What it's known for
Karachi is Pakistan's largest city, the capital of Sindh and the country's main industrial and financial centre. Its two big seaports, the Port of Karachi and Port Qasim, handle most of Pakistan's foreign trade.
Karachi
City in PakistanKarachi lies at the southern tip of Pakistan on the Arabian Sea coast, in Sindh province. It grew up around the Malir and Lyari rivers, and the flood plains of the Indus River lie to its east.
Fun facts
- The city grew from Kolachi-jo-Goth, a settlement founded in 1729 and named after Mai Kolachi, whose son is said to have killed a man-eating crocodile.
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was born in Karachi in 1876 and rests in the Mazar-e-Quaid, a mausoleum completed in 1971.
- Its nicknames include 'City of Lights' and 'Bride of the Cities'.
Finding it on the globe
Follow the Indus River down to the Arabian Sea: Karachi is on the coast just west of the river's delta.
Easy to mix up
Karachi was Pakistan's first capital, but the government moved north, first to Rawalpindi and then to Islamabad, built as the new capital in the 1960s about 1,150 km away.
Sources: Wikipedia: Karachi, Wikipedia: Mazar-e-Quaid, Wikipedia: Islamabad, Wikipedia: List of national capitals