Mardan

Mardan, the second largest city in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, sits close to two of the region's most historically significant sites: the Ashoka rock edicts at Shahbaz Garhi, inscribed in Kharosthi script around the mid-200s BCE and considered the earliest irrefutable evidence of writing in South Asia, and the ruins of the ancient Buddhist monastery at Takht-i-Bahi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1980. The area around the city was part of the Gandhara grave culture as far back as around 1800 BCE.

• Population300,424
• Nearest water from center 0.7 km0.5 mi
• Nearest mountain from center 6.3 km3.9 mi