Rawalpindi is Islamabad's older twin on the Potohar Plateau
Rawalpindi—Pindi for short—is Punjab's third-largest city and Pakistan's fourth-most populous, sitting on the Soan River beside the capital Islamabad as the twin cities. Founded in 1493 by a Gakhar chief, it stayed small until British annexation of Punjab in 1849.
Near UNESCO Taxila on the Potohar Plateau, it became a major garrison and later secondary capital under Ayub Khan before Islamabad rose. Motorways M-1 and M-2 make it a northern logistics hub. Earlier Fatehpur Baori decayed under Mongol invasions; Jhanda Khan restored it as Village of Rawal.
The area lies within ancient Gandhara. Northwest of the city are traces of at least 55 stupas, 28 monasteries and 9 temples, along with artefacts in Kharoshthi script, and to the southeast stands the 2nd-century Mankiala stupa, tied to a Jataka tale of the Buddha giving his body to seven hungry tiger cubs. Mahmud of Ghazni destroyed an earlier settlement, which the Gakhar chief Kai Gohar rebuilt in the early 11th century. Under the Mughals the Gakhars kept control, and Akbar arrived in December 1585 and stayed in the area for 13 years.
Sikhs under Sardar Gujjar Singh took the town in the mid-1760s, and Sardar Milkha Singh invited traders from Jhelum and Shahpur in 1766, starting its growth from a tiny base. Sikh commanders surrendered to General Gilbert nearby on 14 March 1849, and Lord Dalhousie decided in 1851 to station a permanent cantonment there. Its Garrison Church dates from 1854, and the 1855 census found 15,913 residents. Railways arrived in the 1880s, its Commissariat Steam Flour Mills were Punjab's first, and in 1885 about 14 percent of Kashmir's exports and 27 percent of its imports passed through.
Source: Rawalpindi
