Life In Pakistan

The name Pakistan means Land of (the) Pure in Urdu and Persian. It was coined in 1934 as Pakstan by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan movement activist, who published it in his pamphlet Now or Never. The name is a portmanteau representing the "thirty million Muslims of PAKISTAN, who live in the five Northern Units of British Raj — Punjab, Afghania (now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Kashmir, Sindh and BalochisTAN." However, the authorship of the name is controversial. some attributes it to Khawaja Abdul Rahim while others stick to the popular belief that its author is Rahmat Ali. The Indus region, which covers a considerable amount of Pakistan, was the site of several ancient cultures including the Neolithic era's Mehrgarh and the bronze era Indus Valley Civilisation (2500 BCE – 1500 BCE) at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.
Waves of conquerors and migrants from the west — including Harappan, Indo-Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Sakas, Parthians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Afghans, Arabs, Turks and Mughals — settled in the region throughout the centuries, influencing the locals and being absorbed among them. Ancient empires of the east — such as the Nandas, Mauryas, Sungas, Guptas and the Palas — ruled these territories at different times from Patliputra. However, in the medieval period, while the eastern provinces of Punjab and Sindh grew aligned with Indo-Islamic civilisation, the western areas became culturally allied with the Iranian civilisation of Afghanistan and Iran. The region served as a crossroads of historic trade routes, including the Silk Road, and as a maritime entreport for the coastal trade between Mesopotamia and beyond up to Rome in the west and Malabar and beyond up to China in the east.