Kishtwar

Kishtwar lies in the mountain country of the Chenab valley. Kalhana's Rajatarangini calls it Kashthavata and records that its ruler Uttamaraja visited the court of the Kashmiri king Kalasha in the eleventh century, accompanied by other hill chiefs. The town's broad central ground is known as the Chowgan. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries people from Kashmir settled in the wider region. The local kingdom endured until 1821, when Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu annexed it. Its ruler Muhammad Tegh Singh was imprisoned at Lahore, where he died.