हिंदीOn this day
Standing

Attock Fort

The fort over the Indus crossing where Maratha horsemen watered their horses in 1758 and the Sikh army beat the Afghans in 1813. To say a thing ‘reached Attock’ became a Marathi way of saying it reached the farthest frontier.

Built: 1581–83, by Akbar, at the old crossing of the SindhuWhere: Punjab (Attock district), Pakistan, Pakistan33.89° N, 72.24° E
  1. 1581–83
  2. April 1758
  3. 13 July 1813
  4. 1849
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain

01From Akbar to the Marathas

The Kabul river meets the Indus just above Attock, and for two thousand years armies crossed here, near old Udabhandapura, the Hindu Shahi capital a little upstream at Hund. Akbar built the fort in 1581–83 after his campaign against his brother Mirza Hakim of Kabul. In 1758, two years after Ahmad Shah Abdali sacked Delhi and Mathura, Raghunathrao, with Malhar Rao Holkar and the Scindias, drove the Afghans out of the Punjab and reached Attock in April; Maratha detachments went on to Peshawar. The Marathi phrase Atkepar zenda, the flag beyond Attock, comes from that summer.

02The Sikh fort

In 1813 Maharaja Ranjit Singh bought the fort from its Afghan governor, and the Durrani wazir Fateh Khan marched to take it back. On 13 July 1813, at Chhachh near Attock, the Sikh army under Diwan Mohkam Chand, with Hari Singh Nalwa among its commanders, broke the Afghan attack in the summer heat. It was the first great Sikh victory over the Afghans, and Attock remained the Sikh gateway to Peshawar and the Khyber until the British annexed the Punjab in 1849. The fort is held by the Pakistan Army today and is closed to visitors.

The life of this place

  1. 1581–83Akbar builds the fort at the Indus crossing.
  2. April 1758Raghunathrao’s Maratha army reaches Attock and pushes on to Peshawar.
  3. 13 July 1813The Sikh army defeats the Afghans under Fateh Khan; Attock becomes a Sikh fort.
  4. 1849The British annex the Punjab and take over the fort.

People

Malhar Rao HolkarWarrior
16 Mar 1693 – 20 May 1766

Malhar Rao Holkar

Founder of the Holkar house of Indore

Hari Singh NalwaWarrior
1791–1837 CE

Hari Singh Nalwa

Sikh general who held the Khyber

Nearby

Waihind (Udabhandapura, Hund)Ruined
The long resistance: Sindh to Tarain

Waihind (Udabhandapura, Hund)

Udabhandapura, the Waihind of the Arab writers, on the right bank of the Indus above Attock, was the capital of the Hindu Shahi kings Jayapala and Anandapala. Near it in 1008–09 Anandapala’s allied army fought Mahmud of Ghazni and lost.

Takshashila (Taxila)Excavated
Janapadas and the Rise of Magadha

Takshashila (Taxila)

The great city of learning of Gandhara, where Chanakya taught, Jivaka studied medicine and, says the Mahabharata, Vaishampayana first recited the Bharata to Janamejaya. Its three excavated cities, Bhir Mound, Sirkap and Sirsukh, lie outside Rawalpindi.

Peshawar (Purushapura)Standing
Shungas, Satavahanas, Kharavela and the Sangam Kingdoms

Peshawar (Purushapura)

Purushapura, the city at the foot of the Khyber, was Kanishka’s capital and later a city of the Hindu Shahis, before whose walls Jayapala fell to Mahmud in 1001. Hari Singh Nalwa governed it for the Sikh empire in the 1830s.

HaripurStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Haripur

The town Hari Singh Nalwa founded in 1822 when Ranjit Singh made him governor of Hazara, with a fort to hold the hill country between the Indus and Kashmir. It was the headquarters of Hazara until the British took the Punjab.