Balochistan (region)

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This article is about the wider Balochistan region. For other uses of the name, see Balochistan.

Major ethnic groups in Pakistan and surrounding areas, in 1980. The Baloch are shown in pink.

Balochistan or Baluchistan is an arid region located in the Iranian Plateau in Southwest Asia and South Asia, between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The area is named after the numerous Baloch (or Baluch, Balouch, Balooch, Balush, Balosh, Baloosh, Baloush) tribes, an Iranian people, who moved into the area from the west around A.D. 1000. All natives are considered Balochi even if they do not speak Balochi; Pashto, Persian, and Brahui languages are also spoken in the region. The southern part of Balochistan is known as Makran.

1 Landscape
2 History
3 Famous people of Baluchistan
4 Baluchistan Separatist Movements
5 Baluchistan Political Parties
6 References
7 See also

[edit] Landscape

Balochistan's landscape is composed of barren, rugged mountains and fertile land. During the summer, some regions of Balochistan are the hottest in Pakistan. Most of the land is barren, and it is generally sparsely populated. In the south – the Makran – lies the desert through which Alexander the Great passed with great difficulty.

[edit] History

Main article: History of Balochistan

The original inhabitants of ancient Baluchistan, were the aborigine tribes speaking languages related to Munda languages.^{[citation needed]} The Dravidians are thought to have migrated from the Iranian plateau and settled in Baluchistan and the Indus valley around 4000 BC.^{[citation needed]} The Brahui living in Baluchistan still speak a Dravidian language, thought to be a remnant from this earlier susbtrate. The Indo-European Indo-Aryan peoples, and other Indo-Iranian peoples, migrated from what is now Afghanistan and surrounding areas starting around 2000 BC, and settled in all regions of Pakistan.^{[citation needed]} Later, these Aryan groups would become the Pakhtuns and the various Nuristani, Dardic, and other tribes that currently populate the region.^{[citation needed]} Before the arrival of the Baloch, the region was populated by Brahui people|Brahuis]].^{[citation needed]}. Nearly all of Baluchistan, and what is today the country of Pakistan, was part by the Persian Achaemenid dynasty that ruled the area for over two hundred years beginning in 540 BC. In 326 BC, Alexander the Great defeated the Hindu king Puru (Porus, Paurava) at the Hydaspes near Jhelum and annexed the area to his Hellenistic empire. After Alexander's death and brief Seleucid control, Baluchistan remained part of the Persian empire.

From the 1st century to the 3rd century AD, the region was ruled by the Pāratarājas (lit. "Pārata Kings"), a dynasty of Indo-Scythian or Indo-Parthian kings. The dynasty of the Pāratas is thought to be identical with the Pāradas of the Mahabharata, the Puranas and other Indian sources.^[1]

They are essentially known through their coins, which typically exhibit the bust of the ruler on the obverse, with long hair within a headband), and a swastika within a Brahmi legend on the reverse (usually silver coins) or Kharoshthi (usually copper coins). The coins can mainly be found in the Loralai area of modern Pakistan.

Herodotus in 650 BC describes the Paraitakenoi as a tribe ruled by Deiokes, a Persian king, in northwestern Persia (History I.101). Arrian describes how Alexander the Great encountered the Pareitakai in Bactria and Sogdiana, and had them conquered by Craterus (Anabasis Alexandrou IV). The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century AD) describes the territory of the Paradon beyond the Ommanitic region, on the coast of modern Baluchistan.^[2]

During the Arab conquest of the Persian empire in the 8th century, Muslim technocrats, bureaucrats, soldiers, traders, scientists, architects, teachers, theologians and sufis flocked from the rest of the Muslim world and many settled in Baluchistan and its tributory state until the rise of the Mughals. Numerous Baloch tribes, an Iranian people, moved into the area from the west in the 11th century to escape the Seljuk Turks. Western Baluchistan was conquered by Iran in the 19th century, and its boundary was fixed in 1872. Omani influence waned in the east and Oman's last possession, Gwadar, was bought by Pakistan in 1958. In 1998 Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.