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The Pakistan Portal

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Introduction

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State emblem of Pakistan
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"The National Anthem"
Qaumī Tarānah
قَومی ترانہ

Pakistan (Urdu: پاکِستان [ˈpaːkɪstaːn]), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (اِسلامی جمہوریہ پاکِستان), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-largest Muslim population just behind Indonesia. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country in the world by area and the second-largest in South Asia, spanning 881,913 square kilometres (340,509 square miles). It has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman. Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre.

Pakistan is the site of several ancient cultures, including the 8,500-year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan, the Indus Valley civilisation of the Bronze Age, the most extensive of the civilisations of the Afro-Eurasia, and the ancient Gandhara civilization. The region that comprises the modern state of Pakistan was the realm of multiple empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenid; briefly that of Alexander the Great; the Seleucid, the Maurya, the Kushan, the Gupta; the Umayyad Caliphate in its southern regions, the Hindu Shahis, the Ghaznavids, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Durranis, the Omani Empire, the Sikh Empire, British East India Company rule, and most recently, the British Indian Empire from 1858 to 1947. (Full article...)

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Quaid-e-Azam Residancy Ziarat Balochistan by Balochlens.jpg

Balochistan (/bəˈlɒɪstɑːn, bəˌlɒɪˈstɑːn, -stæn/; Balochi: بلۏچستان; Urdu: بلوچستان) is a province of Pakistan. Located in the southwestern region of the country, Balochistan is the largest province of Pakistan by land area but is the least populated one. It is bordered by the Pakistani provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the north-east and Punjab to the east and Sindh to the south-east. It shares International borders with Iran to the west and Afghanistan to the north; It is also bound by the Arabian Sea to the south. Balochistan is an extensive plateau of rough terrain divided into basins by ranges of sufficient heights and ruggedness. It has the world's largest deep sea port, The Port of Gwadar lying in the Arabian Sea.

Balochistan shares borders with Punjab and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the northeast, Sindh to the east and southeast, the Arabian Sea to the south, Iran (Sistan and Baluchestan) to the west and Afghanistan (Helmand, Nimruz, Kandahar, Paktika and Zabul Provinces) to the north and northwest. (Full article...)
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Government College University, Lahore - Tower1.jpg

Clock Tower at Government College University, Lahore. It is a co-educational public university located on The Mall in Lahore, Pakistan. The University offers bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D. degrees in a variety of disciplines. The university currently has more than 6000 students and 323 faculty members. Alumni of Government College are called Ravians after the nearby Ravi River.

Photo credit: Waqas Usman

General images

The following are images from various Pakistan-related articles on Wikipedia.

This week in history

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Provinces and Territories

Clickable map of the four provinces and three federal territories of Pakistan.
Balochistan (Pakistan)Punjab (Pakistan)SindhIslamabad Capital TerritoryKhyber PakhtunkhwaKhyber PakhtunkhwaAzad KashmirGilgit-BaltistanA clickable map of Pakistan exhibiting its administrative units.
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Provinces:

  1. Balochistan
  2. Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KPK)
  3. Punjab
  4. Sindh

Territories:

  1. Islamabad Capital Territory
  2. Federally Administered Tribal Areas

Pakistani-administered portions of the Kashmir:

  1. Azad Kashmir
  2. Gilgit-Baltistan

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Tehmina Durrani in 1994.jpg
Durrani at an event in 1994

Tehmina Durrani (Urdu: تہمینہ درانی; born 18 February 1953) is a Pakistani author, artist, activist on women's and children's rights, and the current First Lady of Pakistan being married to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Her first book, "My Feudal Lord" (1991), shocked conservative Pakistani society because of the sensational exposure of her politically famous but abusive husband, Mustafa Khar.

Her three-year tenure of service alongside Abdul Satar Edhi was transformational and life changing. It also resulted in her authoring his (narrated) autobiography, "A Mirror to the Blind" (1996). The influence of Edhi spurred her into social work and inspired her to establish the 'Tehmina Durrani Foundation', with a mission to further Edhi's way of "humanitarianism", and his vision of Pakistan as a social welfare state. (Full article...)

Did you know?

  • ... that Ruth Katherina Martha Pfau, the famous German–Pakistani Catholic nun who devoted more than 55 years of her life to fighting leprosy was the first Christian and first non-Muslim to have a state funeral in Pakistan? (2 September 2021)
  • ... that Lahore Knowledge Park is an actualization of Triple Helix configuration; a framework to create synergies between government, academia and industry to operate into an interactive rather than linear model for the establishment of social formats and entities to promote commercial innovation and R&D. [2] (27 January, 2017)
  • ... that Sialkot is the world's largest producer of hand-sewed footballs, with local factories manufacturing 40~60 million footballs a year, amounting to roughly 60% of world production. (4 December, 2017)
  • ... that Hafiz Muhammad Fazal Azim Taha, the famous living Pakistani poet said about Iqbal's work that "He not only dreamed for Pakistan but also got the nation up for their rights". This famous saying is regarded as Iqbal's definition. (14 July, 2014)
  • ... that The Edhi Foundation, founded by Edhi, runs the world's largest volunteer ambulance service operating 1,800 of them with upto 6,000 a day in Karachi alone. (4 December 2017)


Pakistan news

Today is January 31, 2023
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For up to date, in depth news coverage on Pakistan, see Wikinews:Portal:Pakistan. Wikinews is a sister project of Wikipedia, which deals with journalism of current events. They are both operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.
30 January 2023 – Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
At least 87 people are killed and 170 others are injured when a suicide bomber detonates his explosive belt at a mosque in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The mosque is located inside a compound that includes the headquarters of the provincial police force and a counter-terrorism department. (Reuters) (The Washington Post)
29 January 2023 – 2023 Lasbela bus crash
At least 41 people are killed and two others are injured when a bus falls off a bridge and catches fire in Lasbela District, Balochistan, Pakistan. (Reuters)
29 January 2023 –
Ten children are killed and eleven other people are injured when a boat capsizes at the Tanda Dam in Kohat District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. (AFP via Barron's)
27 January 2023 – Environmental issues in Pakistan
At least 18 people have been killed in the past two weeks by toxic chemicals from factories in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. (Al Jazeera)
23 January 2023 –
A major power outage in Pakistan leaves nearly 220 million people without electricity after a failure at the national power grid. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered a reduction in energy consumption as the country faces a severe energy crisis. (CNN) (Reuters)
20 January 2023 – Insurgency in Balochistan
A bomb blast derails a passenger train in Peshi village, Kachhi District, Balochistan, Pakistan, injuring 13 people. (Al Jazeera)

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    ApproachingNangaParbat
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    PK Karachi asv2020-02 img62 Frere Hall

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You are cordially invited to join and contribute to WikiProject Pakistan, a WikiProject dedicated to the development and improvement of articles relating to Pakistan.

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Wikipedias in Pakistani languages

كشميري (Kashmiri) • پښتو (Pashto) • فارسی (Persian) • پنجابی (Punjabi) • سنڌي (Sindhi) • اردو (Urdu)

Sources

  1. ^ Mahendra, Anjali. "The Metro Bus System comes to Lahore, Pakistan". TheCityFix. World Resources Institute. Retrieved 31 August 2021.
  2. ^ "Lahore Knowledge Park Company".
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