Kashmir

Kashmir ( KASH-meer or kash-MEER) is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. The term has since also come to encompass a larger area that formerly comprised the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, and includes the Indian-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.

Following centuries of cultural flourishing under Hindu dynasties which ended with the fall of the Lohara dynasty in 1339, Kashmir Valley was ruled by local sultanates until its incorporation into the Mughal Empire in 1586. It later came under the control of the Afghan Durrani Empire in 1752. In 1819, the Sikh Empire, under Ranjit Singh, annexed the Kashmir Valley. In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the First Anglo-Sikh War, and upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, became the new ruler of Jammu and Kashmir. The rule of his descendants, under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown, lasted until the Partition of India in 1947, when the former princely state of the British Indian Empire became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: China, India, and Pakistan.

Etymology

The word Kashmir is thought to have been derived from Sanskrit and was referred to as káśmīra. A popular local etymology of Kashmir is that it is land desiccated from water.