Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu), is a republic in South Asia, marking the region where South Asia converges with Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046 kilometer (650 mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea in the south, and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast

Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world and is the second most populous country with a Muslim majority. Its territory was a part of the pre-partitioned British India and has a long history of settlement and civilisation including the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most of its current territory was conquered in the 1st millennium BCE by Persians and Greeks and ruled by them for a few centuries. For the rest of history the region was part of a various local and Central Asian dynasties. Later arrivals and conquests include those by the Arabs, Afghans, Turks, Baloch and Mongols. The territory was incorporated into British India in the nineteenth century. Since its independence, the country has experienced both periods of significant military and economic growth, and periods of instability, with the secession of East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh).

Etymology

The name "Pakistan" means "Land of the Pure" in Urdu, Sindhi, and Persian. It was coined in 1934 as "Pakstan" by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, who published it in the pamphlet Now or Never. The name represented, according to Ali, the "thirty million Muslims of PAKSTAN, who live in the five Northern Units of (British) India—Punjab, N.W.F.P. (Afghania), Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan." The nation was founded officially as the Dominion of Pakistan in 1947, and was renamed the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1956.