Street Shops & Heritage Sites in Old Kashmir Photographs

A collection of old photographs showing daily life, trade, education, shrines, and landscapes in Kashmir from the 1870s to around 1915. The pictures include a street-side sweet shop in Srinagar with trays of confections; girl students at Miss Fitze School in Fateh Kadal; a panoramic view of Srinagar across the Jhelum River around 1870; riverbank life in Baramulla in the 1870s; a portrait of a boatman's daughter; devotees at Sheikh Hamza Makhdoom shrine; Verinag Spring with its Mughal pavilion; visitors at Aishmuqam Shrine; patients at an open-air dispensary in Baramulla; and houseboats moored along a quiet lake. Simple views of old Kashmir.

A street-side sweet shop in Srinagar around 1915, with large trays of freshly prepared sweets arranged openly for customers along a busy market frontage. Shops like this were an everyday part of urban life, producing confections made from ingredients such as honey, nuts, and grain-based pastes that were widely consumed across the region. These spaces were not only centres of trade but also informal social gathering points, where neighbours paused, conversations unfolded, and news of the day was exchanged. The scene reflects how small food businesses were woven into the rhythm of daily life in early twentieth century Kashmir, combining commerce, community, and routine social interaction.

Girl students gathered on the steps of Miss Fitze School at Fateh Kadal in Srinagar, dressed in traditional Kashmiri clothing, likely photographed in the early twentieth century. Schools such as this played an important role in the gradual expansion of formal education for girls in Kashmir, at a time when access to schooling was still limited and uneven. The institution was later shifted to Sheikh Bagh and renamed after Miss Mallinson, reflecting broader changes in educational organisation and location within the city. The image captures not only a school setting but also a moment in the early history of women’s education in Kashmir, where learning spaces began to take shape alongside established social and cultural traditions.

A broad view of Srinagar around 1870, looking across the Jhelum River as it flows through densely built neighbourhoods lined with wooden houses, river-facing balconies, and small bridges. At this time, the river functioned as the city’s main artery, used daily for transport, trade, and communication, with homes and shops closely oriented toward the water. The tightly clustered architecture reflects an urban pattern shaped by canals and riverbanks rather than roads, long before modern expansion altered the city’s layout. Scenes like this illustrate how Srinagar’s social and economic life was deeply connected to the Jhelum in the nineteenth century, with the river acting as both a working space and a defining feature of everyday life.

A riverbank scene at Baramulla captured in the 1870s, showing people standing along the edge of the water with small huts, boats, and everyday belongings arranged close to the river. Baramulla was an important river town on the Jhelum, serving as a gateway between the Kashmir Valley and routes leading toward the Punjab, and daily life here was closely tied to river traffic and seasonal movement. The presence of temporary shelters and boats reflects how riverbanks functioned as working and living spaces, not just points of passage. This image offers a quiet view of everyday activity in a town shaped by trade, travel, and the constant presence of the river in the late nineteenth century.

A portrait of a young girl identified as the daughter of a boatman, photographed in Kashmir in the early twentieth century. Boatman families were closely tied to the lakes and waterways of Srinagar, particularly Dal Lake and the Jhelum, where daily life depended on boats for transport, trade, and household movement. Children from these families grew up around water, with their lives shaped by lake-based work, seasonal rhythms, and close-knit community ties. Such portraits were often taken by visiting photographers or travellers, capturing individual faces while also reflecting the social worlds that existed along Kashmir’s waterways at the time.

This photograph shows devotees gathered at the shrine of Sheikh Hamza Makhdoom, also known as Sultan-ul-Arifeen, at the foothills of Hari Parbat in Srinagar. The image reflects the long-established tradition of collective visitation and reverence associated with Sufi shrines in Kashmir. Sheikh Hamza Makhdoom was a sixteenth-century Sufi scholar who played a central role in spreading the Suhrawardi order in the region, emphasising religious learning, ethical conduct, and social reform. Following his death in 1576, his burial place developed into one of Srinagar’s most important pilgrimage sites, with the shrine complex taking its enduring form largely during the Mughal period, when Sufi institutions were actively supported across the valley.

This photograph shows Verinag Spring, the recognised source of the Jhelum River, with its Mughal-era stone pavilion and arched water outlet set against the wooded slopes of the Pir Panjal range in Anantnag. Verinag has been historically revered as a sacred spring long before the Mughal period, associated in local Hindu tradition with the deity Nila Nag. In 1620, the site was formally developed under Mughal patronage when Emperor Jahangir commissioned an octagonal stone reservoir and architectural enclosure to frame the spring. The complex was later expanded during the reign of Shah Jahan with landscaped gardens and water channels, establishing Verinag as one of the earliest and most refined examples of Mughal garden design in Kashmir.

This photograph shows devotees gathered in the courtyard of the Aishmuqam Shrine, seated along the carved wooden veranda of the mausoleum dedicated to Sheikh Zain-ud-din Wali. The scene reflects the everyday life of a major Kashmiri Sufi shrine, where visitors would rest, converse, and engage in quiet devotion within the shrine complex. Sheikh Zain-ud-din Wali, a fifteenth-century Sufi saint and prominent disciple of Sheikh Noor-ud-din Wali, renounced his princely origins to live a life of asceticism and spiritual discipline in the hills above Aishmuqam. After his death, the site developed into one of the most important pilgrimage centres in southern Kashmir, drawing devotees from different religious backgrounds. The shrine became especially associated with the annual Zool festival, during which a ceremonial torch is carried, symbolising spiritual illumination and renewal, and reinforcing the shrine’s long-standing role as a shared space of faith, tradition, and communal gathering in the region.

This photograph depicts patients gathered outside an open-air dispensary associated with St Joseph’s Mission Hospital in Baramulla, where medical consultations were conducted in a simple outdoor setting. The scene reflects early twentieth-century healthcare practices in Kashmir, particularly in towns along the Jhelum Valley Road, where access to enclosed medical facilities was limited and patient numbers were often high. Established in 1921 by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, St Joseph’s Mission Hospital became a key centre for modern medical care in north Kashmir, serving both local residents and travellers entering the valley. Open-air dispensaries like this one allowed doctors and nurses to treat large groups efficiently, providing basic examinations, medicines, vaccinations, and maternal care. The hospital played an important role in introducing organised public health services to the region, marking a gradual transition from home-based and traditional healing methods to institutional healthcare during the late colonial period.

This photograph shows houseboats and shikaras moored along the edge of a lake in Kashmir, with low wooden structures, small boats, and distant mountain ridges reflected in the still water. The exact lake is not identified, and the scene is presented here without assigning it to a specific location such as Dal Lake. During the late nineteenth century, lakes and waterways across the Kashmir Valley supported similar patterns of life, where boatmen families lived and worked on the water, using shikaras for transport, fishing, and local trade. Houseboats at this time were functional floating homes rather than tourist accommodations, shaped by social conditions and restrictions on land settlement. Photographs like this offer a quiet record of everyday lake-based living in Kashmir before the large-scale transformation of these waters into organised tourist spaces in the twentieth century.