ځایونه
Places
Historical places and regions
Cities, forts, passes and regions with a recorded past.
Articles on historical places and regions
- Bannu: the valley between the Kurram and the TochiBannu is a river-fed basin in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the home of the Bannuchi, where Herbert Edwardes built the fort of Dalipgarh in 1847 and had about 400 village forts pulled down; the 2023 census counted 1,357,890 people in the district.
- Buner: the Barandu valley, Pir Baba's shrine and the Ambela passBuner is the mountain-ringed basin of the Barandu river in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, home of the Iliaszai Yusufzai and Pir Baba's shrine at Pacha, and the country that held a British column at the Ambela pass in 1863. The 2023 census counted 1,016,869 people.
- Charsadda and Hashtnagar: ancient Pushkalavati and the Swat river plainCharsadda, in Hashtnagar ("eight cities") on the Swat river north-east of Peshawar, stands beside the Bala Hisar mound, the site of Pushkalavati, a capital of Gandhara besieged by Alexander in 327 BC. Its Muhammadzai villages include Utmanzai, home of Bacha Khan.
- Dera Ismail Khan and the Derajat: the Daman plain and the Powindah roadDera Ismail Khan was founded in the late fifteenth century by Baloch settlers under Malik Sohrab and his son Ismail Khan, and its district was settled by Baloch, Jats and Pashtun tribes, many of them Powindah nomads who came down the Gomal road.
- Jalalabad: the valley between Kabul and the KhyberJalalabad (جلال آباد), capital of Nangarhar in eastern Afghanistan, stands on the Kabul river near the western end of the Khyber; named after Akbar, it was held by Sale's brigade through the siege of 1841–42 and was the winter capital of the Afghan amirs; Amir Habibullah, his son Amanullah and Queen Soraya are buried there.
- Kabul and its Pashtuns: the capital from Timur Shah to the TalibanKabul (کابل), a mostly Persian-speaking city, has been the seat of Afghan power since Timur Shah moved the Durrani court there in the 1770s. Pashtun kings ruled from its Bala Hisar, and Pashto has had an uneasy place in it, most sharply under the Taliban.
- Kandahar: an oasis city and its long historyKandahar (کندهار), in the irrigated oasis of the Arghandab and Tarnak rivers in southern Afghanistan, stood on the Qaytul ridge from the Achaemenid period until Nadir Shah emptied the old city in 1738; Ahmad Shah Durrani built the present walled city as his capital and is buried there.
- Kohat and the Kohat Pass: Bangash and Khattak country on the Peshawar roadKohat is a district town of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Bangash and Khattak country 1,700 feet up and forty road miles south of Peshawar. The Kohat Pass joins them, and the Adam Khel Afridi who hold it fought the British there in 1850 and now make guns at Darra Adam Khel.
- Mardan and the Yusufzai plain: Hoti, the Guides, Takht-i-Bahi and Shahbaz GarhiMardan district (1,632 sq km, 2,744,898 people in 2023) holds the Mandanr lands of the Yusufzai plain, the Guides' fort at Hoti Mardan, the Buddhist monastery of Takht-i-Bahi and Ashoka's rock edicts at Shahbaz Garhi.
- Pashtunkhwa (Pakhtunkhwa): the name for the land of the PashtunsPashtunkhwa or Pakhtunkhwa (پښتونخوا) means the Pashtuns' country: Pashtun plus khwa, "side, quarter". Raverty's 1860 dictionary already lists it, and in 2010 Pakistan renamed the North-West Frontier Province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
- Peshawar: a short history of an ancient cityPeshawar (پېښور, Pēkhawar), ancient Purushapura, was the Kushan capital of Kanishka, the winter seat of the Durrani kings and the capital of the North-West Frontier Province from 1901; excavations at Gor Khuttree in the old city reach back to the Mauryan period.
- Quetta: Shal, the Kasi, the cantonment and the 1935 earthquakeQuetta (Kwatta, old Shal) stands at 5,500 feet at the head of the Bolan Pass, on the line where Pashtun country meets Brahui and Baloch. Britain leased it in 1883, and the earthquake of 31 May 1935 killed about thirty thousand people.
- Swat: the valley, the district and the former stateSwat is the valley of the Swat river in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Buddhist Uddiyana of the Chinese pilgrims, taken by the Yusufzai in the early sixteenth century and ruled as the Swat State from 1915 until it merged with Pakistan on 15 August 1969.