HAZARA is the Persian and Turkish word for a body of troops numbering one thousand and it is the name of an administrative area in the old North West Frontier Province of India. This is now a part of the Republic of In around 1399 A.D. the Hindu rulers were ousted by a Turkish warlord who placed a regiment of a thousand troops in charge of the district.
James Abbot, an assistant to the British Resident Commissioner, was given the task of surveying the Hazara District in 1847. In 1849, the Punjab was annexed, and Abbott became the first Deputy Commissioner of Hazara. During his four years in the post he maintained his headquarters at Haripur, which had long been the administrative center of the District.
His successor, Herbert Edwards, realised in 1853 that a higher and healthier place ought to be found for his capital and he chose a spot at the lower end of the Rashi Plain in a beautiful valley at an elevation of 4,000 feet. Here, in the lower foot-hills of the north-western end of the Himalayas, he built the hill station (pictured above) which – as a compliment to his predecessor- he named Abbottabad.
It was in Abbottabad that the Hazara Lodge came into being as a direct result of the general rejoicing at the end of World War I.