Gandhara's City of Men still gates the Khyber
Peshawar is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's capital and Pakistan's eighth-most-populous city with over 1.9 million people. Recorded history reaches at least the sixth century BCE, ranking it among South Asia's oldest continuous cities. Akbar's era popularized a Sanskrit-rooted Puruṣapura—'City of Men.'
The city sits in the broad Peshawar Valley just east of the Khyber Pass and probably began as a village in the fifth century BCE near the old Gandharan capital of Pushkalavati. Chinese pilgrims wrote its name as Fou-lou-sha in the fifth century and Po-la-sha-pu-lo in the seventh, while al-Masudi and al-Biruni recorded Parashawar and Purushavar. Some link the current form to a Persian phrase for frontier or forward town.
Alexander subdued Gandhara in the winter of 327 to 326 BCE, after which Seleucus I held the valley until ceding it to the Mauryas in 303 BCE; Megasthenes described it as the western end of a royal road to Pataliputra. Greco-Bactrians seized it around 190 BCE, and the Indo-Parthian king Gondophares founded the nearby Takht-i-Bahi monastery in 46 CE. Under the Kushans it became the primary capital, home to an estimated 120,000 people, reaching its height under Kanishka in the second century. Shapur I's Sasanian armies wrecked Buddhist monasteries around 260 CE, and the White Huns devastated the city in the 460s, although they rebuilt Kanishka's great stupa with a wooden tower crowned by a thirteen-tiered gilded parasol. When Xuanzang visited about 630, he mourned its ruined monuments.
Islam likely arrived late in the seventh century. Sabuktigin fought the Hindu Shahis here in 986 to 987, and on 28 November 1001 his son Mahmud of Ghazni crushed Jayapala at the Battle of Peshawar. Muhammad Ghori took it in 1179 to 1180, and Mongols destroyed it early in the 1200s. The Dilazak were the first Pashtun tribe to settle the valley, later pushed across the Indus in 1515.
Babur captured the city in July 1526 and rebuilt its fort, and under Akbar it became a Grand Trunk Road trading post. Mohabbat Khan built his famous mosque in 1630, but Roshani, Yusufzai and Afridi revolts shook Mughal control, and Afridis wiped out a Mughal force in the Khyber in 1672. Today over 1.9 million people live there.
Source: Peshawar
