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Dear Members !

So finally I have decided you to take Pakistan tour with me. So be prepare yourself...


I will provide you complete details about Pakistan, Like history, its areas, Geography, Biography of Presidents and Prime Ministers, Tour Places etc etc...

You will feel like that you are travelling with me

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Badshai mousque in Lahore....

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Flag of Pakistan

Chand Sitaron Wala....
The flag of Pakistan is green with a vertical white band on the hoist side, which symbolizes the role of religious minorities. Centered in the green is a large white crescent and star -- the crescent and star and the color green are traditional symbols of Islam.

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Episode # 1

History of Pakistan

The history of Pakistan is a part of the histories of Afghanistan, India, and Iran and traces back to the earliest known human settlements in South Asia.
Spanning the western expanse of the Indian subcontinent and the eastern borderlands of the Iranian plateau, the region of modern Pakistan was the birthplace of some of South Asia's major civilizations and the subcontinent's gateway to the Middle East and Central Asia.

The earliest archaeological site in Pakistan is the palaeolithic hominid site in the Soan River valley.[4] Situated on the first coastal migration route of Homo sapiens out of Africa, the region was inhabited early by modern humans.[5] Village life in South Asia began with the neolithic site of Mehrgarh,[6] while the first urban civilization of the region was the Indus Valley Civilization, with major sites at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa.[7] The Indus Valley Civilization collapsed in the middle of the second millennium BCE and was followed by the Vedic Civilization, which extended over much of the Indo-Gangetic plains. Successive empires and kingdoms ruled the region from the Achaemenid Persian empire[8] around 543 BCE, to Alexander the Great[9] in 326 BCE and the Mauryan empire. The Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria included ****hara and Punjab from 184 BCE, and reached its greatest extent under Menander, establishing the Greco-Buddhist period with advances in trade and culture.

In 712 CE, the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh and Multan in southern Punjab,[10] setting the stage for several successive Muslim empires in the Indian subcontinent, including the Ghaznavid, the Ghorid, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. The latter suffered a gradual decline in the early eighteenth century which provided opportunities for the Afghans, Balochis and Sikhs to exercise control over large areas until the British East India Company[11] gained ascendancy over South Asia. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 resulted in 90 years of direct British rule, laid the foundations for the freedom struggle led by the Indian National Congress, and the All India Muslim League. The latter was founded in 1906 to protect Muslim interests and rose to popularity in the late 1930s amid fears of under-representation and neglect of Muslims in politics. On 29 December 1930, the poet Muhammad Iqbal called for an autonomous "state in northwestern India for Indian Muslims".[12] Muhammad Ali Jinnah espoused the Two Nation Theory and led the Muslim League to adopt the Lahore Resolution[13] of 1940, demanding the formation of an independent Pakistan.

In 712 CE, the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh and Multan in southern Punjab,[10] setting the stage for several successive Muslim empires in the Indian subcontinent, including the Ghaznavid, the Ghorid, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. The latter suffered a gradual decline in the early eighteenth century which provided opportunities for the Afghans, Balochis and Sikhs to exercise control over large areas until the British East India Company[11] gained ascendancy over South Asia. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 resulted in 90 years of direct British rule, laid the foundations for the freedom struggle led by the Indian National Congress, and the All India Muslim League. The latter was founded in 1906 to protect Muslim interests and rose to popularity in the late 1930s amid fears of under-representation and neglect of Muslims in politics. On 29 December 1930, the poet Muhammad Iqbal called for an autonomous "state in northwestern India for Indian Muslims".[12] Muhammad Ali Jinnah espoused the Two Nation Theory and led the Muslim League to adopt the Lahore Resolution[13] of 1940, demanding the formation of an independent Pakistan.

Pakistan became independent on August 14, 1947 with two Muslim-majority wings to the east and northwest of India. The Partition of India resulted in communal riots across India and Pakistan — as millions of Muslims moved to Pakistan and millions of Hindus and Sikhs moved to India. Disputes arose over several princely states including Jammu and Kashmir whose ruler had acceded to India following an invasion by Pashtun tribesmen, leading to the First Kashmir War (1948) which ended with India occupying roughly two-third of the state. A republic was declared in 1956 but was stalled by a coup d'etat by Ayub Khan (1958–69), who ruled during a period of internal instability and a second war with India in 1965. Economic and political dissent in East Pakistan led to violent political repression and tensions escalating into civil war[14] followed by the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and ultimately the secession of East Pakistan as the independent state of Bangladesh.[15] Civilian rule resumed from 1972 to 1977 under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, until he was deposed by General Zia-ul-Haq, who became the country's third military president. Pakistan's secular policies were replaced by the Islamic Shariah legal code, which increased religious influences on the civil service and the military. With the death of General Zia in a plane crash in 1988, Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was elected as the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan. Over the next decade, she alternated power with Nawaz Sharif, as the country's political and economic situation worsened. Military tensions in the Kargil conflict[16] with India were followed by a Pakistani military coup d'état in 1999[17] in which General Pervez Musharraf assumed executive powers. In 2001, Musharraf named himself President after the forced resignation of Rafiq Tarar. After the 2002 parliamentary elections, Musharraf transferred executive powers to newly elected Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who was succeeded in the 2004 Prime-Ministerial election by Shaukat Aziz, followed by a temporary period in office by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. On November 15, 2007 the National Assembly completed its term and a caretaker government was appointed with the former Chairman of the Senate, Muhammad Mian Soomro as Prime Minister. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has resulted the general elections being postponed until February 18, 2008.

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Ancient Hindu wood carving from Kashmir Smas, Peshawar District" Unknown photographer 1880s. British Library


P.S Tex Appiii apkee request per may tumam photos large kerkay post ker rahi hon.

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Prehistory



Mehrgarh, (7000-5500 BCE), on the Kachi plain of Balochistan, is an important Neolithic site discovered in 1974, with early evidence of farming and herding,[18] and dentistry.[19] Early residents lived in mud brick houses, stored grain in granaries, fashioned tools with copper ore, cultivated barley, wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle, while later residents (5500-2600 BCE) engaged in crafts, including flint knapping, tanning, bead production, and metalworking. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BCE,[20] but climatic changes between 2600 and 2000 BCE caused the area to become more arid. Mehrgarh was abandoned in favour of the Indus valley,[21] where a new civilization was in the early stages of development.[22]

The Indus Valley civilization developed between 3300-1700 BCE on the banks of the Indus River and at its peak had as many as five million inhabitants in hundreds of settlements extending as far as the Arabian Sea, southeastern Iran and the Himalayas.[23] The major urban centers were at Dholavira, Harappa, Lothal, Mohenjo-daro, and Rakhigarhi, as well as an offshoot called the Kulli culture (2500-2000 BCE) in southern Balochistan, which had similar settlements, pottery and other artifacts. The Indus Valley civilisation has been tentatively identified as proto-Dravidian, but this cannot be confirmed until the Indus script is fully deciphered.[24] The civilization collapsed abruptly around 1700 BCE, possibly due to a cataclysmic earthquake or the drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra river.


In the early part of the second millennium BCE, Indo-European tribes from Central Asia or the southern Russian steppes migrated into the region,[25] and settled in the Sapta Sindhu area between the Kabul River and the Upper Ganges-Yamuna rivers.[26] The resulting Vedic culture lasted until the middle of the first millennium BCE when there were marked linguistic, cultural and political changes.[27] During the Vedic culture, the hymns of the Rigveda were composed and the foundations of Hinduism were laid. The city of Taxila, in present-day northern Pakistan, became important in Hinduism (and later in Buddhism) — traditionally the Mahābhārata epic was first recited at Taxila at the snake sacrifice of King Janamejaya, one of the heroes of the story.[28]

The Indus plains formed the most populous and richest satrapy of the Persian Achaemenid Empire for almost two centuries from the reign of Darius the Great (522-485 BCE).[29] The Achaemenids used the Aramaic script for the Persian language, but other scripts became more popular after the end of Achaemenid rule, such as Kharoṣṭhī (derived from Aramaic) and Greek. The interaction between Hellenistic Greece and Buddhism began when Alexander the Great overthrew the Achaemenid empire in 334 BCE, and marched eastwards. Eventually, after defeating King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes (near modern Jhelum), he conquered much of the Punjab region, but his battle weary troops refused to advance any further into India[30] to engage the mighty army of Nanda Dynasty so Alexander travelled southwest along the Indus valley.[31] Along the way he engaged in several battles and founded several new Macedonian/Greek settlements in ****hara and Punjab, before marching his army westward across the Makran desert towards modern Iran.

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During the time of his campaigns on the Indus plain, Alexander found an ally in Chandragupta Maurya, who later raised his own military force and overthrew the Nanda Dynasty in Magadha, using Macedonian tactics, and founded the Mauryan dynasty that lasted about 180 years.[32] Alexander's Diadochi (generals) divided his empire after his death in 323 BCE, with Seleucus setting up the Seleucid Kingdom, which included the Indus plain.[33] Chandragupta Maurya took advantage of this fragmentation of Greek power and captured the Punjab and ****hara.[34] Later, the eastern part of the Seleucid Kingdom broke away to form the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (third–second century BCE). Chandragupta's grandson, Ashoka the Great, (273-232 BCE) expanded the Mauryan empire to it's greatest extent covering most of South Asia. He converted to Buddhism after feeling remorse for his bloody conquest of Kalinga in eastern India. His Edicts were written on pillars in Aramaic (the lingua franca of the Achaemenid Empire) or in Kharoṣṭhī.[35]

Greco-Buddhism (or Grوco-Buddhism) was the syncretism between the culture of Classical Greece and Buddhism in the area of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan, between the fourth century BCE and the fifth century CE.[36] It influenced the artistic development of Buddhism, and in particular Mahayana Buddhism, before it spread to central and eastern Asia, from the 1st century CE onward. Demetrius (son of the Greco-Bactrian king Euthydemus) invaded northern India in 180 BCE as far as Pataliputra and established an Indo-Greek kingdom. To the south, the Greeks captured Sindh and nearby coastal areas, completing the invasion by 175 BCE and confining the Sungas to the east. Meanwhile, in Bactria, the usurper Eucratides killed Demetrius in a battle. Although the Indo-Greeks lost part of the Gangetic plain, their kingdom lasted nearly two centuries.

The Indo-Greek Menander I (reigned 155-130 BCE) drove the Greco-Bactrians out of ****hara and beyond the Hindu Kush, becoming a king shortly after his victory. His territories covered Panjshir and Kapisa in modern Afghanistan and extended to the Punjab region, with many tributaries to the south and east, possibly as far as Mathura. The capital Sagala (modern Sialkot) prospered greatly under Menander's rule and Menander is one of the few Bactrian kings mentioned by Greek authors.[37] The classical Buddhist text Milinda Paٌha, praises Menander, saying there was "none equal to Milinda in all India".[38] His empire survived him in a fragmented manner until the last independent Greek king, Strato II, disappeared around 10 CE. Around 125 BCE, the Greco-Bactrian king Heliocles, son of Eucratides, fled from the Yuezhi invasion of Bactria and relocated to ****hara, pushing the Indo-Greeks east of the Jhelum River. Various petty kings ruled into the early first century CE, until the conquests by the Scythians, Parthians and the Yuezhi, who founded the Kushan dynasty. The last known Indo-Greek ruler was Theodamas, from the Bajaur area of ****hara, mentioned on a 1st century CE signet ring, bearing the Kharoṣṭhī inscription "Su Theodamasa" ("Su" was the Greek transliteration of the Kushan royal title "Shau" ("Shah" or "King")).

The Indo-Scythians were descended from the Sakas (Scythians) who migrated from southern Siberia to Kashmir and Arachosia from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century BCE. They displaced the Indo-Greeks and ruled a kingdom that stretched from ****hara to Mathura, while Scythian tribes spread further into northwest India and the Iranian plateau.

The Parni were a nomadic Central Asian tribe who overthrew the Persian Seleucids and annexed much of the Indus region. Following the decline of the central Parthian authority after clashes with the Roman Empire, a local Parthian leader, Gondophares established the Indo-Parthian Kingdom in the 1st century CE. The kingdom was ruled from Taxila and covered much of modern southeast Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India.[39]

The Kushan kingdom founded by King Heraios, and greatly expanded by his successor, Kujula Kadphises. Kadphises' son, Vima Takto conquered territory now in India, but lost much of the west of the kingdom to the Parthians. The fourth Kushan emperor, Kanishka I, (circa 127 CE) had a winter capital at Purushapura (Peshawar) and a summer capital at Kapisa (Bagram). The kingdom linked the Indian Ocean maritime trade with the commerce of the Silk Road through the Indus valley. At its height, the empire extended from the Aral Sea to northern India, encouraging long-distance trade, particularly between China and Rome. Kanishka convened a great Buddhist council in Kashmir, marking the start of the pantheistic Mahayana Buddhism and its scission with Nikaya Buddhism. The art and culture of ****hara are the best known expressions of the interaction of Greek and Buddhist cultures, which continued over several centuries until the fifth century CE White Hun invasions. Over the next few centuries, the White Huns, Indo-Parthians, and Kushans shared control of the Indus plain while the Persian Sassanid Empire dominated the south and southwest. The mingling of Indian and Persian cultures in the region gave rise to the Indo-Sassanid culture, which flourished in Balochistan and western Punjab. The Gupta Empire arose in northern India around the second century CE and included much of the lower Indus area as a province. The Gupta era was marked by a local Hindu revival, although Buddhism continued to flourish.

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Ruins of Hindu temple and gateway in the Indo-Greek Kashmiri style at Malot, Jhelum District. Photo: Joseph David Beglar, 1870s.

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Buddhist ruins at Ali Masjid in the Khyber Pass, showing a length of wall covered in niches with Buddha images. Photo: John Burke, 1878.


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[t3xPeRt]

w/salam... n very zabar10 thread mission

me k leay yeh bht lash pash thread hey................. but abi jo u ki last posting mein choti pics hein.... kia wo bari ho sakti hein

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The Muslim period

In 712 CE, a Syrian Muslim chieftain called Muhammad bin Qasim conquered most of the Indus region for the Umayyad empire, but the instability of the empire resulted in effective control only over Sind and southern Punjab. The provincial capital of "As-Sindh" was at Al-Mansurah, 72 km north of modern Hyderabad. There was gradual conversion to Islam in the south, especially amongst the native Buddhist majority, but in areas north of Multan, Buddhists, Hindus and other non-Muslim groups remained numerous.[40] In 997 CE Mahmud of Ghazni conquered the bulk of Khorasan and in 1005 marched on Peshawar, followed by the conquest of Punjab in 1007, Balochistan in 1011, Kashmir in 1015 and Qanoch in 1017. By the end of his reign in 1030, Mahmud's empire extended from Kurdistan in the west to the Yamuna river in the east, and the Ghaznavid dynasty lasted until 1187. Contemporary historians such as Abolfazl Beyhaqi and Ferdowsi described extensive building work in Lahore, as well as Mahmud's support and patronage of literature and the arts.


The Age of the Caliphs
Prophet Mohammad, 622-632

Patriarchal Caliphate, 632-661

Umayyad Caliphate, 661-750

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In 1160, the Muhammad Ghori conquered Ghazni from the Ghaznavids, and in 1173 Muhammad became governor of Ghazni. He raided eastwards into the remaining Ghaznavid territory, and invaded Gujarat in the 1180s, but was rebuffed by Gujarat's Solanki rulers. In 1186-7 he conquered Lahore, ending the Ghaznavid empire and bringing the last of Ghaznevid territory under his control. Muhammad returned to Lahore after 1200 to deal with a revolt of the Rajput Ghakkar tribe in the Punjab. He suppressed the revolt, but was killed during a Ghakkar raid on his camp on the Jhelum River in 1206. Muhammad's successors established the first dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, while the Mamluk Dynasty (mamluk means "slave" and referred to the Turkic slave soldiers who became rulers throughout the Islamic world) in 1211 seized the imperial throne. Several Turko-Afghan dynasties ruled from Delhi: the Mamluk (1211-90), the Khalji (1290-1320), the Tughlaq (1320-1413), the Sayyid (1414-51), and the Lodhi (1451-1526). Although some kingdoms remained independent of Delhi in the Deccan and in Gujarat, Malwa (central India), and Bengal, almost all of the Indus plain came under the rule of these large Indo-Islamic Sultanates, with Delhi as their capital.

The sultans of Delhi enjoyed cordial relations with Muslim rulers in the Near East but owed them no allegiance. The sultans ruled from urban centers--while military camps and trading posts provided the nuclei for towns that sprang up in the countryside. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the sultanate was its temporary success in insulating the South Asia from the potential devastation of the Mongol invasion from Central Asia in the thirteenth century, which nonetheless led to the loss of Afghanistan and western Pakistan to the Mongols (see the Ilkhanate Dynasty). The resulting "Indo-Islamic" fusion left lasting monuments in architecture, music, literature, and religion. In addition it is surmised that the language of Urdu (literally meaning "horde" or "camp" in various Turkic dialects) was born during the Delhi Sultanate period as a result of the mingling of Sanskritic prakrits and the Persian, Turkish, Arabic.

From the 16th to the 19th century CE the formidable Mughal empire covered much of South Asia and played a major role in the economic and cultural development of the region. The empire was one of the three major Islamic states of its day and sometimes contested its northwestern holdings such as Qandahar against the Uzbeks and the Safavid Persians. The Mughals were descended from Persianized Central Asian Turks (with significant Mongol admixture). The third emperor, Akbar the Great, was both a capable ruler and an early proponent of religious and ethnic tolerance and favored an early form of multiculturalism. For a short time in the late 16th century, Lahore was the capital of the empire. The architectural legacy of the Mughals in Lahore includes the Shalimar Gardens built by the fifth emperor, Shahjahan, and the Badshahi Mosque by the sixth emperor, Aurangzeb.

In 1739, the Persian emperor Nader Shah invaded India, defeated the Mughal Emperor Mohammed Shah, and occupied most of Balochistan and the Indus plain. After Nadir Shah's death, the kingdom of Afghanistan was established in 1747, by one of his generals, Ahmad Shah Abdali and included Kashmir, Peshawar, Daman, Multan, Sind and Punjab. In the south, a succession of autonomous dynasties (the Daudpotas, Kalhoras and Talpurs) had asserted the independence of Sind, from the end of Aurangzeb's reign. Most of Balochistan came under the influence of the Khan of Kalat, apart from some coastal areas such as Gwadar which were ruled by the Sultan of Oman. The Sikh Confederacy (1748-1799) was a group of small states in the Punjab which emerged in a political vacuum created by rivalry between the Mughals, Afghans and Persians.[41] The Confederacy drove out the Mughals, repelled several Afghan invasions and in 1764 captured Lahore. However after the retreat of Ahmed Shah Abdali, the Confederacy suffered instability as disputes and rivalries emerged.[42] The Sikh empire (1799-1849) was formed on the foundations of the Confederacy by Ranjit Singh who proclaimed himself "Sarkar-i-Wala", and was referred to as the Maharaja of Lahore.[41] His empire eventually extended as far west as the Khyber Pass and as far south as Multan. Amongst his conquests were Kashmir in 1819 and Peshawar in 1834, although the Afghans made two attempts to recover Peshawar. After the Maharaja's death the empire was weakened by internal divisions and political mismanagement. The British annexed the Sikh empire in 1849 after two Anglo-Sikh wars.[43]

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The fort lahore bourne 1860

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Colonial era

During the middle of the second millennium, several European countries, such as Portugal, Holland, France and Great Britain were initially interested in trade with South Asian rulers including the Mughals and leaders of other independent Kingdoms. The Europeans took advantage of the fractured Indian kingdoms and local rivalries to gradually annexe their territories and ultimately control most of the country, using the policy now known as divide and rule. Largely occupied by the British East India Company, India came under direct colonial rule of the British crown and became a part of the British Empire in 1857 after a failed insurrection, also known as the First War of Indian Independence 1857, fought in the name of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader.


Photograph of the Bolan Pass, Baluchistan, (now Pakistan) after the construction of the railway. Macnabb Collection, 1880s.



During much of the 19th century, the British and Russian Empires engaged in what came to be known as the Great Game as both sides intrigued over Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Often arming local Pashtun and Tajik tribesmen, both sides sought to undermine the other, while the rulers of Afghanistan were able to maintain some measure of independence in-spite of the loss of territories to the east to British India.

The Anglo-Afghan wars took place in 1839, 1842 and 1878 and resulted in the eventual loss of Pashtun/Afghan territory to the expanding British Indian empire. Following the 2nd Anglo-Afghan war, a tenuous peace resulted between Afghanistan and the British empire based in India. For Afghan ruler Abdur Rahman Khan, delineating the boundary with India (through the Pashtun area) was far more significant, and it was during his reign that the Durand Line was drawn. Under pressure, Abdur Rahman agreed in 1893 to accept a mission headed by the British Indian foreign secretary, Sir Mortimer Durand, to define the limits of British and Afghan control in the Pashtun territories. Boundary limits were agreed on by Durand and Abdur Rahman before the end of 1893, but there is some question about the degree to which Abdur Rahman willingly ceded certain regions. There were indications that he regarded the Durand Line as a delimitation of separate areas of political responsibility, not a permanent international frontier, and that he did not explicitly cede control over certain parts (such as Kurram and Chitral) that were already in British control under the Treaty of ****amak.

The Durand Line cut through both tribes and villages and bore little relation to the realities of topography, demography, or even military strategy. The line laid the foundation, not for peace between the border regions, but for heated disagreement between the governments of Afghanistan and British India, and later, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The issue revolves around the Pashtun nationalist movement known as Pashtunistan.



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1909 Percentage of Hindus, Map of British of Indian Empire, 1909, showing percentage of Hindus in different districts.




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