Everyday Life Along Kashmir’s Rivers and Lakes, 1890s–1930s

This post brings together early photographs that trace everyday life in Kashmir as it unfolded along rivers, lakes, neighbourhood spaces, and places of routine activity. The scenes move through moments of prayer in shrine courtyards, children swimming in the Jhelum after school, women spinning yarn and trading vegetables on Dal Lake, and villagers gathering in shared outdoor spaces. Education, work, leisure, and movement appear closely connected to water and locality, reflecting a way of life shaped by familiarity with rivers and lakes rather than separation from them. Taken together, these photographs offer a quiet, human view of Kashmir in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where daily routines, community life, and landscape were deeply intertwined.

The Shah-i-Hamadan Mosque stands prominently on the banks of the Jhelum River in Srinagar in 1920, its tiered wooden roof and riverside position forming a distinctive part of the city’s skyline. Also known as Khanqah-e-Moula, the mosque is closely associated with the fourteenth-century Sufi saint Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, whose teachings played a central role in the spread of Islam in Kashmir. By the early twentieth century, the mosque had long served as a centre of religious learning, devotion, and community life, while its placement along the Jhelum reflects how Srinagar’s sacred architecture developed in close relationship with the river that shaped the city’s spiritual and urban history.

A young Kashmiri woman stands outdoors in 1939 wearing a pheran, the loose woollen garment worn daily by women across Kashmir for warmth and comfort. Her head covering and large earrings reflect everyday styles rather than ceremonial dress, suggesting an ordinary moment rather than a posed studio setting. Photographs like this were often taken by visiting tourists, who frequently recorded people they encountered during travel, focusing on clothing and appearance as part of their experience of Kashmir. Such images quietly capture how women dressed and presented themselves in daily life, offering a simple, human view of the period without formality or display.

Men, women, and children gather outside a dispensary in Kashmir in the early twentieth century, waiting their turn as medical staff stand at the entrance. Such dispensaries were among the earliest points of organised healthcare in the region, often serving large local populations with limited access to treatment. During this period, basic medical care was gradually introduced through small clinics and mission or state-run facilities, where people came for medicines, vaccinations, and simple consultations. Scenes like this reflect how healthcare became part of everyday life, with families waiting together in shared spaces, long before hospitals and modern health systems became widely available across Kashmir.

A large group of Kashmiri villagers sits and stands together outdoors in 1912, with men, women, and children gathered closely beneath trees. The clothing, including wrapped shawls and loose garments, reflects everyday village dress shaped by climate and local custom rather than any formal occasion. Group photographs like this were often taken when travellers or officials visited rural areas, bringing people together for a single moment of documentation. Such images offer a quiet glimpse into village life at a time when extended families lived closely, shared space and labour, and formed tightly connected communities across rural Kashmir.

The road outside Nishat Garden runs along the edge of Dal Lake, with parked vehicles, pedestrians, and a steady movement of boats visible across the water. This scene reflects a period when road transport and lake travel existed side by side, with buses and cars bringing visitors to the gardens while shikaras and larger boats continued to serve daily movement on the lake. Nishat Garden, laid out in the seventeenth century during the Mughal period, had long been a major destination in Srinagar, and by the mid twentieth century the area had become a meeting point of older water-based life and newer road connections, showing how the city was gradually changing while still remaining closely tied to the lake.

Men are engaged in prayer within the courtyard of a shrine in Srinagar around 1900, seated quietly on the ground beside simple wooden stands beneath bare trees. The enclosed courtyard and timber-built surroundings point to a neighbourhood shrine used for regular daily worship rather than a large congregational space. Around the turn of the twentieth century, such shrines formed an important part of Srinagar’s religious life, offering accessible places for personal devotion woven into everyday routine. Scenes like this reflect a calm, unhurried rhythm of prayer that shaped daily life in the city, grounded in shared spaces and long-established practice.

A large crowd stands along Zaina Kadal in Srinagar in 1911, watching the Jhelum flow beneath and observing the movement of boats below. Known historically as the Fourth Bridge, Zaina Kadal was one of the original wooden bridges of the old city and a busy point of daily movement and pause. Watching the river from bridges was a common pastime in Srinagar, where people lingered to observe boat traffic, exchange conversation, and pass time rather than crossing in haste. Scenes like this show how bridges functioned not only as crossings but as shared social spaces, closely tied to the rhythm of river life in the city.

A Kashmiri woman sits outdoors around 1900, spinning yarn on a yander, the traditional hand-driven spinning wheel used across the region. Seated on open ground beneath a tree, she works calmly with the wheel set close to her, turning raw fibre into thread through steady, practiced movement. Spinning was a routine part of daily life for many women, supplying yarn for household use and for wider textile work that supported local weaving traditions. Scenes like this reflect how skilled handwork was woven into ordinary days, carried out in open spaces near home and water, and shaped by a slow, patient rhythm that defined everyday life in Kashmir at the turn of the century.

Schoolboys leap into the Jhelum River from the building of the CMS School at Fateh Kadal in Srinagar during the 1890s, watched by classmates gathered along the balcony and riverbank. Established in 1880 by Rev. J.H. Knowles and relocated to Fateh Kadal around 1889–1890, the Church Missionary Society school became an important centre of modern education in Kashmir, later known as the CMS Central School. Positioned directly beside the river, the school’s setting reflected how education, daily life, and the Jhelum were closely intertwined in the old city. The building itself no longer survives, having been demolished during later bridge construction, but scenes like this capture a formative period in Kashmiri education, remembered today through the institution’s legacy and its later association with the Biscoe School.

Women travel on a vegetable boat across Dal Lake in 1902, one standing with a paddle while another sits among baskets of produce. Such boats were part of the floating market system that supplied vegetables and daily goods to households and vendors along the lake and adjoining waterways. In the early twentieth century, Dal Lake functioned as a working landscape as much as a place of residence, with families relying on boats for transport, trade, and routine movement. Scenes like this reflect how women were directly involved in lake-based commerce, navigating water routes that formed an essential part of everyday life in Srinagar long before roads replaced the lake as the primary network of exchange.