Mir Pur district of Azad Jammu & Kashmir (Pakistan)
Short brief history of Mir Pur Azad Jammu & Kashmir (Pakistan)
Mirpur
is the capital of Mirpur district and one of the
largest cities in the part of the state of Jammu Kashmir administered by
Pakistan.
The city of Mirpur itself was founded in around 1642 AD or 1052 AH by the Ghakhar chief Miran Shah Ghazi.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India Provincial Series Kashmir and Jammu
(1909) provides this information about Mirpur history as "it is said to
have been founded by Miran Shah Ghazi and Sultan Fateh Khan".
In 1816, Ranjit Singh annexed Jammu state and in 1820 awarded Jammu to his commander Gulab Sing who hailed from Jammu and was under the service of Ranjit Singh for the
past eight years. Between 1831–39 Ranjit Singh bestowed on Gulab Singh
the royalty of the salt mines in northern Punjab. The state of Kashmir was annexed by Ranjit Singh in 1819. However
the rebellion in Hazara in the beginning of 1846, compelled the country to be transferred to Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu as well.
With the arrival of British rule however, the thriving river trade was decimated due to the construction of railway lines from Bombay and Karachi
into the interior of the Punjab. Moving goods by rail was both cheaper
and quicker, and hundreds of Mirpuri boatmen found themselves out of a
job.
There was a huge demand for men who were prepared to work in the hot,
dirty and dangerous stokeholds of the new coal-fired steamers. European
seamen avoided such jobs whenever they possibly could. They preferred to
work on deck. But in the 1870s Mirpuri ex-river boatmen were
desperately searching for a new source of income. Although unfamiliar
with stoking coal-fired boilers, they were prepared to learn and quickly
gained a virtual monopoly of jobs as engine-room stokers on new
steamships sailing out of Karachi and Bombay, a position they retained
until coal-fired ships were finally phased out of service at the end of
the Second World War.On 14 August 1947, Mirpur was part of the princely state of Kashmir
under the rule of Maharaja Hari Singh. A revolt against his rule erupted
with the advent of Pakistan.
Most of Kashmir's state forces had barricaded themselves in Mirpur
after having retreated from the surrounding posts in particular from
Mangla Fort. On the outskirts of the city, the local rebels, being
mainly retired army personnel from British and state's armies and
defectors from the state's army, attacked the Maharaja's forces on 4
November 1947. Between 6 and 11 November, heavy battles between the
former and Indian forces took place within the city. Mirpur city was
captured by local rebels on 11 November and the rest of Mirpur district
was captured by 25 November 1947. Pakistan Army helped at a later stage
to restore law and order.
