The city of Mirpur was founded by a Gakhar chief Miran Shah Ghazi around 1642 AD. In 1816, Ranjit Singh annexed Jammu state and in 1820 awarded Jammu to his commander Gulab Singh who hailed from Jammu and was under the service of Ranjit Singh for the past eight years.Between 1831-39 Ranjit Singh bestowed on Gulab Singh the royalty of the salt mines in northern Punjab, and the northern Punjab towns including Bhera, Jhelum, Rohtas, Mirpur, Kotli and Gujrat. Gulab Singh kept on expanding his kingdom and in 1840 Baltistan was made subject to Jammu and Gilgit fell to a Sikh force from Kashmir in 1842.

Since Mirpur lies at the point where the Jhelum River breaks out of the Pir Panjal mountains into the plains Punjab. It was an ideal spot for the construction of the boats used to carry goods. Traders have been operating from there across the Indian Ocean for over three thousand years. Most of boats trading systems were drawn from Mirpur. With the arrival of British rule however, the thriving river trade was decimated due to the construction of railway lines from Bombay and Karachi into the interior of the Punjab. Moving goods by rail was both cheaper and quicker, and hundreds of Mirpuri boatmen found themselves out of a job.

At the same time long-distance ocean trade was shifting from sail to steam. There was a huge demand for men who were prepared to work in the hot, dangerous stokeholds of the new coal-fired steamers. In the 1870s Mirpuri ex-river boatmen were desperately searching for a new source of income. They gained jobs as engine-room stokers on new steamships sailing out of Karachi and Bombay, a position they retained until coal-fired ships were finally phased out of service at the end of the second world war.

After world war two a new set of opportunities opened up. Britain’s economy was just setting off on what proved to be a long post-war boom, and there was an acute short of labour in the foundries of the Midlands, and the textile mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Now it was the turn of ex-seamen to become industrial workers in Britain. Also when the Mangla lake was filled up in 1966, depriving large numbers of Mirpuri farmers of their land, an alternative was available: to move overseas to join those of their kinsfolk who had established themselves in Britain.

As a result, Mirpur is one of the principal sources of migration from Pakistan to Europe, and especially to Britain, so much so that close to half a million migrants from this area now live in the United Kingdom.

Although it is widely believed that the principal reason for this outflow was the construction of the Mangla Dam, this is only partially true. Whilst the construction of the dam undoubtedly reinforced the scale of the outflow, since the waters of the lake swamped most of the best land in the District, emigration from this region began long beforehand.

There are many cites with the name Mirpur (in India, Banglades, Pakistan), but the Mirpur in Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir Territory is famous in all over the world.

Mirpur In Pakistan

Mirpur Khas is a city in the province of Sindh

Mirpur Mathelo is a town in Ghotki District, Sindh

Mirpur is a union council of Abbottabad District

Mirpur Sakro, Pakistan

Mirpur Bathor in Thatta District, Sindh

Mirpur Haripur Hazara

Mirpur Tehsil, subdivision of Kachhi district, Balochistan

Mirpur In India

Mirpur, a village in Haryana

Mirpur Turk, a town in the North East district of Delhi

Mirpur In Bangladesh

Mirpur Dhaka Bangladesh.