Kasur

History

Early

The Kasur region was an agricultural region with forests during the Indus Valley civilization. The Kasur region was ruled variously by the Maurya Empire, Indo-Greek kingdom, Kushan Empire, Gupta Empire, White Huns, Kushano-Hephthalites and Kabul Shahi kingdoms. The region is also said to have been visited by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang in 633 AD. Alexander Cunningham writes about his visit describing the place filled with tombs, mosques, and thickly covered with ruins. The city which is most commonly associated with Kasur was described as being situated somewhere on the right bank of the Beas (Sutlej) opposite to the city of Lahore.

Arrival of Islam

Ghaznavids

In 1005 CE, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, took over the region under the Ghaznavid dynasty. This led to the introduction of Islam in the Northern Punjab area, after being conquered. Sufi missionaries were sent to the region in order to preach Islam which made the Punjab region predominantly Muslim. The city was later under the rule of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals.

Kheshgi Dynasty

Kasur was established as a city by the Kheshgi tribe of Pashtuns from Kabul who had migrated to the region in 1525 from Afghanistan during the reign of Babur and built several small forts in the area, establishing the Kheshgi chieftaincy. The city was built as an aggregation of about twelve fortified hamlets, known as kots (کوٹ) forming a considerable town. The 12 mahallahs (abodes) were built by the order of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, and named after the heads of various Pashtun families. Some of these forts have been severely damaged over time.

Under Mughal rule, the city flourished and was notable for commerce and trade. It became the home of the Sufi saint and poet, Bulleh Shah, who is buried in a large shrine in the city. After the decline of the Mughal Empire, the Kasur region fell into a power vacuum. Kasur was captured by Ahmad Shah Durrani of the Durrani Empire.

Sikh

The Sikhs sacked the city in 1747 under Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, and again in 1763 after Durrani shifted to Afghanistan. The Sikh Empire under Ranjit Singh, captured the city in 1807 in the Battle of Kasur. During the First Anglo-Sikh War, the city was occupied by Company forces on 10 February 1846.

British

During the British Raj, the irrigation canals were built that irrigated large areas of the Kasur District. Communal disturbances between Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims erupted in 1908 over the issue of meat sales. Riots erupted following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on 13 April 1919, leading to the destruction of civic infrastructure, including the city's railway station. Martial law was imposed on 16 April 1919 in response to the riots.

Modern

After the formation of Pakistan in 1947, the minority Hindus and Sikhs migrated to India, while Muslim refugees migrated from India and settled in Kasur. Kasur emerged as a major centre of leather tanning after independence, and is home to 1/3rd of Pakistan's tanning industry.

Kasur is one of the biggest market and trading hub in the country of hides collection and leather tanning and processing. In recent times, hide traders in Kasur were engaged in smuggling donkey hides, a medicinal demand, to China via Karachi Port.

In January 2018, two protestors were killed in rioting over the rape and murder of Zainab Ansari, a seven-year-old girl. There had been 12 similar murders in the past two years, five of which have been linked to one suspect, leading to widespread anger at police failures.

In November 2020, Russia sponsored a 1,122-km high pressure RLNG pipeline from Port Qasim, Karachi to Kasur. In May 2021, Islamabad and Moscow agreed to change the name of the North-South Gas Pipeline Project to "Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline".

Geography

Kasur is bordered to the north by Lahore, by India to the south and east, it also has borders with Okara and Nankana Sahab district. The city is adjacent to the border of Ganda Singh Wala, a border with its own flag-lowering ceremony.

Ecoregion

Kasur is situated in a subtropical thorn woodland biome (Northwestern thorn scrub forests) and in the Deserts and xeric shrublands ecoregion according to the World Wide Fund for Nature's map of ecological regions in the world.

Climate

Kasur has a sub humid subtropical climate (Trewartha climate classification Cf), bordering a humid subtropical climate (Koppen: Cwa)in north(Lahore)and a Semi-arid climate in south (Okara). Kasur has extremes of climate; the summer season begins from May and continues till August. June is the hottest month. The mean maximum and minimum temperature for this month are about 42 °C (107.6 °F) and 27 °C (80.6 °F) respectively. The winter seasons lasts from November to February. January is the coldest month. The mean maximum and minimum temperatures for the coldest month are 22 °C (71.6 °F) and 4 °C (39.2 °F) respectively. With rainfall towards the end of June, monsoon conditions appear and during the following two and a half months the rainy season alternates with sultry weather. The winter rain falls during January, February and March, ranging from 23 millimetres (0.91 in) to 31 millimetres (1.2 in).According to a 30 year average from Pakistan Meteorological Department Kasur receives an annual of 700 to 850mm rainfall with 47 percent falling in monsoon season and rest falling outside monsoon season. Water logging tannery pollution and salinity have affected a large area of the district, making the underground water brackish and contaminated with heavy metals.

Demographics

Population

The population of Kasur is 510,875 as of 2023. The principal tribes residing here include the Rajput, Jats, Arains, Dogars, Ansari, Sheikh, Pashtuns etc. Among them there are also a concentration of Kashmiris who had migrated earlier, during partition. There are also Moeens or artisans; they include Christians, blacksmiths (Lohar), carpenters (Tarkhan), ceramicists (Kumhar), barbers, weavers etc.

Religion

The population in Kasur is predominantly Muslim with some small Christian and Hindu minorities. In a census conducted by the Office of the Census Commissioner in 1951, the result was that 96% of the population of Kasur was Muslim with 0.004% being Hindu minorities and 0.034% being Christian minorities.

Languages

According to the 2023 Census of Pakistan, Kasur is overwhelmingly Punjabi-speaking. Punjabi is the dominant language, spoken by 88.64% of the population. This is followed by Urdu, spoken by 6.10%, and Mewati, which accounts for a significant minority at 4.65%, and an additional 0.61% of the population spoke other languages of Pakistan (mostly Pashto and Sindhi).

Notable people

• Ram Nath Chawla, Indian Pilot
• Bawa Lal Dayal, 14th-century saint
• Irshad Ahmed Haqqani, journalist, writer
• Noor Jehan, singer and actress
• Ahmed Khan Kasuri, Pakistani Magistrate, allegedly assassinated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
• Ahmad Raza Khan Kasuri, former member of National Assembly of Pakistan
• Fauzia Kasuri, a Pakistani politician and women's activist
• Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, former Foreign Minister
• Mahmud Ali Kasuri, a Pakistani politician, lawyer and human rights activist, former Law Minister
• Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, classical vocalist of British India
• Barkat Ali Khan, classical vocalist of British India
• Muhammad Muhsin Khan, Muslim scholar and author
• Rana Muhammad Iqbal Khan former speaker Punjab assembly
• Yousuf Khan, actor
• Hafiz Ghulam Murtaza, spiritual murshid of Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah
• Sardar Asif Nakai, Member of the Punjab Provincial Assembly
• Sardar Talib Hassan Nakai, Member of National Assembly of Pakistan
• Najam Sethi, journalist, writer, Pakistan Cricket Board chairman
• Bulleh Shah, Sufi saint and spiritual poet
• Pran Kumar Sharma, Indian cartoonist
• Basit Jehangir Sheikh, Politician, youngest founder member of the Pakistan Peoples Party (P.P.P)
• Fateh Muhammad Sial, first Ahmadi missionary sent from India