Peshawar

Peshawar lies in a broad valley east of the Khyber Pass, on the roads between the Indian plains and Central Asia. As Purushapura it was a city of Gandhara and a Kushan capital, its great stupa drawing pilgrims from afar, though the city had already declined when Xuanzang saw it in the 7th century. Hindko-speaking traders kept its bazaars busy.

The Mongols had destroyed the city in the early 13th century, and in the late 15th and 16th centuries Pashtun tribes settled the countryside around it. In the 1520s Babur took Peshawar, rebuilt its fort and used the city as a base. Under the Mughals it became a busy centre on the Grand Trunk Road, and the Mohabbat Khan Mosque was raised in 1630. The Mughals still had to deal with revolts: the followers of Pir Roshan besieged the city in 1586, and the Afridis closed the Khyber Pass in 1672 until Aurangzeb restored control in 1674.

Nader Shah took Peshawar in 1738 and Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. Under Timur Shah it became the Afghan winter capital, and the Bala Hissar fort was the king's residence. The English traveller William Moorcroft saw it as the main trading centre between Bukhara and India, and the surrounding farms supplied much of north India's dried fruit. In 1823 Ranjit Singh's Sikhs beat the Afghans at Nowshera, and in 1834 Peshawar came under the Lahore Durbar, though the Afghan ruler Dost Muhammad Khan failed to retake it in 1835.