By Dr. Ashraf Zainabi

In Warpora, a village in Zaingeer Sopore, the story of Haji Mohammad Sultan War still moves from lip to lip like an old folksong.

Those who knew him describe him as a man who carried a century of Kashmir's history in his heart and left behind orchards that continue to bloom with his spirit.

Sultan was born around 1925, in a modest mud house where the family's few possessions were measured in faith rather than fortune. Along with his elder brother, Haji Ghulam Rasool War, he began life with nothing except a patch of land and a will that would one day transform the landscape of North Kashmir.

The brothers were orphans before they were adults, burdened with responsibility before they could dream of ease. But instead of yielding to hardship, they leaned into it. They chose to work hard, and with purpose.

As young men, the two would travel across the mountains to Gilgit-Baltistan, on horseback and foot, looking for work in places where no roads existed. Those journeys stitched strength and spirit into their character.

When they returned to Zaingeer, they returned with vision. It was the mid-twentieth century, a time when much of rural Kashmir still lived from one harvest to the next. The brothers saw promise in the soil. They began to plant apple saplings, an idea that seemed strange in a region accustomed to subsistence farming.

The first trees took years to bear fruit. Seasons passed. People watched, sometimes with doubt, and sometimes with hope. Then the miracle began.

The orchards bloomed, and with them, Zaingeer changed.

From the 1950s through the 1970s, the valley's green fields turned into a mosaic of apple trees. A generation that once struggled to make ends meet began to find prosperity through the same soil that had once yielded so little.

Today, Sopore's name is synonymous with apples, the“apple town” of Kashmir, and its roots trace back to those two brothers who planted a new way of life.

What made Sultan's story remarkable was his humanity.

When the area had only one car, it belonged to him, but it never stayed parked at his home. It served as a community vehicle, rushing the sick to hospitals, carrying neighbours through emergencies, or ferrying strangers across villages.

To own a car in that era was to possess a kind of power, but Sultan used it to serve. He believed that blessings grew by sharing them.

Those who visited his home recall the same generosity. The door stayed open to everyone: labourers, travellers, families in distress. There was no pride in his hospitality, only a deep sense of duty. He and his brother built their lives on work, faith, and compassion.

Politics tempted many of their generation, but they kept their distance. They admired Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah's National Conference, but never chased public office. They seemed content with their silent revolutions of soil and seed.

On 4 November 2025, Sultan passed away in his village at the age of around one hundred. His departure was as calm as his life, without ceremony and commotion, surrounded by the same land he had tended since boyhood.

His brother Ghulam Rasool had left a few years earlier, completing a parallel journey of faith and purpose.

Today, when apple trucks roll out of Sopore toward markets across India, few remember the men who first planted the dream. But, in every box of fruit leaving the valley, their legacy travels.

Sultan's life reminds Kashmir of a time when progress was built on hard work, wealth meant shared well-being, and leadership grew from example.

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