With over 241 million people, Pakistan is the fifth most populous country in the world. Northern Pakistan is mountainous; its Hindu Kush range joins with the Himalayas and includes some of the highest peaks on Earth. The River Indus flows southwards from these mountains across Pakistan’s large central plain. Together with its tributaries, the Indus brings much-needed water to this otherwise dry land. The land along Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan is also mountainous, while the lowlands in east merge into the Thar, or Great Indian, Desert. In the southwest, the province of Balochistan lies on a hot, dry plateau. Pakistan has an extremely hot and dry climate, with a cooler, rainy monsoon season between July and September. A number of heatwaves in the 2010s and 2020s have seen temperatures near or exceed 50°C (120°F) in April or May.

People

Pakistan is home to many different ethnic groups, speaking more than 60 languages. The national language, Urdu, is a first language to just 7% of Pakistanis, although around three-quarters of the population are able to speak and understand it. Just under 40% of Pakistanis speak Punjabi as a first language.
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Pakistan’s Punjabi and Sindhi people are descended from Aryan settlers who settled in the Indus Valley around 1500 BC. The Pashtuns originate from Afghanistan; their language, Pashto, is the second-most widely spoken in Pakistan. Balochs (also called Baluchis), who make up just under 4% of the population, have their roots in Iran.
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Religion

Pakistan is the world’s second-largest Muslim country (after Indonesia); over 95% of people are Muslim, most of them belonging to the Sunni branch of Islam. There are two types of schools: government schools, and religious schools called madrasas. Here, children receive a religious education along with food and accommodation.
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Migration

Pakistan’s population is young, with around 64% of the population under 30 years old. To escape poverty, many people have moved from the countryside to find work in the cities, such as the great port city of Karachi (see below). Others have moved abroad to work or study. More than 7.6 million Pakistanis live in other countries all over the world, sending money home to their families.
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Women and girls

According to World Economic Forum figures, Pakistan ranks low in the world in terms of gender equality. It means that men have significant advantages over women in Pakistan. The WEF marks countries on a range of measures including wage equality, number of women in parliament, women’s life expectancy and girls’ education.
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In traditional Pakistani society, women are expected to take care of the home as wives and mothers, while men are the chief breadwinners. Education for boys is therefore prioritized over that for girls, because it is perceived that boys must acquire the skills to earn money in the workplace, while girls need only the domestic skills to be good mothers and wives (an education is not required for employment in the garment industry). Destruction of schools—and even violence towards female pupils—have harmed women's education even further: the Taliban Islamist terrorist movement is strongly opposed to girls’ education.

​​​​​​​Gender difference in education is particularly marked amongst the poorest households, especially in rural areas, where only 12% of women can read and write. Just 18% of Pakistani women have received 10 years or more of schooling. Only among rich Pakistanis is the gender gap in education non-existent.

Agriculture

Around half of Pakistan’s workforce works in agriculture, on farms or in food processing. Much of the land is made suitable for farming by irrigation, a system where water is diverted from rivers and channelled to where it is needed. Wheat and rice are the main crops grown to feed the population, while cotton is a major cash crop, grown for export abroad and use in the country’s textile industry. Pakistan is the fourth-largest producer of cotton in the world.
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Textile industry

The most important manufacturing industry in Pakistan is the textile industry, which employs around 15 million people, many of whom are women. In large factories, mainly in Karachi and the Punjab’s major cities, people work to make cotton fabrics, clothes and sheets, knitwear, and cotton yarn. Clothing and textiles together make up almost 60% of Pakistan’s exports.
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Creation of Pakistan

In 1947, British India (known as the Raj in Hindi) ceased to exist. Up to that time, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were all vast one terrtory under British rule. On independence in August 1947, the Partition of India came into effect, separating the two mainly Muslim regions in the northeast and northwest from India, which was mostly Hindi and Sikh, making them into a new country called Pakistan.
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The two parts of Pakistan were originally divided by a distance of more than 1450 kilometres (900 miles) either side of India. The shape of the country changed again when in 1971, East Pakistan broke away from West Pakistan, to become a new country: Bangladesh.

Present-day Pakistan is made up of four provinces: Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan. There are also three territories: Islamabad Capital Territory, plus the two Kashmir territories of Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.

The largely Muslim region of Kashmir, lying in the foothills of the Himalayas between India and Pakistan, is a disputed territory, with both India and Pakistan controlling parts of it. The two countries have fought several wars over Kashmir, and tensions remain high over who owns the land. The border between Indian-controlled Kashmir and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir is heavily guarded, despite parts of it passing through a mountainous, glacial landscape.

Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, is located on the Arabian Sea coast of Sindh province. Founded in 1729 as the village of Kolachi (perhaps named after a local man Mai Kolachi, whose son had slain a man-eating crocodile), it grew up around a natural harbour at the mouth of the River Lyari.

The settlement increased in importance with its conquest by the British East India Company in 1839. Over the next few decades, the British transformed the city into a major seaport, for the export of wheat and cotton cultivated inland. Connected to the railway network of the Indian subcontinent, Karachi grew rapidly, attracting migrant workers from across South Asia.
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Many of today's residents of Karachi descend from Urdu-speaking migrants and Muslim refugees from North India known as Muhajirs (from the Arabic word for "migrant"). The first Muhajirs arrived in 1946 after riots in Bengal and Bihar, with a further huge influx following Partition in 1947. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants travelled from India, while most of Karachi's Hindu residents went in the opposite direction. The city's total population tripled between 1941 and 1951.

​​​​​​​Karachi was Pakistan's capital from 1947 until Rawalpindi took over in 1959. Further waves of immigration took place in the 1970s, when more than a million Biharis arrived after Bangladesh separated from Pakistan in 1971, in the 1980s and 90s when another million Afghan refugees fled the Soviet–Afghan War and in the 2010s following the disastrous floods.

Largely as a result of immigration—both from other parts of Pakistan and further afield—Karachi is one of the world's fastest-growing cities: its population jumped from 16 to over 20 million between 2017 and 2024. It has large communities representing almost every ethnic group in Pakistan, as well as many migrants from other parts of Asia (including 400,000 Rohingya from Myanmar). Around half of Karachi's population are Urdu speakers.

Today, Karachi is also Pakistan's financial and commercial capital, generating approximately 25% of Pakistan's entire GDP. Many of Pakistan's largest companies, producing textiles, cement, steel, heavy machinery, chemicals and food products, are based in the city. Karachi's seaports, the Port of Karachi and Port Qasim, handle nearly all the country's foreign trade. Every Pakistani bank is headquartered on Karachi's I. I. Chundrigar Road, known as "Pakistan's Wall Street".

Lahore

The city of Lahore, which is located on the eastern shore of the River Ravi in Punjab province, northeastern Pakistan, was founded in around the year 1000. What is now known as the Walled City was built around this time. Lahore came under the rule of the Ghaznavid Empire in the 1020s, later falling to the Ghurid ruler Muhammad at the Siege of Lahore in 1186. Lahore was later conquered by the Mongols and Delhi Sultanate, before coming under the rule of the Mughal Empire in 1555.
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Akbar the Great made the city his capital and began reconstruction work on the ruined Lahore Fort in 1566. Dozens of mosques, tombs and other monuments were built during the rule of later Mughal emperors, including Jahangir and Shah Jahan. In its Mughal heyday, Lahore became one of the largest cities in the world.
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After the end of Mughal rule, the city was occupied by the advancing Afghan Durrani Empire in the late 18th century. The Afghans were finally driven out by Ranjit Singh in 1799, who proclaimed himself the Maharaja of Punjab in 1801. Thus Lahore became the capital of the Sikh Empire. Along with the rest of the Punjab, Lahore fell to the British East India Company, victorious in the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849.

As tensions grew in 1947 ahead of Partition, Lahore experienced terrible riots, during which the Shah Alami Bazaar, a largely Hindu quarter of the Walled City, was burnt to the ground. By late August, as Lahore became part of the new state of Pakistan, two-thirds of the city's Hindu and Sikh population had fled the city. At the same time it received huge numbers of Muslim refugees fleeing eastern Punjab and northern India.
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Today Lahore is the second largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, with a population of 13 million people. The vast majority are Muslims. Some 80% are Punjabis and nearly three-quarters speak Punjabi as their first language. Lahore is an extremely young city, with more than 40% of its inhabitants below the age of 15.

Lahore is major industrial city, although in recent decades its focus has shifted from from manufacturing to service industries, in which more than 40% of its workforce is now employed. The city is Pakistan's largest software and hardware producing centre and it remains the principal centre of cultural activity in Pakistan.
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Smog in Lahore

Lahore suffers from severe air pollution, usually peaking in late November and December as cold, dense air rolls southwards from the Himalayas trapping pollutants close to the ground. The smog, reached abnormally high levels in November 2024, leading to school closures, a ban on motorbike rickshaws and heavy vehicles in certain areas, and an appeal by the authorities to the city's residents to stay indoors.
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A major cause of the smog is the smoke from the burning of stubble after the harvest by farmers in both Pakistan and India. Another is the exhaust fumes from Lahore's five million motorbikes and millions of other vehicles. Coal-fired brick kilns on the city's outskirts also contribute. The problem also afflicts the Indian National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.

Facts about Pakistan

Area 770,875 sq km (297,640 sq miles)

Population 241,499,431

Highest point K2 8611 m (28,244 ft)

Capital Islamabad (population 1.1 million)

Other major cities Karachi (20.4 million), Lahore (13 million), Faisalabad (3.7 million), Rawalpindi (3.4 million), Gujranwala (2.5 million), Multan (2.2 million), Hyderabad (1.9 million), Peshawar (1,905,975)

Languages Urdu and English (official languages), Punjabi, Pashto

Religions Muslim 96.4% (Sunni 85–90%, Shia 10–15%), Christian, Hindu and other 3.6%

Ethnicity Punjabi 44.7%, Pashtun 15.4%, Sindhi 14.1%, Sariaki 8.4%, Muhajirs 7.6%, Balochi 3.6%, other 6.2%

Currency Pakistani rupee (PKR)

Chief exports Textiles and clothing, cotton, rice, chemicals, leather goods, food products, carpets