Place · Samma capital · Pakistan
Thatta
Also known as Thatta, Thaṭṭa, Tatta
The Samma, Arghun, Tarkhan and Mughal capital of Sindh from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, on the Indus delta forty kilometres east of modern Karachi. The Makli necropolis above the city holds half a million tombs of its ruling houses; the Shah Jahan Mosque of 1647 is Mughal Sindh's finest glazed tile-work. Thatta was a major Islamic learning centre with four hundred madrassas at its height, and a port whose silks and painted cottons reached Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. The Indus shifted course in the eighteenth century and the port lost its river, after which Karachi inherited its role.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Tradition
- Standard reference and civic histories; INTACH and ASI records; municipal and state gazetteers.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.746, 67.924
Connections (2)
- Site withinMakli Necropolis, Thatta
Makli Necropolis, Thatta sits inside Thatta and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
- Site withinShah Jahan Mosque, Thatta
Shah Jahan Mosque, Thatta sits inside Thatta and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.