Place · riverside fort · Pakistan
Red Fort, Muzaffarabad
A fort on a bend of the Neelum where it meets the Jhelum, begun by the Chak rulers of Kashmir in 1559 against Mughal pressure from the south, and rebuilt by the Bomba dynasty of the Jhelum valley in 1646. The Dogras of Jammu took it in the nineteenth century and held it until 1947. Water on three sides did the defensive work. The 2005 Kashmir earthquake, whose epicentre was close by, brought down a large part of what stood.
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.382, 73.465
Worth knowing
The fort changed hands between Kashmiri, Mughal, Bomba, Sikh and Dogra control and then became a border post in 1947 — five sovereignties on one river bend, and the river has since taken part of the northern wall.
Connections (2)
- Route adjacencyShāradā Peeth
Both stand on the Neelum, the river the Kishanganga becomes when it crosses the line of control, and both are now on the Pakistani side of a border that cut their world in half. Sharada Peeth, the Shakta seat and school that Kashmiri learning took its name for its script from, lies upstream near Kupwara's opposite bank; Muzaffarabad's fort commands the confluence with the Jhelum downstream. The valley route between them was the ordinary road from Kashmir to the Punjab until 1947.
- AnalogueAttari
Two places where the division of 1947 stopped being an argument and became a line. At Wagah the Punjab boundary was drawn through cultivated country and the corridor became the one official crossing, with the refugee columns going both ways through it that autumn. Muzaffarabad is where the Kashmir question was settled by force in October 1947, when tribal fighters entering from the frontier took the town and the Maharaja signed accession to India in response. The fort on the confluence became a border post of the resulting ceasefire line.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Red Fort, Muzaffarabad”. Azad Jammu and Kashmir archaeology department records; Ali Muhammad Tufail on the Bomba chiefs of the Jhelum valley.
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