Portal:Pakistan
About Pakistan
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Pakistan (Urdu: پاکِستان), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اِسلامی جمہوریہ پاکِستان), 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, spanning 881,913 square kilometres (340,509 square miles). Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) 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, and China in the far northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the northwest, and also 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, and was later home to kingdoms ruled by people of different faiths and cultures, including Hindus, Indo-Greeks, Muslims, Turco-Mongols, Afghans 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 (partially) and, most recently, 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 similarly diverse geography and wildlife. Initially 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 also 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, and 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, terrorism, poverty, illiteracy, 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 National Anthem"
Qaumī Tarānah
قَومی ترانہ
Selected article
Malala Yousafzai (Malālah Yūsafzay: Urdu: ملالہ یوسفزئی; Pashto: ملاله یوسفزۍ [məˈlaːlə jusəf ˈzəj]; born 12 July 1997) is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become "the most prominent citizen" of the country.
Yousafzai was born to a Pashtun family in Mingora, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Her family came to run a chain of schools in the region. Considering Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Benazir Bhutto as her role models, she was particularly inspired by her father's thoughts and humanitarian work. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu detailing her life during the Taliban occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. She rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by activist Desmond Tutu. Read more...- The Bengali Language Movement (Bengali: ভাষা আন্দোলন Bhasha Andolôn) was a political movement in former East Pakistan (currently Bangladesh) advocating the recognition of the Bengali language as an official language of the then-Dominion of Pakistan in order to allow its use in government affairs, the continuation of its use as a medium of education, its use in media, currency and stamps, and to maintain its writing in the Bengali script.
When the Dominion of Pakistan was formed by the partition of India in 1947, it was composed of various ethnic and linguistic groups, with the geographically non-contiguous East Bengal province (that was renamed in 1956 as East Pakistan) having a mainly Bengali population. In 1948, the Government of the Dominion of Pakistan ordained Urdu as the sole national language, sparking extensive protests among the Bengali-speaking majority of East Bengal. Facing rising sectarian tensions and mass discontent with the new law, the government outlawed public meetings and rallies. The students of the University of Dhaka and other political activists defied the law and organised a protest on 21 February 1952. The movement reached its climax when police killed student demonstrators on that day. The deaths provoked widespread civil unrest. After years of conflict, the central government relented and granted official status to the Bengali language in 1956. Read more... - Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler (10 September 1890 – 22 July 1976) was a British archaeologist and officer in the British Army. Over the course of his career, he served as Director of both the National Museum of Wales and London Museum, Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, and the founder and Honorary Director of the Institute of Archaeology in London, in addition to writing twenty-four books on archaeological subjects.
Born in Glasgow to a middle-class family, Wheeler was raised largely in Yorkshire before relocating to London in his teenage years. After studying Classics at University College London (UCL), he began working professionally in archaeology, specializing in the Romano-British period. During World War I he volunteered for service in the Royal Artillery, being stationed on the Western Front, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross. Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler. Influenced by the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording of stratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the "Wheeler Method". In 1926, he was appointed Keeper of the London Museum; there, he oversaw a reorganisation of the collection, successfully lobbied for increased funding, and began lecturing at UCL. Read more... - Salimuzzaman Siddiqui (Urdu: سلیم الزّماں صدّیقی [səˈliːmʊzzəmɑːn sɪˈd̪d̪iːqi]; 19 October 1897 – 14 April 1994), HI, MBE, SI, DPhil, FPAS, FRS was a Pakistani organic chemist specialising in natural product chemistry.
Siddiqui studied philosophy at Aligarh Muslim University and later studied chemistry at Frankfurt University, where he received his PhD in 1927. On return to British India, he worked at the Tibbia College Delhi and the Indian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. He later moved to Pakistan and worked in the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and went on to establish the Pakistan National Science Council and was appointed as its first chairman in 1961. In the same year he became the Fellow of the Royal Society. He later also co-founded Pakistan Academy of Sciences, and after retirement from the government, he founded the Hussain Ebrahim Jamal Research Institute of Chemistry. Read more... - Ahmad Hasan Dani (Urdu: احمد حسن دانی) FRAS, SI, HI (20 June 1920 – 26 January 2009) was a Pakistani archaeologist, historian and linguist. He was an authority on Central Asian and South Asian archaeology and history. He introduced archaeology as a discipline in higher education in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Throughout his career, Dani held various academic positions and international fellowships, apart from conducting archaeological excavations and research. He is particularly known for archaeological work on pre-Indus Civilization and Gandhara sites in Northern Pakistan. He was also the recipient of various civil awards in Pakistan and abroad. He was able to speak 35 local and international languages and dialects. Read more...
General Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay KG, GCB, CH, DSO, PC, DL (21 June 1887 – 17 December 1965), nicknamed Pug, was a British Indian Army officer and diplomat, remembered primarily for his role as Winston Churchill's chief military assistant during the Second World War and his service as the first Secretary General of NATO from 1952 to 1957.
Ismay was born in Nainital, India, in 1887, and educated in the United Kingdom at the Charterhouse School and Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After Sandhurst, he joined the Indian Army as an officer of the 21st Prince Albert Victor's Own Cavalry. During the First World War, he served with the Camel Corps in British Somaliland, where he joined in the British fight against the "Mad Mullah", Mohammed Abdullah Hassan. In 1925, Ismay became an Assistant Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID). After being promoted to the rank of colonel, he served as the military secretary for Lord Willingdon, the Viceroy of India, then returned to the CID as Deputy Secretary in 1936. Read more...- Disgraced is a 2012 play by novelist and screenwriter Ayad Akhtar. It premiered in Chicago and has had Off-Broadway and Off West End engagements. The play, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater October 23, 2014. Disgraced has also been recognized with a 2012 Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work – Play or Musical and a 2013 Obie Award for Playwriting. It is Akhtar's first stage play. The 2014 Broadway transfer earned a Tony Award for Best Play nomination in 2015.
The play is centered on sociopolitical themes such as Islamophobia and the self-identity of Muslim-American citizens. It focuses on a dinner party between four people with very different backgrounds. As discussion turns to politics and religion, the mood quickly becomes heated. Described as a "combustible powder keg of identity politics," the play depicts racial and ethnic prejudices that "secretly persist in even the most progressive cultural circles." It is also said to depict the challenge for upwardly mobile Muslim Americans in the post-9/11 America. Productions have included performances by Aasif Mandvi and Erik Jensen. Read more... - Pakistan has several official national symbols including a historic document, a flag, an emblem, an anthem, a memorial tower as well as several national heroes. The symbols were adopted at various stages in the existence of Pakistan and there are various rules and regulations governing their definition or use. The oldest symbol is the Lahore Resolution, adopted by the All India Muslim League on 23 March 1940, and which presented the official demand for the creation of a separate country for the Muslims of India. The Minar-e-Pakistan memorial tower which was built in 1968 on the site where the Lahore Resolution was passed. The national flag was adopted just before independence was achieved on 14 August 1947. The national anthem and the state emblem were each adopted in 1954. There are also several other symbols including the national animal, bird, flower and tree. Read more...
- Pakistan competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia from 7 to 23 February 2014. Pakistan's team consisted of one athlete in alpine skiing. The country competed for the second consecutive Winter Games, after making its debut four years earlier in Vancouver. The flag bearer for the opening and closing ceremonies was Pakistan's sole athlete Muhammad Karim. Read more...
Rehman playing for Bradford City in 2009
Zeshan Rehman (Urdu: ذيشان رحمان; born 14 October 1983) is a professional footballer who plays as a defender for Hong Kong Premier League club Southern.
He was the first British Asian to start a Premier League match and is the first to have played in all four divisions of professional football in England. He also plays for the Pakistan national football team and was the first Pakistani international footballer to play professional football in England, Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia, as well as the first Pakistani international to play in the AFC Cup. He started his career at Fulham and made a total of 30 appearances, having loan spells at Brighton & Hove Albion and Norwich City. A transfer to Queens Park Rangers followed and he went on to make 50 appearances for the club. During his three years there he went on loan to Brighton & Hove Albion, Blackpool and Bradford City, moving permanently to the latter on a free transfer in June 2009. Having previously represented England at under-18, under-19 and under-20 levels, in 2005 he made his debut for Pakistan. Read more...
Selected images
A sitar workshop in Islamabad, Pakistan.
A Pakistani dish prepared using the tandoori method
Muhammad Iqbal was the ideological father of Pakistan
Pakistan hosts the second largest refugee population globally after Turkey. An Afghan refugee girl near Tarbela Dam
Seekh kebab - one of the famous Pakistani food specialities
The 17th-century Badshahi Mosque built by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in Lahore
President George W. Bush meets with President Musharraf in Islamabad during his 2006 visit to Pakistan.
Government College University is one of the oldest universities in Pakistan as well as one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the Muslim world.
Faisal Mosque, built in 1986 by Turkish architect Vedat Dalokay on behalf of King Faisal bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia
Signing of the Tashkent Declaration to end hostilities with India in 1965 in Tashkent, USSR, by President Ayub alongside Bhutto (centre) and Aziz Ahmed (left)
The Pakistan Stock Exchange is one of the best-performing markets in the world. According to Forbes, PSX delivered a return of 400% between 2010 and 2015.
National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) is Pakistan's top ranked university for engineering, sciences and technology.
Pakistan Air Force's JF-17 Thunder flying in front of the 26,660-foot-high (8,130-metre) Nanga Parbat.
Lahore Fort, a landmark built during the Mughal era, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Surface mining in Sindh. Pakistan has been termed the 'Saudi Arabia of Coal' by Forbes.
Tarbela Dam, the largest earth filled dam in the world, was constructed in 1968.
Azad Kashmir is part of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
Literacy rate of over-15 Pakistan population (1980–2015) by UNESCO Institute of Statistics
The Kalash people maintain a unique identity and religion within Pakistan.
The Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam is part of Pakistan's Sufi heritage.
Ayub Khan (President of Pakistan) with U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Location of Pakistan (dark green); claimed but uncontrolled region (light green)
Television assembly factory in Lahore. Pakistan's industrial sector accounts for about 20.3% of the GDP, and is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Lahore Fort, a landmark built during the Mughal era, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
Indus Priest King Statue from Mohenjo-Daro.
Köppen climate classification of Pakistan
Standing Buddha from Gandhara, Greco-Buddhist art, 1st-2nd century AD.
Pakistan Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai signing the Treaty of Friendship Between China and Pakistan. Pakistan is host to China's largest embassy.
Boeing 737 owned and operated by Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). PIA operates scheduled services to 70 domestic destinations and 34 international destinations in 27 countries.
Minar-e-Pakistan is a national monument marking Pakistan's independence movement.
Muslim girl wearing Shalwar kameez, c. 1870
Truck art is a distinctive feature of Pakistani culture.
Pakistan produced 1,135 megawatts of renewable energy for the month of October 2016. Pakistan expects to produce 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy by the beginning of 2019.
Clifton Beach in Karachi, with under-construction skyscrapers in the background.
Map showing population density in Pakistan, per 2017 census.
A satellite image showing the topography of Pakistan
The Friday Prayers at the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore
Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan's national poet who conceived the idea of Pakistan
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Provinces and Territories
Clickable map of the four provinces and three federal territories of Pakistan.
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Provinces:
Territories: Pakistani-administered portions of the Kashmir: | |
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Quote of the Day
| “ | Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim Ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and treasure and which, we hope other will share with us. | ” |
| — Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Founder of Pakistan) | ||
Selected biography
Abdul Qadeer Khan, NI, HI, FPAS (/ˈɑːbdəl 
listen); Urdu: ڈاکٹر عبد القدیر خان; born 1935 or 1936), known as A. Q. Khan, is a Pakistani nuclear physicist and a metallurgical engineer, who founded the uranium enrichment program for Pakistan's atomic bomb project. AQ Khan founded and established the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) in 1976, serving as both its senior scientist and Chairman until he retired in 2001. Khan was also a figure in other Pakistani national science projects, making research contributions to molecular morphology, the physics of martensite alloys, condensed matter physics, and materials physics.
In January 2004, the Pakistani government summoned Khan for a debriefing on his active role in nuclear weapons technology proliferation in other countries after the United States provided evidence of it to the Pakistanis. Khan formally admitted his responsibility for these activities a month later. The Pakistani government dismisses allegations that Pakistani authorities sanctioned Khan's activities. Read more...
Did you know
- ... that the Pakistan Communist Party ceased to exist just three weeks after it had been founded?
- ... that British-Pakistani director Sarmad Masud describes his 2017 film My Pure Land as "a modern-day feminist Western set in Pakistan"?
- ... that one of the dogs belonging to Imran Khan, the Pakistani prime minister, accompanies him on his daily helicopter ride to the office and in official meetings at his home?
- ... that the Khpal Kor Foundation, which operates an orphanage in Pakistan's Swat District, established a Child Assembly that Malala Yousafzai once chaired?
- ... that elected at age 39, Sadiq Sanjrani is the youngest-ever Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan?
- ... that Nazo Dharejo fought off 200 bandits in a gun battle that earned her a reputation as "Pakistan's toughest woman"?
- ... that Pakistani policeman Mumtaz Qadri was executed for killing the former Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer, who spoke against the blasphemy law and in favor of Asia Bibi?
- ... that in 1975 Najma Sadeque and seven others perturbed by human rights violations in Pakistan established a NGO called Shirkat Gah?
- ... that the Kamran ki Baradari, built by Kamran Mirza, was the first Mughal structure in Lahore, Pakistan?
- ... that Younis Khan holds the records for most runs and centuries for Pakistan in Test cricket?
Pakistan News
- 2 March 2019 – 2019 India–Pakistan standoff
- Indian and Pakistani soldiers target each other’s posts and villages in Kashmir, killing at least six civilians and two Pakistani troops. (Associated Press)
- 28 February 2019 – 2019 India–Pakistan standoff, 2019 Balakot airstrike
- Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan says that captured Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman will be released tomorrow as a gesture of peace. (Economic Times) (Reuters)
- 27 February 2019 – 2019 India–Pakistan standoff
- The Pakistani Air Force announces it has carried out airstrikes against Indian-held Kashmir, shooting down two Indian aircraft and capturing one pilot following a dogfight. Indian officials confirm one of their planes has crashed, killing both pilots on board. Indian media claim India has shot down a Pakistani F-16 that violated its airspace. (Bloomberg) (ANI)
- An Indian Air Force Mi-17 transport helicopter crashes in the Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir, killing all six IAF personnel onboard and a civilian on the ground. (Hindustan Times)
- 26 February 2019 – 2019 Balakot airstrike
- Pakistan reports Indian military aircraft violated their airspace near Muzaffarabad and "released a payload" which landed near Balakot. After this, Pakistan scrambled their own jets, but state no casualties or damage have been inflicted. India claims the incident was an airstrike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp in Balakot in retaliation to the Pulwama attack days earlier. (Reuters), (CNN-News18)
- The attack is the first time since Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 that the Indian Air Force has crossed and attacked Pakistan beyond the line of control. As well as the first time since both countries have acquired nuclear weapons. (India Today)
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Military: Military of Pakistan
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