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

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

• Naushera
• Nausherha

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

External lnks

• Nowshera Wikipedia
• Photograph: British Infantry Lines, Nowshera, flickr.com, on another website labelled 1872
• 1900 view of Nowshera cantonment flickr.com
• Old Pictures of Nowshera: Nizapur Road from Nowshera on Facebook
• Photograph: Taj Building, Nowshera built 1920s flickr.com
• Military photographs Nowshera c 1917 flickr.com