Before the Trakhans
Gilgit's earlier history is of considerable importance. The Patola Shahis, a Buddhist dynasty of the sixth to eighth centuries, ruled here on the crossing point between the Indian, Chinese, Tibetan and Central Asian worlds, and the Gilgit manuscripts — birch-bark Buddhist texts found in a stupa in 1931, including some of the oldest surviving Sanskrit manuscripts of the Mahāyāna sūtras — come from that kingdom.
The rock carvings and thousands of inscriptions along the upper Indus, left by travellers over a millennium in Kharoṣṭhī, Brahmi, Sogdian, Chinese and Tibetan, record the traffic through this valley. Many were submerged or are threatened by the Karakoram Highway and dam construction.
In 747 a Tang Chinese army under Gao Xianzhi crossed the Pamirs and took Gilgit from a Tibetan-allied ruler — among the more extraordinary military operations of the pre-modern world.
The Trakhans
The Trakhan family ruled the Shina-speaking country of Gilgit from the fourteenth century, converting to Islam and holding the valley between the pressures of Kashmir, Baltistan and Chitral.
The Dogras took Gilgit in 1842 and it became part of Jammu and Kashmir, later administered by the British as the Gilgit Agency. In November 1947 the Gilgit Scouts deposed the Kashmir governor and the region acceded to Pakistan; it is administered as Gilgit-Baltistan and claimed by India.
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.