Multan

Multan is one of the oldest inhabited places in South Asia, built on a mound raised by its own ruins beside a former course of the Ravi and near the Chenab. It is usually identified with the city of the Malli, whom Alexander the Great besieged in 326 BC and where he was seriously wounded. For centuries it was known for a celebrated temple of the sun god, whose wealth drew both pilgrims and raiders.

In 712 the Arab commander Muhammad bin Qasim took the city, and Multan became the northernmost outpost of Arab rule in the subcontinent and a centre of Ismaili influence. Mahmud of Ghazni attacked it in the 11th century, and under the Delhi Sultanate it grew into a great Sufi centre: Bahauddin Zakariya established his Suhrawardi order here in the 13th century, and his grandson Shah Rukn-e-Alam is buried in the tomb that still dominates the skyline. Their shrines made Multan "the city of saints", and generations of rulers, from the Langah sultans to the Mughals, governed it as a provincial capital and a hub of the caravan trade with Central Asia.

Afghan and then Sikh rule followed the Mughal decline; Ranjit Singh's forces took the city in 1818. The British besieged Multan in 1848–49 in the Second Anglo-Sikh War, and the bombardment destroyed the fort and much of the old town, leaving the mound that remains today. Under British rule the railway and canal irrigation turned the surrounding desert into cotton and mango country. Partition in 1947 exchanged its Hindu and Sikh population for Muslim refugees, and the city has since grown into the largest in southern Punjab, its shrines still the focus of its life.

Multan is the cultural capital of the Saraiki belt, the southern part of Punjab whose language, dress and music differ from those of Lahore and which has long campaigned for a province of its own. Saraiki is the mother tongue of most people here, softer in sound than Punjabi and rich in devotional poetry, and the city's identity is built on the shrines rather than on any court or industry.

Sufi practice shapes the year. The urs of a saint fills the mound with pilgrims, qawwali and the ecstatic drumming and dance called dhamal; langar, free food, is distributed; and Thursday evenings bring smaller versions of the same at shrines across the city. Devotional singing here draws on the Saraiki kafi tradition of poets such as Khwaja Ghulam Farid, whose verses are widely known.

Craft is the other inheritance. Multani kashi-kari — the white, blue and turquoise glazed tilework that covers the shrines — is still made in family workshops, along with blue pottery, camel-skin lamps that glow when lit from within, embroidered khussa slippers and block-printed cloth. Manners are formal and hospitable, with tea pressed on any visitor; dress is conservative, heads are covered at shrines and shoes removed at the door. Cricket is the shared enthusiasm, and the Multan Sultans give the city a team in the national league.

About 2.1 million people live in the city, which makes it the largest in southern Punjab and among the half-dozen largest in Pakistan. Growth has been outward along Bosan Road and the motorway approaches, while the old city inside the line of the vanished walls has become denser and poorer, with many families in subdivided brick houses.

The economy rests on agriculture and what it feeds. Multan is the collection and dispatch point for the mango and citrus orchards of southern Punjab and for the cotton belt around it, and the city has ginning factories, oil mills, fertiliser and textile plants, a large wholesale fruit market and a growing trade in dried fruit and dates. The universities and hospitals draw students and patients from across the south, and remittances from the Gulf support many households.

Life is organised around the heat. Shops open early, close through the worst of the afternoon in summer and reopen into the evening; bazaars and shrine courtyards are busiest after dark. Persistent problems are water and power supply, heatwaves that have become more severe, dust and smoke in winter, the pressure of farm mechanisation on rural jobs, and the long-running political question of whether southern Punjab should govern itself.

Multan's most famous product is a sweet. Sohan halwa is a dense, brittle disc of milk and sugar cooked down with ghee, studded with pistachios and almonds and sold by the tin; it is the standard gift taken from the city, and several shops in the old bazaars have made it for generations. Alongside it come more ordinary sweets — jalebi, barfi, gulab jamun — and in winter gajar ka halwa of carrots and milk.

Savoury cooking is southern Punjabi. Mutton and chicken karahi cooked to order with tomato and green chilli, seekh kebabs and tikka from charcoal, slow-cooked daal, and on the sweeter side of the palate the milky rice dish zarda at weddings. Breakfast is halwa puri or siri paye with naan, and dahi, plain yoghurt, appears with almost every meal as relief from the chillies. Bread is a point of pride: thick tandoori roti, sheermal and kulcha from clay ovens on the bazaar corners.

Above all Multan means mangoes. The orchards around the city produce Chaunsa, Anwar Ratol, Langra and Sindhri varieties between June and August, and the harvest is a national event, with fruit sent by lorry to every city and by air abroad. Mango lassi, mango with roti at the end of a meal, and boxes carried onto trains are all part of the season. Year round, sugarcane juice, lemon squash and lassi are what people drink against the heat.