Thatta - History

History

The city, formerly commanding the delta of the Indus, was the capital of Lower Sindh from the 14th century onwards. During the ruling period of the Samma dynasty, Thatta was the capital of Sindh for 95 years. Between 1592-1739, it was governed in the name of the Mughal emperors of Delhi. In 1739 however, following the Battle of Karnal, the province was ceded to Nadir Shah of Persia, after which Thatta fell into neglect as the Indus river started to silt up. In the 17th Century, the Dutch East India Company had a small tradingpost (comptoir) in Thatta.

Thatta may be the site of ancient Patala (Πάταλα in Greek), the main port on the Indus in the time of Alexander the Great. The site of Patala has been subject to much debate. Ahmad Hasan Dani, director of the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations, Islamabad, concluded: “There has been a vain attempt to identify the city of Patala. If ‘Patala’ is not taken as a proper name but only refers to a city, it can be corrected to ‘Pattana’, that is, city or port city par excellence, a term applied in a later period to Thatta, which is ideally situated in the way the Greek historians describe”.

The geographer Strabo (c.64 BC–c.24 AD) recorded that: “The Indus falls into the southern sea by two mouths, encompassing the country of Patalênê, which resembles the Delta in Egypt”. He noted: “All these were conquered by Alexander, and last of all he reduced Patalênê, which the Indus forms by splitting into two branches… Patalênê contains a considerable city, Patala, which gives its name to the island”. In the late second century BC Agatharchides of Cnidus recorded merchants from Patala, or as he called it, “Potana”, coming to the island of Socotra to trade with Alexandrian merchants.