Karachi & Sindh

Mohenjo-daro, on the right bank of the Indus near Larkana, was one of the great cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation around 2500 BC, laid out on a grid with brick houses, wells and covered drains; it was excavated from the 1920s. Much later, Alexander the Great's army passed down the Indus, and Buddhist communities left stupas across the valley. In 711–712 the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim took the port of Debal and conquered Sindh, which Pakistanis often call the "gateway of Islam" in South Asia.

Local dynasties followed: the Soomras, then the Sammas, who ruled from Thatta and were buried on Makli hill, then the Arghuns and Tarkhans, before the Mughals absorbed the province. In the 18th century the Kalhoras and then the Baloch Talpur Mirs ruled Sindh, the Talpurs from Hyderabad. The British under Charles Napier defeated the Mirs at Miani in 1843 and ran Sindh from Bombay until it became a separate province in 1936, by which time Karachi had grown from a fishing village into a major port.

Partition transformed the province. Many Hindu Sindhis left for India, while Urdu-speaking migrants from India, the Muhajirs, settled in Karachi and Hyderabad, and Karachi served as the national capital until the move north in the late 1950s. The ethnic politics that followed produced the Muhajir-based MQM and decades of violence in Karachi, peaking in the 1990s. Rural Sindh, meanwhile, has been the stronghold of the Bhutto family's Pakistan Peoples Party, whose leaders are buried at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh near Larkana.

Sindhi is the main language of the province and has its own rich literature, written in an Arabic-based script. Karachi is different: Urdu is its common tongue, and it is also home to Pashtuns, Punjabis, Baloch, Gujarati-speaking communities, and Christian and Parsi communities. Sindh also holds most of Pakistan's Hindus, concentrated in the Thar and the lower Indus.

Sufism is the centre of rural culture. The 18th-century poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, whose verses fill the Shah Jo Risalo, lies at Bhit Shah, where singers perform his poetry nightly; Sachal Sarmast is honoured at Daraza; and the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan, with its red-clad devotees and dhamaal dance, is among the most popular in the country.

The ajrak, a block-printed shawl in deep red, indigo and black, and the mirrored, embroidered Sindhi cap are symbols of identity, worn above all on Sindhi Culture Day in December. Hyderabad is famous for glass bangles, and the Thar for embroidery, rugs and pottery. Karachi supplies much of the nation's television, advertising and publishing, along with a lively art and literature festival scene.

Sindh has about 55 million people. Karachi is officially home to around 20 million of them, though estimates run higher, making it one of the largest cities in the world. Hyderabad has about 2 million, and Sukkur, Larkana and Nawabshah are the other main towns.

Karachi is the country's financial and industrial centre, home to the central bank, the stock exchange, the main ports and a large share of manufacturing and tax revenue; it is also a city of vast informal settlements, water shortages and power cuts. The interior lives by irrigated farming — wheat, cotton, rice, sugarcane, bananas and mangoes — much of it on land held by powerful landlord families, and Thar coal now feeds new power plants.

Karachi runs late: offices start mid-morning, traffic jams build in the evening, and restaurants fill until after midnight. Current issues include the upkeep of the city's crumbling infrastructure, drought and child malnutrition in the Thar, and recovery from the 2022 floods, which displaced millions of people in Sindh.

Sindhi food is spicy and tangy. Sindhi biryani is layered with potatoes, dried plums, tomatoes and green chillies, and Sindhi kadhi is a thick, tangy gravy of gram flour with vegetables, eaten with rice. Sai bhaji is spinach cooked down with lentils and other greens, and koki is a wheat flatbread eaten with dal, vegetables or tea. The prized fish is palla, the bony, oily hilsa, caught in the Indus delta and fried, curried or grilled.

Karachi eats from every corner of the country and beyond. Burns Road is known for nihari, haleem and rabri, a sweet dish of thickened milk; bun kebab is the city's street burger, a spiced lentil-and-meat patty with egg and chutney in a soft bun; and seafood and grilled kebabs fill the seafront. Mirpur Khas is famous for its Sindhri mangoes, and the Hyderabad area for its sweet shops.

Karachi's sights start with the white Mazar-e-Quaid, Jinnah's mausoleum, and the colonial buildings of Saddar and the old city — Frere Hall, Empress Market and the Sindh Assembly — along with the pink sandstone Mohatta Palace museum. Clifton beach and the fishing island of Manora lie on the seafront, and the carved sandstone Chaukhandi tombs stand just east of the city.

East of Karachi, Thatta's Makli necropolis, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, holds the grand stone and tiled tombs of Samma, Tarkhan and Mughal-era rulers, including those of Mirza Isa Khan Tarkhan and Mirza Jani Beg, and the town below has the tiled Shah Jahan Mosque, with Keenjhar Lake nearby. North along the Indus, Hyderabad has the tombs of the Talpur Mirs and the old Pacco Qila fort, and beyond it lie Ranikot, a vast walled fort in the Kirthar hills, and the Kirthar National Park.

Further up the river are the shrines of Sehwan Sharif and Bhit Shah, and then Mohenjo-daro, with its Great Bath, granary mound and Buddhist stupa beside a site museum. Sukkur has the Lansdowne Bridge, the Sukkur Barrage and the island temple of Sadhu Bela, and the Indus river dolphin survives in the river nearby. In the south-east, the Thar desert reaches from Mithi to Nagarparkar, with its Karoonjhar hills, old Jain temples and villages of round thatched huts.