Kasur, Punjab Province, Pakistan

🇵🇰 Kasur (قصور; Qasūr; "palaces" or "forts") is a city to the south of Lahore, in the Pakistani province of Punjab. The city serves as the headquarters of Kasur District. Kasur is the 16th largest city in Punjab and 24th largest in Pakistan, by population. It is also known for being the burial place of the 17th-century Sufi-poet Bulleh Shah. It is farther west of the border with neighboring India, and bordered to Lahore, Sheikhupura and Okara Districts of Punjab. The city is an aggregation of 26 fortified hamlets overlooking the alluvial valleys of the Beas and Sutlej rivers.

Etymology Kasur derives its name from the Arabic and Persian word qasur (قصور), meaning "palaces", or "forts". According to a legend, Kasur was founded by, and named for, Prince Kusha of the Ramayana, son of the Hindu deities Rama and Sita. According to that account, the city was named Kashawar along with its neighbouring city, Lahore which was named Lahawar. Historical records reject an ancient founding of the city and date it to 1525, when it was found as a fortified settlement.

History 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.

History: 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 legendary Sufi saint and celebrated 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 February 10, 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.

History: 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.

Demography The population of Kasur is 382,000 as of 2020. 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.