Peshawar

Peshawar is the capital and the largest city in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the eighth-most populous Pakistani city, with a population of over 1.9 million. It is located in the north-west of the country, lying in the Peshawar Valley, a broad area situated east of the Khyber Pass.

Peshawar's recorded history dates back to at least the sixth century BC, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South Asia. One of the principal cities of the ancient Gandhara, Peshawar (then known as Puruṣapura) served as the capital of the Kushan Empire during the rule of Kanishka the Great in the second century CE. A variety of Muslim empires ruled the city following the conquest of Peshawar by the Ghaznavids from the Hindu Shahis in 1001 CE. It was an important trading centre of the Mughal Empire, later serving as the winter capital of the Durrani Empire from 1776 until its capture by the Sikh Empire in 1823. In 1849, the city was annexed by the East India Company along with rest of Punjab and subsequently became part of the British Raj. In 1901, Peshawar was made capital of the North-West Frontier Province after it was created by bifurcating the northwestern districts of Punjab Province. Following the Partition of British India in 1947, it became part of Pakistan.

Peshawar is a major cultural, political and economic centre of the region. During the colonial period and well into the early years after independence, the lingua franca of Peshawar was Hindko; in the succeeding decades, the rapid urbanization and the high rate of migration from the rural and the former tribal areas of the province, as well as the influx of Afghan refugees following the Soviet–Afghan War, transformed Peshawar from a Hindko to a Pashto-speaking city.