Hyderabad

Hyderabad Sindh sits on a limestone ridge above the Indus River—the same geological feature that attracted the Kalhora dynasty to build their capital here in 1768. The ridge provided protection from the Indus floods that periodically devastated the surrounding plain, and the city became the capital of Sindh before the British moved administration to the new port city of Karachi in 1843.

The British conquest of Sindh is remembered through Sir Charles Napier's possibly apocryphal one-word dispatch: "Peccavi" (Latin for "I have sinned"—a pun on "I have Sindh"). Whether real or invented, the joke captures the casual violence of acquisition. The Battle of Miani (1843) was fought outside Hyderabad, and the city's demotion from capital to provincial town followed immediately.

Modern Hyderabad is Pakistan's second-largest city in Sindh province and its industrial counterweight to Karachi's commercial dominance. The city's economy revolves around manufacturing (textiles, glass, handicrafts), education (University of Sindh, founded 1947, is Pakistan's second-oldest), and agriculture (the Indus irrigation system sustains rice, wheat, and sugarcane cultivation across the district).

Hyderabad's Sindhi identity is politically charged. The city is a stronghold of Sindhi nationalism, and tensions between Sindhi-speaking natives and Urdu-speaking Muhajirs (post-1947 migrants from India) have produced periodic ethnic violence. The linguistic divide maps onto economic and political divisions that shape everything from employment to municipal governance.

The Pakka Qila (fort) and the tombs of the Kalhora and Talpur dynasties anchor the old city, while LATIFABAD (named for Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Sindh's greatest Sufi poet) houses the planned modern expansion.

Hyderabad demonstrates what happens when a capital loses its status but retains its cultural identity: the pride remains, the resources don't, and the gap between the two fuels politics for generations.