Bahawalpur Town
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts.Many units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Bahawalpur Town
Capital of the Bahawalpur State, Punjab, and head-quarters of the Bahawalpur nizamat and tahsil, situated in 29°24 r N. and 7i°47' E., on the North- Western Railway, on the south bank of the Indus, 65 miles south of Multan. Population (1901), 18,546. Founded in 1748 by Nawab Bahawal Khan I, it replaced Derawar as the capital of the State. The town is surrounded by a mud wall 4 miles in circuit. The palace built by Nawab Sadik Muhammad Khan IV in 1882 is a vast square pile, with towers at each corner. The reception hall in the centre is 60 feet long and 56 high, the vestibule being 120 feet high. The palace contains underground apart- ments, where the thermometer remains at about 70 , while it rises to ioo° and even no in the upper rooms. From the roof an extensive view is gained over the vast desert of Blkaner, which stretches away waterless for 100 miles. Five miles from Bahawalpur, the North- western Railway crosses the Sutlej by the magnificent iron-girder Empress Bridge, opened in 1878, 4,258 feet in length, consisting of 16 spans, each 250 feet long. The guesthouse or Nur Mahal, built in 1S75 at a cost of 12 lakhs, is a handsome building in the Italian style. The town possesses the Sadik Egerton College, the high school of the same name, an Anglo-vernacular middle school, a theological school, an orphanage, and two hospitals, one of which is the Jubilee Hospital for females, opened in 1898. It has a considerable trade and some flourishing industries, and contains a rice-husking mill, to which is attached a cotton-ginning factory. The municipality was constituted in 1874. In 1903-4 the income was Rs. 32,500, chiefly from octroi. The cantonment contains the lines of the Nizam regiment and the Imperial Service Camel Corps.
