'A History of Pakistan and its Origins' is a comprehensive, detailed and fully up-to-date study of one of the most diverse, volatile and strategically significant countries in the world today. Born in turmoil barely half a century ago, Pakistan seems to be in an interminable pursuit of its own identity and at the same time finds itself a pivotal player in world politics. Its short existence has witnessed much: four coups d' tat; the rise of Islam as a power; tensions between ethnic, religious and separatist movements; the Kashmir conflict and the near-constant war footing with India. This text charts half a century of nation-building in Pakistan, while at the same time placing the country within the context of its relations with the outside world.

In Purifying the Land of the Pure, Farahnaz Ispahani analyzes Pakistan's policies towards its religious minority populations, both Muslim and non-Muslim, since independence in 1947.

In Pakistan's northwest, a sequence of temples built between the sixth and the tenth centuries provides a missing chapter in the evolution of the Hindu temple in South Asia. Combining some elements from Buddhist architecture in Gandharā with the symbolically powerful curvilinear Nāgara tower formulated in the early post-Gupta period, this group stands as an independent school of that pan-Indic form, offering new evidence for its creation and original variations in the four centuries of its existence. Drawing on recent archaeology undertaken by the Pakistan Heritage Society as well as scholarship from the Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture project, this volume finally allows the Salt Range and Indus temples to be integrated with the greater South Asian tradition.

Ancient Pakistan - An Archaeological History deals with the prehistory of Pakistan from the Stone Age to the end of the Indus Civilization. This particular volume, The Stone Age, concerns with the first appearance of man in northern Pakistan more than a million years ago and traces his cultural history up to the emergence of agriculture and sedentary living in this region. The book is written for students of ancient history, anthropology, and archaeology. The material is generously illustrated with a large number of maps, tables, drawings, and colored photographs. Each Section is provided with extensive references to the text and a comprehensive bibliography is provided for those who want to dig deeper into the subject. Although the book primarily deals with the Greater Indus Valley, its scope is much wider: the subject has been discussed in context with the paleolithic of India, Central Asia, and Iran. The story of human evolution provides a constant background.

The first book to explore the modern history of Islam in South Asia The first modern state to be founded in the name of Islam, Pakistan was the largest Muslim country in the world at the time of its establishment in 1947. Today it is the second-most populous, after Indonesia. Islam in Pakistan is the first comprehensive book to explore Islam's evolution in this region over the past century and a half, from the British colonial era to the present day. Muhammad Qasim Zaman presents a rich historical account of this major Muslim nation, insights into the rise and gradual decline of Islamic modernist thought in the South Asian region, and an understanding of how Islam has fared in the contemporary world. Much attention has been given to Pakistan's role in sustaining the Afghan struggle against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, in the growth of the Taliban in the 1990s, and in the War on Terror after 9/11. But as Zaman shows, the nation's significance in matters relating to Islam has much deeper roots. Since the late nineteenth century, South Asia has witnessed important initiatives toward rethinking core Islamic texts and traditions in the interest of their compatibility with the imperatives of modern life. Traditionalist scholars and their institutions, too, have had a prominent presence in the region, as have Islamism and Sufism. Pakistan did not merely inherit these and other aspects of Islam. Rather, it has been and remains a site of intense contestation over Islam's public place, meaning, and interpretation. Examining how facets of Islam have been pivotal in Pakistani history, Islam in Pakistan offers sweeping perspectives on what constitutes an Islamic state.

This is the fourth volume of the Ancient Pakistan - An Archaeological History. It deals with a number of issues of the Indus Civilization, which are primarily of theoretical importance. The main topics that have been discussed are the social and political organization of the Harappan society, the Harappan religion, the Indus script and language, the beginning and the end of this vast civilization, and the recent attempts in creating some myths around the Indus Civilization. Since this volume is primarily dedicated to the theoretical and the abstract, descriptive material is kept to a minimum.

From the Publisher: A Brief History of Pakistan attempts to answer these questions in a concise yet thorough account. By illuminating the nation's past, this book offers readers a detailed perspective of Pakistan today and enables them to consider soundly how the country, once a birthplace of civilization, might change in the future.