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. The term has since come to encompass a larger area that includes the India-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.Political map of the Kashmir region, showing the Pir Panjal Range and the Kashmir Valley or Vale of Kashmir Pahalgam Valley

                   Nanga Parbat in Kashmir, the ninth-highest mountain on Earth, is the western anchor of the HimalayasIn 1820, the Sikh Empire, under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir.In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the First Anglo-Sikh War, and upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, became the new ruler of Kashmir. The rule of his descendants, under the paramountcy  of the British Crown, lasted until the Partition of India in 1947, when the former princely state of the British Indian Empire became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: China, India, and Pakistan.