94 Fun Facts About Pakistan

Which city has been the capital of Pakistan since it was built as a planned city in the 1960s?

Islamabad: planners wanted a capital easier to reach from the whole country and close to the army's Rawalpindi headquarters, and Rawalpindi served as stand-in capital while it was built.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah is revered in Pakistan by the title Quaid-e-Azam, which means what?

Great Leader: early in his career Sarojini Naidu hailed Jinnah as an 'ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity', long before he led the campaign for a separate Pakistan.

The Indus River rises in which region before flowing through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea?

Tibet: the Indus rises there near sacred Mount Kailash as the 'Lion River', and the name India itself derives from the river.

Which is Pakistan's national sport?

Field hockey: Pakistan won three Olympic golds and four World Cups, yet its men's team failed to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Which animal, known for its corkscrew horns, is the national animal of Pakistan?

Markhor: its Persian name is usually read as 'snake-eater', and local communities receive 80% of Pakistan's trophy-hunting licence fees for it, which gives them a reason to protect it.

Which flower is Pakistan's national flower?

Jasmine: it is also Tunisia's national flower, so Western media dubbed Tunisia's 2010–11 revolution the Jasmine Revolution.

Which conifer is the national tree of Pakistan?

Deodar: its rot-resistant timber made it prized for building, including the famous houseboats of Srinagar in Kashmir.

Malala Yousafzai grew up under Taliban control in which Pakistani valley?

Swat: at 11 she blogged anonymously for the BBC about life there under the Taliban, and at 17 she became the youngest Nobel laureate.

Abdus Salam, the first Pakistani Nobel laureate, won the 1979 prize in which field?

Physics: Salam was an Ahmadi, a group a 1974 amendment declared non-Muslim, and the word 'Muslim' was later removed from his gravestone.

What is the nickname of the bronze statuette unearthed at Mohenjo-daro in 1926?

Dancing Girl: when Mohenjo-daro's finds were shared out at partition, she went to India, while the Priest-King went to Pakistan's national museum.

The Mohenjo-daro archaeological site lies in which province?

Sindh: archaeologist R. D. Banerji came to survey what he took for a Buddhist stupa in 1919–20 and found artefacts from a far older city.

The Badshahi Mosque in Lahore was commissioned in 1671 by which Mughal emperor?

Aurangzeb: after Ranjit Singh took Lahore in 1799, his army used the mosque's courtyard as a stable and its rooms to store military supplies.

The tent-shaped Faisal Mosque was designed by an architect from which country?

Turkey: Vedat Dalokay's domeless design, modelled on a Bedouin tent, won a 1969 competition, and the mosque was named for Saudi King Faisal, who funded it.

Which language is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan?

Urdu: it is the national language and lingua franca, yet in the 2023 census only about 9% of Pakistanis named it as their mother tongue.

Who became the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country, in 1988?

Benazir Bhutto: she took office 11 years after a coup toppled her father's government, and both of her terms ended in dismissal.

The Khyber Pass runs along Pakistan's border with which country?

Afghanistan: after 2001 the pass became a crucial overland supply route for the US and NATO forces fighting there.

Which Pakistani peak earned the nickname 'Killer Mountain' for its many climber deaths?

Nanga Parbat: 31 people had died on it before Hermann Buhl reached the top alone in 1953, without supplementary oxygen.

Which Pakistani squash player went unbeaten in competitive matches from 1981 to 1986?

Jahangir Khan: his 555-match streak ended in the 1986 World Open final against Ross Norman, and he also won ten straight British Open titles.

Imran Khan's Pakistan won the 1992 Cricket World Cup final against which team?

England: earlier in the tournament England bowled Pakistan out for 74, and only rain, which washed that match out, kept Pakistan from going out.

The polytheistic Kalash people live in three valleys of which region?

Chitral: its Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir valleys shelter the Kalash, who kept their old faith while people across the border in Kafiristan were forcibly converted in the 1890s.

The Karakoram Highway reaches its highest point near which mountain pass on the Chinese border?

Khunjerab Pass: at least 810 Pakistani workers died building the highway through the Karakoram, and it opened to tourists in 1986.

The port of Gwadar was purchased by Pakistan in 1958 from which country?

Oman: its sultans had held Gwadar since 1783, and after the 1958 handover China went on to build a deep-water port there.

Which dam on the Indus is the world's largest earth-filled dam by structural volume?

Tarbela Dam: built as part of the project that followed the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, its reservoir forced about 96,000 people from their villages.

On Pakistan's flag, what does the vertical white stripe at the hoist represent?

Religious minorities: the flag grew out of the Muslim League's green banner, and the white stripe for non-Muslims was added shortly before independence.

Which border crossing near Lahore stages a nightly flag-lowering ceremony by Pakistani and Indian guards?

Wagah: in November 2014 a suicide bomber killed dozens of people on the Pakistani side just after the daily ceremony.

Which is the largest of Pakistan's provinces by area, but the least populated?

Balochistan: the princely state of Kalat there stayed independent after August 1947, and its Khan acceded to Pakistan only in March 1948.

The North-West Frontier Province was renamed what in April 2010?

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa became the province's name under the 18th Constitutional Amendment, signed into law on 19 April 2010, reflecting its Pashtun majority.

Gilgit-Baltistan, home to K2, was known by what name until 2009?

Northern Areas was the name given in 1970 to the combined Gilgit Agency and Baltistan; the 2009 Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order renamed the territory and gave it an elected assembly.

The Pakistan Super League played its first season in 2016 in which country?

United Arab Emirates venues in Dubai and Sharjah hosted the whole inaugural 2016 season, because international cricket had largely avoided Pakistan since the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was the world's most famous performer of which form of Sufi devotional music?

Qawwali: his work with Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack of The Last Temptation of Christ helped carry the Sufi form to Western audiences.

The Shalimar Gardens in Lahore were begun in 1641 under which Mughal emperor?

Shah Jahan: the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh later ordered the gardens repaired in 1806, and in 1981 UNESCO listed them together with Lahore Fort.

The UNESCO World Heritage city of Taxila was a centre of which ancient region and its Buddhist art?

Gandhara: its Greek-influenced sculptors are believed to have made the first images of the Buddha in human form, ending an era when he was shown only by symbols.

Rohtas Fort near the Salt Range was commissioned by which 16th-century ruler?

Sher Shah Suri: he began the fort in 1541 to hold down the Gakhar tribe and block the exiled Humayun's return, with Todar Mal supervising the work.

Makli Necropolis, among the world's largest funerary sites, lies near which historic city?

Thatta: it flourished as a Samma capital on the Indus, but when the river shifted its course east, the city lost its port and declined.

Which annual holiday marks the Lahore Resolution of 23 March 1940?

Pakistan Day: the Muslim League's resolution called for independent states in Muslim-majority regions and laid the foundations of the Pakistan Movement.

Arfa Karim became the youngest person in the world to hold which certification in 2004?

Microsoft Certified Professional status came at age nine in 2004, and Bill Gates invited her to Microsoft's headquarters the following year; Arfa Karim died in January 2012 aged 16.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's Oscars for Saving Face and A Girl in the River were in which category?

Documentary short: A Girl in the River pushed Pakistan's government to review its honour-killing laws, and a 2016 act closed the loophole that let families pardon killers.

Bangladesh was a province of Pakistan until 1971 under what name?

East Pakistan: Indian territory separated it from the western wing, and the 1971 war ended with Pakistan's forces surrendering in December.

In Choudhry Rahmat Ali's acronym 'Pakistan', what does the P stand for?

Panjab supplied the P in Rahmat Ali's 1933 pamphlet Now or Never, with Afghania, Kashmir and Baluchistan supplying other letters; the word also means 'land of the pure' in Persian.

Which city is home to Mazar-e-Quaid, the mausoleum of Muhammad Ali Jinnah?

Karachi: a British design won an international competition for Jinnah's tomb, but his sister Fatima Jinnah had it rejected and brought in architect Yahya Merchant.

Who served as Pakistan's first prime minister?

Liaquat Ali Khan: he led the government from independence until an assassin shot him while he was addressing a rally in Rawalpindi on 16 October 1951.

In which city did Muhammad Iqbal give his famous 1930 address on a political framework for Muslim-majority regions?

Allahabad: Iqbal's December 1930 address there urged uniting the north-western Muslim provinces into a single state, though historians debate how independent, and he died in 1938.

When Pakistan became an Islamic republic in 1956, which governor-general became its first president?

Iskander Mirza: in October 1958 he abrogated the constitution and declared martial law, and within three weeks army chief Ayub Khan forced him into exile.

Which country borders Pakistan to the southwest?

Iran: in 2007 it began building a concrete wall along the frontier to stop illegal border crossings and drug smuggling.

Brothers Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi of Lahore wrote Brain in 1986, considered the first what for the IBM PC?

Computer virus: the brothers said they wrote Brain to stop piracy of their medical software, and put their own address and three phone numbers in the code.

Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab draws pilgrims as the birthplace of the founder of which world religion?

Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak, who was born in the town; it was known as Talwandi until it was renamed in his honour.

In which Pakistani garrison city, home to the national military academy, was Osama bin Laden killed in 2011?

Abbottabad was founded in 1853 and named after James Abbott, a British officer; Pakistan demolished bin Laden's walled compound there in 2012, the year after the US raid.

Arshad Nadeem won Pakistan's first individual Olympic gold medal at Paris 2024 in which athletics event?

Javelin: his throw of 92.97 metres set an Olympic record, nine years after Nadeem, who had hoped to become a cricketer, first picked one up.

Legend says the salt deposits at Khewra in Pakistan were found when whose army horses began licking the rocks?

Alexander the Great's troops are credited with the find in 326 BC; Khewra is now the world's second-largest salt mine, and its rock salt is sold worldwide as Himalayan salt.

The Indus river dolphin, Pakistan's national mammal, has almost entirely lost which of its senses?

Sight is all but gone: the dolphin's eyes have no lens, so it can make out little more than light and dark, and it hunts and steers by echolocation instead.

The name Pakistan, first published in a 1933 pamphlet, is usually translated from Persian as what?

Land of the Pure joins the Persian pak, meaning pure, to the suffix -stan, meaning place of; its coiner also built the name as an acronym of regions.

Kashmiri chai, a salted milk tea popular in Pakistan, turns which colour when brewed with baking soda?

Pink comes from chemistry: green tea leaves are boiled with baking soda until they turn burgundy, then milk is added; in Pakistan it is often served with sugar and nuts.

Abdul Sattar Edhi, Pakistan's 'Angel of Mercy', built the world's largest volunteer network of which vehicles?

Ambulances made Edhi a national hero: he bought the first with donations, never took a salary from his foundation and owned only two sets of clothes.

Lahore's main cricket stadium, home of the Pakistan Cricket Board, was renamed in the 1970s after which foreign ruler?

Muammar Gaddafi of Libya gave his name to the old Lahore Stadium, which went on to stage the final of the 1996 Cricket World Cup.

Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on which date, one day before neighbouring India marks its own?

14 August is the date Pakistan settled on, though its first commemorative stamps, issued the following summer, still printed 15 August as the day of independence.

Which vehicles do Pakistani folk artists famously cover in painted flowers, verse and dangling chains?

Cargo trucks decorated this way were nicknamed jingle trucks by American troops, after the sound of the chains and pendants swinging from their bumpers.

Chaunsa and Anwar Ratol are prized varieties of which fruit, the national fruit of Pakistan?

Mango is a title-holder three times over, as the national fruit of India and the Philippines too; the small yellow Anwar Ratol is prized for having no fibre.

Which outfit of loose trousers and a long tunic, worn by men and women alike, is Pakistan's national dress?

Shalwar kameez is built for movement: the trousers are held up by a drawstring that pleats them at the waist, and the tunic's side seams are left open below the waistline.

Which currency, issued by the State Bank of Pakistan, was traditionally divided into 100 paisa?

Rupee notes made for the new state in 1948 were still Indian ones, issued by the Reserve Bank of India with the words Government of Pakistan added to the plates.

Which nickname for Pakistan's film industry is credited to a 1989 column by gossip writer Saleem Nasir?

Lollywood blends Hollywood with Lahore, the city where Pakistan's film studios gathered after independence.

After being shot in 2012, Malala Yousafzai was flown to hospital in which British city, later her home?

Birmingham became her base: she finished school there, co-founded the Malala Fund and went on to read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, trained at Lincoln's Inn in London to become what?

Barrister was his calling long before politics: back in India he enrolled at the Bombay High Court, and only later did national politics replace his legal practice.

Which Pakistani fast bowler, nicknamed the Rawalpindi Express, was clocked at 100.2 mph at the 2003 Cricket World Cup?

Shoaib Akhtar's delivery, measured at 161.3 km/h, was recognised by Guinness World Records as the fastest ball ever bowled in cricket.

Basant, the spring festival long associated with Lahore, traditionally fills the city's sky with what?

Kites are the heart of Basant, but glass-coated strings caused so many deaths that Punjab banned the festival from 2007 until February 2026.

Which Lahore tower, completed in 1968, marks the spot where the Lahore Resolution was passed in 1940?

Minar-e-Pakistan took eight years to build and stands in Greater Iqbal Park; the resolution passed there was the first official call for a separate Muslim homeland.

Which bird, said in South Asian folklore to gaze lovingly at the moon, is the national bird of Pakistan?

Chukar partridge, or chakor, stands for intense and often unrequited love in the region's culture; its fierce temper in the breeding season also made it a fighting bird.

Which street-stall drink did Pakistan's government declare the national drink in 2019 after a public poll on Twitter?

Sugarcane juice won the vote; vendors feed whole stalks into a pressing machine that squeezes out the sugary sap, glass by glass.

Which ICC tournament did Pakistan, the lowest-ranked team entered, win in 2017 by beating India by 180 runs?

Champions Trophy glory came at The Oval in London, where Fakhar Zaman hit 114 and the winning margin was the largest in the final of any ICC one-day tournament.

Which sport is played each July at Shandur in Pakistan's mountains, on the highest ground of its kind in the world?

Polo at Shandur is played under freestyle rules at about 3,700 metres, and Michael Palin filmed the tournament for the first episode of his Himalaya series.

Which British author, born in Bombay, worked as a young journalist in Lahore, where his father ran the museum?

Rudyard Kipling joined the Civil and Military Gazette as assistant editor, and the Zamzama cannon outside the Lahore Museum is nicknamed Kim's Gun after his novel.

The cancer hospital Imran Khan opened in Lahore in 1994 is named Shaukat Khanum after which relative of his?

His mother died of cancer in 1985, and seeing poor patients struggle during her illness set the former cricket captain raising funds for a specialist hospital.

Chicken karahi, a Pakistani restaurant favourite of chicken, tomatoes and ginger, takes its name from what?

The pan it cooks in is the karahi, a deep, steep-sided cousin of the wok; unlike most curries of the region, the dish is traditionally made without onions.

Which language is spoken natively by the largest share of Pakistanis, far ahead of the national language itself?

Punjabi is the country's most widely spoken native language, and Pakistanis write it in the Shahmukhi script rather than the Gurmukhi script used across the border in India.

Which ancient Punjab city, its bricks taken as railway ballast in the 1850s, gave the Indus civilisation its other name?

Harappa was the first of the civilisation's sites to be excavated, in the 1920s, so archaeologists followed custom and named the whole culture after it.

A 2006 Nature paper reported that Stone Age farmers at Mehrgarh in Pakistan practised an early form of what?

Dentistry, of a sort: molars from the site had been drilled while their owners were alive, the oldest evidence of tooth-drilling in a living person.

Which three-word motto, taken from Jinnah's guiding principles, runs along the scroll of Pakistan's state emblem?

Faith, Unity, Discipline translates Iman, Ittehad, Nazm, the words read from right to left beneath the emblem's shield.

Which Pakistani left-arm bowler, the 'Sultan of Swing', was the first to take 500 one-day international wickets?

Wasim Akram reached the mark during the 2003 World Cup and is regarded as one of the founders, and perhaps the finest exponent, of reverse swing.

Which television music show did Rohail Hyatt, formerly of the band Vital Signs, launch in Pakistan in 2008?

Coke Studio opened its first season in front of a live audience, then settled into studio-recorded sessions that pair established stars with emerging artists.

In which Pakistani animated series does schoolteacher Jiya fight villains with a martial art of thrown books and pens?

Burka Avenger was created by the pop star Haroon to back education for schoolgirls; her enemies are corrupt politicians and mercenaries who try to shut their schools down.

Which army chief seized power in Pakistan's bloodless 1999 coup after his airliner was refused permission to land?

Pervez Musharraf was flying home from Sri Lanka when the prime minister tried to remove him; within 17 hours army commanders held every key institution.

Attabad Lake, a turquoise tourist draw in Pakistan's Hunza Valley, was created in 2010 by what?

A landslide blocked the Hunza River for months, killing twenty people and drowning 19 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway under the new lake.

Which stew of simmered shank and bone marrow, first served to Mughal nobles at breakfast, is a Pakistani favourite?

Nihari was eaten after the dawn prayer, and food historians argue over whether it was born in the kitchens of Delhi or of Lucknow.

Which poet wrote the words of Pakistan's national anthem in 1952, three years after its music had been composed?

Hafeez Jalandhari's verses were fitted to a tune Ahmad Chagla had composed in 1949, after a national committee found none of the earlier submissions suitable.

Which Marxist poet, jailed after a 1951 coup plot, won the Soviet Union's Lenin Peace Prize in 1962?

Faiz Ahmad Faiz spent four years in prison over the plot, known as the Rawalpindi conspiracy, and wrote two of his collections of verse while behind bars.

Which Lahore-raised novelist wrote The Reluctant Fundamentalist, about a Pakistani who quits America after 9/11?

Mohsin Hamid's novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and filmed by Mira Nair with Riz Ahmed in the lead; his later Exit West made the Booker shortlist too.

Samina Baig became in 2013 the first Pakistani woman to stand on the summit of which mountain?

Mount Everest was only the start: by 2014 she had climbed all Seven Summits, and a 6,000-metre peak she was the first to climb in Pakistan was renamed after her.

The Sheesh Mahal, a marble pavilion in Lahore Fort, owes its popular English name to walls inlaid with what?

Mirrors set into the white marble walls and ceilings make the room gleam, so it became the Palace of Mirrors; the fort around it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

On Pakistan's green flag the star stands for light and knowledge; what does the crescent beside it represent?

Progress is the crescent's message; together the crescent and star also form a familiar symbol of Islam.

Deosai National Park, on a high plateau in Pakistan's mountains, was set up in 1993 to protect which animal?

Brown bear numbers were critically low when the park was created for the Himalayan subspecies; Deosai's plains average 4,114 metres, the second-highest plateau on Earth.

Which 2022 duet by Ali Sethi and newcomer Shae Gill was that year's most-streamed Pakistani song on Spotify?

Pasoori, whose title means difficulty or trouble, was also the second most-searched song in the world on Google that year.

Which Lahore band, led by guitarist Salman Ahmad with singer Ali Azmat, pioneered the genre known as Sufi rock?

Junoon, a name meaning obsession, formed in 1990; Ahmad had grown up partly in New York, where he saved 235 dollars to buy his first electric guitar.

Which 2022 drama, the first Pakistani film in the official selection at Cannes, won a jury prize there?

Joyland was at first banned from Pakistani cinemas, then cleared after minor cuts, and became the first Pakistani film shortlisted for the international feature Oscar.

Which yoghurt drink, traditionally made in the Punjab from water buffalo milk, is served sweet or salted in Pakistan?

Lassi began in the Punjab and has the thickness of a smoothie; the savoury kind is often spiced with cumin, while cardamom is a classic addition to the sweet one.

Which aromatic long-grain rice of Pakistan and northern India was first named in a 1766 verse epic?

Basmati's earliest known mention comes in Heer Ranjha, a tragic romance in verse; by 2019 Pakistan supplied about 35 per cent of the international trade in it.