Over View
Kashmir is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ``Kashmir`` denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, it denotes a larger area that includes the Indian-administered territory of Jammu and Kashmir (which includes the divisions Jammu, Kashmir Valley, and Ladakh), the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract. The region is bounded by Xinjiang to the northeast and Tibet to the east (both parts of China), the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south, Pakistan to the west, and Afghanistan to the northwest.</p>
<p>In the first half of the first millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later still, in the ninth century, Kashmir Shaivism arose.`{`4`}` In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Salatin-i-Kashmir or Shah Mir dynasty.
