Pakistan 2

Early and medieval age

Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan. The earliest known inhabitants in the region were the Soanians, who settled in the Soan Valley of Punjab.^[15] The Indus region, which covers most of Pakistan, was the site of several successive ancient cultures including the Neolithic Mehrgarh^[16] and the Bronze AgeIndus Valley Civilisation (2800–1800 BCE) at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.^[17][18]

The Vedic Civilization (1500–500 BCE), characterized by Indo-Aryan culture, laid the foundations of Hinduism, which would become well established in the region.^[19][20] Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre.^[21]The Vedic civilization flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, now Taxila in Punjab.^[16] Successive ancient empires and kingdoms ruled the region: the Persian Achaemenid Empire around 519 BCE, Alexander the Great's empire in 326 BCE^[22] and the Maurya Empire founded by Chandragupta Maurya and extended byAshoka the Great until 185 BCE.^[16] The Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria (180-165 BCE) included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander (165-150 BCE), prospering theGreco-Buddhist culture in the region.^[16] [23] Taxila had one of the earliest universities and centers of higher education in the world.^{[24][25][26][27]}

Pakistan 1

Etymology

The name Pakistan literally means "Land of (the) Pure" in Urdu and Persian. It was coined in 1933 as Pakstan by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in his pamphlet Now or Never,^[10] using it as an acronym ("thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKSTAN") referring to the names of the five northern regions of the Indian subcontinent:Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind, and Baluchistan".^[11][12][13] The letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation and form the linguistically correct name.^[14]

Pakistan

Pakistan (ⁱ/ˈpækɨstæn/ or ⁱ/pɑːkiˈstɑːn/; Urdu: پاکستان) (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪˈst̪aːn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاکستان), is asovereign country in South Asia. It sits at the crossroads of the strategically important regions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west and north, Iran to the southwest and China in the far northeast. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and it shares a marine border with Oman.

The territory of modern Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures, including the NeolithicMehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and has undergone invasions or settlements by Hindu, Persian, Indo-Greek, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Afghan and Sikh cultures. Thus the area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Indian Mauryan Empire, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, theMughal Empire, the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and the British Empire. As a result of thePakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and India's struggle for independence, Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims from the regions in the east and west of India where there was a Muslim majority. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted anew constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. A civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh.

Pakistan is a federal parliamentary republic consisting of four provinces and four federal territories. With a population exceeding 170 million people, it is the sixth most populous country in the world and has the largest Muslim population after Indonesia. It is an ethnically andlinguistically diverse country, with a similar variation in its geography and wildlife. Its semi-industrialized economy is the 27th largest in the world in terms of purchasing power. Pakistan's post-independence history has been characterized by periods of military rule, political instability and conflicts with neighbouring India. The country continues to face challenging problems, including terrorism, poverty, illiteracy and corruption.

A regional and middle power,^[8][9] Pakistan has the seventh largest standing armed forces in the world and is a declared nuclear weapons state, being the first and only nation in the Muslim world, and the second in South Asia, to have that status. It is designated as a major non-NATO ally of the United States and a strategic ally of China. Pakistan is a founding member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) and is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and the G20 developing nations.