Nowshera

Nowshera
Presidency: Bengal
Coordinates:	34.015278°N 71.974722°E
Altitude:
Present Day Details
Place Name:	Nowshera
State/Province:	Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, old NWFP
Country:	Pakistan
Transport links
North Western Railway

For Naushera in the Punjab, see Rahim Yar Khan.

Nowshera was a town and cantonment as well as tehsil of Peshawar District (later Peshawar Division). The town was on the route of North Western Railway and the Grand Trunk (GT) Road. The population according to the 1901 census of India was 9,518.

Spelling Variants

Modern name: Nowshera
Variants: Naushera/Nausherha/Naushahra

Geography

Nowshera was twenty miles east of Peshawar, on the Grand Trunk Road, on the way from Jahangira and Attock. The town was the headquarters of the tahsil of Nowshera – a small tract of low-lying riverain land on both sides of the Kabul river, known as the Khalsa tappa, and of the Khattak pargana which includes the Khwarra-Nilab valley and is separated from it by the Khattak range, which culminates in the Ghaibana Sir (5,136 feet in height) and the sanitarium and hill station of Cherat.

Cantonment

In 1908 the Imperial Gazetteer of India remarked of the cantonment at Nowshera that it “stretches along the right bank of the Kabul river on a sandy plain, 3 miles in diameter, and is surrounded by low hills on all sides except the north, which is open towards the river. The garrison now consists of one British infantry regiment, two native cavalry and four infantry regiments, a mountain battery, and a bearer corps, belonging to the Peshawar division of the Northern Command. The Kabul river is crossed by a permanent bridge of boats, whence roads lead to Mardan and Charsadda. The iron road and railway bridge across the river was opened on December 1, 1903. The village of Naushahra Khurd, west of the cantonment, and the large village of Naushahra Kalān, on the north bank of the Kabul, are both outside cantonment limits. The head-quarters of the Naushahra tahsīl, with the police station, are in the former, 3 miles from the cantonment. The town contains a Government dispensary and a vernacular middle school, maintained by the District board."

Cemeteries and other records

The BACSA Archive at the British Library Mss F370 has items

• 880 Nowshera, Pakistan: Christ Church: baptisms, 1859-1924
• 881 Nowshera, Pakistan: Christ Church: burials, 1897-1922
• 882 Nowshera, Pakistan: burials, 1922-1946
• 883 Nowshera Cemetery, Pakistan: Cemetery Register, 1858-1927

Also see "Historical books online", below.

External lnks

• Nowshera Wikipedia
• Photograph: British Infantry Lines, Nowshera, flickr.com, on another website labelled 1872
• 1900 view of Nowshera cantonment flickr.com
• Photograph: Taj Building, Nowshera built 1920s flickr.com
• Military photographs Nowshera c 1917 flickr.com
• From a collection of postcards at the ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, sent by F.G. Prew, a soldier, probably in the 2nd Battalion, Essex Regiment to Adolf Feller of Switzerland
  • Nowshera, NWFP, Khartoum Barracks, post stamped 1929 with message
  • Nowshera, NWFP, YMCA sent c 1929 with message
  • Nowshera, NWFP, Ice Factory sent c 1929 with message “a very old view”
  • Nowshera, Railway Bridge on River Kabul, on the way to Risalpur, post stamped 1929 with message
  • Nowshera, Pontoon Boat Bridge on River Kabul, showing the River in Flood poststamped 1929 with message
  • Nowshera, NWFP, River Kabul & Boat Bridge post stamped 1930 with message
  • Nowshera, NWFP, The Mall, post stamped 1930 with message "The Artillery bks [barracks ?] are behind the trees on the right hand side".
  • Nowshera, NWFP, Chital Relief Memorial 1895, sent c 1930 with message “Every year a column goes up to Chitral. It takes six weeks from start to finish, the distance there & back is 365 miles, a stiff march”.
  • Nowshera, The Church sent c 1931 with message
• From the collection of James Wilson, Royal Artillery 1940s WW2-1947 500px.com.
  • Photograph: Royal Artillery, 9th Field Regiment Barracks, Nowshera 1940s WW2
  • Photograph: Royal Artillery Camp, 9th Field Regiment. Nowshera
  • Photograph: Regimental Canteen, 9th Field Regiment, likely Nowshera
  • Photograph: Regal Cinema, Nowshera c 1946
  • Photograph: Cinema, likely Nowshera
  • Photograph: Nowshera Railway Station, India. 1946

Historical books online

• "Naushahra Town" page 163 Imperial Gazetteer of India Provincial Series North-West Frontier Province 1908 Archive.org
• "Naushahra Town" Imperial Gazetteer of India, Volume 18, page 417.
• "Nowshera" page 157 A list of inscriptions on Christian tombs or monuments in the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Kashmir and Afghanistan possessing historical or archaeological interest Part 1 by Miles Irving (1910) Hathi Trust Digital Library