1920s Government House – Peshawar

1920s Government House – Peshawar




The Governor's House in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan is a historic building and has a secret tunnel from the left side mosque to the Bala Hisar Fort it is about 1.25 km long, amidst what is now a park. It is close to the Peshawar Museum. It serves as the official residence of the Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Governor House was commissioned in the early 20th century by the British. The famous British era contractor responsible for the Mardan-Chitral Road (Lowari Pass), Attock Landi Kotal Rail track and Drosh Fort Khan Bahadur Nawab Abdul Hameed Khan of Badrashi was contracted to build the building in a traditional Greco-Roman design prevailent in other grand British buildings across India.
Peshawar (Pashto: پېښور‎ Pēx̌awar [peˈçawar] (listen); Hindko: پشور‎; [pɪˈʃɔːɾ] (listen); Urdu: پشاور‎ [peːˈʃaːʋər] (listen)) is the capital of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.[5] Situated in the broad Valley of Peshawar near the eastern end of the historic Khyber Pass, close to the border with Afghanistan, Peshawar's recorded history dates back to at least 539 BCE, making it the oldest city in Pakistan and one of the oldest cities in South Asia.[6] As the center of the ancient Gandhara region, Peshawar served as the capital of the Kushan Empire;[7][8][9] and was home to the Kanishka stupa.[10] Peshawar was then sacked by the White Huns, before the arrival of Muslim empires. The city was an important trading centre during the Mughal era before serving as the winter capital of the Afghan Durrani Empire from 1757 until the city was captured by the Sikh Empire in 1818, who were then followed by the British in 1849. The city of Peshawar has a population of 1,970,042 according to the 2017 census, making it the largest city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the sixth-largest in Pakistan,[11] while Peshawar District has a population of 4,269,079.[12] Peshawar is the largest Pashtun-majority city in Pakistan[13][14] and is bilingual in Pashto and Hindko
The modern name of the city "Peshawar" is widely attributed to the name "Purushapura" (Sanskrit: पुरूषपुर Puruṣapura, meaning "City of Men " or “City of Purusha").[16][17][18] However, the name Purushapura does not appear in any ancient Indian literary sources.[19] The ruler of the city during its founding may have been a Hindu raja (King) named Purush; the word pur means "city" in Sanskrit.[20][21][22] Sanskrit, written in the Kharosthi script, was the literary language employed by the Buddhist kingdoms which ruled over the area during its earliest recorded period.[23] The city’s name may be also derived from the Sanskrit name for "City of Flowers," Poshapura, a name found in an ancient Kharosthi inscription that may refer to Peshawar.[24]
Hsuan Tsang’s 7th century account of a city in Gandhara called the city Po-la-sha-pu-lo, and an earlier 5th century account by Fa-Hien records the city’s name as Fou-lou-sha, the Chinese equivalent of the Sanskrit name of the city, Purushapura.[25][26] An ancient inscription from the Shapur era identifies a city in the Gandhara valley by the name pskbvr, which may be a reference to Peshawar.[27]
The Arab historian and geographer Al-Masudi noted that by the mid 10th century, the city was known as Parashāwar. The name was noted to be Purshawar and Purushavar by Al-Biruni.[28] The city began to be known as Peshāwar by the era of Emperor Akbar.[29] The current name is said by some to have been based upon the Persian for "frontier town"[29] or, more literally, "forward city," though transcription errors and linguistic shifts may account for the city's new name. One theory suggests that the city’s name is derived from the Persian name "Pesh Awardan", meaning "place of first arrival" or "frontier city," as Peshawar was the first city in the Indian subcontinent after crossing the Khyber Pass.[30][31] Akbar's bibliographer, Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, lists the city's name as both Parashāwar, transcribed in Persian as پَرَشَاوَر,[32] and Peshāwar (پشاور)#fastitlinks.com