Peshawar&_160;
(help·info) (
Pashto ????;
Urdu ?????) is the capital of the
North-West Frontier Province[1] and the administrative centre for the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas of
Pakistan.
[2] "Peshawar" literally means
High Fort in
Persian and is known as
Pekhawar in Pashto. The area of the city has been ruled by numerous empires including the
Persian,
Greek,
Maurya,
Scythian,
Arab,
Turk,
Mongol,
Mughal,
Afghan,
Sikh and the
British.
In ancient times a major settlement called Pushpapura was established in the general area of Peshawar by the Central Asian Kushans. It was during the Mughal period that the current city was established by Akbar in the 16th century and received its name Peshawar. During much of its history, the city was one of the main trading centres on the ancient Silk Road and was a major crossroads for various cultures between South and Central Asia and the Middle East. Located on the edge of the Khyber Pass near the Afghan border, Peshawar is the commercial, economic, political and cultural capital of the Pashtuns in Pakistan.
Peshawar is located in an area that was dominated by various tribes of Indo-Iranian origin. The region was affiliated with the ancient kingdom of Gandhara and had links to the Harappan civilization of the Indus River Valley and to Bactria and other ancient kingdoms based in Afghanistan. According to the historian Tertius Chandler, Peshawar had a population of 120,000 in the year 100 BCE, making it the seventh most populous city in the world.[3]
The area that Peshawar occupies was then seized by the Greco-Bactrian king, Eucratides (c. 170 - c. 159 BCE), and was controlled by a series of Greco-Bactrian and later Indo-Greek kings who ruled an empire that spanned from ancient Pakistan to North India. Later, the city came under the rule of several Parthian and Indo-Parthian kings, another group of Iranic invaders from Central Asia, the most famous of whom, Gondophares, ruled the city and its environs starting in circa 46 CE, and was briefly followed by two or three of his descendants before they were displaced by the first of the "Great Kushans", Kujula Kadphises, around the middle of the 1st century.
