Multan: the City of Saints and its mangoes
Multan is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South Asia. Its history runs through Alexander’s campaigns, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, and through all of it the city has remained itself: dusty, devout, warm and extraordinarily productive.
The City of Saints
Pakistanis know Multan as the City of Saints, for the many Sufi shrines across it. The Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, completed in the early fourteenth century, is one of the great buildings of the subcontinent: brick and blue tile beneath a dome visible for miles across the flat Punjab plain. During the annual urs the air fills with qawwali, incense and pilgrims.
And a city of mangoes
Drive out of the centre in any direction in early summer and you enter another world: orchards to the horizon, the trees heavy with fruit. The season is a cultural event. Families visit orchards to eat straight from the tree, compare varieties and argue about whether this year’s Chaunsa beats last year’s. The bazaars overflow.
It is a city that deserves to be known internationally for what it grows, and for the people who have grown it for generations. It gave Golden Multan its name, and it is home to our partner farm, Abdali Mango.
Guide to Pakistani mango varieties: names, seasons and types →
