Charsadda is a district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Peshawar Division. It was a tehsil inside Peshawar District before being a district in 1998. The majority of people in the district are Pashtun. The town of Charsadda, formerly a part of the ex-metropolitan area of Peshawar, serves as the district headquarters.
Charsadda is bordered by the districts of Malakand to the north, Mardan to the east, Nowshera and Peshawar to the south, and Mohmand to the west. Charsadda is situated in the province’s westernmost region. Approximately 996 square kilometers make up the district.
In 516 BC, the kingdom of Gandhara, which had encompassed Charsadda, was absorbed into the seventh satrapy or province of the Achaemenid Empire. Up to Alexander the Great’s conquest of the region in the fourth century BC, Gandhara paid tribute to Darius the Great of Persia.
Chandragupta Maurya, an Indian emperor, took control of Gandhara when Alexander died in 323 BC. There is said to be the location of one of Emperor Ashoka’s stupas. The famed Chinese Buddhist traveler Hieun Tsang made a point of visiting this stupa in 630. The stupa, which he dubbed Po-Lu-Sha, he claimed had a diameter of 2.5 kilometers (4.0 km).
A Brahminical temple could be found to the east, and a Buddhist monastery to the north is where, according to tradition, Buddha revealed the Law. The term Gandhara disappeared after Mahmud of Ghazni conquered the area and established Islam in it in 1026.
Bactrian Greeks
The Bactrian Greeks also ruled this region between 250 and 125 BC. The Indo-Greek Kingdom, which reigned until 10 A.D, came behind them in terms of power.
Shabqadar
Located in Charsadda Tehsil and 27 kilometers (17 miles) northwest of Peshawar lies the little town of Shabqadar. The Sikhs built Sharkargarh, a fort, at this location. In 1897, Mohmands lit the town on fire. It has been rebuilt since then.
Bibi Syeda Dheri
A stupa said to have been erected to mark the conversion by Buddha of the local god Hariti, who previously devoured children, can be found at Bibi Syeda Dheri, which is a half-mile to the north of Umarzai hamlet in Charsadda tehsil. There is also a shrine dedicated to Bibi Syeda, a female saint.
Shar-i-Napursan
The archaeological site of Shar-i-Napursan is located close to the village of Rajjar in the Charsadda tehsil. Excavations have unearthed two distinct communities from the Buddhist and two from the Muslim periods. Coins from Menander, Hermaeous, and Kanishka have been found.
Palatu Dheri
Another archaeological site called Palatu Dheri is close to the Charsadda tehsil. It is one mile to Shar-i-Napursan. Hieun Tsiang claims that coins found alongside the stupa’s ruins at the summit of a mound date to the first century AD and were made by a guy by the name of Deven. Among the other finds is a portrait of the deity Kalika-devi. Three inscribed jars that were offered to “the Community of the Four Quarters” by certain laypeople are currently on display in the Peshawar Museum.
Demographics
The district has 1,610,960 residents as of the 2017 census, of which 817,651 were men and 793,298 were women. 1,340,756 people lived in rural areas (83.23%), while 270,204 people lived in cities (16.77 percent). The literacy rate was 50.72 percent, with men reading at a rate of 66.17 percent and women at a rate of 35.04 percent. In the district, 873 persons, mostly Christians, belonged to religious minorities. The majority of the inhabitants, 99.13 percent, spoke Pashto as their native tongue.
Administration
A total of 58 Union Councils make up the 3 Tehsils into which the district is administratively divided:
| Tehsil | No. of Union Councils |
| Charsadda | 34 |
| Tangi | 12 |
| Shabqadar | 12 |
National Assembly
The district is represented in the National Assembly by two MNAs who represent the following constituencies:
NA-7 Charsadda-I
NA-8 Charsadda-II
Provincial Assembly
The district is represented in the Provincial Assembly by five MPAs who represent the following constituencies:
PK-56 Charsadda-IV
PK-57 Charsadda-III
PK-58 Charsadda-II
PK-59 Charsadda-V
PK-60 Charsadda-VI