The Muslim world is a vast and immense mass of land sprawling from West Africa to southern Philippines far in the Pacific. Its northern limits reach as far as the Volga River in Russia while southern frontiers run up to Mozambique in South-East Africa in the Indian Ocean. In China, Muslims are in substantial numbers in the provinces bordering Burma and in the districts around Peking. Total population of Muslims in the world is estimated at one billion. This paper deals with a small segment of this vast world, in a region called Pakistan. Pakistan in different forms and in different backgrounds has appeared many times in these very regions and endured longer than other independent states of the Asian sub-continent, making enormous contribution to civilization. It has, perhaps, witnessed more invasions than any other part of the world, absorbed more racial strains than any other region and more ideas have taken birth in the heart of this land than elsewhere. .
It was in the lands of the Indus Valley Civilization where Pakistan flourised with its main cities in the Sind, Punjab, Baluch, and Pathan regions. It was here where the Buddhist culture blossomed and reached the Pathan region, it also reached its peak under the Kushans at the twin cities of Peshawar and Taxila. The Graeco-Bactrian civilization left the indelible marks of finest Greek art in the Potwar plateau near Rawalpindi. "Western Pakistan is a region which has been conspicuously important in the development of civilization." (Pakistan and Western Asia, By Prof. Norman Brown. Pakistan Miscellany). .
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is bordered on the north and northwest by Afghanistan, on the northeast by Jammu and Kashmir, on the east and southeast by India, on the south by the Arabian Sea, and on the west by Iran. Pakistan became an independent state in 1947, and until 1971, it included the province of East Pakistan (previously East Bengal), which, after its secession from Pakistan, assumed the name Bangladesh.
