Mastung, Pakistan
Mastung (Urdu: مستونگ ), the capital of Mastung District, is a town in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is located at 29°48'0N 66°50'60E and has an altitude of 1701 metres (5583 feet).[2] The town is also the administrative centre of Mastung Tehsil, an administrative subdivision of the district – the town itself is administratively subdivided into two Union Councils.
Mastung مستونگ | |
|---|---|
  Mastung مستونگ  Mastung مستونگ | |
| Coordinates: 29°47′58.19″N 66°50′48.58″E | |
| Country |  Pakistan |
| Province |  Balochistan |
| Division | Kalat |
| District | Mastung |
| Elevation | 1,701 m (5,581 ft) |
| Population | |
| • Total | 35,129 |
| Time zone | UTC+5 (PST) |
| Number of Union councils | 2 |
Mastung is located in Sarawan which is a division of the princely state of Kalat, the Chief Of Sarawan himself is from Mastung.
There are numerous Baloch as well as Pashtun tribes populated in Mastung, the tribes include Pirkani,Raisani (Tareen) which is the most popular tribe and is politically active and leading in the area other tribes include Dehwar,Lehri, Satakzai, Bangulzai, Tareen, Syed and several more.[3]
History
Mastung was known to the 10th-century geographers al-Muqaddasi and Istakhri, who both listed it among the towns in the province of Bālis, also called Bālish or Wālishtān, whose capital was Sibi.[4]
The Ain-i-Akbari, written during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar in the late 1500s, lists Mastung as one of the 24 mahals included in the Sarkar of Kandahar. At that time, Mastung was defended by a mud brick fort and produced a yearly revenue of 10 tumans and 8,000 dinars in cash alongside 470 kharwars of grain. Its population was a mixture of Afghans and Balochs.[5]
Languages
Like other Balochistan major urban centers Quetta, Sibi, Mach, and Khuzdar, it is a multi-ethnic city where several languages are spoken including Brahui, Persian (in Hazargi and Dehwari dialects), Pashto, Baluchi, Sindhi (In Hindki and Frakhi dialects) and Urdu. No language has a clear majority and Urdu serves as lingua franca for inter-ethnic communications.
Notes
- https://www.citypopulation.de/Pakistan-Balochistan.html?cityid=11413
- Location of Mastung – Falling Rain Genomics
- "Tehsils & Unions in the District of Mastung – Government of Pakistan". Archived from the original on February 9, 2012.
- Le Strange, Guy (1905). The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia, from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 347=48. OCLC 458169031. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
- Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak; Jarrett, Henry Sullivan (translator) (1891). The Ain-i-Akbari. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal. p. 397. Retrieved 29 May 2020.