Gujranwala District

Gujranwala District (Punjabi and ), is a district that is a part of the Majha region in Punjab, Pakistan. Gujranwala District is bordered by the districts of Wazirabad, Sialkot, Hafizabad and Sheikhupura. Gujranwala district has 5 National Assembly and 12 Punjab Assembly constituencies. Gujranwala belongs to the Majha region of ancient Punjab. The village of Asarur has been identified as the location of Taki, an ancient town, visited by the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang contains immense ruins of Buddhist origin. After the time of Tsiang little is known about Gujranwala till the Islamic conquests by Mahmud of Ghazni, by this time, however, Taki had fallen into oblivion while Lahore had become the capital of Punjab. Lahore had replaced Taki as the major city of Punjab and it became the second capital of the Ghaznavids. The contemporary village of Asarur has been identified as the site of the ancient city. From the beginning of the 7th century Gujjar kingdoms dominated Eastern portions of Pakistan and northern India. The district flourished during Mughal rule, from the days of Akbar to those of Aurangzeb, wells were scattered over the whole country, and villages lay thickly dotted about the southern plateau, now a barren waste of grass land and scrub jungle. Their remains may still be found in the wildest and most solitary reaches of the Bar. The Punjab region became predominantly Muslim due to missionary Sufi saints whose dargahs dot the landscape of Punjab region. Eminabad and Hafizabad were the chief towns (the latter now part of a separate district), while the country was divided into six well-tilled parganas. But before the end of the Islamic period the tract was mysteriously depopulated. The tribes at present occupying the District are all immigrants of recent date, and before their advent the whole region seems for a time to have been almost entirely abandoned. The only plausible conjecture to account for this sudden and disastrous change is that it resulted from the constant wars by which the Punjab was convulsed during the last years of Mughal Imperial rule.