Welcome Rohri City! Bukkur ( Island )

     Named Bukkur (Dawn) by the pious Sayed Muhammad Maki in the seventh century of Hijri, this island is a limestone rock, oval in shape, 800 yards long by 300 wide, and about twenty-five feet in height. According to the Superintendent of Land Records and Registration, Sindh, in 1912, the area covering Bukkur island was 255,292 sq. yards, or forty-nine acres.
     Bukkur must have been fortified and garrisoned at a very early date, because Sheikh Abu Taurab, the Arab whose tomb near Gajo in taluka Mirpur Sakro bears the date AH 171 (AD 787), is reported to have distinguished himself by taking it. Later it fell to Abdul Razak, the Wazir of Sultan Ghazni, when he invaded Sindh in AD 1026. One of the most noted governors of Bukkur was Sultan Mahmood Kokaltash, who was appointed by Shah Beg Arghun in AH 928 (AD 1522).
     Bricks from the ancient fort of Alore, the old capital of Sindh (see below), and materials from buildings of the Sama (AD 1333-1522) and ‘Turk’ or Turkhan (AD 1507- 43) periods were utilized in repairing the fort walls when Shah Beg Arghun decided to make Bukkur his capital in ii 928 (AD 1522). At the time of the arrival of Emperor Humayun in AH 947 (AD 1541), Sultan Mahmood Khan added an outer wall to the fort, increasing its circuit to 1,875 yards, adding four gates opposite those of the inner wall. There were then two gardens called the ‘Nizurgah’ and the ‘Goozargah’. The fortifications were rebuilt and restored for the last time by Governor Ghulam Sadik Khan between 1780-90, during the reign of Taimur Shah. The fort has figured prominently in the history of Sindh. It has been held by Mughal emperors, Kaihoras, Afghans, and Talpurs; in 1839, the Amirs of Khairpur handed it over to the British.     The once flourishing city of Bukkur now contains only a few houses, and exhibits a deplorable picture of desolation. The British converted the governor’s palace on the east wall into a powder magazine, and the entire area is covered with mounds, fifteen to twenty feet high, of bricks, debris from buildings, and rubbish that has accumulated over the ages.