Rawalpindiਰਾਵਲਪਿੰਡੀ

Ancient roots

The land around Rawalpindi has been inhabited for thousands of years. It falls within ancient Gandhara, and traces of at least 55 stupas, 28 Buddhist monasteries and 9 temples have been found to the north-west of the city, with artefacts in the Kharoshthi script. The famous "Fasting Buddha", now in the British Museum, was discovered here, and the second-century Mankiala stupa stands to the south-east — the spot where, in the Jataka tales, a previous incarnation of the Buddha offered his body to seven hungry tiger cubs.

The town itself was first destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni and restored by the Gakhar chief Kai Gohar in the early 11th century. It fell into decay again during the Mongol invasions of the 14th century and lay deserted until 1493, when the Gakhar chief Jhanda Khan re-established it as Rawalpindi — "the village of the Rawals", after a community of ascetics.

Sikh rule

After Mughal power declined — Akbar had spent some 13 years in and around Rawalpindi from December 1585, and the 16th-century Rawat Fort still stands as a fortified caravanserai of that era — the town was captured in the mid-1760s by the Sikhs under Sardar Gujjar Singh and his son Sahib Singh. Administration passed to Sardar Milkha Singh, who in 1766 invited traders from the commercial centres of Jhelum and Shahpur to settle there. The town began to prosper, though it still counted only about 300 families in 1770.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh seized Rawalpindi in 1810 but kept Milkha Singh's son on as governor, and Sikh rule was consolidated with the defeat of the Afghans at Haidru in July 1813. The 1820s saw the area become a centre of Syed Ahmad Barelvi's jihad movement, and in 1839 Jews fleeing Qajar persecution arrived from Mashhad and settled in Babu Mohallah. On 14 March 1849, Sardar Chattar Singh and Raja Sher Singh surrendered to General Gilbert near Rawalpindi, and the Sikh Empire came to an end on 29 March.

The garrison city

The British made Rawalpindi the largest garrison town of the Northern Command, with the decision to build a permanent cantonment taken in 1851 by the Marquess of Dalhousie. The Leh River still separates the old city from the cantonment. Municipal status came in 1867, the railway arrived in the 1880s, and by 1921 Rawalpindi was the third-largest city in Punjab. The arsenal of 1883 made the cantonment a major centre of Raj military power, and in 1901 the city became the winter headquarters of the Northern Command. Its district stood first in Punjab for recruiting during World War I.

The commercial city grew alongside the cantonment: Sardar Sujan Singh opened a large market in 1883, and the British developed the elite Saddar shopping district. The Commissariat Steam Flour Mills were the first of their kind in Punjab.

Partition and Pakistan

On 5 March 1947 a procession by Rawalpindi's Hindu and Sikh communities against a Muslim League ministry turned violent, and the next day Partition riots erupted; in the villages surrounding the city, thousands of Sikhs and Hindus were killed in what came to be known as the Rawalpindi massacres. In 1947 the city was 43.79% Muslim and the district 80% Muslim, so the region went to Pakistan. The city's Hindu (33.72%) and Sikh (17.32%) populations migrated en masse to India, while Muslim refugees from eastern Punjab and northern India settled in the city.

Chosen as headquarters of the Pakistan Army, Rawalpindi became the stage for much of the country's early history: the 1951 Rawalpindi conspiracy, the assassination of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan at what is now Liaquat Bagh, Ayub Khan's 1958 coup launched from the city, and its years as Pakistan's interim capital from 1959 to 1969 while Islamabad was built next door. In 1979 the deposed prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged here.

Today

Rawalpindi and Islamabad are jointly known as the "twin cities", linked by the M-1 and M-2 motorways, and Rawalpindi remains the army's General Headquarters with an air force base at Chaklala. With about 3.36 million people in the 2023 census, it is Pakistan's fourth-largest city. Its historic havelis and temples recall the pre-Partition city, and it serves as the gateway for travellers heading to Taxila, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.