In 630 AD Xuan Zang, the famous Chinese Buddhist monk, visited Jalalabad and a number of other locations nearby. The city was a major center of Gandhara's Greco-Buddhist culture in the past until it was conquered by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century. However, not everyone converted to Islam at that period as some still refused to accept it. In a book called Hudud-al-Alam, written in 982 CE, it mentions a village near Jalalabad where the local king used to have many Hindu, Muslim and Afghan wives.
The region became part of the Afghan Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century, during the Indian invasions by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Later, it was controlled by the successor Ghurids until the Mongols invaded the area. It then became part of the Timurids.
The modern city gained prominence during the reign of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. Babur had chosen the site for this city and was built by his grandson Jalal-uddin Mohammad Akbar in 1570. The original name of Jalalabad was Adinapur as mentioned here:
'In the following year 1505, Babar meditated an incursion into India and proceeded by Jalalabad (then called Adinapur) and the Khaibar Pass to Peshawar
In the last decade of the sixteenth century Adinapur was renamed to Jalalabad after the son of Pir Roshan, Jalala who was fighting the Mughals in the Waziristan area. It remained part of the Mughal Empire until around 1738 when Nader Shah and his Afsharid forces from Khorasan came to take over control. Nader Shah was accompanied by the young Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of Afghanistan, who would re-conquer the area in 1747 after becoming the new ruler of the Afghans. He used the city while going back and forth during his nine military campaigns into India.
The city was invaded by Ranjit Singh and his Sikh army in the early 19th century but was quickly chased out a few days later by Afghan forces of Durrani Empire. The British forces invaded Jalalabad in 1838, during
