Charsadda is a town and headquarters of Charsadda District, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan It is located at 34°8'43N 71°43'51E with an altitude of 276 metres (908 feet) and lies 29 kilometres from the provincial capital - Peshawar. Charsadda was once part of the kingdom of Gandhara, however around 516 BC Gandhara became part of the seventh satrapy or province of the Achaemenid Empi
re and paid tribute to Darius the Great of Persia, until its overthrow by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. After the death of Alexander in 323 BC the Indian Emperor Chandragupta Maurya rose to power and brought Gandhara under his sway. According to a popular tradition, Emperor Ashoka built one of his stupas there. This stupa was mentioned by the famous Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hieun Tsang, who visited in 630, according to him Po-Lu-Sha (as he called the stupa) was 2.5 miles (4.0 km) in circumference. A Brahminical temple to the east and a monastery to the north which according to Buddhist legends was the place where Buddha preached the Law. The name Gandhara disappeared after Mahmud of Ghazni conquered the area and converted it to Islam in 1026.
