Sind

Province of southeast Pakistan, mainly in the Indus delta; area 140,914 sq km/54,393 sq mi; population (1993 est) 28,930,000. The capital and chief port is Karachi. Industries include shipbuilding, cement, textiles, and foundries; salt is mined. Wheat, rice, cotton, barley, oilseeds, and vegetables are grown; red Sindhi cattle, buffaloes, and camels are raised.

The province contains the last 480 km/300 mi of the Indus Valley; to the east is the Thar Desert. Low rainfall averages make the region dependent on irrigation.

Features include Sukkur Barrage, which enables water from the Indus River to be used for irrigation of over 2 million ha/4.9 million acres; down river at Kotri there is a second barrage irrigating over 1 million ha/2.46 million acres. There is a rail link with India via Hyderabad.

About 60% of the population speak Sindi; other languages include Urdu, Punjabi, Baluchi, and Pashto.

The Indus Valley Civilizations were established in Sind from 2300 to 1750 BC; Mohenjo Daro dates from this period. Sind's earliest recorded history deals with its annexation by the Persian Empire under Darius I. It was later controlled by a succession of empires: those of Alexander the Great, Seleucus, Chandragupta Maurya, the Indo-Greeks and Parthians, and the Scythians and Kusans. Sind became Buddhist in the 1st century AD, but was brought under Brahmin rule until the Arab conquest in 711 and the spread of Islam. An administrative province of the Ummayad and Abbasid empires from 711 to 900, Sind was ruled from 1591 to 1700 by the Moguls, followed by two independent Sind dynasties. The British, under Sir Charles Napier, took control in 1843 with Napier's punning one-word dispatch ‘Peccavi’ (‘I have sinned’). Sind was part of the Mumbai Presidency until 1937 when it was established as a separate province. After partition in 1947 it became part of the province of West Pakistan until 1970, when it was re-established as a separate province. There is agitation for its creation as a separate state, Sindhudesh.