Muhajir (Pakistan)
Urdu speaking multi-ethnic group
The Muhajir people (also spelled Mohajir and Mahajir) (Urdu: مہاجر) are a multi-origin ethnic group of Pakistan. They are the Muslim immigrants of various ethnic groups and regional origins, who migrated from various regions of India, mostly after the 1947 independence to settle in the newly independent state of Pakistan, and their descendants.
Muhajirs come from various ethnic and regional backgrounds, with a significant portion of the community residing in Karachi and other major urban centers of Pakistan.
The total population of Muhajrs worldwide is estimated to be around 15 million, and the overwhelming majority of this figure (14.7 million) is located in Pakistan, according to the 2017 Pakistani census. Though the official controversial 2017 census of Karachi, which has historically hosted the country's largest Muhajir population, has been challenged by most of Sindh's political parties.
Etymology
The Urdu term muhājir (Urdu: مہاجر) comes from the Arabic muhājir (Arabic: مهاجر), meaning an "immigrant", or "emigrant". This term is associated in early Islamic history to the migration of Muslims and connotes 'separation, migration, flight, specifically the flight of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina'. This term was popularised in Pakistan by the 1951 census, although its earliest uses date back to Partition.
Demographics
Origins
Most of the Muhajirs who settled in the Sindh province of Pakistan came from the present-day Indian states of Central Provinces, Berar, Bombay, United Provinces, Haryana, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi, while others were from princely states of Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Hyderabad, Baroda, Kutch, and the Rajputana Agency.
Population
Muhajirs, worldwide, have a population of over 15 million.
“Muhajir (Pakistan)” enters the record as urdu speaking multi-ethnic group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Muhajir, Pakistan and Urdu can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12644212. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947, 2017 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Muhajir (Pakistan)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.