Mardan

Mardān is a city in the Mardan District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Located in the Valley of Peshawar, Mardan is the second largest city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (only after Peshawar). It is a fast growing city that experienced a population boom in the latter half of the 20th century. Around 1800 BCE, the area around Mardan was part of the homeland of the Gandhara grave culture. Rock edicts of the ancient Indian King Ashoka in the nearby Shahbaz Garhi, written in the right-to-left Kharosthi script, dates from the Mauryan period (mid-200s BCE) and represent the earliest irrefutable evidence of writing in South Asia. The nearby Takht-i-Bahi has remains of an ancient Buddhist monastery was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.