Multan

Alexander the Great was wounded storming Multan's citadel in 326 BCE—an arrow pierced his lung, and his troops massacred the city's defenders in retaliation. Twenty-three centuries later, Multan remains what it was then: a walled city on a mound above the floodplain, surviving by being difficult to ignore and impossible to hold permanently.

Multan claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in South Asia, with evidence of settlement stretching back five millennia. Its position on the Chenab River, at the convergence of trade routes connecting Central Asia to the Indus Valley, made it wealthy enough to attract every invader who passed through the subcontinent: Greeks, Arabs, Ghaznavids, Mughals, Sikhs, British. Each conquest added a layer without erasing the previous one. The city's Sufi shrines—particularly the tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam (1320s)—reflect this accumulation: Islamic mysticism built on Buddhist and Hindu foundations.

Multan is Pakistan's mango capital and its cotton gateway. The surrounding Punjab province produces over 80% of Pakistan's cotton, and Multan's textile mills process much of it. Agriculture drives the economy—mangoes, wheat, cotton, dates—but the informal sector dominates employment. The city's famous blue pottery (kashi-kari), decorated with geometric patterns, represents a craft tradition traceable to the Mughal period.

Multan International Airport connects to Gulf states where a significant diaspora works. Remittances from Multani workers in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar constitute a major income stream—an invisible export economy that subsidizes the visible one.

The city bakes. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 45°C (113°F), earning Multan the title "City of Heat and Dust" (Madinat-ul-Auliya—actually "City of Saints," but heat defines the experience). Solar energy potential is enormous and largely untapped.

Multan endures because endurance is its product—a city that has outlasted every empire that conquered it.