Kasurਕਸੂਰ

Kasur is a historic city in Punjab, Pakistan, about 55 kilometres south of Lahore and the headquarters of Kasur District. It is best known as the burial place of the 17th-century Sufi poet Bulleh Shah, whose shrine draws visitors from across the region. The 2023 census counted 510,875 people in the city, a major centre of leather tanning and Sufi heritage.

Where is Kasur?

Kasur lies south of Lahore in Pakistan's Punjab, some 55 kilometres from the provincial capital and close to the border with India. It is the headquarters of Kasur District in Lahore Division, bordering the Lahore, Sheikhupura and Okara districts. The city stands near the Ganda Singh Wala border crossing, where a flag-lowering ceremony is held, and Ferozepur Road runs through its eastern side toward Ferozepur, 25 kilometres away across the border.

History

Kasur takes its name from the Arabic qasur, the plural of qasr, meaning palaces or forts. Legend credits its founding to Prince Kusha of the Ramayana, but historical records date the city to 1525, when Kheshgi Pashtuns migrating from Kabul settled here during the reign of Babur and raised a cluster of small forts. The town grew as an aggregation of about twelve fortified hamlets, known as kots, and the twelve mahallahs were laid out by order of the Mughal emperor Akbar and named after the heads of Pashtun families. Many of those names, like Kot Ghulam Muhammad Khan and Kot Usman Khan, survive in the city's quarters today.

Under the Mughals, Kasur flourished as a centre of commerce and trade, and it became the home of the Sufi poet Bulleh Shah, who is buried in a large shrine in the city. After the Mughal decline the region fell into a power vacuum and was captured by Ahmad Shah Durrani. The Sikhs sacked the city in 1747 and again in 1763, and Ranjit Singh took Kasur in 1807. During the First Anglo-Sikh War, Company forces occupied it on 10 February 1846. Under the British, irrigation canals watered the district, though the city also saw communal disturbances in 1908 and rioting after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, when martial law was imposed.

After the partition of 1947, Kasur's Hindu and Sikh residents migrated to India while Muslim refugees settled in the city. On 1 July 1976 Kasur was carved out of Lahore District as a district in its own right.

Geography & people

The old course of the Beas river runs through the district, dividing it into two parts known locally as Hither and Uthar, while the Ravi bounds it in the northwest and the Sutlej in the southeast. Kasur has a sub-humid subtropical climate: summers run from May to August with June the hottest month, when mean temperatures reach about 42 degrees Celsius, and winters from November to February with January the coldest, around 4 degrees at night. Annual rainfall averages 700 to 850 millimetres, nearly half of it in the monsoon.

The 2023 census counted 510,875 people in the city. Punjabi is the mother tongue of about 89 percent of the urban population, followed by Urdu at around 6 percent and Mewati at near 5 percent. The city is an aggregation of 26 fortified hamlets overlooking the alluvial valleys of the Beas and Sutlej, and its people are known across Pakistan for their hospitality, liveliness and love of good food.

Places of interest

The heart of Kasur is the shrine of Bulleh Shah, the 17th-century Sufi poet whose verses are sung across Punjab on both sides of the border. The hilltop shrine of Shah Kamal Chisti is another popular place of pilgrimage. The Kasur Museum on Ferozepur Road, established in 1999, holds fossils, Harappa-era pottery and Gandhara sculptures. Visitors can still walk the old kots, the fortified quarters that gave the city its name.

Beyond the city, the Ganda Singh Wala border crossing draws crowds for its flag-lowering ceremony, and nearby Khem Karan carries memories of the 1965 war. About 30 miles west of Kasur lies Changa Manga, the man-made forest whose plantation began in 1864 and which produces timber, honey, beeswax and silk. Food is a landmark in itself here: Kasuri falooda has a national reputation, and visitors seek out Kasuri andarsa, spicy fish and the dahi-kulcha breakfast.

Notable people

Kasur's most beloved son is Bulleh Shah, the Sufi saint and poet buried in the city. Its famous names include the singer and actress Noor Jehan, the classical vocalists Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Barkat Ali Khan, former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the politician and lawyer Mahmud Ali Kasuri, Hafiz Ghulam Murtaza, the spiritual guide of both Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah, the journalist Najam Sethi and the actor Yousuf Khan.

Getting there

Kasur is about 55 kilometres from Lahore by the Ferozepur Road and the six-lane Lahore-Kasur motorway. By rail, Kasur Junction in the northwest of the city connects through a branch line from Raiwind Junction, running via Khudian Khas and Kanganpur toward Lodhran, a track completed in 1910. Before partition the city was linked by rail to Amritsar and Ferozepur; today most of its transport and trade runs through Lahore.

Today

Today Kasur is one of Pakistan's great leather cities, home to about a third of the country's tanning industry and one of its biggest markets for hides. Weaving continues an old tradition too, with the bafta cloth and the khes shawls of its Ansari weavers. The city keeps its Sufi character alive around the shrines, its kitchens keep the falooda and fish famous, and as a district headquarters it anchors the life of the surrounding countryside between Lahore and the Indian border.