls in cruel competition. To attend one was to forgo three equally interesting subjects.

Dr Ayesha Jalal to Pakistan`s early history what Dr Romila Thapar is to India`s more ancient one opened LLF with a discourse on Muslim enlightened thought.

She set the bar for the remaining sessions.

This year, the Iberian Peninsula insinuated itself into prominence, reinforced by the presence of the ambassadors of Spain and Portugal. Scholars spoke of the inspiration incubated in Al Andalus. Spanish historian Eduardo Moreno examined whether the Umayyads`rule was `Utopian`.

Diana Darke, introducing her recent book Islamesque, guided her audience from the earliest origin of the zigzag (the Egyptian hieroglyphic for water) reappearing through time in the eighth-century mosque in Cordoba, 12th-century Romanesque cathedrals in Britain and Europe, and later churches and monasteries. She presented the evidence left etched in tiles and incised in timbers by the highly skilled but forgotten Muslim craftsmen who built Europe`s medieval monuments.

Those who sought perfection in the arts attended Susan Stronge`s presentation on her exhibition `The Great Mughals`, still on at the V&A, London. To admire even reproductions of objects made for the three major Mughals Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan is to pay homage to the largely anonymous craftsmen who laboured to please their monarchs. Carved gems, jade cups, large carpets, bronze and copper ware, textiles, manuscripts from the imperial library (many made in Lahore)each object spoke of sensibility, elegant taste, and affordable patronage.

Drawn from collections from everywhere except the crucible of their origin, these treasures may have been taken abroad but they have been preserved there by their new owners and available for our plebeian eyes.

Ancient and modern Türkiye wriggled for attention in two sessions one on the history of `Istanbul: Three Cities, Three Stories`, and the second on religious revivalism in Türkiye from Atatürk to Erdogan and the precarious balance between democratic forces and uniformed ones.

A side light came through the session `Himalayas` with Pakistani mountaineer Naila Kiani. By scaling 11 8,000 metrehigh peaks, she has proven that one does not need the upward draught of an establishment to reach the top.Dr Peter Frankopan`s presence is always a scholastic benediction. The BBC calls him a `rock star don`. His rare visits to Lahore, as Malcolm Muggeridge once said of royal visits, are not to be expected but enjoyed when they occur. This year he did the LLF organisers proud by speaking extempore for two full-length sessions and participating in a third all in the same day.

Ever since his pioneering opus The Silk Roads: A New History of the World ( 2015 ), Dr Frankopan has expanded his field into the impact of geophysical events on world history. Of his three contributions to LLF 2025, the second `The Anthropogenic Shocks to Climate` was the most impactful. It drew on his book The Earth Transformed: An Untold History.

His warnings of the irreversible impact of climate change were not new. Twenty years ago, former US vice-president Al Gore had warned the world in countless presentations, documented in the film An Inconvenient Truth and his accompanying book of the same name. In 2007, Gore and aUN panel jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for `r aising international awareness about the global climate crisis`. His timely message met the fate of every premature prophet.

Related sessions covered archaeology `The Golden Road through Swat` and`Feminist Climate Justice`.

Mishal Husain, the epitome of feminism in the media, reprised in Lahore her memoir of her grandparents Broken Threads, this time interviewed by Jane Marriott (British high commissioner).

Novels were launched and discussed, Urdu poetry recited at the level of Iftikhar Arif, who also chaired a mushaira.

Certainly the most innovative session belonged to Ayedha Husain`s introduction o f T he Suf i Tarot, Ib n Arabi a nd the Ma mluks.

A practising Sufi, she and her equally wellinformed interlocutor discussed Ayedha`s unique pack of Sufi cards. Unlike previous Tarot packs, Ayedha`s set of images encourages the reader to look inwards.

The solutions lie not in the cards but within ourselves. In Maulana Rumi`s words, `Unfold your own myth.

This LLF is the 13th. It has proven lucky for its creator Razi Ahmed. He has been awarded the Chevalier de l`Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

He deserves equal recognition by ours. • The wnter, an author, was a speaker at the LLF www.fsaijazuddin.pk