Hilal-i-Jur'at - History

History

Further information: Modern day Pakistan, Dominion of Pakistan, Pakistan Military, and Pakistan Military Awards

Established on 16 March 1957, the award was founded in celebration of Pakistan becoming a Republic and was formally given award status by the President of Pakistan. According to the official army website of Pakistan the award is given for "acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty, performed on land, at sea or in the air in the face of the enemy". The recipient of the award is able to use the distinguished honorific post-nominal letters "HJ" after his or her name. The apportion is considered to be the equivalent to the Distinguished Service Order under the British Honours System and the United States Distinguished Service Cross.

The names of the medals originate from the Persian language but are written in the form of the Arabic language. This was unusual since the major languages of Pakistan are Punjabi and Urdu. In the Pakistan Parliament there was a debate on why the names were given in Persian but were spelled in Arabic as some politicians were not entirely sure other medals made were inscribed of words from the Arabic language in the decade that it was made official.

Pakistan became a republic in 1956. Prior to that Pakistan had been a dominion of Great Britain and had as such come under the British honours system. When the award was established, however, it was instituted retrospectively back to 15 August 1947—the date of Indian Independence and Partition of India – and it was subsequently conferred on a number of Pakistani officers for service during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947.

One particular unit that appeared in an article from Dawn, the Guards Battalion, was mentioned which emphasized that they had earned several Military Crosses and one Victoria Cross was congratulated in 2004 by the president. In the article it was emphasized that before partition the unit had been given British gallantry awards which suggests the Hilal-i-Jur'at didn't exist at the time.