Khushab

Khushab is a city in Khushab District, Sargodha Division, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, and the headquarters of Khushab Tehsil. It stands on the bank of the Jhelum River and ranks as the 85th most populous city in the country. The name combines two Persian words, khush for sweet or tasty and aab for water, and a common belief holds that Persians arriving from the west praised the sweet water of the river settlement. The 1901 census recorded 11,403 residents, and the 2023 census recorded 139,905. The city is best known outside Pakistan as the site of the Khushab nuclear complex, part of the national Special Weapons Programme. Among its notable natives are the chess grandmaster Sultan Khan, the Sufi saint Shah Maroof Khushabi and the scholar and poet Wasif Ali Wasif.