Our inheritance was
never only gold.

A gemologist crosses into Lahore

As the subcontinent was divided, a young gemologist named Muhammad Ismaiel left Jaipur — and the family of gemstone traders he was born into — and crossed into Lahore with little more than his trained eye and the trade in his blood. He settled in the old jewellers’ heart of the city, among the lanes of Rang Mahal and Paniwala Talab, and began again from the stone up. In time, his name became the trade itself: his fellow traders elected him, unopposed, as their honorary president — a place he held with quiet authority to the last day of his life.

A name of our own

Trusted enough, in time, to be imitated. As “Nafees” began appearing on shopfronts in cities that had nothing to do with us, we chose to set ourselves apart the only honest way we knew — with a name that could belong to no one else.

And so, Hibaat.