History of Gwadar

(in [Pashto). It was this term that the Greeks Hellenzied to Gedrosia. Gedrosia then became a region of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. It is believed to have been conquered by the founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great. The capital of the satrapy of Gedrosia was Pura, which is thought to have been located near the modern Bampûr, in Iranian Balochistan. During the homeward march of Alexander the Great, his admiral, Nearchus, led a fleet along the modern-day Makran coast and recorded that the area was dry, mountainous, and inhabited by the "Ichthyophagoi" (or "fish eaters"), an ancient Greek rendering of the ancient Persian phrase "Mahi khoran" (which has itself become the modern word "Makran"). After the collapse of Alexander's empire the area was ruled by Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander’s generals. The region then came under indigenous rule around about 303 BCE.

The region remained on the sidelines of history for a millennium until the Arab-Muslim army of Muhammad bin Qasim captured Gwadar in 711 CE and over the intervening (and nearly equivalent) amount of time the area was contested by various powers, including the Mughals (from the east) and the Safavids (from the west).

This was then followed by almost two centuries of local rule by the various Baloch tribes. The city was visited by Ottoman Admiral Seydi Ali Reis in 1550s and mentioned in his book Mirat ul Memalik (The Mirror of Countries), 1557. According to Seydi Ali Reis, the inhabitants of Gwadar were Baloch and their chief was Malik Jelaleddin, son of Malik Dinar. The Portuguese captured, sacked and burnt Gwadar in 1581.

In 1783, the Khan of Kalat granted