Punjab (Gurmukhi: ਪੰਜਾਬ; Shahmukhi: پنجاب; , ; , ; Punjabi: [pənˈdʒaːb] (listen); also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of eastern Pakistan and northern India The boundaries of the region are ill-defined and focus on historical accounts
The geographical definition of the term "Punjab" has changed over time In the 16th century Mughal Empire it referred to a relatively smaller area between the Indus and the Sutlej rivers In British India, until the Partition of India in 1947, the Punjab Province encompassed the present-day Indian states and union territories of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and Delhi and the Pakistani regions of Punjab and Islamabad Capital Territory.
It bordered the Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa regions to the west, Kashmir to the north, the Hindi Belt to the east, and Rajasthan and Sindh to the south
The people of the Punjab today are called Punjabis, and their primary language is Punjabi The main religion of the Pakistani Punjab region is Islam The two main religions of the Indian Punjab region are Sikhism and Hinduism Other religious groups are Christianity, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Ravidassia.
The Punjab region was the cradle for the Indus Valley Civilisation The region had numerous migration by the Indo-Aryan peoples The land was later contested by the Persians, Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Kushans, Macedonians, Ghaznavids, Turkic, Mongols, Timurids, Mughals, Marathas, Arabs, Pashtuns, British and other peoples Historic foreign invasions mainly targeted the most productive central region of the Punjab known as the Majha region, which is also the bedrock of Punjabi culture and traditions The Punjab region is often referred to as the breadbasket in both India and Pakistan.