Hyderabad

The ridge above the Indus where Hyderabad stands was occupied long before the city: Neroon Kot, the settlement said to have given Sindh's Arab conquerors their foothold on this stretch of the river in the early eighth century, stood on or near the same rise. The modern city dates from 1768, when the Kalhora ruler Mian Ghulam Shah moved his capital here from Khudabad and built the great brick fort, Pacco Qillo, on the ridge, with the town spreading below its walls.

The Baloch Talpur Mirs took power from the Kalhoras in the 1780s and made Hyderabad their capital in 1789, ruling Sindh from it until 1843 and dividing authority between branches of the family and building the tiled tombs that are still the city's finest monuments. Their rule ended at the battle of Miani in February 1843, a few kilometres north of the city, where Charles Napier's British force defeated the Mirs' army; Sindh was annexed and administered from Bombay, and the British soon moved the provincial centre of gravity to the new port of Karachi.

Hyderabad remained the commercial and cultural capital of Sindhi life, its merchant families — many of them Hindu — trading across the Indian Ocean. In 1947 most of its Hindu population left for India and Urdu-speaking Muhajirs arrived in large numbers, filling the new district of Latifabad. The ethnic divide that followed made the city a centre of Sindhi nationalist politics and of the Muhajir movement, with violent years in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s before an uneasier calm returned.

Hyderabad is the cultural capital of Sindhi language and letters. The provincial literary bodies, publishers and Sindhi newspapers are concentrated here, the University of Sindh sits across the river at Jamshoro with its Institute of Sindhology, and the city has produced a long line of poets, singers and scholars. Sindhi and Urdu are both heard everywhere, and which is spoken where still carries political weight.

The crafts are what the city is best known for. Its workshops produce almost all of Pakistan's ornamental glass bangles, made in small, intensely hot furnaces in the lanes around the old town and sold by the dozen in the bazaars; ajrak block printing, embroidery, lacquered woodwork and the mirrored Sindhi cap are made and traded here too. On Sindhi Cultural Day, the first Sunday in December, the streets fill with ajrak shawls and caps.

Devotional life is strongly Sufi. The shrine of Shah Abdul Latif at Bhit Shah draws the city's musicians and pilgrims, and his poetry, sung to the dambura and the yaktaro, is the shared inheritance of educated and rural Sindhis alike. Manners are formal and unhurried: elders are greeted first, hospitality is insistent, and business in the bazaar is conducted over tea. Weddings are large and noisy, and the wedding market is one of the engines of the local economy.

About 1.7 million people live in the city proper, making it Sindh's second largest after Karachi and one of the largest in Pakistan. The population divides roughly between Sindhi speakers, concentrated in Qasimabad and the surrounding districts, and Urdu-speaking Muhajirs, concentrated in Latifabad, with Punjabi, Pashtun and Baloch communities alongside them.

The economy rests on trade and small industry: glass bangles, textiles, hosiery, soap, cement, leather and food processing, along with the wholesale markets that serve farming districts producing wheat, sugarcane, cotton, bananas and mangoes. Government offices, the university across the river and hospitals employ a large share of the middle class, and the motorway to Karachi has pulled the two cities closer together.

The day begins early and pauses through the worst of the afternoon heat, with shops reopening in the late afternoon and the bazaars busiest after dark. Power cuts are a routine feature of summer, water supply is unreliable in parts of the city, and drainage cannot cope with heavy monsoon rain, which has flooded whole districts in recent years. Much of the old city's historic housing is deteriorating, while new building spreads outwards along the bypass roads.

Hyderabad eats Sindhi food in its fullest form. Sindhi biryani, layered with potatoes, dried plums and green chillies, is the dish of celebration; Sindhi kadhi, a tangy gram-flour gravy cooked with vegetables and poured over rice, is the everyday counterpart, often followed by rice pudding. Sai bhaji, spinach stewed down with lentils and greens, and koki, a thick wheat flatbread studded with onion and chilli and eaten with tea or yoghurt, belong to the same tradition.

Meat comes grilled or in a karahi — mutton or chicken fried with tomato, chilli and ginger in a wide iron pan — and street food means bun kebab, samosas, pakoras, dahi bhalla and chaat sold from carts in the bazaar lanes. Palla, the oily hilsa of the Indus, is a seasonal delicacy taken from the river nearby and usually fried or cooked with tamarind.

The city has an outsized reputation for sweets. Rabri, milk reduced for hours and served chilled, is the classic, along with halwa, gulab jamun and seasonal sohan. Bombay Bakery, near Saddar, is the one Hyderabad name known across Pakistan; its boxes are a standard gift for anyone travelling on to Karachi. Drinks are tea — doodh patti at every corner — sugarcane juice pressed at roadside stalls, lassi, and, from May to August, the mangoes of the surrounding districts, eaten out of hand or blended into milkshakes.