Gateway to the Khyber Pass — one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Asia, where bazaars that have traded since the Kushan Empire still sell carpets, lapis lazuli, and hand-hammered copper pots
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, with a population of 2 million at the mouth of the Khyber Pass connecting Pakistan with Afghanistan. One of the oldest cities in Asia with continuous occupation for at least 2,000 years, it served as the eastern terminus of the Silk Road. The old city — Qissa Khwani Bazaar (Storytellers' Bazaar), the Karkhano Market, and the copper and fabric lanes of Nakhasi and Saddar — retains a Mughal-era commercial density unlike any other city in Pakistan.
Peshawar's recorded history begins with the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the 6th century BCE; under the Kushan Empire (1st–3rd century CE) it was called Purushapura and served as a great Kushan capital, home to one of the world's largest Buddhist stupas — the Kanishka stupa, estimated at 120–180m tall. The Mughal Emperor Babur captured the city in 1530, and Mughal emperors used it as a summer capital to escape Delhi's heat. Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh held it from 1834 to 1849, then the British built the cantonment and Victoria Hall; the Khyber Rifles frontier corps maintained the pass until P…