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Peshāwar (help·info) (Pashto: پیشور Pekhawar/Peshawar, Hindi: ِِشور Pishor, Urdu: پیشور), is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa[2] and the administrative center (but not the capital of the federal administration) of the Province of Pakistan.[3] The Kushan king Kanishka moved the capital from Pushkalavati (now called Charsadda in the Peshawar Valley) to Purushhapura in the 2nd century CE.[4] The current name "Peshawar" may derive from Sanskrit Purushhapura[5] (meaning "city of men") and is known as Pekhawar or Peshawar in Pashto and Pishor in Hindi. The area originally belonged to the Gandhara and East Iranian tribes of Scythian origin, and later became part of the Kushan Empire. This gave the name to the Peshwari naan bread, one of the various types of naan common in curries in the UK. It also briefly witnessed some Greek influence, followed by the Arab conquest and the rise of Islam. Today it is one of the major cities of Pakistan west of the Indus River.

PESHAWAR AT A GLANCE

Province: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Capital: Peshawar

Area: Total 1,257 km2 (485.3 sq mi)

Population (1998): Total 2,019,118

Density 1,606.3/km2 (4,160.3/sq mi)

History

History of Peshawar Peshawar is now officially recognized as one of the oldest living cities in Asia. Its history and culture have continued uninterrupted for several centuries. This fact was confirmed by the discovery of silver minted coins from the Government House in 1906–07 and the ongoing excavations at Gor Khatri, which is the deepest and widest in the world. Among the oldest cities in the region between Central, South and West Asia, Peshawar has been a center of trade between Afghanistan, South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East for centuries. As an ancient center of learning, 2nd century BC. A Bakhshali manuscript used in the Bakhshali approximation was found nearby. Peshawar was the main center of Buddhist learning until the 10th century. As a sign of its importance, Peshawar was also the site of Kanishka's Great Stupa, which housed the relics of Gautama Buddha, and was widely considered the tallest building in the world at the time of its construction. Ancient Chinese manuscripts recount Buddhist pilgrims such as Faxian, Sung Yun, and Xuanzang stating that a 7th-century stupa rediscovered southeast of the city at a site called Shahji-ki-Dheri in 1907–08 had a height of . 591–689 feet. Peshawar emerged as a center for both Hindi and Pashtun intellectuals. Its dominant culture for much of British rule was that of the Hindi speakers, also referred to as "Khaarian" ("city dwellers" in Pashto). Its unique culture, distinct from the surrounding Pashtun areas, has led to the city being romanticized by Pashto singers, with songs such as larsha Pekhwar tha (go to Peshawar) and more recently Pekhawar kho pekhawar dhay kana (Peshawar is Peshawar after all). This unique culture gradually disappeared with the massive influx of Afghan refugees and the increasing migration of Pashtuns into the city. The demographics have changed quite dramatically and Pashto is now the dominant language of the city. Peshawar is located in an area dominated by various tribes of Indo-Iranian origin. The region was associated with the ancient kingdom of Gandhara and had links to the Harappan civilization in the Indus River Valley and to Bactria and other ancient kingdoms based in Afghanistan. According to historian Tertius Chandler, Peshawar had a population of 120,000 in 100 BC, making it the seventh most populous city in the world.

Vedic mythology refers to an ancient settlement called Pushkalavati in the area, after Pushkala, son of King Bharata in the epic Ramayana, but the existence of this settlement remains speculative and unverified. In recorded history, the earliest major city established in the general area of ​​Peshawar was called Purushapura (Sanskrit for city of people) and was founded by the Kushans, a Central Asian tribe of Tocharian origin, more than 2,000 years ago. Prior to this period, the region was associated with Gandhara, an ancient Indo-Iranian kingdom, and was annexed first by the Persian Achaemenid Empire and then by the Hellenic Empire of Alexander the Great. The city came under the rule of Alexander's successor, Seleucus I Nicator, who ceded it to Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya Empire in 305 BC. Buddhism was introduced to the region at this time and could claim the majority of Peshawar's population before the arrival of Islam.

Indo-Greek Peshawar

The area occupied by Peshawar was then seized by the Greco-Bactrian king Eucratides (170 – 159 BC) and ruled by a series of Greco-Bactrian and later Indo-Greek kings who ruled an empire stretching from present-day Pakistan to the north. India. Later, the city came under the rule of several Parthian and Indo-Parthian kings, another group of Iranian invaders from Central Asia, the most famous of whom, Gondophares, ruled the city and its surroundings beginning around 46 AD and was briefly succeeded. by two or three of his descendants before they were displaced by the first of the "Great Kushans", the Kujula Kadphises, about the middle of the 1st century CE.

Gandharan Peshawar

Peshawar formed the eastern capital of the Gandhara Empire under the Kushan king Kanishka, who ruled from at least 127 CE. Peshawar became a great center of Buddhist learning. Kanishka built what may have been the tallest building in the world at the time, a giant stupa that housed Buddha's relics, just outside the Ganj Gate of the old city of Peshawar. The Kanishka Stupa was said to be an imposing structure as one traveled down from the mountains of Afghanistan to the Gandhara Plain. The earliest account of the famous building comes from a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim monk, Faxian, who visited it in 400 and described it as over 40 chang (probably about 120 m or 394 ft) high and adorned with "all precious substances". "Of all the stupas and temples that travelers have seen, none can compare with this beauty of form and strength." It was destroyed by lightning and repaired several times. It was still in existence at the time of Xuanzang's visit in 634. From the ruined base of this giant stupa, a jeweled coffin containing the remains of the Buddha and an inscription identifying Kanishka as the donor was excavated from a chamber beneath the temple. in the very center of the base of the stupa, by a team led by Dr. D. B. Spooner in 1909. The stupa was roughly cruciform with a diameter of 286 feet (87 m) and heavily decorated with stucco scenes on the sides. Sometime in the 1st millennium BCE, the group that now dominates Peshawar began coming southwest from the Suleiman Mountains in southern Afghanistan to the Pashtuns. Over the centuries, the Pashtuns dominated the region, and Peshawar became an important center of Pashtun culture, along with Kandahar and Kabul.