Blue pottery is a famous craft of Multan in Pakistan and Jaipur in India. Pakistan’s version is also made in Hala, Sindh, where the craft is called Kashi kari. Both traditions descend from Persian and Central Asian tilework.
Search results for this question split along a border. Pakistani general knowledge papers expect Multan. Indian ones expect Jaipur. Neither answer is wrong, because the craft reached both cities from the same source and then developed separately. This article names the cities, dates the tradition in Multan and Hala, explains how the pottery is made, and sets out what actually separates Multani blue pottery from the Jaipur version.
Blue Pottery Is a Famous Craft of Which City?
Three cities carry the craft under three names. Multan is the Pakistani answer, Hala is the second Pakistani centre, and Jaipur is the Indian answer.
| City | Country | Local name of the craft | Best known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multan | Pakistan | Multani blue pottery, Kashigari | Cobalt and turquoise vessels, tiles, shrine facades |
| Hala | Pakistan | Kashi kari | Glazed earthenware, painted tiles, mosque tilework |
| Jaipur | India | Blue pottery of Jaipur | Clay free quartz paste ware, bird and floral motifs |
Multan is the answer expected in Pakistan. The city sits in southern Punjab and is known as the City of Saints, and its shrines carry the same glazed blue tilework that its potters put on vessels. Hala, in Sindh, produces the same family of glazed ware under the older Persian name. Jaipur, in the Indian state of Rajasthan, holds the craft on the other side of the border and has registered Blue Pottery of Jaipur as a geographical indication.
Why Do Pakistan and India Both Claim Blue Pottery?
Both claims are correct because blue pottery is a Persian and Central Asian technique that entered the subcontinent through several routes and several centuries. The glaze chemistry, the cobalt blue, and the tile format all arrived from the west and were then absorbed by local workshops.
The Persian word kashi, meaning tile, is widely held to come from Kashan, a medieval ceramic centre in Iran. Kari means work, so kashi kari means tile work, and the craftsmen are called kashigars. That single word travelled with the technique into Multan, Lahore, Thatta, and Hala.
Persian potters are recorded at Multan by the early 13th century. The mausoleum of Bahauddin Zakariya in Multan, built about 1262, is often cited as the earliest glazed tile monument in the subcontinent. The tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, built between 1320 and 1324 under Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, carries blue and white faience mosaic on a 35 metre octagonal brick structure and now sits on Pakistan’s UNESCO World Heritage tentative list. The shrine of Shah Yusuf Gardezi in Multan carries the same tilework.
Jaipur received the technique much later and by a different path. The craft reached the Mughal courts and Delhi, and accounts place its arrival in Jaipur in the 17th century, with a second and better documented transfer in the 19th century under Sawai Ram Singh II, who sent local artisans to Delhi to be trained. A popular Pakistani account credits artisans who came with the Arab conquest of Multan in 712 CE, but the datable evidence for the craft in Multan begins with the 13th century monuments.
Blue Pottery of Multan and the Kashigari Tradition
Multani blue pottery is glazed ceramic ware painted in cobalt blue, turquoise, and white, made in the workshops of Multan and fired at high temperature. The craft is called Kashigari in the city, and the same skill produces both vessels and architectural tiles.
The shrines of Multan are the reason the craft survived. Blue and turquoise faience covers the tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, the mausoleum of Bahauddin Zakariya, and the shrine of Shah Yusuf Gardezi, and workshops that supplied tiles for shrine repair kept the technique in continuous use. Multan sits in southern Punjab, and the craft belongs to the wider pattern of regional culture across the provinces of Pakistan, in which each province holds a distinct set of crafts.
Multani workshops use clay. Potters there work with a body of white and red clay and fire it harder than the Jaipur equivalent, which gives a sturdier and glossier piece. Red clay from the river beds around Multan produces terracotta ware, and ceramic ware uses clay brought in from other districts. The colour palette stays narrow, and dark cobalt blue, turquoise, and white carry nearly every piece.
Motifs follow the shrine vocabulary. Painters use floral scrolls, leaf and vine borders, geometric lattices, and Quranic calligraphy, and they avoid figurative work. Typical products are plates, bowls, vases, jars, lamp bases, wall plaques, and tile panels.
Kashi Kari of Hala in Sindh
Hala is the second centre of blue pottery in Pakistan, a town on the left bank of the Indus in Sindh where kashigars have made glazed earthenware and tiles for generations. Nasirpur is the other Sindhi centre, and both towns draw high quality clay from the river basins nearby.
Hala tiles were built into major Mughal architecture. The Shah Jahan Mosque at Thatta, raised between 1644 and 1659 with 93 domes and 33 arches, was clad in tiles fired at Hala. That link between a working pottery town and a monument of that scale explains why the craft in Sindh stayed tile led rather than vessel led.
The Hala palette is wider than the Multan one. Kashigars there work in cobalt blue, turquoise, mustard, purple, brown, and white, and cover pieces with flowers, geometric motifs, and calligraphy. Reporting by Dawn records that each piece passes through more than 20 manual stages and is fired for 15 to 20 hours at 800 to 900 degrees Celsius in wood fuelled furnaces before it is painted and glazed.
Hala kashigars also produce architectural components rather than tableware alone, including minarets, domes, columns, and pillars for mosque and shrine work.
How Is Blue Pottery Made?
Blue pottery is made in a fixed sequence of manual stages that ends in a glaze firing. The steps below describe the Multan and Hala method.
- Prepare the body. Workshops mix and sift the clay, then rest the prepared body so it holds shape without cracking.
- Shape the piece. Potters throw vessels on a wheel or press the body into plaster moulds for repeated forms such as tiles and plates.
- Dry the piece. Shaped work air dries in shade for several days so that trapped water does not burst the wall during firing.
- Fire the body. Kashigars in Hala fire for 15 to 20 hours at 800 to 900 degrees Celsius in wood fuelled kilns.
- Apply the white ground. A white slip or opaque base coat covers the fired surface and gives the painter a clean field.
- Paint the design. Painters draw outlines and fill motifs by hand with mineral oxide pigments, using cobalt oxide for blue and copper oxide for turquoise and green.
- Glaze the surface. A transparent glaze goes over the painting, which is what produces the glassy finish and protects the colour.
- Fire the glaze. The second firing fuses the glaze to the body and fixes the colour.
- Cool the kiln slowly. Kilns cool over two to three days, because a fast temperature drop cracks the glaze.
Every stage is done by hand, which is why output per workshop is low and why two pieces of the same design never match exactly.
What Is the Difference Between Multan and Jaipur Blue Pottery?
The two crafts differ most in the body material. Multan uses clay and fires hard, while Jaipur uses no clay at all and fires low.
| Feature | Multan blue pottery | Jaipur blue pottery |
|---|---|---|
| Country | Pakistan | India |
| Body material | White and red clay, fired as ceramic or terracotta | Quartz powder, powdered glass, fuller’s earth, borax and gum, no clay |
| Firing | High temperature glaze firing | Low fired, roughly four to five hours in the kiln |
| Result | Sturdier, opaque, glossy | Fragile, sometimes semi transparent |
| Local name | Kashigari, Kashi kari | Blue pottery of Jaipur |
| Common motifs | Floral scrolls, geometry, calligraphy | Birds, animals, floral panels |
| Legal protection | Named in Pakistan’s Geographical Indications Act 2020 | Registered geographical indication in India |
The Jaipur body is close to Egyptian faience rather than to pottery in the ordinary sense, which is why Jaipur ware chips more easily and why some pieces let light through. One shared ingredient crosses the border, because the Jaipur recipe includes multani mitti, the fuller’s earth named after Multan.
Where Did Blue Pottery Come From?
Blue pottery began as an attempt to copy Chinese porcelain. Potters in Abbasid Iraq developed opaque white tin glazes to imitate imported Chinese wares, then painted them with cobalt. Kashan in Persia turned the result into a tile industry, and Timurid Central Asia carried the glazed tile into monumental architecture.
The technique moved east with Turkic and Mughal rule. It reached Multan and Sindh first, where the earliest dated glazed monuments stand, then Lahore, where the Wazir Khan Mosque was tiled between 1634 and 1641, then Delhi, and finally Jaipur.
Cobalt oxide is the reason the whole tradition is blue. Cobalt is one of the few colouring oxides that survives a glaze firing without shifting, which made deep blue the reliable colour long before it was the preferred one.
Where to Buy Blue Pottery in Pakistan
Multan remains the main market. Workshops and retail shops cluster in the old city around the shrine quarter and in the Hussain Agahi bazaar area, and buying at the workshop is the only way to see the unfired and painted stages together.
Hala and Nasirpur in Sindh sell tiles and glazed earthenware direct from kashigar households. Government and provincial craft outlets stock both traditions, and several Pakistani craft marketplaces now list artisan work online. Pieces sold as blue pottery outside these centres are frequently transfer printed imitations, so the hand painted outline, which varies slightly across a set, is the practical test.
Why Is Multan Blue Pottery Under Threat?
The craft is losing workshops. Reporting by The Express Tribune records that many workshops that specialised in handmade blue pottery have stopped production, that artisans discourage their children from entering the trade because the income is poor, and that surviving workshops face expensive raw materials, outdated equipment, limited financing, and a shortage of young workers.
Legal recognition has moved faster than commercial support. Pakistan passed the Geographical Indications (Registration and Protection) Act in 2020, and Multani blue pottery was named among the indigenous products the law was written to protect, alongside Peshawari chappal, Hala ajrak, and Himalayan pink salt. Recognition of that kind restricts who may sell under the name, but it does not by itself restore the demand the workshops lost.
Frequently Asked Questions About Blue Pottery
Blue pottery is famous in which city of Pakistan?
Multan. The city in southern Punjab is the main centre of blue pottery in Pakistan, and Hala in Sindh is the second centre, where the same craft is made under the name Kashi kari.
Why is it called blue pottery?
The name comes from the cobalt blue glaze. Cobalt oxide holds its colour through a glaze firing, so it became the standard pigment, and the deep blue on a white ground became the signature of the whole tradition.
What is Kashi kari?
Kashi kari means tile work in Persian. The word kashi, meaning tile, derives from Kashan in Iran, and the craftsmen are called kashigars. In Pakistan the term covers both glazed tiles and underglaze painted pottery.
How old is blue pottery in Multan?
Persian potters are recorded at Multan by the early 13th century. The mausoleum of Bahauddin Zakariya, built about 1262, is often cited as the subcontinent’s earliest glazed tile monument, which makes the craft roughly 800 years old there.
What is the difference between Multan and Jaipur blue pottery?
Multan blue pottery is made of clay and fired hard, which gives an opaque and sturdy piece. Jaipur blue pottery uses no clay, only quartz powder, glass, fuller’s earth and gum, and is low fired and fragile.
Last Thoughts on Blue Pottery in Pakistan
The Multan and Jaipur question has a single honest answer, which is that both cities hold the craft and neither invented it. What distinguishes the Pakistani tradition is the run of dated monuments behind it. Multan and Sindh carry the earliest glazed tile buildings in the subcontinent, and the workshops that supplied those facades are the same lineage that still throws cobalt vases today.
That history is also the argument for going to see it. The shrine quarter of Multan and the Shah Jahan Mosque at Thatta are among the beautiful places worth visiting in Pakistan, and both put the craft in its original setting rather than on a shelf. Buying from a Multan or Hala workshop is what keeps the kilns lit.
