SINDH
Sindh (Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Neighbouring regions are Balochistan to the west and north,Punjab in the north and Rajasthan (India) to the east. To the south are the Arabian Sea and the Rann of Kutch.
Sindh is the third largest province geographically. Its size is about 579 km north-south and 442 km (extreme) or 281 km (average) east-west, with an area of 140,915 km² The population was about 28 million in 1994, with about half urban. Its capital is Karachi. Other towns and cities include Hyderabad, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas, Tando Adam, Tando Allahyar,Nawabshah, Larkana, Shikarpur, Khairpur, Badin. Languages spoken include Sindhi, Urdu and Rajasthani.
The province contains the southern part of the Indus River valley. In the east is the Thar Desert of India.
The main crops are cotton, rice, wheat and sugar cane, with rice the most important. Other crops include banana and mango.
History
Historically, Sindh has been a very rich region. The first known village settlements date as far back as 7000 BCE. Some of the earliest known writings come from Sindh, dated at approximately 3500 BCE. The first urban civilization in South Asia, the Indus Valley Civilisation, developed in 3000 BCE, and Mohenjo Daro was one of the great centers. The Indus civilization was very urbanized, with planned cities, a drainage system, and a binary system of weights and a system of tax collection.
In 1700 BCE, Aryans came to this part of the world and it was known that beyond Sindh to the east was "Deserta inconeta," or unknown desert. The name Sindh was itself derived from the Sanskrit word for river, sindhu. Hindu, Indus, and India all find their origin in the same precursor.
Sindh was conquered by the Persian Empire in the 6th century BCE, and became the Persian satrapy (province) of Hindush. Alexander the Great invaded in 325 BCE, and conquered the Punjab as far as the Beas River, where his soldiers refused to go further east. Alexander's armies then moved south into Sind, and from there returned west. After Alexander's death, the eastern provinces of his empire passed to the Seleucids, and the provinces on the Indus were integrated into the Mauryan Empire. The Mauryan provincial capital was at Taxila near Islamabad.
In 275 BCE, the Mauryan King Ashoka became Buddhist. Sindh too was converted to Buddhism. In 60 CE, theKushanas came and the country became prosperous and rich in agriculture. Later in the 6th century, the Hephthalites or "White Huns" came and the country was divided into several pieces. The 7th century saw the end of a period of sporadic Buddhist rule in the Sindh.
In 711 the first Arab Muslim armies, led by Muhammad bin Qasim, conquered Sindh from its Hindu rulers. Sindh became a province of the Umayyad Caliphate. Multan, in southern Punjab, became a center of the Ismaili sect of Islam, which still has many adherents in Sind. The region was ruled by the Ghaznavid kingdom from the 10th to the 12th, by the Delhi Sultanate from the 13th to the 16th centuries, and by the Mughals from the 16th to the 18th centuries. As the Mughal empire began to unravel in the 18th century, Sind came under the control of Afghan rulers.
In 1842-1843 British forces under General Charles Napier conquered Sindh. It is said that he sent back to the Governor General a one-word message, "Peccavi" – Latin for "I have sinned". In actual fact, this pun first appeared as a cartoon in Punch magazine. The first Aga Khan helped the British in the conquest of Sindh and was granted a pension as a result. Sind was made part of British India's Bombay Presidency, and became a separate province in 1935. The province was incorporated into Pakistan upon Pakistan's independence in 1947.
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