Jauharabad

Jauharabad is the headquarters of Khushab District in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The Urdu word jauhar means gem, but the city was named in honour of the Pakistani freedom activist Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar. Its foundation was laid in 1951 and completed in 1953, and it was developed under a master plan to serve as the new federal capital of Pakistan because of its central location, until Ayub Khan replaced that plan with Islamabad. It began serving as a district headquarters when Khushab was carved out of Sargodha as a new district. The scholar Muhammad Asad, formerly Leopold Weiss, stayed there in the 1950s. The city houses the Khushab Nuclear Complex and Pakistan Air Force Base Sakesar. It lies at the meeting of the Thal Desert and the Pothohar Plateau on flat agricultural land just south of the Salt Range, with the Jhelum River passing about 7 km to the southeast and the Khushab Reserve Forest, about 4 square kilometres, to the east.