Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a country in South Asia. It is the world’s fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world’s second-largest Muslim population just behind Indonesia.
Pakistan is the site of several ancient cultures, including the 8,500-year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan,[16] the Indus Valley civilisation of the Bronze Age, the most extensive of the civilisations of the Afro-Eurasia,[17][18] and the ancient Gandhara civilization.[19] The region that comprises the modern state of Pakistan was the realm of multiple empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenid; briefly that of Alexander the Great; the Seleucid, the Maurya, the Kushan, the Gupta;[20] the Umayyad Caliphate in its southern regions, the Hindu Shahis, the Ghaznavids, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals,[21] the Durranis, the Sikh Empire, British East India Company rule, and most recently, the British Indian Empire from 1858 to 1947.