1.
Region
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In geography, regions are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics, human impact characteristics, and the interaction of humanity and the environment. Apart from the continental regions, there are also hydrospheric and atmospheric regions that cover the oceans. The land and water global regions are divided into subregions geographically bounded by large geological features that influence large-scale ecologies, such as plains and features. As a way of describing spatial areas, the concept of regions is important and widely used among the branches of geography. For example, ecoregion is a used in environmental geography, cultural region in cultural geography, bioregion in biogeography. The field of geography that studies regions themselves is called regional geography, where human geography is concerned, the regions and subregions are described by the discipline of ethnography. A region has its own nature that could not be moved, the first nature is its natural environment. The second nature is its physical elements complex that were built by people in the past, the third nature is its socio-cultural context that could not be replaced by new immigrants. Global regions distinguishable from space, and are clearly distinguished by the two basic terrestrial environments, land and water. However, they have generally recognised as such much earlier by terrestrial cartography because of their impact on human geography. They are divided into largest of land regions, known as continents, there are also significant regions that do not belong to either classification, such as archipelago regions that are littoral regions, or earthquake regions that are defined in geology. Continental regions are based on broad experiences in human history. As such they are conceptual constructs, usually lacking distinct boundaries, oceanic division into maritime regions are used in conjunction with the relationship to the central area of the continent, using directions of the compass. To a large extent, major continental regions are mental constructs created by considering an efficient way to large areas of the continents. For the most part, the images of the world are derived as much from academic studies and they are a matter of collective human knowledge of its own planet and are attempts to better understand their environments. Regional geography is a branch of geography that studies regions of all sizes across the Earth and it has a prevailing descriptive character. The main aim is to understand or define the uniqueness or character of a particular region, attention is paid also to regionalization, which covers the proper techniques of space delimitation into regions. Regional geography is considered as a certain approach to study in geographical sciences
2.
Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
3.
Pakistan
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Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a federal parliamentary republic in South Asia on the crossroads of Central Asia and Western Asia. It is the sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 200 million people, in terms of area, it is the 33rd-largest country in the world with an area covering 881,913 square kilometres. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistans narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, Pakistan is unique among Muslim countries in that it is the only country to have been created in the name of Islam. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and it is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a similarly diverse geography and wildlife. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic, an ethnic civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh. The new constitution stipulated that all laws were to conform to the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran. Pakistan has an economy with a well-integrated agriculture sector. The Pakistani economy is the 24th-largest in the world in terms of purchasing power and it is ranked among the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world, and is backed by one of the worlds largest and fastest-growing middle classes. The post-independence history of Pakistan has been characterised by periods of military rule, the country continues to face challenging problems such as illiteracy, healthcare, and corruption, but has substantially reduced poverty and terrorism and expanded per capita income. It is also a member of CERN. Pakistan is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, the name Pakistan literally means land of the pure in Urdu and Persian. It is a play on the word pāk meaning pure in Persian and Pashto, the letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation and form the linguistically correct and meaningful name. Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan, the earliest known inhabitants in the region were Soanian during the Lower Paleolithic, of whom stone tools have been found in the Soan Valley of Punjab. The Vedic Civilization, characterised by Indo-Aryan culture, laid the foundations of Hinduism, Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre. The Vedic civilisation flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, the Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander, prospering the Greco-Buddhist culture in the region. Taxila had one of the earliest universities and centres of education in the world. At its zenith, the Rai Dynasty of Sindh ruled this region, the Pala Dynasty was the last Buddhist empire, which, under Dharampala and Devapala, stretched across South Asia from what is now Bangladesh through Northern India to Pakistan. The Arab conqueror Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the Indus valley from Sindh to Multan in southern Punjab in 711 AD, the Pakistan governments official chronology identifies this as the time when the foundation of Pakistan was laid
4.
Ethnic group
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An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities, such as common ancestral, language, social, cultural or national experiences. Unlike other social groups, ethnicity is often an inherited status based on the society in which one lives, in some cases, it can be adopted if a person moves into another society. Ethnic groups, derived from the historical founder population, often continue to speak related languages. By way of language shift, acculturation, adoption and religious conversion, it is possible for individuals or groups to leave one ethnic group. Ethnicity is often used synonymously with terms such as nation or people. In English, it can also have the connotation of something exotic, generally related to cultures of more recent immigrants, the largest ethnic groups in modern times comprise hundreds of millions of individuals, while the smallest are limited to a few dozen individuals. Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to form a pan-ethnicity, whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis. The term ethnic is derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos, the inherited English language term for this concept is folk, used alongside the latinate people since the late Middle English period. In Early Modern English and until the mid-19th century, ethnic was used to mean heathen or pagan, as the Septuagint used ta ethne to translate the Hebrew goyim the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews. The Greek term in antiquity could refer to any large group, a host of men. In the 19th century, the term came to be used in the sense of peculiar to a race, people or nation, the abstract ethnicity had been used for paganism in the 18th century, but now came to express the meaning of an ethnic character. The term ethnic group was first recorded in 1935 and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972, depending on the context that is used, the term nationality may either be used synonymously with ethnicity, or synonymously with citizenship. The process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is called ethnogenesis, the Greeks at this time did not describe foreign nations but had also developed a concept of their own ethnicity, which they grouped under the name of Hellenes. Herodotus gave an account of what defined Greek ethnic identity in his day, enumerating shared descent. Whether ethnicity qualifies as a universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf and they regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, the study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently, one is between primordialism and instrumentalism. In the primordialist view, the participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, as a given, even coercive
5.
Pashtuns
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The Pashtuns /ˈpʌʃˌtʊnz/ or /ˈpæʃˌtuːnz/, historically known by the exonyms Afghans, and Pathan, are an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and North-Western Pakistan. They are generally classified as Eastern Iranian ethno-linguistically, who use Pashto language and follow Pashtunwali, the origin of Pashtuns is unclear but historians have come across references to various ancient peoples called Pakthas between the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC, who may be their early ancestors. Their history is mostly spread amongst various countries of South and Central Asia, as the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, Pashtuns have been the dominant ethno-linguistic group for over 300 years. The Barakzai dynasty played a role during the Great Game from the 19th century to the 20th century as they were caught between the imperialist designs of the British and Russian empires. There have been many notable Pashtun people throughout history, Ahmad Shah Durrani is regarded as the founder of the modern state of Afghanistan. Under Amanullah Khan, Afghanistan was able to pursue an independent foreign policy, some others include Malala Yousafzai, Shah Rukh Khan, Hamid Karzai, and Imran Khan. They are an important community in Pakistan, which has the largest Pashtun population, Pashtuns attained presidency there and high rankings in sports. They are the worlds largest segmentary lineage ethnic group, according to Ethnologue, the total population of the group is estimated to be around 50 million but an accurate count remains elusive due to the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979. Estimates of the number of Pashtun tribes and clans range from about 350 to over 400, additional Pashtun communities are located in western and northern Afghanistan, the Gilgit–Baltistan and Kashmir regions and northwestern Punjab province of Pakistan. There are also sizeable Muslim communities in India, which are of largely Pashtun ancestry, throughout the Indian subcontinent, they are often referred to as Pathans. Smaller Pashtun communities are found in the countries of the Middle East, such as in the Khorasan Province of Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, important metropolitan centres of Pashtun culture include Peshawar, Quetta, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Kunduz, and Lashkar Gah. The cities of Kabul and Ghazni in Afghanistan are home to around 25% Pashtun population while Herat, with as high as 7 million by some estimates, the city of Karachi in Sindh, Pakistan has the largest concentration of urban Pashtuns in the world. In addition, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, and Lahore also have sizeable Pashtun populations, about 15% of Pakistans nearly 200 million population is Pashtun. In Afghanistan, they are the largest ethnic group and make up between 42-60% of the 32.5 million population. The exact figure remains uncertain in Afghanistan, which is affected by the 1.5 million or more Afghan refugees that remain in Pakistan. Another one million or more Afghans live in Iran, a cumulative population assessment suggests a total of around 49 million individuals all across the world. A prominent institution of the Pashtun people is the system of tribes. Despite this, many people identify themselves with various clans
6.
Languages
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
7.
Pashto
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Pashto, known in Persian literature as Afghānistani and in Urdu and Hindi literature as Paṭhānī, is the South-Central Asian language of the Pashtuns. Its speakers are called Pashtuns or Pukhtuns and sometimes Afghans or Pathans and it is an Eastern Iranian language, belonging to the Indo-European family. Pashto is one of the two languages of Afghanistan, and it is the second-largest regional language of Pakistan, mainly spoken in the west and northwest of the country. Pakistans Federally Administered Tribal Areas are almost 100% Pashto-speaking, while it is the majority language of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pashto is the main language among the Pashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto-speakers is estimated to be 45–60 million people worldwide, Pashto belongs to the Northeastern Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian branch, but Ethnologue lists it as Southeastern Iranian. Pashto has two main groups, “soft” and “hard”, the latter known as Pakhto. As a national language of Afghanistan, Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south, and southwest, the exact numbers of speakers are unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 45–60% of the total population of Afghanistan. In Pakistan Pashto is spoken as a first language by about 15. 42% of Pakistans 170 million people and it is the main language of the Pashtun-majority regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and northern Balochistan. It is also spoken in parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of the Punjab province and in Islamabad, modern Pashto-speaking communities are found in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh. Other communities of Pashto speakers are found in Tajikistan, and further in the Pashtun diaspora, there are also communities of Pashtun descent in the southwestern part of Jammu and Kashmir. Pashto is one of the two languages of Afghanistan, along with Dari. Since the early 18th century, all the kings of Afghanistan were ethnic Pashtuns except for Habibullah Kalakani, Persian as the literary language of the royal court was more widely used in government institutions while Pashto was spoken by the Pashtun tribes as their native tongue. Although officially strengthening the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a “sophisticated language, king Zahir Shah thus followed suit after his father Nadir Khan had decreed in 1933, that both Persian and Pashto were to be studied and utilized by officials. Thus Pashto became a language, a symbol for Afghan nationalism. The status of language was reaffirmed in 1964 by the constitutional assembly when Afghan Persian was officially renamed to Dari. The lyrics of the anthem of Afghanistan are in Pashto. In Pakistan, Urdu and English are the two official languages, Pashto has no official status at the federal level. On a provincial level, Pashto is the language of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas
8.
Peshawar
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Peshawar is the capital of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It also serves as the centre and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Situated in a valley near the eastern end of the historic Khyber Pass, close to the border with Afghanistan. Making it the oldest city in Pakistan and one of the oldest in South Asia, Peshawar is the largest city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. According to the last census, it is also the ninth-largest city of Pakistan, the earliest settlement established in the area of Peshawar was called Puruṣapura, from which the current name Peshawar is derived. The Arab historian and geographer Al-Masudi noted that by the mid 10th century, after the Ghaznavid invasion, the citys name was again noted to be Parashāwar by Al-Biruni. The city became to be known as as Peshāwar by the era of Emperor Akbar, a name which is traditionally said to have been given by Akbar himself. The new name is said to have been based upon the Persian for frontier town, or more literally, forward city, though transcription errors and linguistic shifts may also account for the citys new name. Akbars bibliographer, Abul-Fazl ibn Mubarak, lists the name by both its former name Parashāwar, transcribed in Persian as پَرَشاوَر, and Peshāwar. Peshawar was founded as the ancient city of Puruṣapura, on the Gandhara Plains in the broad Valley of Peshawar, the city likely first existed as a small village in the 5th century BCE, within the cultural sphere of eastern ancient Persia. Puruṣapura was founded near the ancient Gandharan capital city of Pushkalavati, in the winter of 327-26 BCE, Alexander the Great subdued the Valley of Peshawar during his invasion of ancient India, as well as the nearby Swat and Buner valleys. Following Alexanders conquest, the Valley of Peshawar came under suzerainty of Seleucus I Nicator, a locally-made vase fragment that was found in Peshawar depicts a scene from Sophocles play Antigone. Following the Seleucid–Mauryan war, the region was ceded to the Mauryan Empire in 303 BCE, as Mauryan power declined, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom based in modern Afghanistan declared its independence from the Seleucid Empire, and quickly seized Puruṣapura around 190 BCE. The city was ruled by several Iranic Parthian kingdoms. Puruṣapura was then captured by Gondophares, founder of the Indo-Parthian Kingdom, Gondophares established the nearby Takht-i-Bahi monastery in 46 CE. In the first century of the Common era, came under control of Kujula Kadphises, the city was made the empires winter capital. The Kushans summer capital at Kapisi was seen as the capital of the empire. Ancient Peshawars population was estimated to be 120,000, which would make it the seventh-most populous city in the world at the time, around 128 CE, Puruṣapura was made sole capital of the Kushan Empire under the rule of Kanishka
9.
Kabul
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Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan as well as its largest city, located in the eastern section of the country. According to a 2015 estimate, the population of the city was around 3,678,033 which includes all the ethnic groups. Rapid urbanization had made Kabul the worlds 64th largest city and the fifth fastest-growing city in the world, Kabul is said to be over 3,500 years old, mentioned since at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire. The city is at a location along the trade routes of South and Central Asia. It has been part of the Achaemenids, Seleucids, Mauryans, Kushans, Kabul Shahis, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Later, it was controlled by the Mughal Empire until finally becoming part of the Durrani Empire in 1747. The city is located high up in a valley between the Hindu Kush mountains. Kabul became the capital of Afghanistan during the reign of Timur Shah Durrani, in the early 19th century, the British occupied the city but were compelled to abandon it. Relations between Afghanistan and Great Britain were later established, the city was occupied by the Soviets in 1979 but they too abandoned it after the 1988 Geneva Accords were signed. A civil war in the 1990s between various rebel groups destroyed much of the city, resulting in many casualties, since the removal of the Taliban from power in late 2001, the city gradually began rebuilding itself with assistance by the international community. Despite the many terrorist attacks by elements, the city is growing and developing. The city is divided into about 18 districts, the Kabul International Airport is located in the Wazir Akbar Khan district a few miles from the foreign embassies. The Parliament of Afghanistan, built by India, is located in the Kārte Seh district, Kabul, also spelled Cabool, Caubul, Kabol, or Cabul. The word Kubhā is mentioned in the Rigveda, one of the four sacred texts of Hinduism, and the Avesta. The Rigveda praises it as a city, a vision of paradise set in the mountains. The area in which the Kabul valley sits was ruled by the Medes before falling to the Achaemenids, there is a reference to a settlement called Kabura by the rulers of the Achaemenid Empire, It became a center of Zoroastrianism followed by Buddhism and Hinduism. The region became part of the Seleucid Empire but was given to the Indian Maurya Empire. The Greco-Bactrians captured Kabul from the Mauryans in the early 2nd century BC, indo-Scythians expelled the Indo-Greeks by the mid 1st century BC, but lost the city to the Kushan Empire about 100 years later. Some historians ascribe Kabul the Sanskrit name of Kamboja and it is mentioned as Kophes or Kophene in some classical writings
10.
Quetta
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Quetta is the provincial capital of Balochistan, Pakistan and the ninth-largest city of the country. The city is known as the garden of Pakistan, due to the numerous fruit orchards in and around it. The city was known as Little London in the past because of its beauty. The immediate area has long been one of pastures and mountains, with varied plants, Quetta is at an average elevation of 1,680 meters above sea level, making it Pakistans only high-altitude major city. The population of the city is estimated to be approximately 1,140,000, located in north western Balochistan near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Quetta is a trade and communication centre between the two countries. The city lies on the Bolan Pass route which was once the gateway from Central Asia to South Asia. Quetta played an important role militarily for the Pakistani Armed Forces in the intermittent Afghanistan conflict, Quetta is also spelled Kuwatah, which is a variation of Kot, a Pashto word meaning fortress. It is believed that it relates to the four imposing hills that surround the city, in 1876 Quetta was incorporated into British controlled territories of the subcontinent. British Troops constructed the infrastructure for their establishment as it was a strategic location, by the time of the earthquake on 31 May 1935 Quetta had developed into a bustling city with a number of multistory buildings and was known as Little Paris because of that. The epicenter of the earthquake was close to the city and destroyed most of the city’s infrastructure, during the independence movement of the Indian subcontinent, the predominantly Muslim population of the region supported the Muslim League and the Pakistan Movement. Quetta has an area of 2,653 km2 and consists of series of river valleys which act as a natural fort surrounded on all sides by hills. The closest city is Kandahar in Afghanistan, north-west at the end of the N25 road, three main roads gradually fan out to the south, the central route, the N25 leads via the city of Khuzdar to the coastal metropolis of Karachi. Quetta has a high semi-arid climate with a significant variation between summer and winter temperatures, summer starts about late May and goes on until early September with average temperatures ranging from 24–26 °C. The highest temperature in Quetta is 42 °C which was recorded on 10 July 1998, autumn starts in late September and continues until mid-November with average temperatures in the 12–18 °C range. Winter starts in late November and ends in late March, with temperatures near 4–5 °C. The lowest temperature in Quetta is −18.3 °C which was recorded on 8 January 1970, spring starts in early April and ends in late May, with average temperatures close to 15 °C. Unlike more easterly parts of Pakistan, Quetta does not have a season of heavy rainfall. In the winter, snowfall has become quite erratic, the city saw a severe drought from 1999 to 2001, during which the city did not receive snowfall and below normal rains
11.
Kandahar
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Kandahar or Qandahar is the second-largest city in Afghanistan, with a population of about 491,500 as of 2012. Formerly called Alexandria Arachosia, the city is named after Alexander the Great, Kandahar is the capital of Kandahar Province, located in the south of the country at an altitude of 1,010 m above sea level. The Arghandab River runs along the west of the city, the city of Kandahar has a population of 557,118. It has 15 districts and a land area of 27,337 hectares. The total number of dwellings in Kandahar is 61,902, Kandahar is one of the most culturally significant cities of the Pashtuns and has been their traditional seat of power for more than 200 years. It is a trading center for sheep, wool, cotton, silk, felt, food grains, fresh and dried fruit. The region produces fine fruits, especially pomegranates and grapes, and the city has plants for canning, drying, and packing fruit, the area is believed to be the birthplace of cannabis indica. The region around Kandahar is one of the oldest known human settlements, Alexander the Great had laid-out the foundation of what is now Old Kandahar in the 4th century BC and gave it the Ancient Greek name Αλεξάνδρεια Aραχωσίας. Many empires have long fought over the city due to its location along the trade routes of southern, central. In 1709, Mirwais Hotak made the region an independent kingdom, in 1747, Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the last Afghan empire, made it the capital of modern Afghanistan. A temple to the deified Alexander as well as an inscription in Greek and Aramaic by Emperor Ashoka, Ibn Batutta mentions Kandahar in the 14th century by describing it as a large and prosperous town three nights journey from Ghazni. It has been then mentioned extensively by Mughal Emperor Babur and others, an alternative story describes Khandahar as Gandhara in Mahabharata ruled by Suvala and later by Shakuni. The princess of Hastinapur, Gandhari was born in Gandhara, a folk etymology offered is that the word kand or qand in Persian and Pashto means candy. The name Candahar or Kandahar in this form probably translates to candy area and this probably has to do with the location being fertile and historically known for producing fine grapes, pomegranates, apricots, melons and other sweet fruits. Ernst Herzfeld claimed Kandahar perpetuated the name of the Indo-Parthian king Gondophares, excavations of prehistoric sites by archaeologists such as Louis Dupree and others suggest that the region around Kandahar is one of the oldest human settlements known so far. Early peasant farming villages came into existence in Afghanistan ca.5000 B. C. or 7000 years ago, deh Morasi Ghundai, the first prehistoric site to be excavated in Afghanistan, lies 27 km southwest of Kandahar. Another Bronze Age village mound site with multiroomed mud-brick buildings dating from the same period sits nearby at Said Qala, Bronze Age pottery, copper and bronze horse trappings and stone seals were found in the lowermost levels in the nearby cave called Shamshir Ghar. In the Seistan, southwest of these Kandahar sites, two teams of American archaeologists discovered sites relating to the 2nd millennium B. C, while the Diadochi were warring amongst themselves, the Mauryan Empire was developing in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent
12.
Mardan
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Mardan is a city and the headquarters of Mardan District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. The name Mardan was given to an area after the name of Pir Mardan Shah. Gradually, a surrounding area came to be known as Mardan. The area constituting Mardan district is a part of the Peshawar valley, until 1937, Mardan district was a part of Peshawar district. In 1937, Mardan was set up as an independent district after the name of its headquarters town, Mardan is the 19th largest city of Pakistan. It is the de facto headquarters of the Yousafzai tribe, although a significant number of Momands have settled there over the past years. It is the second most populous city in the province, located in the south west of the district at 34°120N 72°160E, the villages are divided into Kandis. Each kandi is further divided into sub-sections, the divisions of Kandis are on the pattern of agricultural lands. Their houses generally consist of two or three rooms and a court-yard known locally as ghollai and varandah, the cattle and poultry are also accommodated beside the shelter for family. Each Kandi of the village has its own mosque and its own Maulvi, in most cases it is the property of elders of the Kandi, who are expected to feed and give shelter to visitors/travelers. Nowadays, the people in service abroad have accumulated sufficient wealth which brought a change in the life of the villagers who construct pacca houses of cement, bricks. A Tandoor is also found for baking bread in many houses and sometimes women of three or four houses use one tandoor for baking bread turn by turn, the houses have huge compound walls along with gates. Chairs and tables are used in the houses of well-to-do people whereas others use the ordinary cot, the city of Mardan is featured in the novel The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye. Baghdada Sawal Dher Bakhshali mardan. com website
13.
Mingora
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Mingora is the largest commercial city in Swat District, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It is located at an altitude of 984 metres and about 2 kilometres away from Saidu Sharif, the city is a major tourist destination with a large number of grand hotels. With a mild and generally warm and temperate climate, Mingora features a subtropical climate under the Köppen climate classification. The average annual temperature in Mingora is 19.3 °C, even in the driest months, there is a lot of precipitation. The coldest month January has a temperature of 7.5 °C. Many Buddhist remains and carvings have been discovered near Mingora in the Jambil River Valley, at Panr, a stupa and monastery dated to the 1st century CE has been excavated. At Loe Banr, Butkara II and Matalai, Italian archaeologists unearthed 475 Aryan graves dated between 1520 and 170 BC and two horse skeletons. On the opposite side of the River Swat at Aligrama, near the Saidu Sharif airport, a site of Gandhara grave culture was discovered by Italian archaeologists and dated to 1000 BC
14.
Jalalabad
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Jalalabad /dʒəˈlæləˌbæd/, formerly called Adina Pur as documented by the 7th century Hsüan-tsang, is a city in eastern Afghanistan. Located at the junction of the Kabul River and Kunar River near the Laghman valley and it is linked by approximately 155 kilometres of highway with Kabul to the west. Major industries include papermaking, as well as agricultural products including oranges, rice, Jalalabad is one of the leading trading centres with neighbouring Pakistan. The city of Jalalabad has a population of 356,274 and it has 6 districts and a total land area of 12,796 Hectares. The total number of dwellings in this city are 39,586, the Jalalabad territory fell to the Maurya Empire, which was led by Chandragupta Maurya. The Mauryas introduced Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism to the region, seleucus is said to have agreed a peace treaty with Chandragupta by giving control of the territory south of the Hindu Kush to the Mauryas upon intermarriage and receipt of 500 elephants. As soon as the forces, therefore, of all the confederates were united, a battle was fought, in which Antigonus was slain, having consolidated power in the northwest, Chandragupta pushed east towards the Nanda Empire. Afghanistans significant ancient tangible and intangible Buddhist heritage is recorded through wide-ranging archeological finds, including religious, Buddhist doctrines are reported to have reached as far as Balkh even during the life of the Buddha, as recorded by Husang Tsang. In this context a legend recorded by Husang Tsang refers to the first two lay disciples of Buddha, Trapusa and Bhallika responsible for introducing Buddhism in that country. Originally these two were merchants of the kingdom of Balhika, as the name Bhalluka or Bhallika probably suggests the association of one with that country and they had gone to India for trade and had happened to be at Bodhgaya when the Buddha had just attained enlightenment. Faxian visited and worshiped the sacred Buddhist sites such as of The Shadow of the Buddha in Nagarhara, in 630 AD Xuan Zang, the famous Chinese Buddhist monk, visited Jalalabad and a number of other locations nearby. The city was a center of Gandharas Greco-Buddhist culture in the past until it was conquered by Muslim Arabs in the 11th century. However, not everyone converted to Islam at that period as some still refused to accept it, in Hudud-al-Alam, written in 982 CE, there is reference to a village near Jalalabad where the local king used to have many Hindu, Muslim and Afghan wives. The region became part of the Afghan Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century, later, it was controlled by the successor Ghurids until the Mongols invaded the area. It then became part of the Timurids, the modern city gained prominence during the reign of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. Babur had chosen the site for this city which was built by his grandson Jalal-uddin Mohammad Akbar in 1560, the Battle of Jellalabad in 1842 was an Afghan siege of the isolated British outpost at Jellalabad about 130 kilometres east of Kabul. The siege was lifted after five months when a British counterattack routed the Afghans, the outpost was no more than a wide place in the road with a fort, held by about 2,000 troops under General Sir Robert Sale. After the massacre of the British force during their retreat from Kabul in January 1842, the British managed to beat off the assaults, and even captured 300 sheep from the besieging force when rations ran short
15.
Ghazni
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Ghaznī or Ghaznai, also historically known as Ghaznīn or Ghazna, is a city in Afghanistan with a population of nearly 150,000 people. It is located in the central-east part of the country, situated on a plateau at 7,280 feet above sea level, the city serves as the capital of Ghazni Province. It is linked by a highway with Kandahar to the southwest, Kabul to the northeast, the foundation stone of Ghazni Airport was laid in April 2012 which now serves Ghazni and other nearby eastern Afghan provinces. Similar to many other Afghanistani cities, Ghazni as ancient city has withstood numerous military invasions, during the pre-Islamic period, the area was inhabited by various tribes who practiced different religions including Buddhism and Hinduism. Arab Muslims introduced Islam to Ghazni in the 7th century, they were followed by the 9th century Islamic conquest of the Saffarids from Zarang in the west, sabuktigin made Ghazni the capital of the Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century. The city was destroyed by one of the Ghurid rulers, and it fell to a number of regional powers, including the Timurids and the Delhi Sultanate, until it became part of the Hotaki dynasty, which was followed by the Durrani Empire or modern Afghanistan. During the First Anglo-Afghan War in the 19th century, Ghazni was partially destroyed by British-Indian forces, the city is currently being rebuilt by the Government of Afghanistan in remembrance of the Ghaznavid and Timurid era when it served as a major center of Islamic civilisation. The Afghan National Security Forces have established bases and check-points to deal with the Taliban insurgency, Ghazni is a trading and transit hub in central Afghanistan. Agriculture is the dominant land use at 28%, in terms of built-up land area, vacant plots slightly outweigh residential area. Districts 3 and 4 also have large institutional areas, the city of Ghazni has a population of 143,379 with 4 Police districts and total land area of 3,330 Hectares. There are 15,931 total number of dwellings in Ghazni city, Ghazni was founded some time in antiquity as a small market town and is mentioned by Ptolemy. In the 6th century BC, the city was conquered by the Achaemenid king Cyrus II, the city was subsequently incorporated into the empire of Alexander the Great in 329 BC, and called Alexandria in Opiana. Ghazni was a thriving Buddhist centre up until the 7th century, in 683 AD, Arab armies brought Islam to the region, but many refused to accept the new religion. Yaqub Saffari from Zaranj conquered the city in the late 9th century and it later became the dazzling capital of the Ghaznavid Empire, which encompassed much of northern India, Persia and Central Asia. Many iconoclastic campaigns were launched from Ghazni into India, resulting in the destruction of ancient temples, libraries and palaces, the Ghaznavids took Islam to India and returned with fabulous riches taken from Indian princes and temples. Although the city was sacked in 1151 by the Ghorid Alauddin, it became their secondary capital in 1173. Between 1215 and 1221, Ghazni was ruled by the Khwarezmid Empire, in the first decades of the 11th century, Ghazni was the most important centre of Persian literature. This was the result of the policy of the Sultan Mahmud, who assembled a circle of scholars, philosophers
16.
Kunduz
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Kunduz is a city in northern Afghanistan, which serves as the capital of Kunduz Province. It is sometimes spelled as Kundûz, Qonduz, Qondûz, Konduz, Kondûz, Kondoz, the city of Kunduz has a population of about 268,893, while Kunduz District has a population of 304,600. It is about the 5th largest city of Afghanistan, Kunduz is located in the historical Tokharistan in the region of Bactria. It is linked by highways with Mazar-e Sharif to the west, Kabul to the south, Kunduz is at an elevation of 391 metres above sea level. The land use of the city is largely agricultural, residential land comprises nearly half of the built-up land area with 29,877 dwellings. Alternative derivations also include Turkic kündüz, from Proto-Turkic kün, day/sun, interestingly, until the 1960s, the city served as the capital to the now-defunct province of Qataqan, itself meaning Old/Ancient city. Kunduz is the site of the ancient city of Drapsaka and it was a great center of Buddhist learning and very prosperous during the 3rd century AD. The city used to be called Walwalij and the name Kuhandiz began to be used from the Timurid time and it was part of The Great Game between the British and Russians. This khanate was finally destroyed by Afghanistan in 1859, between one hundred and two-hundred thousand Tajiks and Uzbeks fled the conquest of their homeland by Russian Red Army and settled in northern Afghanistan. In the early 20th century, under the governance of Sher Khan Nasher and this was mainly due to Nashers founding of the Spinzar Cotton Company, which continues to exist in post-war Afghanistan. Kunduz is the most important agricultural province which produces wheat, rice, millet, Kunduz is the centre for the north east provinces, and was the stronghold of the Taliban during its regime. It was the last major city held by the Taliban before its fall to US-backed Afghan Northern Alliance forces on November 26,2001. The city is important because it is the only way connecting Takhar province and Badakhshan provinces. During the summer of 2015, the Taliban and Afghan forces battled for control of the city, tens of thousands of inhabitants were displaced internally in Afghanistan by the fighting. On 28 September 2015 the Taliban flag was raised in the city center. Kunduz has a cold climate with hot summers and cold winters. Precipitation is generally low except from January to April, with summers almost always rainless, the city of Kunduz has a population of about 268,893, while Kunduz District has a population of 304,600. Kunduz has a mixed population, including Tajiks, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Khowar, Arabs
17.
Khost
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Khost or Khowst, a city in eastern Afghanistan, lies on 7,139 hectares in a mountainous region near the Pakistani border. The urban population of 106,083, mainly from the Zadran, Mangal, Zazi, Tani, Gurbaz, Muqbal, the town was besieged from July 1983 to November 1987, during the nine-year Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Khost Airfield, with a 9, 000-foot runway, served as a base for Soviet military helicopter operations, American forces have used the Khost Airfield since as early as at least January 2007 during the war which commenced in October 2001. Khost is the home of Khost University, the inhabitants of area are Pashto-speaking ethnic Pashtuns. Khost Mosque serves as the mosque in the city. Khost is located about 150 kilometres south of Kabul and 100 kilometres southeast of Gardez, the city lies on a plateau of minimally 1,000 metres altitude that extends to the East for about 40 kilometres until the Bannu Pakistan border. 30 km to the North the peaks start up to 2,500 to 3,000 metres right next to the frontier, while 20 kilometres to the South, near the border, the average is around 1,800 m. The valley of Khost is closed to the west with a mountain chain with peaks that go over 3,000 metres. Through this runs for about 90 kilometres the road to Gardez, so Taliban invaded Khost in 1995. The capital of Khost province is Matoon, Khost has the following 12 district units. Spera Dwa monda Nadershah koot Ismail khail va Mandozi Musa khail Qalander Tani Gurbaz Bak Zazi maidan Sabari Ali shir Khost has a semi-arid climate and it is located in the Khost Bowl, a valley with lower elevation than the surrounding highlands. Nonetheless, for a proportion of the year Khost remains hot and dry. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Khost was the object of a siege which lasted for more than eight years. Soon after the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops, Afghan guerillas took control of the land route between Khost and Gardez, effectively putting a stop to the Soviet advance. Khost is a Provincial Center in eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan, the eastern districts are characterized by forests and residential land while the western districts have more barren land with residential. There are also several waterways accounting for 5% of total land use, Khost has been in American control since the 2001 US led invasion of Afghanistan. Due to its location in eastern Afghanistan, it was a hotbed for insurgent activity attempting to dislodge the American forces there, like most other provinces, Khost is home to maneuver forces and a Provincial Reconstruction Team. Maneuver forces wage war against insurgents and assist the Afghan National Army, the FPFs brought a broader sense of security and prosperity to surrounding areas
18.
Lashkargah
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Lashkargah, historically also called Bost, is a city in southern Afghanistan and the capital of Helmand Province. It is located in Lashkargah district, and situated between the Helmand and Arghandab rivers, the city has a population of 201,546 as of 2006. Lashkargah is linked by roads with Kandahar to the east, Zaranj to the west. It is mostly arid and desolate. However, farming does exist around the Helmand and Arghandab rivers, Bost Airport is located on the east bank of the Helmand River, five miles north of the junction of the Helmand and Argahandab rivers. Lashkargah means army barracks in Persian language, the area was part of the Saffarids in the 9th century. It grew up a thousand years ago as a barracks town for soldiers accompanying the Ghaznavid nobility to their grand winter capital of Bost. The ruins of the Ghaznavid mansions still stand along the Helmand River, the city of Bost and its communities were sacked in successive centuries by the Ghorids, Mongols. However, the region was later rebuilt by Timur, by the late 16th century the city and region was governed by the Safavid dynasty. It became part of the Afghan Hotaki Empire in 1709 and it was invaded by the Afsharid forces in 1738 on their way to Kandahar. By 1747 it became part of the Durrani Empire or modern Afghanistan, the British arrived in or about 1840 during the First Anglo-Afghan War but left about year later. The city was used by Ayub Khan in the Second Anglo-Afghan War until 1880 when the British helped return it to Abdur Rahman Khan and it remained peaceful for the next 100 years. Lashkargah was built using American designs, with broad tree-lined streets, in the wake of the Soviet invasion and the long Afghan civil war, the trees mostly came down and walls went up. The project focused on three large canals, the Boghra, Shamalan, and Darweshan, responsibility for maintaining the canals was given to the Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority, a semi-independent government agency whose authority rivaled that of the provincial governors. After the Communist takeover of Afghanistan, Sam Sloan escaped from custody in June 1978. After the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 and the collapse of Mohammad Najibullahs government in 1992, in the mid-1990s it fell to the Taliban government. In late 2001, the Taliban were removed from power by the United States armed forces, since 2002, the city and region was occupied by United States Marine Corps and the International Security Assistance Force. In 2008, Taliban forces attacked the city heavily but the Afghan National Army, after training and equipping Afghan security forces, the foreign armies transferred security responsibility to the military of Afghanistan and Afghan National Police in 2011
19.
Pashtun culture
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Pashtun culture is based on Islam and Pashtunwali, which is an ancient way of life, as well as speaking of the Pashto language and wearing Pashtun dress. The culture of the Pashtun people is highlighted since at least the time of Herodotus or Alexander the Great, the Pashtun culture has little outside influence, and, over the ages, has retained a great degree of purity. The biggest holidays for Pashtuns are the Islamic Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, followed by Afghan Independence Day, the arrival of Sparlay or spring, known as Naw-Wraz, is also celebrated by some Pashtuns. It is an ancient annual Pashtun festival which both the beginning of spring and the New Year. Amongst some Pashtuns, Sheshbeeyeh, a festival to Nava Wroz, is also celebrated. This tradition still survives, mainly amongst the southerners, in Bannu, during holidays, Pashtuns set up festivals in which they usually attend mosques to make special prayers, have cookouts in parks, and go to fairs. Afghanistan and K. P. K. were noted for its poetic language even before the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan, the Pata Khazana contains Pashto poetry written as far back as the 8th century. Pashtun men usually gather at special events and listen to Pashto poetry, there are TV programs which broadcast such events to the wider Pashtun audiences. One such program is on AVT Khyber channel in Pakistan, with Amanullah Kakar as the presenter, traditional Pashto music is mostly klasik ghazals, using rubab or sitar, tabla, portable harmonium, flute and several other musical instruments. Todays modern Pashto music is influenced by neighboring music such as Bollywood filmi as well as western or European music, below is a list of the main known styles of Attan in Pakistan and Afghanistan. All of thes may be practiced and mixed by Pashtuns in other valleys, Pashto, اتڼ, ALA-LC Romanization, Ataṇ, also referred to as Atan or Attan, are the following, In this dance, the dancers perform to the beat of the music. It is typically performed by men and women and it involves 2-5 steps, ending with a clap given while facing the center, after which the process is repeated. The hips and arms are put in a sequential movement including left and right tilts, ultimately a hand is projected outward and brought in a scoop-like fashion towards the center where the other hand meets it for a clap. This dance is performed with the musician dictating the duration. The Khattak dance is performed by the Khattak tribe, mainly in Pakistan and this is a unique dance routine using rifles performed by the Mahsud tribe of Pashtuns in South Waziristan. Originally it was performed at times of war, but later became a cultural dance, the dancers dance empty handed and require only large drums. Nowadays it is performed with guns in the hands, loaded guns are taken in one hand. After taking two and a half steps, each dancer turns about and cocks the gun, all the dancers do this in a uniform manner, and by completing the turning steps they fire in the air simultaneously
20.
Names of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
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The Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been known by a number of names throughout its history. For over a hundred years from its founding as a province of British India in 1901, unofficially, it was known as Sarhad, derived from the provinces Urdu name which means frontier. Pakhtunkhwa, Pakhtoonkhwa, Pukhtunkhwa, or Pashtunkhwa has often been the used by the Pashtun people for the Pashtunized and Pashtun-dominated areas of Pakistan. More recently it was used by Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan as the name by which they wanted to rename the former North-West Frontier Province, Pakhtunkhwa is derived from Pakhtun and khwa, the former refers to the ethnic group and the latter literally means heart. Metaphorically, it is used to indicate near the Pakhtuns, nationalist Pashtuns claim Pakhtunkhwa is an old name of the area inhabited by Pashtuns. The famous Greek historian Herodotus had recorded it as Paktia, the earliest available historical evidence is Akhund Darwezas Makhzanul Islam. A verse in this book reads, Pakhtunkhwa pa misal shpa wa, the word Pakhtunkhwa was also used in the modern poetry by contemporary poets like Qalandar Momand long before it was suggested as the nomenclature for the NWFP. Culturally there is no doubt that the land was called Pakhtunkhwa in Pashto literature since 15th century, the term has been applied for both tribal and settled areas, he added. Besides Pashtus, there are many non-Pashtuns who have mentioned this name in their writings, a book by French orientalist James Darmesteter has the title, Da Pakhtunkhwa Bagh w Bahar, a selection of Pashto poems with a valuable essay on Pashto language. Afghania is another name long considered as a replacement for North-West Frontier Province and it was proposed first by the founding leaders of the Muslim League in 1933 and was at least partly chosen to represent the first a in Pakistan. It is non-descript because it indicates their geographical situation as a province of old British India. It is wrongful because it suppresses the social entity of these people, in fact, it suppresses that entity so completely that when composing the name Pakistan for our homelands, I had to call the North-West Frontier Province the Afghan Province. Many of these alternatives were designed to avoid or balance the ethnic connotations of Pakhtunkhwa, for most of the history of the North-West Frontier Province, there were efforts to change its name. As early as 1933, when Afghania was proposed, suggestions for new names came, although some of the names were ethnically neutral, most proposals emphazised the provinces Pashtun ethnic identity. The renaming issue was a one which often crossed party lines. Ghaffar Khan suggested Pakhtunkhwa, but Zia-ul-Haq asked Ghaffar Khan to suggest an alternative, the name Pakhtunkhwa for NWFP was heard for the first time in 1988 in the Provincial Assembly when the Pakistan Peoples Party leadership wanted to move a resolution for changing the name. The name was first used in the National Assembly in November 1990, the name Pakhtunkhwa is very popular with the ordinary Pashtun people and was approved by the democratically elected constitutional assembly of the province, in 1997, by a 53 to 2 majority vote. It was opposed by two MPAs, Salim Saifullah and Humayun Saifullah, both Pashtuns of the Pakistan Muslim League faction, while the Pakistan Muslim League with 37 members abstained
21.
Name of Afghanistan
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The name Afghānistān means land of the Afghans, which originates from the ethnonym Afghan. Historically, the name Afghan mainly designated the Pashtun people, the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan, the earliest reference to the name is found in the 10th-century geography book known as Hudud ul-alam. The last part of the name, -stān is a Persian suffix for place, in 1857, in his review of J. W. Kayes The Afghan War, Friedrich Engels describes Afghanistan as, an extensive country of Asia. Between Persia and the Indies, and in the direction between the Hindu Kush and the Indian Ocean. It formerly included the Persian provinces of Khorassan and Kohistan, together with Herat, Beluchistan, Cashmere, and Sinde, and its principal cities are Kabul, the capital, Ghuznee, Peshawer, and Kandahar. Afghanistan was officially recognized as a state by the international community after the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 was signed. Arabs know this and so do Romans, Afghans are Pashtuns, Pashtuns are Afghans, pashtunization has been going on in the region since at least the 8th century. It is a process of a cultural or linguistic change in which something non-Pashtun becomes Pashtun, according to Tarikh-i Yamini, Afghans enrolled in Sabuktigins Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century as well as in the later Ghurid Kingdom. From the beginning of the Khilji dynasty in 1290, Afghans are becoming more recognized in history among the Delhi Sultanate of India. The later Lodi dynasty and Sur dynasty of Delhi were both made up of Afghans, whose rule stretched to as far as what is now Bangladesh in the east. The word Afghan is mentioned in the form of Abgan in the third century CE by the Sassanians and as Avagana in the 6th century CE by Indian astronomer Varahamihira. A people called the Afghans are mentioned several times in a 10th-century geography book, Hudud al-alam, particularly where a reference is made to a village, Saul, a pleasant village on a mountain. Al-Biruni referred to them in the 11th century as various tribes living on the frontier mountains of the Indus River. They hold mountains and defiles and possess considerable strength, and are mostly highwaymen and their principle mountain is called Kuh Sulayman. The name Afghanistan is mentioned in writing by the 16th century Mughal ruler Babur, the road from Khorasān leads by way of Kandahār. It is a level road, and does not go through any hill-passes. In the country of Kābul there are many and various tribes and its valleys and plains are inhabited by Tūrks, Aimāks, and Arabs. In the city and the part of the villages, the population consists of Tājiks*
22.
Punjab
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The Punjab, also spelled Panjab, panj-āb, land of five rivers, is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of South Asia, comprising areas of eastern Pakistan and northern India. Not being a unit, the extent of the region is the subject of debate. The foreign invaders mainly targeted the most productive region of the Punjab known as the Majha region. The people of the Punjab today are called Punjabis and their language is called Punjabi. The main religions of the Punjab region are Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism, other religious groups are Christianity, Jainism and Buddhism. The name of the region is a compound of two Persian words Panj and āb and was introduced to the region by the Turko-Persian conquerors of India, Punjab literally means Five Waters referring to the rivers, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas. All are tributaries of the Indus River, the Chenab being the largest, there are two main definitions of the Punjab region, the 1947 definition and the older 1846–1849 definition. The third definition incorporates both the 1947 and the definitions but also includes northern Rajasthan on a linguistic basis. 1947 definition The 1947 definition defines the Punjab region with reference to the dissolution of British India whereby the then British Punjab Province was partitioned between India and Pakistan, in Pakistan, the region now includes the Punjab province and Islamabad Capital Territory. In India, it includes the Punjab state, Chandigarh, Haryana, Using the 1947 definition, the Punjab region borders Kashmir to the north, Sindh and Rajasthan to the south, the Pashtun region and Balochistan to the west, and the Hindi belt to the east. Accordingly, the Punjab region is diverse and stretches from the hills of the Kangra Valley to the plains. Present day maps Major cities Using the 1947 definition of the Punjab region, some of the cities of the area include Lahore, Faisalabad. Older 1846–1849 definition The older definition of the Punjab region focuses on the collapse of the Sikh Empire, According to this definition, the Punjab region incorporates, in Pakistan, Azad Kashmir including Bhimber and Mirpur and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In India the wider definition includes parts of Delhi and Jammu Division, the formation of the Himalayan Range of mountains to the east and north-east of the Punjab is the result of a collision between the north-moving Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The plates are moving together, and the Himalayas are rising by about 5 millimetres per year. The upper regions are snow-covered the whole year, Lower ranges of hills run parallel to the mountains. The Lower Himalayan Range runs from north of Rawalpindi through Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, the mountains are relatively young, and are eroding rapidly. The Indus and the five rivers of the Punjab have their sources in the range and carry loam, minerals and silt down to the rich alluvial plains
23.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
24.
Turkic languages
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The Turkic languages are a language family of at least thirty-five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China. Turkic languages are spoken as a language by some 170 million people. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans, characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family. Apparent similarities with the Uralic languages family even caused these families to be regarded as one for a time under the hypothesis of Ural-Altaic languages. Turkic languages are languages, have vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes, and lack of grammatical articles, noun classes. Subject–object–verb word order is universal within the family, the geographical distribution of Turkic-speaking peoples across Eurasia ranges from the North-East of Siberia to Turkey in the West, since the Ottoman era. The two groups shared a religion, Tengrism, and there exists a multitude of evident loanwords between Turkic languages and Mongolic languages, although the loans were bidirectional, today Turkic loanwords constitute the largest foreign component in Mongolian vocabulary. The most famous of these loanwords include lion, gold, the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, written during the 11th century AD by Kaşgarlı Mahmud of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The Compendium is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and it mainly pertains to the Southwestern branch of the family. The earliest records of the language spoken by Volga Bulgars, the parent to todays Chuvash language, are dated to the 13th–14th centuries AD. With the Turkic expansion during the Early Middle Ages, Turkic languages, in the course of just a few centuries, spread across Central Asia, various terminologies from the Turkic languages have passed into Persian, Hindustani, Russian, Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Arabic. This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, the modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich. It is not clear when two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged. With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the following isoglosses are traditionally used in the classification of the Turkic languages, Rhoticisation, e. g. in the last consonant of the word for nine *toqqız. This separates the Oghur branch, which exhibits /r/, from the rest of Turkic, in this case, rhoticisation refers to the development of *-/r/, *-/z/, and *-/d/ to /r/, *-/k/, *-/kh/ in this branch. See Antonov and Jacques on the debate concerning rhotacism and lambdacism in Turkic and this separates Khalaj as a peripheral language. The following table is based upon the classification presented by Lars Johanson The following is a brief comparison of cognates among the basic vocabulary across the Turkic language family. Also, there may be shifts in the meaning from one language to another, in some cases the form given is found only in some dialects of the language, or a loanword is much more common
25.
Kashmir
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Kashmir is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range. In the first half of the 1st millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism, later still, in the ninth century, in 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Salatin-i-Kashmir or Swati dynasty. Kashmir was part of the Mughal Empire from 1586 to 1751 and that year, the Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir. The Sanskrit word for Kashmir was, the Nilamata Purana describes the Valleys origin from the waters, a lake called Sati-saras. A popular, but uncertain, local etymology of Kashmira is that it is land desiccated from water, an alternative, but also uncertain, etymology derives the name from the name of the sage Kashyapa who is believed to have settled people in this land. Accordingly, Kashmir would be derived from either kashyapa-mir or kashyapa-meru, the Ancient Greeks called the region Kasperia which has been identified with Kaspapyros of Hecataeus and Kaspatyros of Herodotus. Kashmir is also believed to be the country meant by Ptolemys Kaspeiria, Cashmere is an archaic spelling of present-Kashmir, and in some countries it is still spelled this way. In the Kashmiri language, Kashmir itself is known as Kasheer, the Buddhist Mauryan emperor Ashoka is often credited with having founded the old capital of Kashmir, Shrinagari, now ruins on the outskirts of modern Srinagar. Kashmir was long to be a stronghold of Buddhism, as a Buddhist seat of learning, the Sarvāstivādan school strongly influenced Kashmir. East and Central Asian Buddhist monks are recorded as having visited the kingdom, in the late 4th century CE, the famous Kuchanese monk Kumārajīva, born to an Indian noble family, studied Dīrghāgama and Madhyāgama in Kashmir under Bandhudatta. He later became a translator who helped take Buddhism to China. His mother Jīva is thought to have retired to Kashmir, vimalākṣa, a Sarvāstivādan Buddhist monk, travelled from Kashmir to Kucha and there instructed Kumārajīva in the Vinayapiṭaka. Karkota Empire was a powerful Hindu empire, which originated in the region of Kashmir and it was founded by Durlabhvardhana during the lifetime of Harshavardhan. The dynasty marked the rise of Kashmir as a power in South Asia, avanti Varman ascended the throne of Kashmir on 855 A. D. establishing the Utpala dynasty and ending the rule of Karkota dynasty. According to tradition, Adi Shankara visited the pre-existing Sarvajñapīṭha in Kashmir in the late 8th century or early 9th century CE, the Madhaviya Shankaravijayam states this temple had four doors for scholars from the four cardinal directions. The southern door of Sarvajna Pitha was opened by Adi Shankara, abhinavagupta was one of Indias greatest philosophers, mystics and aestheticians. He was also considered an important musician, poet, dramatist, exegete, theologian, and logician – a polymathic personality who exercised strong influences on Indian culture
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Balochistan
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Balochistan is an arid desert and mountainous region in south-western Asia. It comprises the Pakistani province of Balochistan, Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, Balochistan borders the Pashtun region to the north, Sindh to the east, Punjab to the northeast, and Persian regions to the west and northwest. South of its coastline, including the Makran Coast, are the Arabian Sea. The name Balochistan is generally believed to derive from that of the Baloch people, the term Baloch does not appear in pre-Islamic sources. It is likely that the Balochs were known by other name at their place of origin. The Suffix -stān is a Persian word meaning place, johan Hansman relates the term Baloch to Meluḫḫa, the name by which the Indus Valley Civilisation is believed to have been known to the Sumerians and Akkadians in Mesopatamia. Meluḫḫa disappears from the Mesopotamian records at the beginning of the second millennium B. C, however, Hansman states that a trace of it in a modified form, as Baluḫḫu, was retained in the names of products imported by the Assyrians. Al-Muqaddasī, who visited the capital of Makran Bannajbur, states that it was populated by people called Balūṣī, leading Hansman to postulate Baluch as a modification of Meluḫḫa and Baluḫḫu. Asko Parpola relates the name Meluḫḫa to Indo-Aryan words mleccha and milakkha/milakkhu etc. which do not have an Indo-European etymology even though they were used to refer to non-Aryan people. Taking them to be proto-Dravidian in origin, he interprets the term as meaning either a proper name milu-akam or melu-akam, meaning high country, historian Romila Thapar also interprets Meluḫḫa as a proto-Dravidian term, possibly mēlukku, and suggests the meaning western extremity. A literal translation into Sanskrit, aparānta, was used to describe the region by the Indo-Aryans. During the time of Alexander the Great, the Greeks called the land Gedrosia and its people Gedrosoi, the earliest evidence of human occupation in what is now Balochistan is dated to the Paleolithic era, represented by hunting camps and lithic scatters, chipped and flaked stone tools. The earliest settled villages in the date to the ceramic Neolithic. These villages expanded in size during the subsequent Chalcolithic, when interaction was amplified and this involved the movement of finished goods and raw materials, including chank shell, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and ceramics. By 2500 BCE, the now known as Pakistani Balochistan had become part of the Harappan cultural orbit. From the 1st century to the 3rd century CE, the region was ruled by the Pāratarājas, the dynasty of the Pāratas is thought to be identical with the Pāradas of the Mahabharata, the Puranas and other vedic and Iranian sources. These coins are found in Loralai in todays western Pakistan. Herodotus in 450 BCE described the Paraitakenoi as a tribe ruled by Deiokes, arrian describes how Alexander the Great encountered the Pareitakai in Bactria and Sogdiana, and had them conquered by Craterus
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Mortimer Durand
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Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, GCMG KCSI KCIE was a British diplomat and civil servant of colonial British India. Born at Sehore, Bhopal, India, he was the son of Sir Henry Marion Durand, the Resident of Baroda and he was educated at Blackheath Proprietary School, Durand entered the Indian Civil Service in 1873. During the Second Anglo-Afghan War he was Political Secretary at Kabul, from 1884 to 1894, he was Foreign Secretary of India. He left in 1900 by which time owing to the illness of his wife Ella he had withdrawn from social life, from 1900 to 1903 he served as British Ambassador to Spain, and from 1903-1906 as Ambassador to the United States of America. He was appointed a CSI in 1881 knighted a KCIE in 1888, from 1906, after his return to England, he devoted his time to writing. He also published the biography of his father, General Henry Marion Durand, some of his publications are, An Autumn Tour in Western Persia Nadir Shah, An Historical Novel The Life of Field-Marshal Sir George White, V. C. Tensions at home in British newspapers heightened the urgency of the incident, threatening war in Central Asia, a telephone line was kept open between Lord Granville and Count Giers in St Petersburg. The British made it clear that any further extension towards Herat would be amoun to a declaration of war, Rahman showed his usual ability in diplomatic argument, his tenacity where his own views or claims were in debate, with a sure underlying insight into the real situation. A Royal Commission was established to demarcate the boundary between Afghanistan and the British-governed India, the two parties camped at Parachinar, now part of FATA Pakistan, near Khost Afghanistan. From the British side the camp was attended by Mortimer Durand and Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum, the Afghans were represented by Sahibzada Abdul Latif and Governor Sardar Shireendil Khan representing Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. The territorial exchanges were amicably agreed upon, the relations between the British Indian and Afghan governments, as arranged, were confirmed. The Durand Road in Lahore is also named after him, Durand died at Quetta, Emirate of Quetta, Sultanate of Balochistan, British Balochistan, British India, in 1924. His grave yet to be discovered however his father is buried in a Church at Dera Ismail Khan, Durand Cup - a football tournament started by Mortimer Durand at Simla in 1888. The Making of a Frontier Five Years Experence and Adventure in Gilgit, Hunsa, Nagar, Chitral, the Russians at the Gate of Herat
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Durand Line
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The Durand Line is the 2, 430-kilometre international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghanistan was considered by the British as an independent princely state at the time, although the British controlled its foreign affairs, the single-page agreement, dated 12 November 1893, contains seven short articles, including a commitment not to exercise interference beyond the Durand Line. A joint British-Afghan demarcation survey took place starting from 1894, covering some 800 miles of the border, established towards the close of the Great Game, the resulting line established Afghanistan as a buffer zone between British and Russian interests in the region. The line, as modified by the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919, was inherited by Pakistan. From a geopolitical and geostrategic perspective, it has described as one of the most dangerous borders in the world. Although it is recognised internationally as the border of Pakistan. The area in which the Durand Line runs has been inhabited by the indigenous Pashtuns since ancient times, the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned a people called Pactyans living in and around Arachosia as early as the 1st millennium BC. The Baloch tribes inhabit the southern end of the line, which runs in the Balochistan region that separates the ethnic Baloch people, arab Muslims conquered the area in the 7th century and introduced Islam to the Pashtuns. It is believed some of the early Arabs also settled among the Pashtuns in the Sulaiman Mountains. It is important to note that these Pashtuns were historically known as Afghans and are believed to be mentioned by name in Arabic chronicles as early as the 10th century. The Pashtun area fell within the Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century followed by the Ghurids, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis, in 1839, during the First Anglo-Afghan War, British-led Indian forces invaded Afghanistan and initiated a war with the Afghan rulers. Two years later, in 1842, the British were defeated, the British again invaded Afghanistan in 1878, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, withdrawing a couple of years later after attaining some geopolitical objectives. During this war, the Treaty of Gandamak was signed, ceding control of various areas to the British Empire. On November 12,1893, the Durand Line Agreement was reached, the two parties later camped at Parachinar, a small town near Khost in Afghanistan, which is now part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, to delineate the frontier. From the British side, the camp was attended by Mortimer Durand and Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum, Political Agent Khyber Agency representing the British Viceroy and Governor General. The Afghan side was represented by Sahibzada Abdul Latif and a governor of Khost province in Afghanistan, Sardar Shireendil Khan. The original 1893 Durand Line Agreement was written in English, with translated copies in Dari and it also included the areas of Multan, Mianwali, the Bahawalpur, and Dera Ghazi Khan. These areas were part of the Durrani Empire from 1709 until the 1820s when the Sikh Empire followed by British invaded, the initial and primary demarcation, a joint Afghan-British survey and mapping effort, covered 800 miles and took place from 1894 to 1896
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Abdur Rahman Khan
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Abdur Rahman Khan was Emir of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901. He was the son of Mohammad Afzal Khan, and grandson of Dost Mohammad Khan. Abdur Rahman Khan re-established the writ of the Afghan government after the disarray that followed the second Anglo-Afghan war and he became known as The Iron Amir after defeating a number of rebellions by various tribes who were led by his relatives. At first, the new Amir was quietly recognized, but after a few months, Afzal Khan raised an insurrection in the north of the country, where he had been governing when his father died. This began a fierce internecine conflict for power between Dost Mohammads sons, which lasted for five years. The Musahiban are descendants of Dost Mohammad Khans older brother, Sultan Mohammad Khan Telai, Abdur Rahman distinguished himself for his ability and energetic daring. Sher Ali threw Afzal Khan into prison, and a serious revolt followed in southern Afghanistan, after some delay and desultory fighting, he and his uncle, Azam Khan, occupied Kabul in March 1866. Notwithstanding the new Amirs incapacity, and some jealousy between the leaders, Abdur Rahman and his uncle, they again routed Sher Alis forces. When Afzal Khan died at the end of the year, Azam Khan became the new ruler, with Abdur Rahman installed as Governor in the northern province. But towards the end of 1868 Sher Alis return, and a rising in his favour, resulted in Abdur Rahman. Both sought refuge to the east in Central Asia, whence Abdur Rahman placed himself under Russian protection at Samarkand, Azam died eventually in Kabul in October 1869. Abdur Rahman lived in exile in Tashkent, the governor-general of Tashkent sent for Abdur Rahman and motivated him by bringing up the blessing of Jacob, Abdurs patriarch. He was being told to cross the Oxus and claim throne for Amir, after some negotiations, and an interview with Lepel Griffin, the diplomatic representative at Kabul of the Indian government. Griffin described Abdur Rahman as a man of middle height, with an exceedingly intelligent face and frank and courteous manners, shrewd, the British evacuation of Afghanistan was settled on the terms proposed, and in 1881, the British troops also handed over Kandahar to the new Amir. However, Ayub Khan, one of Sher Ali Khans sons, marched upon that city from Herat, defeated Abdur Rahmans troops and this serious reverse roused the Amir, who had not at first displayed much activity. He led a force from Kabul, met Ayubs army close to Kandahar, the powerful Ghilzai tribe revolted against the severity of his measures several times. In that same year, Ayub Khan made a fruitless inroad from Persia, Abdur Rahmans attitude at this critical juncture is a good example of his political sagacity. He also published his autobiography in 1885, which served more as a guide for princes than anything else
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British Raj
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The British Raj was the rule by the British Crown in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947. The rule is also called Crown rule in India, or direct rule in India, the resulting political union was also called the Indian Empire and after 1876 issued passports under that name. It lasted until 1947, when the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign states, the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The British Raj extended over almost all present-day India, Pakistan and this area is very diverse, containing the Himalayan mountains, fertile floodplains, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, a long coastline, tropical dry forests, arid uplands, and the Thar desert. In addition, at times, it included Aden, Lower Burma, Upper Burma, British Somaliland. Burma was separated from India and directly administered by the British Crown from 1937 until its independence in 1948, among other countries in the region, Ceylon was ceded to Britain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens. Ceylon was part of Madras Presidency between 1793 and 1798, the kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, having fought wars with the British, subsequently signed treaties with them and were recognised by the British as independent states. The Kingdom of Sikkim was established as a state after the Anglo-Sikkimese Treaty of 1861, however. The Maldive Islands were a British protectorate from 1887 to 1965, India during the British Raj was made up of two types of territory, British India and the Native States. In general, the term British India had been used to also to the regions under the rule of the British East India Company in India from 1600 to 1858. The term has also used to refer to the British in India. The terms Indian Empire and Empire of India were not used in legislation, the monarch was known as Empress or Emperor of India and the term was often used in Queen Victorias Queens Speeches and Prorogation Speeches. The passports issued by the British Indian government had the words Indian Empire on the cover, in addition, an order of knighthood, the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, was set up in 1878. At the turn of the 20th century, British India consisted of eight provinces that were administered either by a Governor or a Lieutenant-Governor, during the partition of Bengal the new provinces of Assam and East Bengal were created as a Lieutenant-Governorship. In 1911, East Bengal was reunited with Bengal, and the new provinces in the east became, Assam, Bengal, Bihar, there were 565 princely states when India and Pakistan became independent from Britain in August 1947. The princely states did not form a part of British India, the larger ones had treaties with Britain that specified which rights the princes had, in the smaller ones the princes had few rights. Within the princely states external affairs, defence and most communications were under British control, the British also exercised a general influence over the states internal politics, in part through the granting or withholding of recognition of individual rulers. Although there were nearly 600 princely states, the majority were very small
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Border control
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Border controls are measures taken by a country to monitor or regulate its borders. Border controls are put in place to control the movement of people, animals, specialized government agencies are usually created to perform border controls. Such agencies may perform various functions such as customs, immigration, security, quarantine, official designations, jurisdictions and command structures of these agencies vary considerably. In some countries, controls may be targeted at the national origin or other countries that have been visited. Others may need to be certain the traveler has paid the fees for their visas and has future travel planned out of the country. Yet others may concentrate on the contents of the travelers baggage, sometimes border controls exist on internal borders within a sovereign state. For example, in the Peoples Republic of China, there are border controls at the borders among the mainland, all persons need to present their passports or other types of travel documents to cross the border. For example, Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card and Home Return Permit are required for Hong Kong Permanent Residents who are Chinese citizens to cross the border, another example is the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, each having separate border controls from the rest of Malaysia. Also Norway exercise passport check when travelling between mainland Norway and the archipelago of Svalbard which is non-Schengen area, in some cases countries can introduce controls that functions as border controls but arent border controls legally and dont need to be performed by government agencies. Normally they are performed and organised by companies, based on a law that they have to check that passengers dont travel into a specific country if they arent allowed to. Such controls can take effect in one country based on the law of another country, even if they arent border controls they function as such. The most prominent example is airlines which check passports and visa before passengers are allowed to board the aircraft, also for some passenger boats such check are performed before boarding. Border Biosecurity Border guard Coast guard Visa Susan and aramis Residues of Border Control, Southern Spaces,17 April 2011
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Amu Darya
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The Amu Darya, also called the Amu River and historically known by its Latin name, Oxus, is a major river in Central Asia. It is formed by the junction of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, at Qaleh-ye Panjeh in Afghanistan, in ancient times, the river was regarded as the boundary between Greater Iran and Turan. In classical antiquity, the river was known as the Ōxus in Latin and Ὦξος Ôxos in Greek—a clear derivative of Vakhsh, in Vedic Sanskrit, the river is also referred to as Vakṣu. The Avestan texts too refer to the River as Yakhsha/Vakhsha, in Middle Persian sources of the Sassanid period the river is known as Wehrōd. The name Amu is said to have come from the city of Āmul, in modern Turkmenistan. Medieval Arabic and Muslim sources call the river Jayhoun which is derived from Gihon, however, this name is no longer used. Hara and to the river of Gozan (that is to say, the Amu. the Gozan River is the River Balkh, i. e. the Oxus or the Amu Darya. and were brought into Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan. The rivers total length is 2,400 kilometres and its drainage basin totals 534,739 square kilometres in area, the river is navigable for over 1,450 kilometres. All of the water comes from the mountains in the south where annual precipitation can be over 1,000 mm. An ice cave at the end of the Wakhjir valley, in the Wakhan Corridor, in the Pamir Mountains, a glacier turns into the Wakhan River and joins the Pamir River about 50 kilometres downstream. Therefore, the Chelab stream may be considered the true source or parent stream of the Oxus. The Panj River forms the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan and it flows west to Ishkashim where it turns north and then north-west through the Pamirs passing the Tajikistan–Afghanistan Friendship Bridge. It subsequently forms the border of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for about 200 kilometres, passing Termez and it delineates the border of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan for another 100 kilometres before it flows into Turkmenistan at Atamurat. As the Amudarya, it flows across Turkmenistan south to north, passing Türkmenabat, use of water from the Amu Darya for irrigation has been a major contributing factor to the shrinking of the Aral Sea since the late 1950s. Historical records state that in different periods, the river flowed into the Aral Sea, into the Caspian Sea, about 1,385,045 square kilometres of land is drained by the Amu Darya into the Aral Sea endorheic basin. This includes most of Tajikistan, the southwest corner of Kyrgyzstan, the northeast corner of Afghanistan, part of the Amu Daryas drainage divide in Tajikistan forms that countrys border with China and Pakistan. About 61% of the lies within Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Of the area drained by the Amu Darya, only about 200,000 square kilometres actively contribute water to the river and this is because many of the rivers major tributaries have been diverted, and much of the rivers drainage is dominated by outlying desert and steppe
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Indus River
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The Indus River, also called Sindhū or Abāsīn, is a major south-flowing river in South Asia. The total length of the river is 3,180 km which makes it one of the longest rivers in Asia and it is the longest river and national river of Pakistan. The river has a drainage area exceeding 1,165,000 km2. Its estimated annual flow stands at around 207 km3, making it the twenty-first largest river in the world in terms of annual flow, the Zanskar is its left bank tributary in Ladakh. In the plains, its left tributary is the Chenab which itself has four major tributaries, namely, the Jhelum, the Ravi, the Beas. Its principal right tributaries are the Shyok, the Gilgit, the Kabul, the Gomal. Beginning in a spring and fed with glaciers and rivers in the Himalayas. The Indus forms the delta of present-day Pakistan mentioned in the Vedic Rigveda as Sapta Sindhu, the river has been a source of wonder since the Classical Period, with King Darius of Persia sending his Greek subject Scylax of Caryanda to explore the river as early as 510 BC. In Pali, Síndhu means river, stream and refers to the Indus River in particular, the word Indus is the romanised form of the ancient Greek word Indós, borrowed from the old Persian word Hinduš which is in turn borrowed from the Sanskrit word Sindhu. Megastheness book Indica derives its name from the rivers Greek name, Indós, the ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indói, literally meaning the people of the Indus. The country of India and the Pakistani province of Sindh owe their names to the river, Rigveda also describes several mythical rivers, including one named Sindhu. The Rigvedic Sindhu is thought to be the present-day Indus river and is attested 176 times in its text –95 times in the plural, more often used in the generic meaning. In the Rigveda, notably in the hymns, the meaning of the word is narrowed to refer to the Indus river in particular. The Rigvedic hymns apply a feminine gender to all the rivers mentioned therein, Sindhu is seen as a strong warrior amongst other rivers which are seen as goddesses and compared to cows and mares yielding milk and butter. The Indus River provides key resources for Pakistans economy – especially the breadbasket of Punjab province, which accounts for most of the nations agricultural production. The word Punjab means land of five rivers and the five rivers are Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, the Indus also supports many heavy industries and provides the main supply of potable water in Pakistan. The ultimate source of the Indus is in Tibet, the river begins at the confluence of the Sengge Zangbo and Gar Tsangpo rivers that drain the Nganglong Kangri, the Indus then flows northwest through Ladakh and Baltistan into Gilgit, just south of the Karakoram range. The Shyok, Shigar and Gilgit rivers carry glacial waters into the main river and it gradually bends to the south, coming out of the hills between Peshawar and Rawalpindi
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Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
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Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is one of the four provinces of Pakistan, located in the northwestern region of the country. It was formerly known as North-West Frontier Province and commonly called Sarhad and its provincial capital and largest city is Peshawar, followed by Mardan. It shares borders with the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the west, Gilgit–Baltistan to the northeast, Azad Kashmir, Islamabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa does not share a border with Balochistan, which lies to its southwest. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also shares a border with Afghanistan, connected through the Khyber Pass. It is also the site of the ancient kingdom Gandhara, the ruins of its capital, Pushkalavati, and the most prominent center of learning in the Peshawar Valley, Takht-i-Bahi. It has been under the suzerainty of the Persians, Greeks, Mauryans, Kushans, Shahis, Ghaznavids, Mughals, Afghanistan, Sikhs, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the third largest province of Pakistan by the size of both population and economy though it is geographically the smallest of four. It comprises 10. 5% of Pakistans economy, and is home to 11. 9% of Pakistans total population, with the majority of the inhabitants being Pashtuns, Hazarewal, Chitrali. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa means Khyber side of the land of Pakhtuns while only the word Pakhtunkhwa means Land of Pakhtuns and according to scholars it means Pakhtun culture. When the British established it as a province, they called it North West Frontier Province due to its location being in north west of their Indian Empire. After independence of Pakistan, Pakistan continued with this name but a Pakhtun nationalist party and their logic behind that demand was that Punjabi people, Sindhi people and Balochi people have their provinces named after their ethnicities but that is not the case for Pashtun people. Major political parties especially Pakistan Muslim League were against that name since it was too similar to Bacha Khans demand of separate nation Pashtunistan. The ancient Aryan Migration is believed to have taken place around 2000 BCE, darius Hystaspes sent Scylax, a Greek seaman from Karyanda, to explore the course of the Indus river. Darius Hystaspes subsequently subdued the races dwelling west of the Indus, Gandhara was incorporated into the Persian Empire as one of its far easternmost satrapy system of government. The satrapy of Gandhara is recorded to have sent troops for Xerxes invasion of Greece in 480 BCE, in the spring of 327 BCE Alexander the Great crossed the Indian Caucasus and advanced to Nicaea, where Omphis, king of Taxila and other chiefs joined him. Alexander then dispatched part of his force through the valley of the Kabul River, while he advanced into modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwas Bajaur. Alexander then made Embolima his base, after Alexanders death in 323 BCE Porus obtained possession of the region, but was murdered by Eudemus in 317 BCE. Eudemus then left the region, and with his departure Macedonian power collapsed, sandrocottus, the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, then declared himself master of the province. His grandson, Ashoka, made Buddhism the dominant religion in ancient Gandhara, after Ashokas death the Mauryan empire collapse, just as in the west the Seleucid power was rising
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Balochistan, Pakistan
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Balochistan, is one of the four provinces of Pakistan, located in the southwestern region of the country. Its provincial capital and largest city is Quetta and it shares borders with Punjab and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the northeast, Sindh to the southeast, the Arabian Sea to the south, Iran to the west, and Afghanistan to the north. The name Balochistan means the land of the Baloch in many regional languages, although largely underdeveloped, the provincial economy is dominated by natural resources, especially its natural gas fields, which supply the entire country. Gwadar Port also plays a significant role in the development of the province. Balochistan is noted for its culture and extremely dry desert climate. Baloch people practice Islam and are predominantly Sunni, similar to the rest of Pakistan, Balochistan marked the westernmost extent of the Indus Valley Civilisation. Centuries before the arrival of Islam in the 7th Century, parts of Balochistan was ruled by the Paratarajas, at certain times, the Kushans also held political sway in parts of Balochistan. With time, Baloch tribes linguistically absorbed all the people in Makran, southern Sistan. By 654, the whole of what is now Balochistan was controlled by the Rashidun Caliphate, however, this town was later conquered during the reign of Caliph Ali. Abdulrehman ibn Samrah made Zaranj his provincial capital and remained governor of these areas from 654 to 656. During the Caliphate of Ali, revolt broke out in southern Balochistans Makran region. Due to civil war in the Rashidun Caliphate, Ali was unable to deal with these areas until 660, Haris ibn Marah Abdi arrived in Makran and conquered it by force, and then moved northward to north-eastern Balochistan and reconquered Qandabil. Finally, he moved south and conquered Kalat after a fierce battle, Muslim forces later regained control of the area during the Umayyad reign. It also remained a part of the Abbasid Caliphate, ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Afghan Empire, also won the allegiance of that areas rulers. Most of the area would revert to local Baloch control, after Afghan rule. During the period of the British Raj, there were four Princely States in Balochistan, Makran, Kharan, Las Bela and Kalat. After the Second Afghan War was ended by the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879, on 1 April 1883, the British took control of the Bolan Pass, south-east of Quetta, from the Khan of Kalat. In 1887, small areas of Balochistan were declared British territory
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Pashto media
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Pashto media includes Pashto literature, Pashto-language newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations, as well as Pashto films and Pashto internet. Pashto media involves the Pashtuns of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Pashtun diaspora around the world, Pashto is not only the name of a language, but it comprises all traditions, norms and values of the Pashtun people. The history of Pashto language comprises thousands of years and it is widely believed among the Pashtuns that the earliest written Pashto poems were written in the 8th century CE by Amir Kror Suri of Ghor, Afghanistan. Amir Kror was the son of Amir Polad and they belonged to the Suri Pashtun tribe, since paper was not much in use in the Pashtun territory, Poets usually performed poetry verbally and its fans memorized the work. Another reason may be that most Pashtuns were nomads and warriors, due to these and other reasons, Pashto remained as a verbal language only. The poems by Amir Kror Suri were discovered and saved in Pata Khazana, Abu Muhammad Hashim Sarwani was another poet of that period. He was born around the Helmand Province in the 9th century and he was the student of Ullema of Basat. It is also said that he was the student of popular Arabic writer, Hashim Sarwani translated some Arabic poems in Pashto, and his work also came under light through the book, Pata Khazana. He also wrote a book, SaloVagma, meaning ‘deserted breeze’ on the eloquence of Arabic verses, after Abu Muhammad Hashim Sarwani, Sheikh Razi is another poet whose work is saved in the book, Pata Khazana. He belonged to the Lodi tribe of Pashtuns, similarly, there are many other poets in the first phase of Pashto poetry. غازی ارسلاخان اتمانخيل دلورالای دباچاخان لاروی وواودلارډسفورډانګليس سره يی شکر په شکر کښي ورکړيوو Intellectual, scholars, poetic literature like Amir Crore Nazam and Sheikh Mati Munajat were all in poetic form. Prose found its place in Pashto literature very late, the reason is that poetry is a far common and effective genre for translating and expressing one’s feeling into it and conveying the same to others. However prose vis-à-vis poetry appeals to a very selective mind and heart, now the question arises as to when prose writing came into vogue in Pashto literature. Since the book is not vogue and the idea is based on mere assumption, similarly, another book Tazkiratul Aulia, written by Suleman Makoo in 612 Hijri, is said to be the first recognized book in Pashto. The book contains descriptions of major Aulia, like Shiekh Malkair, Shiekh Ismial, the complete book is not in existence but a part of it is available. However, the oldest complete prose book in Pashto that is still in existence today is Khairul Bayan. After that we come across Akhund Darvez’s book title Makhzanul Islam and various books written in the 9th and 10th centuries by Babu Jan, Mlamast Zamand, Allah Yar. But all these books were in prose-verse as they contained difficult words and rhetorical expressions, after that comes the era of the great Pashto poet Khushal Khan Khattak, who along with his family has made a remarkable contribution to Pashto prose writing
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Pashtun diaspora
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Pashtun diaspora refers to ethnic Pashtuns who live outside of their traditional homeland, which is south of the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and west of the Indus River in Pakistan. Pakistan is home to the largest Pashtun community, Smaller populations of Pashtuns are found in the European Union, North America, Australia and other parts of the world. They may also be found in the Middle East, particularly in the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, in Northern India, there are communities of Indians who trace their origins to the traditional Pashtun homeland. The Pashtun ethnic group known as Pathan are believed to have settled in the vast Pashtunistan tribal region in the first millennium C. E. between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Indus River. According to Ethnologue, they number around 50 million but some sources give slightly lower or higher figures. In the Indian subcontinent, the group is referred to as Pathan. The ethnonym Afghan has been used since the 3rd century AD to refer to the Pashtuns. Pashtuns make up the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, comprising 42–60% of the total Afghan population, approximately 1.7 million Afghan refugees live in neighboring Pakistan. The majority of them are Pashtuns who were born in that country, the Pashtuns are scattered all over Afghanistan, they can be found in almost every province of the country. Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan and a stronghold of the Pashtun culture, the city of Lashkar Gah in the south, Farah in the west, Jalalabad in the east, and Kunduz in the north are other prominent cultural centres whose populations are predominantly Pashtun. Kabul and Ghazni each have at least 25% Pashtun while Herat, Pashtun tribes make up the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan, comprising over 25%. They form the majority group in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas areas. The following delineates the Pashtun population in the provinces of Pakistan, Smaller Pashtun communities outside of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa can be found in the districts of Attock and these and other communities of Pashtun ancestry are often referred to as the Punjabi Pashtun. Pathan community lives in different district of Azad Kashmir, mainly they are being settled in districts of Poonch, Sudhnuti and Bagh. In Poonch and Sudhnuti they constitute more than 70% population of district, kashmiri Pashtuns mainly consists of Sadozai tribe which are locally known as Sudhan. Approximate population of Sadozai, s in AJK is 1 million, Sadozai tribe has a strong hold in Rawalakot city in Azad Kashmir. Small no of other tribes in Kashmir which include Durrani, Tareen, Lodhi, Yousafzai Shinwary. In addition to this, some Urdu-speaking communities in Pakistan trace their ancestry to the ancient Pashtun regions of Afghanistan, some identify themselves as Bangash, Yousefzai, Ghouri and Durrani
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Pashtun tribes
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The Pashtun tribes or Afghan tribes are the large family units of the Eastern Iranian ethnic groups who use the Pashto language and follow Pashtunwali code of conduct. They are found primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan and form the worlds largest tribal society, comprising over 49 million people and they are traditionally divided into four tribal confederacies, the Sarbani, the Bettani, the Gharghashti, and the Karlani. There are several levels of organisation of Pashtun tribes, the tribe is subdivided into kinship groups, each of which is a khel and zai. A khel or Zai is further divided into Plarina each of which consists of extended families. Tarbur refers to a split into two or more clans and Tarbur mean cousin in Pashto so Tarbur could be enemy as well in the Pashtun culture that they can occupy your land or property. Every Pashtun tribe is then divide into subtribes, also called khel or zai, in Avestan it is similar to Pashto Zoi meaning son or offspring. William Crooke has said that khel is from an Arabic word meaning association or company, a khel is often based in a single village, but it may also be based on a larger area including several villages, or part of a town. Plarina is related to the Bactrian term plār, which derives from Old Iranian piðar, the plural form of plār is plārina. A plārina is considered only when the 7th generation is born, usually, the 7th forefather is assumed to take from one-and-a-half century to two centuries. Kul is the smallest unit in Pashtun tribal system, named after an ancestor of 1, once the fourth generation is born, it would be labelled a family or kūl. The Bettani speak various Pashto dialects, the Ghilji or of the central region around Paktika speak Central Pashto, a dialect with unique phonetic features, transitional between the southern and the northern dialects of Pashto. The Sheerani tribe of the Bettani confederacy speaks another southern dialect, the northern Bettani clans speak the northern or hard Pashto variety. Some of the Bettani lineages, including clans of the Niazi, Tanoli. Today they speak other languages, like Hindko, Saraiki, Punjabi, the Gharghashti Kakar and Musakhel and other minor settled in the region around Quetta speak dialect, which is a soft Pashto dialect very similar to Kandahari Pashto. The Safi, some of the Jaduns, and some other minor northern Gharghashti tribes speak the northern or hard Pashto variety, the Jaduns, living on the Mahabun mountain slopes around Swabi speak Pashto, while those living in Hazara speak Pashto and Hindko. Some clans of the Safi tribe speak the Pashayi languages but are mostly bilingual in Pashto, the Karlani speak some of the most distinctive Pashto dialects which are lexically different from standard Pashto varieties, and phonetically very varied. Furthermore, the Karlani dialects have a tendency towards a change in the pronunciation of vowels, depending on the particular dialect, the standard Pashto, may change into, respectively. In the Karlani dialects of Waziristan, Bannu, and Tani, which follow the vowel shift to the greatest extent, these four vowels normally change into, respectively
39.
Lodi dynasty
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The Lodi dynasty was an Afghan Pashtun dynasty that ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1451 to 1526. It was the last dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate and was founded by Bahlul Khan Lodi when he replaced the Sayyid dynasty, muhammad Shah raised him to the status of an emir. He was the most powerful of the Punjab chiefs and a leader, holding together a loose confederacy of Afghan. He reduced the turbulent chiefs of the provinces to submission and infused some vigour into the government, after the last Sayyid ruler of Delhi, Ala-ud-Din Aalm Shah voluntarily abdicated in favour of him, Bahlul Khan Lodi ascended the throne of the Delhi sultanate on April 19,1451. The most important event of his reign was the conquest of Jaunpur, Bahlul spent most of his time in fighting against the Sharqi dynasty and ultimately annexed it. He placed his eldest surviving son Barbak on the throne of Jaunpur in 1486, Sikandar Lodi, the second son of Bahlul, succeeded him after his death on July 17,1489 and took up the title Sikandar Shah. He was nominated by his father to succeed him and was crowned sultan on July 15,1489 and he founded Agra in 1504 and constructed mosques. He shifted the capital from Delhi to Agra and he abolished corn duties and patronized trade and commerce. He composed under the pen-name of Gulruk and he was also patron of learning and ordered Sanskrit work in medicine to be translated into Persian. He curbed the individualistic tendencies of his Pashtun nobles and compelled them to submit their accounts to state audit and he was, thus, able to infuse vigor and discipline in the administration. His greatest achievement was the conquest and annexation of Bihar, Ibrahim Khan Lodi, the youngest son of Sikandar, was the last Lodi Sultan of Delhi. He had the qualities of an excellent warrior, but he was rash, Ibrahim faced numerous rebellions and kept out the opposition for almost a decade. He was engaged in warfare with the Afghans and the Mughals for most of his reign, Ibrahim was defeated in 1526 at the Battle of Panipat. This marked the end of the Lodi Dynasty and the rise of the Mughal Empire in India led by Babur, by the time Ibrahim ascended the throne, the political structure in the Lodi Dynasty had dissolved due to abandoned trade routes and the depleted treasury. The Deccan was a trade route, but in the late fifteenth century the supply lines had collapsed. The decline and eventual failure of this trade route resulted in cutting off supplies from the coast to the interior. In order to revenge of the insults done by Ibrahim. Ibrahim Lodi was thus killed in a battle with Babur, with the death of Ibrahim Lodi, the Lodi dynasty also came to an end
40.
Sur Empire
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It interrupted the rule of the Mughal Empire under Humayun, who later restored the Mughal Empire by ending the Sur Empire. Sher Shah defeated badhsah-i-Hind Humayun in the Battle of Chausa and again in the Battle of Bilgram, the Sur dynasty held control of nearly all the Mughal territories, from modern-day eastern Afghanistan in the west to Bengal in modern-day Bangladesh in the east. During the almost 17-year rule of the Sur dynasty, until the return of the Mughals to the throne, a systematised relationship was created between the people and the ruler, minimising corruption and the oppression of the public. Their rule came to an end by a defeat that led to restoration of the Mughal Empire, today, the Sur are part of the Pashtun tribal system and belong to the sub-groups of the Ghilzais. It is a ridge, a spur of the Sulaimán Mountains, about six or seven kos in length, Sur Delhi Sultanate List of Sunni Muslim dynasties Sher Shah Suri and the Afghan Revival Sher Shah Suri Sher Shah Suri
41.
Hotak dynasty
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At its peak, the Hotak dynasty ruled very briefly over an area which is now Afghanistan, western Pakistan, and large parts of Iran. In 1715, Mirwais died of a cause and his brother Abdul Aziz succeeded the monarchy. He was quickly followed by Mahmud who ruled the empire at its largest extent for a three years. Following the 1729 Battle of Damghan, where Ashraf Hotak was roundly defeated by Nader Shah, Hussain Hotak became the last ruler until he was also defeated in 1738. Immediately to the east began the Sunni Mughul Empire, who occasionally fought wars with the powerful Safavids over the territory of southern Afghanistan, the area to the north, was controlled by the Khanate of Bukhara at the same time. By the late 17th century, the Iranian Safavids, like their arch rival the Ottoman Turks, had been starting to decline due to misrule, sectarian strife. His first task was to quell the uprisings in the region, Gurgin began imprisoning and executing Afghans, especially those suspected of organizing rebellions, successfully crushing the rebellions. One of those arrested and imprisoned was Mirwais who belonged to an influential Hotak family in Kandahar. Mirwais was sent as a prisoner to the Persian court in Isfahan but the charges against him were dismissed by Shah Husayn, in April 1709, Mirwais, protected by the Ghaznavid Nasher Khans, and along with his followers revolted against the Safavid rule at Kandahar. The uprising began when Gurgīn Khān and his escort were killed during a feast that was organized by Mirwais at his farmhouse outside the city and it is reported that drinking of wine was involved. Next, Mirwais ordered the killings of the remaining Persian military officials in the region, the Afghans then defeated a twice as large Persian army that had been dispatched from Isfahan, one which included Qizilbash and Georgian/Circassian troops. Two years later, in A. D.1713, another Persian army commanded by Rustam Khán was also defeated by the rebels, refusing the title of king, Mirwais was called Prince of Qandahár and General of the national troops by his Afghan countrymen. He died peacefully in November 1715 from natural causes and was succeeded by his brother Abdul Aziz, in 1720, Mahmuds Afghan forces crossed the deserts of Sistan and captured Kerman. His plan was to conquer the Persian capital, Isfahan, after defeating the Persian army at the Battle of Gulnabad on March 8,1722, he proceeded to and besieged Isfahan for 6 months, after which it fell. On October 23,1722, Sultan Husayn abdicated and acknowledged Mahmud as the new Shah of Persia, the majority of the Persian people, however, rejected the Afghan regime as usurpers from the start. For the next seven years until 1729, the Hotaks were the de facto rulers of most of Persia, the Hotak dynasty was a troubled and violent one from the very start as internecine conflict made it difficult to establish permanent control. On the other hand, the Afghans had also suppressed by the Iranian Safavid government represented by its governor Gurgin Khan before their uprising in 1709. Nader Shah had driven out and banished the remaining Ghilji forces from Persia and began enlisting some the Abdali Afghans of Farah, Nader Shahs forces conquered Kandahar in 1738
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Durrani Empire
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The Durrani Empire at its maximum extent encompassed present-day Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, eastern Turkmenistan, most of Pakistan, and northwestern India, including the Kashmir region. The Afghan army began their conquests by capturing Ghazni and Kabul from the local rulers, in 1749 the Mughal ruler had ceded sovereignty over what is now Pakistan and northwestern Punjab to the Afghans. Ahmad Shah then set out westward to take possession of Herat and he next sent an army to subdue the areas north of the Hindu Kush and in short order all the different tribes began joining his cause. Ahmad Shah and his forces invaded India four times, taking control of the Kashmir, early in 1757, he sacked Delhi, but permitted the Mughal dynasty to remain in nominal control as long as the ruler acknowledged Ahmad Shahs suzerainty over the Punjab, Sindh, and Kashmir. Additionally, among the Durranis other military conquests, the Pashtun also instigated the Vaḍḍā Ghallūghārā when they killed thousands of Sikhs in the Punjab, the Durrani Empire is considered the foundation of the modern state of Afghanistan, with Ahmad Shah Durrani being credited as Father of the Nation. In 1709 Mir Wais Hotak, chief of the Ghilji tribe of Kandahar Province, from 1722 to 1725, his son Mahmud Hotak briefly ruled large parts of Iran and declared himself as Shah of Persia. However, the Hotak dynasty came to a end in 1738 after being toppled and banished by the Afsharids who were led by Nader Shah Afshar of Persia. The year 1747 marks the appearance of an Afghan political entity independent of both the Persian and Mughal empires. In October 1747 a loya jirga concluded near the city of Kandahar with Ahmad Shah Durrani being selected as the new leader of the Afghans, despite being younger than the other contenders, Ahmad Shah had several overriding factors in his favor. He belonged to a family of political background, especially since his father served as Governor of Herat who died in a battle defending the Afghans. He also had a larger army and possessed a substantial part of Nadir Shahs treasury, including the Koh-i-Noor diamond. One of Ahmad Shahs first military action was the capture Ghazni from the Ghiljis, in 1749, the Mughal ruler was induced to cede Sindh, the Punjab region and the important trans Indus River to Ahmad Shah in order to save his capital from Afghan attack. Having thus gained substantial territories to the east without a fight, Ahmad Shah turned westward to take possession of Herat, Ahmad Shah next sent an army to subdue the areas north of the Hindu Kush mountains. In short order, the army brought under its control the Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen. Ahmad Shah invaded the remnants of the Mughal Empire a third time and he sacked Delhi in 1757, but permitted the Mughal dynasty to remain in nominal control of the city as long as the ruler acknowledged Ahmad Shahs suzerainty over Punjab, Sindh, and Kashmir. Leaving his second son Timur Shah to safeguard his interests, Ahmad Shah left India to return to Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah halted trade with Qing China and dispatched troops to Kokand. Through this treaty, the Marathas controlled virtually the whole of India from their capital at Pune, Marathas were now straining to expand their area of control towards the Northwest of India. Ahmad Shah sacked the Mughal capital and withdrew with the booty he coveted, to counter the Afghans, Peshwa Balaji Bajirao sent Raghunathrao
43.
Barakzai dynasty
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The two branches of the Barakzai dynasty ruled modern day Afghanistan from 1826 to 1973 when the monarchy ended under Musahiban Mohammad Zahir Shah. The Barakzai dynasty was established by Dost Mohammad Khan after the Durrani dynasty of Ahmad Shah Durrani was removed from power. During this era, Afghanistan saw much of its territory lost to the British in the south and east, Persia in the west, there were also many conflicts within Afghanistan, including the three major Anglo-Afghan Wars and the 1929 civil war. The Barakzai dynasty was the line of rulers in Afghanistan in the 19th and 20th centuries, following the fall of the Durrani Empire in 1826, chaos reigned in the domains of Ahmed Shah Durranis Afghan Empire as various sons of Timur Shah struggled for supremacy. The Afghan Empire ceased to exist as a nation state. Dost Mohammad Khan gained preeminence in 1826 and founded the Barakzai dynasty in about 1837, thereafter, his descendants ruled in direct succession until 1929, when King Amanullah Khan abdicated and his cousin Mohammed Nadir Shah was elected king. The most prominent & powerful sub-clan of the Barakzai Pashtun tribe is the Mohamedzai clan, currently, Gul Agha Sherzai is the Khan of the Barakzai tribe. He is Senior Advisor to the President of Afghanistan and also Governor of Nangarhar Province, a family of Barakzai Tribe is residing in village Tordher of District Swabi of Khyber PukhtoonKhwa. Mohammadzai are the most prominent & powerful sub-tribe of Barakzai, they belong to the branch of the Durrani confederacy and they can also be found in other provinces throughout Afghanistan as well across the border in the Pakistans Balochistan Province. Musahiban are the descendants of Sultan Muhammed Khan, ruler of Peshawar, Mohammadzai Barakzai are closely related to Amanullah Khan. The family of Nadir and Zahir Shah, the Tarzi family is a branch of the Mohammadzai of Afghanistan. Although a smaller branch of the Barakzai ruling dynasty, the Tarzi family has produced some of the most famous, formerly, Dari Persian was used as the language for records and correspondence, until the late nineteenth century tombstones were also inscribed in Dari. The language of the Barakzai tribes in Pishin, Quetta, Gulistan and those who have settled away from Pishin speak local languages, such as Multani or Saraiki in Multan, Hindko in Hazara, Urdu in Bhopal and Sindhi in Sindh. Barakzai, a dialect of Pashto, is the language spoken by Harnai Barakzai
44.
Islam
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Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion which professes that there is only one and incomparable God and that Muhammad is the last messenger of God. It is the worlds second-largest religion and the major religion in the world, with over 1.7 billion followers or 23% of the global population. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique, and He has guided mankind through revealed scriptures, natural signs, and a line of prophets sealed by Muhammad. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, viewed by Muslims as the word of God. Muslims believe that Islam is the original, complete and universal version of a faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. As for the Quran, Muslims consider it to be the unaltered, certain religious rites and customs are observed by the Muslims in their family and social life, while social responsibilities to parents, relatives, and neighbors have also been defined. Besides, the Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad prescribe a comprehensive body of moral guidelines for Muslims to be followed in their personal, social, political, Islam began in the early 7th century. Originating in Mecca, it spread in the Arabian Peninsula. The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and empires, traders, most Muslims are of one of two denominations, Sunni or Shia. Islam is the dominant religion in the Middle East, North Africa, sizable Muslim communities are also found in Horn of Africa, Europe, China, Russia, Mainland Southeast Asia, Philippines, Northern Borneo, Caucasus and the Americas. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world, Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, safeness and peace. In a religious context it means voluntary submission to God, Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means submission or surrender. Muslim, the word for an adherent of Islam, is the active participle of the verb form. The word sometimes has connotations in its various occurrences in the Quran. In some verses, there is stress on the quality of Islam as a state, Whomsoever God desires to guide. Other verses connect Islām and dīn, Today, I have perfected your religion for you, I have completed My blessing upon you, still others describe Islam as an action of returning to God—more than just a verbal affirmation of faith. In the Hadith of Gabriel, islām is presented as one part of a triad that also includes imān, Islam was historically called Muhammadanism in Anglophone societies. This term has fallen out of use and is said to be offensive because it suggests that a human being rather than God is central to Muslims religion
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Khushal Khattak
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Khushāl Khān Khattak, also called Khushāl Bābā, was an Afghan poet, warrior and scholar, and chief of the Khattak tribe of the Pashtuns. Khushal preached the union of all Pashtuns, and encouraged revolt against the Mughal Empire, Khushal was the first Afghan mentor who presents his theories for the unity of the Pashtun tribes against foreign forces and the creation of a nation-state. Khushal wrote many works in Pashto but also a few in Persian, Khushal is considered the father of Pashto literature and the national poet of Afghanistan. In order to restore their freedom, Khushal challenged powers of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and he was a renowned military fighter who became known as an Afghan warrior-poet. The stand and fight attitude of Khushal was an important stance in Afghan history, besides poetry and prose works, Khushal also wrote various translations from Persian and Arabic into Pashto. Khushal was born in or about 1613 in the Khattak tribe of the Pashtun people and he was the son of Malik Shahbaz Khattak from Akora, in the Mughal Empire. His grandfather, Malik Akoray, was the first Khattak to enjoy widespread fame during the reign of the Mughal King Jalal-ud-din Akbar, Akoray moved from Teri to Sarai Akora, the town which Akoray founded and built. Akoray cooperated with the Mughals to safeguard the route and was generously rewarded for his assistance. The Akor Khels, a named after Akoray, still hold a prominent position in the Khattak tribe. The Khattak tribe of Khushal Khan now mostly lives in areas of Karak, Kohat, Nowshera, Akora Khattak, Cherat, Peshawar, Mardan and he was an intelligent and bold person from childhood. His first involvement in war occurred when he was just 13 years old, apart from the fact that he was a scholar, thinker, philosopher and boisterous poet he was a prince and leaders of his tribe simultaneously. His forefathers were since the 16th century officers of the Mughal Empire, after the death of shah Jahan his relations with Aurangzeb deteriorated. In 1658, Aurangzeb, Shah Jehans successor, threw him away as a prisoner in the Gwalior fortress, there he was a prisoner for some time and later under detention in the mountains prison. When he returned, he dissociated himself from the Mughal Empire slowly and he took contact to other Pashtun tribes and with support of his people he started a systematic resistance against the Mughals. Khushal’s grandfather Malik Akoray Khan was a chief of his tribe, Shahbaz Khan Khattak was a prominent soldier in Mughal army. He was a man who fought many wars against Yousaf Zai tribe. This brave man is the father of Khushal and he also proved his bravery in fighting with Yusufzai and later on with Mugahl army that he got the name of swordman. Khushal was the son of Shahbaz Khan Khattak
Afghanistan
Pakistan
