City of Saints — Sufi shrines in brilliant blue kashi tilework, mangoes and 5,000 years of continuous history
Multan is one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, its ancient core packed with Sufi shrines sheathed in hand-painted blue-and-white kashi ceramic tilework. The mausoleum of Shah Rukn-e-Alam — a towering octagonal drum of burnt brick and glazed tile completed in 1324 — is among the finest pre-Mughal structures anywhere in South Asia. Beyond history, Multan is Pakistan's mango capital and home to craftspeople still making the blue pottery, embroidered camel-skin lamps, and sohan halwa that have defined the city for centuries.
Known as Malloi to the ancient Greeks, Multan was the city Alexander the Great besieged in 326 BCE — a Macedonian arrow pierced his lung here and nearly ended the campaign. Arab armies under Muhammad bin Qasim captured it in 712 CE, inaugurating over 1,300 years of Islamic culture that produced the dense network of Sufi shrines the city is still known for today. The Tughlaq-era mausoleum of Shah Rukn-e-Alam (1320–1324) and the earlier Bahauddin Zakariya mausoleum established Multan as one of the great Sufi pilgrimage cities of South Asia.