Khairabad

Khairabad is an old town of Awadh, remembered as a centre of learning in the Mughal period. Tradition attributes its foundation to Khaira Pasi in the eleventh century; an older name, Masichait, survives in the name of a sacred tank whose water is said to have healing properties.

During the reigns of Babur and Akbar, Muslim settlers received grants of land in Khairabad. The town became a place of scholars and poets as well as a centre of trade. Kashmiri shawls and elephants from Assam passed through its markets, and the East India Company arranged to export cloth woven on handlooms here and in neighbouring Dariyabagh. In the early nineteenth century the Nawab of Awadh resumed the old rent-free land grants.