The administrative units of Pakistan consist of four provinces, one federal capital territory, two autonomous territories and a group of federally administered tribal areas. Below this top tier, there are four more tiers of government including 27 divisions, more than a hundred districts (zillas), more than four hundred sub-districts called tehsils, and several thousand union councils.

The administrative units as of 2010^[update] derived from the administrative units inherited from British India. From independence in 1947 to 1971, Pakistan comprised two "wings" separated by 1600 kilometres of Indian territory. The eastern wing comprised the single province of East Bengal which included the Sylhet District from the former Indian province of Assam. The western wing was formed from three full provinces (Hazara (then NWFP), West Punjab and Sind), one Chief Commissioner's Province (Baluchistan), thirteen princely states and parts of Kashmir. In 1948, the area around Karachi was separated from Sind province to form the Federal Capital Territory. In 1950 Hazara (then NWFP) province was expanded to include the small states of Amb and Phulra and the name of West Punjab was changed to Punjab. The four princely states of southwest Pakistan formed the Baluchistan States Union in 1952.

Pakistan (ⁱ/ˈpækɨstæn/ or ⁱ/pɑːkiˈstɑːn/; Urdu: پاکستان) (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪˈst̪aːn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاکستان), is a sovereign country in South Asia. It sits at the crossroads of the strategically important regions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west and north, Iran to the southwest and China in the far northeast. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and it shares a marine border with Oman.

The territory of modern Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures, including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and has undergone invasions or settlements by Hindu, Persian, Indo-Greek, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Afghan and Sikh cultures. Thus the area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Indian Mauryan Empire, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and the British Empire. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and India's struggle for independence, Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims from the regions in the east and west of India where there was a Muslim majority. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a new constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. A civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh.