Laharpur is a town, tehsil headquarter and a

municipal board A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...

Sitapur district Sitapur district is one of the districts which is situated in Uttar Pradesh state of India, with Sitapur town as the district headquarters. Sitapur district is a part of Lucknow division. History Sitapur was first constituted as a district ...

in the Indian

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

History

The foundation of this town was laid by Emperor

Firoz Shah Tughlaq Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309 – 20 September 1388) was a Muslim ruler from the Tughlaq dynasty, who reigned over the Sultanate of Delhi from 1351 to 1388.

(1351–1388 AD) in 1370 AD, while he was on his way to the shrine of at Baharaich. At that time, he settled in some

Kayastha Kayastha (also referred to as Kayasth) denotes a cluster of disparate Indian communities broadly categorised by the regions of the Indian subcontinent in which they were traditionally locatedthe Chitraguptavanshi Kayasthas of North India, the C ...

and

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

families. Around 1400, a local Hindu (

Pasi Pasi may refer to: * Pasi (caste), a Hindu caste of northern India * ''Pasi'' (film), a 1979 Tamil film * Pasi (given name) * Pasi (surname), a surname of the Pasi community * Pasi, Papua New Guinea, a settlement near the coast of Sandaun Provinc ...

) strongman, Lahori Pasi, took possession of it and changed its name from Tuglaqpur to Lahoripur, which became Laharpur due to usage. His descendants remained in possession of Laharpur for another 18 years or so. They were exterminated by a Muslim commander, Sheikh Tahir Gazi of

Kannauj Kannauj ( Hindustani pronunciation: ənːɔːd͡ʒ is a city, administrative headquarters and a municipal board or Nagar Palika Parishad in Kannauj district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The city's name is a corrupted form of the class ...

in 1418 AD. The town became an important urban center when Raja Todarmal, the finance minister of Emperor Akbar, reconstituted a new pargana of 765 villages with its administrative center at the town of Laharpur. Muslims ruled the town until the death of Mughal Emperor

Aurangzeb Muhi al-Din Muhammad (; – 3 March 1707), commonly known as ( fa, , lit=Ornament of the Throne) and by his regnal title Alamgir ( fa, , translit=ʿĀlamgīr, lit=Conqueror of the World), was the sixth emperor of the Mughal Empire, ruling ...

in 1707, when, taking advantage of widespread anarchy across

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

, a local Gaur commander, Raja Chandar Sen invaded

Sitapur Sitapur is a city and a municipal board in Sitapur district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. It is located 90 kilometres north of state capital, Lucknow. The traditional origin for the name is said to be by the King Vikramāditya from Lord ...

in 1707. Since then, it remained under the control local Gaur Kshatriyas until 1858 when it came under the rule of

British Crown The Crown is the state (polity), state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, British Overseas Territories, overseas territories, Provinces and territorie ...

Geography

Laharpur is located at . It has an average elevation of 133

metre The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...

s (436

feet The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made ...

Demographics

India

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...

, the town is home to 50,080 souls. Males constitute 52% of the population and females 48%. It has an average literacy rate of 41%, lower than the national average of 59.5%. Male literacy is 47%, and female literacy is 34%. About 19% of the population in town is under 6 years of age.

Economic activities

The core business used to be weaving by local artisans mostly belonging to Muslim community but due to high cost of raw material and higher labor cost, this artisan based craft is on the verge of extinction. Laharpur used to be a hub of weaving and

Zardozi Zardozi or zar-douzi or zarduzi (from Classical Persian زَردوزی ''zardōzī'', literally "gold embroidery"; fa, label=Modern Persian, زَردوزی, translit=zarduzi; hi, ज़रदोज़ी, tg, зардӯзӣ, ur, زردوزی ...

work in past. However, in present the main businesses in Laharpur are timber and leather work.

Religious places

It is famous for being the seat of Qalandaria Order of Sufism and the Dargah of saints Shah Alauddin Ahmad Chirminaposh Suharwardi, Shah Abdul Rahman Jaanbaaz Qalandar and Shah Maja Qalandar.

References

{{Sitapur district Cities and towns in Sitapur district