Little Tibet
Baltistan lies on the upper Indus below Ladakh, among the highest mountains in the world — K2 and the Karakoram giants stand at the head of its glaciers. Its people speak Balti, a conservative Tibetan language written for centuries in Tibetan script, and are Muslim, largely Shia and Nurbakhshi, converted from Buddhism between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The combination — Tibetan language and culture with Islam — makes Baltistan unusual, and it survives in the region's music, architecture and polo.
Ali Sher Khan Anchan, ruling around 1600, extended Maqpon authority over Gilgit, Chitral and parts of Ladakh, and is the central figure of Balti historical memory. The fort at Skardu and the Shigar and Khaplu palaces belong to this period and to the related lines.
Conquest and after
Zorawar Singh's Dogra forces took Skardu in 1840, and Baltistan was absorbed into Jammu and Kashmir. On the partition of 1947 the region was taken by Gilgit-Baltistan forces and has since been administered by Pakistan, while India maintains a claim; the Siachen glacier at its eastern edge has been contested by the two armies since 1984 at altitudes above six thousand metres.
Further reading
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Jackson, Peter. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Keay, John. India: A History. HarperCollins, 2000
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.