Mardan Museum is located in the

Mardan District Mardan District ( ps, مردان ولسوالۍ, ur, ) is a district in Mardan Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. The district is named after Mardan city, which is also the headquarters of the district. The district is famou ...

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ps, خېبر پښتونخوا; Urdu, Hindko: خیبر پختونخوا) commonly abbreviated as KP or KPK, is one of the Administrative units of Pakistan, four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the Geography of Pakistan, ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

. The museum was first established in 1991 in a Town Hall with a single hall with 22 show cases displaying more than 90

Gandhara Gandhāra is the name of an ancient region located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely in present-day north-west Pakistan and parts of south-east Afghanistan. The region centered around the Peshawar Vall ...

's sculptures by the supervision of Sahibzada Riaz Noor (then Commissioner of Mardan Division). Later in 2006 a portion of land provided by the Mardan District Government on the request of Provincial Government and build three Galleries which was inaugurated by a former

Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa The Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ( ur, وزیر اعلیٰ خیبر پختونخوا) is the head of government of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The chief minister leads the legislative branch of the provincial government ...

Ameer Haider Khan Hoti Ameer Haider Khan Hoti ( ur, ; ps, امير حېدر خان هوتي) is a Pakistani Pashtun politician who was the Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from 2008 to 2013. During his government, the province was renamed from "North-West Frontie ...

in 2009.

Gandhara Gallery

The Gandhara Gallery consist of Gandharan sculptures. Most of these sculptures came from the sites of

Takht-i-Bahi Takht-i-Bahi ( Persian/ ur, , translation=throne of the water spring), is an Indo-Parthian archaeological site of an ancient Buddhist monastery in Mardan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The site is considered among the most important relics of Bu ...

Jamal Garhi Jamal Garhi is a small town located 13 kilometers from Mardan at Katlang-Mardan road in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northern Pakistan. Jamal Garhi was a Buddhist monastery from the first until the fifth century AD at a time when Buddhism f ...

and

Seri Bahlol Seri Bahlol ( ur, ), also Sahr-i Bahlol or Sahri Bahlol, is a city and archaeological site located near Takht-i-Bahi, in Mardan District, about 70 kilometer north-west of Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. History Seri Bahlol is a histo ...

. These are the Previous birth (

Jataka tales The Jātakas (meaning "Birth Story", "related to a birth") are a voluminous body of literature native to India which mainly concern the previous births of Gautama Buddha in both human and animal form. According to Peter Skilling, this genre is ...

) of Buddha, life scenes of Buddha, Palace scenes, Individual images of Buddha and Bodhisattva, Bejeweled heads of Bodhisattva, stucco heads of Buddha and Architectural elements.

Ethnological Gallery

The profile of the ethnic region represented by Ethnological Gallery. The gallery include the household objects, traditional jewelry, weapons, wooden and leather stools and boxes embroidery works, musical instruments and many others.

Islamic Gallery

The manuscripts of 8th to 13th century Hijri exhibited in the Islamic Gallery. The gallery include the beautiful calligraphic specimens of Quran, poetry and religious texts written mostly in the Arabic language and Persian where the dominant calligraphic styles are

Naskh (script) Naskh ( ar, , qalam an-naskh, from the verb , , 'to copy', from n-s-kh root (ن-س-خ)) is a smaller, round script of Islamic calligraphy. Naskh is one of the first scripts of Islamic calligraphy to develop, commonly used in writing administrativ ...

and

Nastaʿlīq script ''Nastaliq'' (; fa, , ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'', is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write the Perso-Arabic script in the Persian and Urdu languages, often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, rarely for Arabic. ''Nas ...

Takht-i-Bahi

site is located in the Mardan District. This is one of the most well-known, preserved and monastic complex, and the

site that is on the

World Heritage List A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNES ...

. The complex consists of the main stupa (having a typical Gandharan style an elongated dome with square plinth and surrounded on three sides by chapels), monastery complex (having a central water tank, surrounded by small rooms on all sides), votive stupas, and the lower cells (used by the monks for the meditation purposes). This site was first reported by a French officer in the court (General Court) of Ranjit Singh in 1836. The Gandhara pieces recovered from

and

Most of them were placed in the

Peshawar Museum The Peshawar Museum ( ur, پشاور میوزیم ''(colloquial)''; پشاور عجائب گھر ''(official)'') is a museum located in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The Peshawar Museum is notable for its colle ...

References

External links