Pakistan the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world’s sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 212,742,631 people. In area, it is the 33rd-largest country. Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, China in the far northeast, it is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the northwest, shares a maritime border with Oman. The territory that now constitutes Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures and intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent; the ancient history involves the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, was home to kingdoms ruled by people of different faiths and cultures, including Hindus, Indo-Greeks, Turco-Mongols and Sikhs. The area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Alexander III of Macedon, the Seleucid Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, the Gupta Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Afghan Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and, most the British Empire.
Pakistan is the only country to have been created in the name of Islam. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a diverse geography and wildlife. A dominion, Pakistan adopted a constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. An ethnic civil war and Indian military intervention in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh. In 1973, Pakistan adopted a new constitution which stipulated that all laws are to conform to the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah. A regional and middle power, Pakistan has the sixth-largest standing armed forces in the world and is a nuclear power as well as a declared nuclear-weapons state, the second in South Asia and the only nation in the Muslim world to have that status. Pakistan has a semi-industrialised economy with a well-integrated agriculture sector and a growing services sector, it is ranked among the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world, is backed by one of the world's largest and fastest-growing middle class.
Pakistan's political history since independence has been characterized by periods of military rule, political instability and conflicts with India. The country continues to face challenging problems, including overpopulation, poverty and corruption. Pakistan is a member of the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the OIC, the Commonwealth of Nations, the SAARC and the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition; the name Pakistan means "land of the pure" in Urdu and Persian. It alludes to the word pāk meaning pure in Pashto; the suffix ـستان is a Persian word meaning the place of, recalls the synonymous Sanskrit word sthāna स्थान. The name of the country was coined in 1933 as Pakstan by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in his pamphlet Now or Never, using it as an acronym referring to the names of the five northern regions of British India: Punjab, Kashmir and Baluchistan; the letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation. 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 Indus region, which covers most of present day Pakistan, was the site of several successive ancient cultures including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro; the Vedic period was characterised by an Indo-Aryan culture. Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre; the Vedic civilisation flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, now Taxila in the Punjab, founded around 1000 BCE. Successive ancient empires and kingdoms ruled the region: the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Alexander the Great's empire in 326 BCE and the Maurya Empire, founded by Chandragupta Maurya and extended by Ashoka the Great, until 185 BCE; 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 higher education in the world, established during the late Vedic period in 6th century BCE. The school consisted of several monasteries without large dormitories or lecture halls where the religious instruction was provided on an individualistic basis; the ancient university was documented by the invading forces of Alexander the Great, "the like of which had not been seen in Greece," and was recorded by Chinese pilgrims in the 4th or 5th century CE. At its zenith, the Rai Dynasty of Sindh ruled the surrounding territories; the Pala Dynasty was the last Buddhist empire, under Dharmapala and Devapala, stretched across South Asia from what is now Bangladesh through Northern India to Pakistan. The Arab conqueror Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh in 711 CE; the Pakistan government's official chronol
Urdu —or, more Modern Standard Urdu—is a Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language. It is the official national lingua franca of Pakistan. In India, it is one of the 22 official languages recognized in the Constitution of India, having official status in the six states of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, as well as the national capital territory of Delhi, it is a registered regional language of Nepal. Apart from specialized vocabulary, spoken Urdu is mutually intelligible with Standard Hindi, another recognized register of Hindustani; the Urdu variant of Hindustani received recognition and patronage under British rule when the British replaced the local official languages with English and Hindustani written in Nastaʿlīq script, as the official language in North and Northwestern India. Religious and political factors pushed for a distinction between Urdu and Hindi in India, leading to the Hindi–Urdu controversy. According to Nationalencyklopedin's 2010 estimates, Urdu is the 21st most spoken first language in the world, with 66 million speakers.
According to Ethnologue's 2017 estimates, along with standard Hindi and the languages of the Hindi belt, is the 3rd most spoken language in the world, with 329.1 million native speakers, 697.4 million total speakers. Urdu, like Hindi, is a form of Hindustani, it evolved from the medieval Apabhraṃśa register of the preceding Shauraseni language, a Middle Indo-Aryan language, the ancestor of other modern Indo-Aryan languages. Around 75% of Urdu words have their etymological roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit, 99% of Urdu verbs have their roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit; because Persian-speaking sultans ruled the Indian subcontinent for a number of years, Urdu was influenced by Persian and to a lesser extent, which have contributed to about 25% of Urdu's vocabulary. Although the word Urdu is derived from the Turkic word ordu or orda, from which English horde is derived, Turkic borrowings in Urdu are minimal and Urdu is not genetically related to the Turkic languages. Urdu words originating from Chagatai and Arabic were borrowed through Persian and hence are Persianized versions of the original words.
For instance, the Arabic ta' marbuta changes to te. Contrary to popular belief, Urdu did not borrow from the Turkish language, but from Chagatai, a Turkic language from Central Asia. Urdu and Turkish borrowed from Arabic and Persian, hence the similarity in pronunciation of many Urdu and Turkish words. Arabic influence in the region began with the late first-millennium Muslim conquests of the Indian subcontinent; the Persian language was introduced into the subcontinent a few centuries by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties including that of Mahmud of Ghazni. The Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate established Persian as its official language, a policy continued by the Mughal Empire, which extended over most of northern South Asia from the 16th to 18th centuries and cemented Persian influence on the developing Hindustani; the name Urdu was first used by the poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi around 1780. From the 13th century until the end of the 18th century Urdu was known as Hindi.
The language was known by various other names such as Hindavi and Dehlavi. Hindustani in Persian script was used by Muslims and Hindus, but was current chiefly in Muslim-influenced society; the communal nature of the language lasted until it replaced Persian as the official language in 1837 and was made co-official, along with English. Hindustani was promoted in British India by British policies to counter the previous emphasis on Persian; this triggered a Hindu backlash in northwestern India, which argued that the language should be written in the native Devanagari script. This literary standard called "Hindi" replaced Urdu as the official language of Bihar in 1881, establishing a sectarian divide of "Urdu" for Muslims and "Hindi" for Hindus, a divide, formalized with the division of India and Pakistan after independence. There have been attempts to "purify" Urdu and Hindi, by purging Urdu of Sanskrit words, Hindi of Persian loanwords, new vocabulary draws from Persian and Arabic for Urdu and from Sanskrit for Hindi.
English has exerted a heavy influence on both as a co-official language. There are over 100 million native speakers of Urdu in India and Pakistan together: there were 52 million and 80.5 million Urdu speakers in India as per the 2001 and 2011 censuses respectively. However, a knowledge of Urdu allows one to speak with far more people than that, because Hindustani, of which Urdu is one variety, is the third most spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English; because of the difficulty in distinguishing between Urdu and Hindi speakers in India and Pakistan, as well as estimating the number of people for whom Urdu is a second language, the estimated number of speakers is uncertain and controversial. Owing to interaction with other languages, Urdu has become localized wherever it is spoken, including in Pakistan. Urdu in Pakistan has undergone changes and has incorporated and borrowed many words from region
Charsadda is a town and headquarters of Charsadda District, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Located in the Valley of Peshawar, Charsadda lies about 29 kilometres from the provincial capital of Peshawar at an altitude of 276 metres; the total area of Charsadda District measures about 996 square Km. The district is geographically organized into two primary parts: Do Aaba; the city hosts the ruins of what was once the ancient Gandharan capital city of Pushkalavati, home of the Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini. The earliest archaeological deposits recovered at Charsadda are dated to ca. 1400 BCE, constituting a series of post holes in association with ceramic sherds and ash. Subsequent periods indicate that more permanent structures were built at Charsadda, including stone-lined pits. Between the 14th century BCE and the 6th century BCE, when an Achaemenid presence is represented at the site, the inhabitants of Charsadda developed an iron-working industry and used ceramics that are typical for this period in the Vale of Peshawar and Dir.
The father of Sanskrit grammar, Pāṇini was from this area and lived around 4th century BCE. The history of Charsadda can be traced back to the 6th century BCE, it was the capital of Gandhara from the 6th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. The ancient name of Charsadda was Pushkalavati, it was the administrative centre of the Gandhara kingdom. Many invaders have ruled over this region during different times of history; these include the Durrani Empire, Alexander the Great's Macedonians, the Mauryas, the Greco-Bactrians, the Indo-Greeks, the Indo-Scythians, the Indo-Parthians, the Kushans, the Huns, the Turks, the Guptas. Charsadda is contiguous to the town of Prang, its chieftain, according to Arrian, was killed in defence of one of his strongholds after a prolonged siege by Hephaistion. Ptolemy fixes its site upon the eastern bank of the Swat; the region was conquered by Chandragupta Maurya from the Macedonian straps. In the seventh century CE Hiuen Tsiang visited the city, which he describes as being 100 li north-east of Peshawar.
A stupa, erected over the spot where Buddha made an alms-offering of his eyes, formed the great attraction for the Buddhist pilgrim and his co-religionists. The city, had then been abandoned as a political capital in favour of Purushapura, Parashāwara, or Peshawar. There are three rivers flowing in Charsadda: the Kabul River and the Swat River; the three rivers merge and join the Indus River. The district is administratively subdivided into three tehsils which contained a total of 49 Union Councils. In January 2016, Bacha Khan University was attacked with guns and bombs, killing 21 people and injuring 17. Four suspected. Bacha Khan University attack Pushkalavati Blast rocks election rally in Pakistan Charsadda Portal
The Avesta is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the otherwise unrecorded Avestan language. The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by usage; the principal text in the liturgical group is the Yasna, which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianism's primary act of worship, at which the Yasna text is recited. The most important portion of the Yasna texts are the five Gathas, consisting of seventeen hymns attributed to Zoroaster himself; these hymns, together with five other short Old Avestan texts that are part of the Yasna, are in the Old Avestan language. The remainder of the Yasna's texts are in Younger Avestan, not only from a stage of the language, but from a different geographic region. Extensions to the Yasna ceremony include the texts of the Visperad; the Visperad extensions consist of additional invocations of the divinities, while the Vendidad is a mixed collection of prose texts dealing with purity laws.
Today, the Vendidad is the only liturgical text, not recited from memory. Some of the materials of the extended Yasna are from the Yashts, which are hymns to the individual yazatas. Unlike the Yasna and Vendidad, the Yashts and the other lesser texts of the Avesta are no longer used liturgically in high rituals. Aside from the Yashts, these other lesser texts include the Nyayesh texts, the Gah texts, the Siroza, various other fragments. Together, these lesser texts are conventionally called "Little Avesta" texts; when the first Khordeh Avesta editions were printed in the 19th century, these texts became a book of common prayer for lay people. The term Avesta is from the 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition in which the word appears as Zoroastrian Middle Persian abestāg, Book Pahlavi ʾpstʾkʼ. In that context, abestāg texts are portrayed as received knowledge, are distinguished from the exegetical commentaries thereof; the literal meaning of the word abestāg is uncertain. The repeated derivation from *upa-stavaka is from Christian Bartholomae, who interpreted abestāg as a contraction of a hypothetical reconstructed Old Iranian word for "praise-song".
The surviving texts of the Avesta, as they exist today, derive from a single master copy produced by collation and recension in the Sasanian Empire. That master copy, now lost, is known as the'Sassanian archetype'; the oldest surviving manuscript of an Avestan language text is dated 1323 CE. Summaries of the various Avesta texts found in the 9th/10th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition suggest that a significant portion of the literature in the Avestan language has been lost. Only about one-quarter of the Avestan sentences or verses referred to by the 9th/10th century commentators can be found in the surviving texts; this suggests that three-quarters of Avestan material, including an indeterminable number of juridical and legendary texts, have been lost since then. On the other hand, it appears that the most valuable portions of the canon, including all of the oldest texts, have survived; the reason for this is that the surviving materials represent those portions of the Avesta that were in regular liturgical use, therefore known by heart by the priests and not dependent for their preservation on the survival of particular manuscripts.
A pre-Sasanian history of the Avesta, if it had one, is in the realm of myth. The oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in the ninth to 11th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition; the legends run as follows: The twenty-one nasks of the Avesta were created by Ahura Mazda and brought by Zoroaster to his patron Vishtaspa. Vishtaspa or another Kayanian, Daray had two copies made, one of, stored in the treasury, the other in the royal archives. Following Alexander's conquest, the Avesta was supposedly destroyed or dispersed by the Greeks after they translated the scientific passages that they could make use of. Several centuries one of the Parthian emperors named Valaksh then had the fragments collected, not only of those, written down, but of those that had only been orally transmitted; the Denkard transmits another legend related to the transmission of the Avesta. In that story, credit for collation and recension is given to the early Sasanian-era priest Tansar, who had the scattered works collected, of which he approved only a part as authoritative.
Tansar's work was supposedly completed by Adurbad Mahraspandan who made a general revision of the canon and continued to ensure its orthodoxy. A final revision was undertaken in the 6th century under Khosrow I. In the early 20th century, the legend of the Parthian-era collation engendered a search for a'Parthian archetype' of the Avesta. In the theory of Friedrich Carl Andreas, the archaic nature of the Avestan texts was assumed to be due to preservation via written transmission, unusual or unexpected spellings in the surviving texts were assumed to be reflections of errors introduced by Sasanian-era transcription from the
Ziarat is a city and the capital of Ziarat District, Balochistan Province, Pakistan. It is about 130 km from the capital city of Balochistan province Quetta; the famous Quaid-e-Azam Residency is there in the valley, where Quaid spent a few of his most memorable days. Tourists from all over Balochistan and from Sindh province visit the valley in the harsh summers, its overall cold weather, fascinating sceneries, lush green forests and mighty mountains attracts tourists of all kinds. May to September are months of peak tourist visits. Specially in the days of Eid festive and other national or religious the valley is full packed; the 2016's Eid experienced about 0.4 million people visiting. The hill station is accessible from Quetta through a Highway. While accessing it from Loralai is little difficult due to bad road conditions; the third way of accessing the valley is through Harnai District although it is pretty dangerous near Dumiara waterfall, due to the steep and unpaved road. The main road of the station is Jinnah road which called the red zone of the valley due to a large numbers of government and askari resorts and buildings there, a few of which are: Frontier Corps Resthouse Governor House IG Police House Panther Lodge Juniper Lodge Quaid-e-Azam Residency Commissioner House CM Balochistan House Near Ziarat is a juniper forest called sanober, which features the species Juniperus macropoda Juniperus excelsa polycarpos.
Pakistan’s largest juniper forest is located in this reserve. The ecosystem is of inestimable value for biodiversity conservation, it is of great ecological significance, providing local and global benefits. The biosphere reserve is home to the largest area of juniper forest in Pakistan, covering about 110,000 hectares, it is believed. The juniper species found there are of global significance because of their advanced age and slow growth rate. In fact, the junipers of Ziarat are among the oldest living trees in the world. Although no dendrological study has yet been conducted, according to one estimate, the age of a mature tree in Ziarat can exceed 5,000 years. Local people refer to the trees as "living fossils", their remarkable longevity allows research on past weather conditions in the region, making the species of particular significance for studies on climate change and ecology. The juniper forest ecosystem of Ziarat provides a habitat for endangered wildlife species and supports a rich variety of plant species.
Because of the ecosystem's biodiversity, various parts of it have been designated protected areas, including wildlife sanctuaries and game reserves. The mountain ranges, including the Khilafat Hills, consist of a core habitat that hosts several globally important wild species, among them markhors, black bears and wolves; the forest serves as a habitat for a number of other animals: Afghan pikas, foxes and several species of migratory birds. However, anthropological factors such as illegal hunting, human habitations and livestock grazing have encroached on the wildlife habitats, leading to their fragmentation; the human population, distributed across various sub-tribes and clans, is concentrated in valleys, although small settlements are visible on mountain slopes. There are over 100,000 people living within or in close proximity to the biosphere reserve, most of whom are agropastoralists. 40 percent of the population migrates for three to four months during the winter to abodes in Harnai. Livestock was the primary source of livelihood in the reserve.
Today, it has been displaced by the development of agriculture and, in particular, the promotion of horticultural crops such as apple and cherry orchards. Ziarat and the surrounding juniper valleys offer good opportunities for hiking and trekking, as well as various gorges; the city is becoming popular for a taste of snowfall during the winter. Ziarat is the location of the Ziarat residency; the residency, constructed in 1892, is a wooden structure with great architectural importance. It was meant to be a sanatorium, but was converted into the summer residence of the Agent of the Governor General, it is now a national monument. The residency catches tourists' attention because of its location and hilly surroundings. There is a small dam, the valley is full of fruits: cherry in summer and apple in winter. Between the hills and the deep ravine, there is a mile-long stretch of flat land ideal for walking; this is "chashma", that provides water for the town. The highest spot that cars can reach is Prospect Point, 2,713 metres above sea level and offers a view of the valley stretching out in undulating slopes, about 6 km from Ziarat.
From a nearby cliff, one can see the highest peak of the Khilifat Hills. There is a small rest house nearby. Bookings can be made through the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Ziarat. Sandman Tangi, 4 km from Ziarat, features a dramatic waterfall, about 13 km from the city is Dumiara, another waterfall; the Chutair Valley is about a 30-minute drive from Ziarat. Inhabitants of the valley live in huts made from juniper bark, distinct from the homes in other villages. Balochistan is an arid region and receives little annual rainfall, but innumerable streams and natural springs known as karez can be found in most parts of the province. There are more than a half dozen gorges around Ziarat formed by karez spring water falling through narrow openings in the mountain rocks, producing a dramatic effect; the gorges along the road to Ziarat are Chutair Tangi, Kahn Tangi, Kawas Tangi, Faran Tangi and Sandman Tangi. The residents of
Rama or Ram known as Ramachandra, is a major deity of Hinduism. He is the seventh avatar of the god Vishnu, one of his most popular incarnations along with Krishna and Gautama Buddha. In Rama-centric traditions of Hinduism, he is considered the Supreme Being. Rama was born to Dasharatha in Ayodhya, the ruler of the Kingdom of Kosala, his siblings included Lakshmana and Shatrughna. He married Sita. Though born in a royal family, their life is described in the Hindu texts as one challenged by unexpected changes such as an exile into impoverished and difficult circumstances, ethical questions and moral dilemmas. Of all their travails, the most notable is the kidnapping of Sita by demon-king Ravana, followed by the determined and epic efforts of Rama and Lakshmana to gain her freedom and destroy the evil Ravana against great odds; the entire life story of Rama and their companions allegorically discusses duties and social responsibilities of an individual. It illustrates dharmic living through model characters.
Rama is important to Vaishnavism. He is the central figure of the ancient Hindu epic Ramayana, a text popular in the South Asian and Southeast Asian cultures, his ancient legends have attracted bhasya and extensive secondary literature and inspired performance arts. Two such texts, for example, are the Adhyatma Ramayana – a spiritual and theological treatise considered foundational by Ramanandi monasteries, the Ramcharitmanas – a popular treatise that inspires thousands of Ramlila festival performances during autumn every year in India. Rama legends are found in the texts of Jainism and Buddhism, though he is sometimes called Pauma or Padma in these texts, their details vary from the Hindu versions. Rāma is a Vedic Sanskrit word with two contextual meanings. In one context as found in Arthavaveda, states Monier Monier-Williams, it means "dark, dark-colored, black" and is related to the term ratri which means night. In another context as found in other Vedic texts, the word means "pleasing, charming, lovely".
The word is sometimes used as a suffix in different Indian languages and religions, such as Pali in Buddhist texts, where -rama adds the sense of "pleasing to the mind, lovely" to the composite word. Rama as a first name appears in the Vedic literature, associated with two patronymic names – Margaveya and Aupatasvini – representing different individuals. A third individual named Rama Jamadagnya is the purported author of hymn 10.110 of the Rigveda in the Hindu tradition. The word Rama appears in ancient literature in reverential terms for three individuals: Parashu-rama, as the sixth avatar of Vishnu, he is linked to the Rama Jamadagnya of the Rigveda fame. Rama-chandra, as the seventh avatar of Vishnu and of the ancient Ramayana fame. Bala-rama called Halayudha, as the elder brother of Krishna both of whom appear in the legends of Hinduism and Jainism; the name Rama appears in Hindu texts, for many different scholars and kings in mythical stories. The word appears in ancient Upanishads and Aranyakas layer of Vedic literature, as well as music and other post-Vedic literature, but in qualifying context of something or someone, "charming, lovely" or "darkness, night".
The Vishnu avatar named Rama is known by other names. He is called Raghava. Additional names of Rama include Ramavijaya, Phreah Ream, Phra Ram, Megat Seri Rama, Raja Bantugan, Ramar. In the Vishnu sahasranama, Rama is the 394th name of Vishnu. In some Advaita Vedanta inspired texts, Rama connotes the metaphysical concept of Supreme Brahman, the eternally blissful spiritual Self in whom yogis delight nondualistically; the root of the word Rama is ram- which means "stop, stand still, rejoice, be pleased". According to Douglas Adams, the Sanskrit word Rama is found in other Indo-European languages such as Tocharian ram, reme, *romo- where it means "support, make still", "witness, make evident"; the sense of "dark, soot" appears in other Indo European languages, such as *remos or Old English romig. This summary is a traditional legendary account, based on literary details from the Ramayana and other historic mythology-containing texts of Buddhism and Jainism. According to Sheldon Pollock, the figure of Rama incorporates more ancient "morphemes of Indian myths", such as the mythical legends of Bali and Namuci.
The ancient sage Valmiki used these morphemes in his Ramayana similes as in sections 3.27, 3.59, 3.73, 5.19 and 29.28. Rama was born on the ninth day of the lunar month Chaitra, a day celebrated across India as Ram Navami; this coincides with one of the four Navratri on the Hindu calendar, in the spring season, namely the Vasantha Navratri. The ancient epic Ramayana states in the Balakhanda that Rama and his brothers were born to Kaushalya and Dasharatha in Ayodhya, a city on the banks of Sarayu River; the Jain versions of the Ramayana, such as the Paumacariya by Vimalasuri mention the details of the early life of Rama. The Jain texts are dated variously, but pre-500 CE, most sometime within the first five centuries of the common era. Dasharatha was the king of Kosala, a part of the solar dynasty of Iksvakus, his mother's name Kaushalya implies that she was from Kosala. The kingdom of Kosala is mentioned in Buddhist and Jaina texts, as one of the sixteen Maha janapadas of ancient India, as an important center of pilgrimage for Jains and Buddhists.
However, there is a schola
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is one of the four administrative provinces of Pakistan, located in the northwestern region of the country along the international border with Afghanistan. It was known as the North-West Frontier Province until 2010 when the name was changed to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by the 18th Amendment to Pakistan's Constitution, is known colloquially by various other names. 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. Within Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa shares a border with Punjab, Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Islamabad, it is home to 17.9% of Pakistan's total population, with the majority of the province's inhabitants being Pashtuns. The province is the site of the ancient kingdom Gandhara, including the ruins of its capital Pushkalavati near modern-day Charsadda. A stronghold of Buddhism, the history of the region was characterized by frequent invasions under various Empires due to its geographical proximity to the Khyber Pass.
Since the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been a major theatre of militancy and terrorism which intensified when the Taliban began an unsuccessful attempt to seize the control of the province in 2004. With the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azb against the Taliban insurgency, the casualty and crime rates in the country as a whole dropped by 40.0% as compared to 2011–13, with greater drops noted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. As of July 2014, about 929,859 people were reported to be internally displaced from North Waziristan to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as a result of Operation Zarb-e-Azb. On March 2, 2017, the Government of Pakistan considered a proposal to merge the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to repeal the Frontier Crimes Regulations, which are applicable to the tribal areas. However, some political parties have opposed the merger, called for the tribal areas to instead become a separate province of Pakistan.
On 24 May 2018, the National Assembly of Pakistan voted in favour of an amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan to merge the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly approved the historic FATA-KP merger bill on 28 May 2018 making FATA part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, signed by President Mamnoon Hussain, completing the process of this historic merger. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa means the "Khyber part of the land of the Pashtuns", while only the word Pakhtunkhwa means "Land of Pashtuns", according to some scholars, it means "Pashtun culture and society"; when the British established it as a province, they called it "North West Frontier Province" due to its relative location being in north west of their Indian Empire. After the creation of Pakistan, Pakistan continued with this name but a Pashtun nationalist party, Awami National Party demanded that the province name be changed to "Pakhtunkhwa", their logic behind that demand was that Punjabi people, Sindhi people and Balochi people have their provinces named after their ethnicities but, not the case for Pashtun people.
Pakistan Muslim League was against that name since it was too similar to Bacha Khan's demand of separate nation of Pashtunistan. PML-N wanted to name the province something other than which does not carry Pashtun identity in it as they argued that there were other minor ethnicities living in the province Hindkowans who spoke Hindko, thus the word Khyber was introduced with the name because it is the name of a major pass which connects Pakistan to Afghanistan. During the times of Indus Valley Civilization the modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Khyber Pass, through Hindu Kush provided a route to other neighbouring regions and was used by merchants on trade excursions. From 1500 BCE, Indo-Aryan peoples started to enter in the region after having passed Khyber Pass; the Gandharan civilization, which reached its zenith between the sixth and first centuries BCE, which features prominently in the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharatha, had one of its cores over the modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The modern day capital city of Peshawar was known in ancient times as Purushapura when the region was Hindu.
Vedic texts refer to the area as the Janapada of Pushkalavati. The area was once known to be a great center of learning. At around 516 BCE. Darius Hystaspes sent Scylax, a Greek seaman from Karyanda, to explore the course of the Indus river. Darius Hystaspes subsequently subdued north of Kabul. 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 dispatched part of his force through the valley of the Kabul River, while he himself advanced into modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Bajaur and Swat regions with his troops. Having defeated the Aspasians, from whom he took 40,000 prisoners and 230,000 oxen, Alexander crossed the Gouraios and entered into the territory of the Assakenoi – in modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Alexander made Embolima his base. The ancient region of Peukelaotis submitted to the Greek invasion, leading to Ni