Multan

Multan is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan, near the Chenab River in the south of the province. Known as the City of Saints, it holds the shrines of Sufi saints who taught there in the Middle Ages.

Multan is one of the oldest cities of South Asia, and it was a center of the worship of the sun god before Islam came to the region in the 8th century. In the 13th and 14th centuries the Sufi teachers Bahauddin Zakariya and his grandson Rukn-e-Alam made the city a center of learning, and pilgrims from across the country still come to honor them. The city was ruled by the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals and later the Sikh Empire, and it came under British rule in the 1840s. Its old walled city, with gates and narrow bazaars, grew around a fortified mound.

Mangoes, among them the Chaunsa and Sindhri varieties, are grown in orchards around the city and sent across Pakistan and abroad. Pak-Arab Fertilizers, based in Multan, makes fertilizers for the farms of the Punjab. Cotton from the fields of southern Punjab is ginned and spun in mills around the city.

The Shrine of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, a brick building of the early 14th century with a great dome, is decorated with blue and white glazed tiles. Multan blue pottery, painted in cobalt blue on a white ground, is made in workshops of the old city. Sohan halwa, a dense sweet of milk, sugar and nuts, is sold in shops across Multan. The Ghanta Ghar, a clock tower of the colonial period, stands at the center of the city.