History of the Yousafzay in Swat

Written by Administrator | 04 January 2010

Taken from the introduction of "The Story of Swat" as told by the Founder Miangul Abdul Wadud Badshah Sahib to Muhammad Asif Khan translated by: Ashruf Altaf Hussain/ year of publication 1962

Area and Situation-

Swat State covers an area of 4,000 square miles. It is bounded on the North by Chitral, on the West by Dir, on the South by Mardan District and on the East by Amb State and the River Indus. The River Swat runs through the middle of the entire territory for about eighty six miles

Valley Swat

Written by Administrator | 29 December 2009

Swat or Udyana as it is in the Sanskrit sources, is a valley in the mountainous region to the north of the Peshawar Plain, at the foot of the mountain range connecting the Hindu Kush with Karakorum; it includes the main valley of the upper course of the River Swat, for a length of about 200 Km from the source as far as the gullies through which the river flows down to the plain, and the lateral valleys of its tributaries. The valley conquered by Alexander the great in 327 B C, and over the following centuries by the Indo-Greek, Saka, Parthian, Kushan, Sasanid and Hephthalite kings, was a prosperous region. It constituted a trading center between the plains of Gandahara and the mountains of the northern areas looking towards Central Asia, and at the same time a great Center of Buddhist culture with an ample scattering of Buddhist monasteries, representing an important stopover on the way to the holy places of Buddhism, traversed by numerous Chinese pilgrims (including Faxian in the 5th century A.D., Sangyun in the 6th, Xuanzang in the 7th and Huizhao in the 8th).