It is my pleasure to write a few lines about the great work on Hindko grammar by my brother Dr. Halil Toker. I wish I could write more, but I am extremely busy reviewing my own five books which I want to be published before the end of this year. I am working fourteen hours a day. Still, I have stolen some time from my busy schedule.

I met Dr. Halil first at an International Urdu Conference at Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan. My second meeting with him was at Peshawar where he was the chief guest and I presided the function at Peshawar Model College. I found him very friendly. He surprised me with his fluent Urdu. He is the head of the Urdu Department at Istanbul University, Turkey. Our third encounter was at the International Conference about Allamah Iqbal at the Urdu Department, Istanbul University, Turkey.

There I found out that he was not only an author of very many Urdu books but an outstanding poet of Urdu as well. I was very much impressed by the depth of his knowledge and the height of his thoughts. To my great surprise, he told me that he was writing a grammar book of Hindko. We wanted to discuss it, but the time of my stay there was too short and our schedule was too tight to allow that.

On my return to England, he contacted me and asked me if I could exchange views on his proposed grammar of Hindko. Since then, he has been in continuous contact with me. During this period of over four years, he impressed me with his zeal and perseverance ever more. His quest for knowledge and love for Hindko left a lasting impression on me. In the end, I was delighted to receive his e-mail saying that he had completed the book. He asked me if I would like to have a final look at the script. It was an honor to me, and I accepted the offer without any hesitation. It was August 2012. I received his script at the end of the month. I set aside all my own literary works and spent the whole month of September going through it.

I am happy to say that I found the work of Dr. Halil of high standard. He did not leave any stone unturned to make it a classical job. It is the result of his unquenched thirst for search and research.

This is the second grammar book of Hindko. The first one was written by a native speaker of the language and this second one by a great Turk brother and lover of the language. I must say that it is a valuable gift of our Turk scholar to Hindkowaans and to the people of Pakistan. I congratulate him on production of the precious book. It will be remembered by lovers of the Hindko language as a token of the historical love that exists between the two brother countries of Turkey and Pakistan for many centuries to come.

I take this opportunity to appeal to the government of KPK and the vice chancellor of the Peshawar University to open a Department of Turkish Language and Culture at the University of Peshawar. This will further strengthen the bonds between the people of the two countries.

Dr. Elahi Bakhsh Akhtar Awan PhD (London) 18 October 2012