History
Dera Ismail Khan was created as an administrative unit of British India, part of the Derajat Division of the North-West Frontier Province, though this was not accepted by the local rulers. It was formerly divided into two almost equal portions by the Indus River, which intersected it from north to south. To the west of the Indus the characteristics of the country resembled those of Dera Ghazi Khan. This region included lar, home of the BALOCHS of lar. To the east of the present bed of the river there is a wide tract known as the Kachi, exposed to river action. Beyond this, the country rises abruptly, and a barren, almost desert plain stretches eastwards, sparsely cultivated, and inhabited by nomadic tribes of herdsmen. In 1901 the trans-Indus tract was allotted to the newly formed North-West Frontier Province, the cis-Indus tract remaining in the Punjab jurisdiction. The cis-Indus portions of the Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu districts now comprise the new Punjab district of Mianwali. Wheat and wool were exported. In 1901 it contained an area of 3,403 sq mi (8,810 km2) and a population of 252,379, chiefly Baluch and Pashtun Muslims. In 1947 it became part of the newly independent Pakistan.
Read more about this topic: Dera Ismail Khan District
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)