Pakistan

Pakistan: capital Islamabad, population 255.2M, area 881,912 km². The 5th most populous country, in Asia. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Pakistan lies along the Indus, a river of 3,180 kilometres that has fed cities here for five millennia. Mohenjo-daro, built around 2500 BCE, held at least 40,000 people. Over seventy languages are spoken as mother tongues, with Urdu serving as the common ground between them.

• Mohenjo-daro was built around 2500 BCE and held at least 40,000 people, one of the largest cities anywhere at a time when Egypt was still raising pyramids.
• Taxila was founded around 1000 BCE and grew into a centre of learning; it is one of the oldest cities in South Asia and a UNESCO site today.
• Gandharan workshops reached their height under the Kushan king Kanishka, who ruled from 127 to 150 CE, and turned out some of the finest sculpture of the subcontinent.
• The Badshahi Mosque rose in Lahore between 1671 and 1673 for the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, set directly opposite the Lahore Fort at the edge of the walled city.

• Abdus Salam shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, for showing that the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism are one thing.
• Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sang qawwali, the Sufi devotional music of Pakistan and India, and was known as Shahanshah-e-Qawwali, the king of kings of the form.
• Jahangir Khan went unbeaten at squash from 1981 to 1986 and won 555 matches in a row, the longest winning streak recorded in any top-level professional sport.
• Abdul Sattar Edhi founded the Edhi Foundation, which runs the largest volunteer ambulance network in the world alongside shelters, orphanages and animal homes across the country.

• Makli Necropolis spreads ten kilometres near Thatta and holds somewhere between half a million and a million tombs, raised over a span of four hundred years.
• Rohtas Fort was built for the Sur emperor Sher Shah Suri in the sixteenth century and still stands almost intact; UNESCO added it to the world heritage list in 1997.
• Harappa, on the old course of the Ravi in Punjab, gave its name to the entire Harappan civilisation that once stretched across the Indus basin.
• The Indus runs 3,180 kilometres from the Tibetan plateau to the Arabian Sea, and almost every city and field in the country sits within reach of its water.

• Trucks here are painted end to end with floral panels and calligraphy, a decorative trade of its own that makes a Pakistani lorry recognisable anywhere on the road.
• The markhor, a wild goat with corkscrew horns, is the national animal; its name comes from a Persian word for the curl of those horns.
• Over seventy languages are spoken as mother tongues, and Urdu is the national language mainly because it belongs to none of the country's ethnic groups in particular.
• Qawwali is Sufi devotional singing built for the shrine courtyard, where a lead voice, harmonium and hand-clapping carry a single song well past ten minutes.

What is the capital of Pakistan?

The capital of Pakistan is Islamabad.

What is the population of Pakistan?

Pakistan has about 255.2M people — the 5th most populous country in the world.

How big is Pakistan?

Pakistan covers 881,912 km², making it the 33rd largest country by area.

Which region is Pakistan in?

Pakistan is in Southern Asia, Asia.