Lahore city in Pakistan

Lahore is a major city in Pakistan and is the capital of the province of Punjab. A native of Lahore is called a Lahori.

It is located near the river Ravi and the Indian border, at 31.5710 North, 74.3130 East. Lahore has 8.5 million inhabitants and thus is the second largest city in Pakistan, (Karachi being the largest). It is considered to be the 24th largest city of the world. Punjabi is the language of the province, and is the most widely spoken language in Lahore. Punjabi spoken by the people of Lahore is known as Lahori Punjabi due to a mixture of Punjabi and colloquial Urdu spoken in Lahore. Lahore is largely thought of as the cultural centre of Pakistan ever since its accession by Mughal rulers since the 16th century A.D.This is apparent by the vast array of historic buildings, presence in architecture and scenery. A truly beautiful city, with thousands of years of history. It was the capital of the Mughal empire, and was going to be the capital of Pakistan, but the idea was dropped on the basis that the city was too close to India which could have meant security problems.

History

According to a legend, Lahore was named by Loh (called Luv in Sanskrit), the once ruler, son of Rama, the hero of the Hindu epic Ramayana.

The city came under Muslim rule due to the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni, who placed it under the rule of his beloved slave, Malik Ayaz. When Qutb-ud-din Aybak was crowned in 1206 here, he became the first Muslim Sultan of the Indian subcontinent. From 1524 to 1752 Lahore was part of the Mughal Empire.

During Akbar's rule, Lahore was the capital of the empire from 1584 to 1598. During this time a massive fort, the Lahore Fort, was built on the fundaments of an older fort in the 1560s. This fort was later extended by Jahangir and Shah Jahan.

The last of the Mughals, Aurangzeb, ruling from 1658 to 1707, built the city's most famous monuments, the Badshahi Masjid and the Alamgiri Gate next to the Lahore Fort. The Sikhs ruled it in the 18th and 19th centuries, making Lahore the capital of sovereign Punjab. However the last bloody Anglo-Sikh war resulted in a British victory thus bringing Lahore under the rule of the British crown. On partition of British India in 1947 into India and Pakistan, Lahore passed into the newly formed Pakistan.

The famous British author and poet, Joseph Rudyard Kipling, lived in Lahore during the 1880s, where his parents were also working. Kipling began working as an editor for a local newspaper and continued tentative steps into the world of poetry; his first professional sales were in 1883.