See also: Faizabad (disambiguation)

Faizabad district (Hindi: फैजाबाद जिला) is one of the 71 districts of Uttar Pradesh state in northern India. Faizabad city is the administrative headquarters of this district. The district occupies an area of 2,764 km². The district had a population of 2,468,371 at the 2011 Census.

According to the 2011 census Faizabad district has a population of 2,468,371, roughly equal to the nation of Kuwait or the US state of Nevada. This gives it a ranking of 178th in India (out of a total of 640). The district has a population density of 1,054 inhabitants per square kilometre (2,730 /sq mi) . Its population growth rate over the decade 2001-2011 was 18.16 %. Faizabad has a sex ratio of 961 females for every 1000 males, and a literacy rate of 70.63 %.

In 1975, the Avadh University was established in Faizabad city, which was later renamed as Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University.

Faizabad has had a very very rich cultural and political history. The earlier name of it was Saket before the mughal empire. During the Mughal rule it was called Bangla

City of Faizabad (Hindi: फ़ैज़ाबाद, Urdu: فیض آباد, Old British Colonial: Fyzabad), the old capital of Awadh, is the headquarters of Faizabad District and Faizabad division as well. Its a joint municipal board with Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, situated on the banks of river Ghaghra (locally known as Saryu). It was the first capital of the Nawabs of Awadh and has monuments built by the Nawabs of Avadh, like the Tomb of Bahu Begum, Gulab Bari etc. The Legend of Avadh, Umrao Jaan 'Ada', was born in Faizabad (her childhood name was Ameeran). Another legend and Hindi writer Mr. Radhika Prasad Tripathi was from this city. Akhtaribai Faizabadi, also known as Begum Akhtar, was born in Faizabad. She was a classical singer who performed ghazals, dadras, thumris, etc. Among other notable people from Faizabad are Mir Babar Ali Anis, a nineteenth century writer of Marsiya (elegies in Urdu) and Brij Narayan Chakbast, another nineteenth-century Urdu poet. Chakbast is credited to have translated the Ramayana into Urdu for the first time.

Mohammad Ismail Khan (born 1946) is a politician and former mujahideen commander from Afghanistan. Born in the western Afghan city of Herat, he rose to become a powerful rebel commander during in the Soviet War in Afghanistan, and then a key member of the Northern Alliance until finally becoming the Governor of Herat Province. He is currently the Minister of Water and Energy, a post he held since 2005. He is a key member of the political party Jamiat-e Islami and the new party United National Front.

Khan was born in Herat, Afghanistan. His family origin is from Shindand District in the Shindand Town Chahar-Mahal neighbourhood. Although he is an ethnic Tajik by origin, he was widely respected beyond sectarian lines. Even after he was arrested and put under house arrest by the Taleban authorities immediately after Herat's fall in 1995, he was allowed a degree of autonomy because the Taleban respected him because they shared similar fundamentalist ideologies. In early 1979 Ismail Khan was a Captain in the Afghan National Army based in the western city of Herat. In early March, there was a protest in front of the Communist governor's palace against the arrests and assassinations being carried out in the countryside. The governor's troops opened fire on the demonstrators, who proceeded to storm the palace and hunt down Soviet advisers. The Herat garrison mutinied and joined the revolt, with Ismail Khan and other officers distributing all available weapons to the insurgents. The communist government led by Nur Mohammed Taraki responded, pulverizing the city using Soviet supplied bombers and killing an estimated 24,000 citizens in less than a week. This event marked the opening salvo of the rebellion which led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Ismail Khan escaped to the countryside where he started to assemble a local mujahideen army, which was widely supported by the population of Herat.

Praveen Togadia (born in 1957) is the International Working President of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), Hindu religious organization. He is a distinguished cancer surgeon.

The king Togadia has asserted in interviews that he does not mandate violence in the Hindutva Movement, and stressed that he was not against minorities. He claims that VHP is an international organization which speaks for Hindus. He also claims that the majority of the work concerning the emancipation of the lower castes is not done by Christian Missionaries but by Hindu organizations.

Rahul Gandhi ([ˈraːɦʊl ˈɡaːnd̪ʱiː]; born 19 June 1970) is an Indian politician and member of the Parliament of India, representing the Amethi constituency. Gandhi is the general-secretary of the Indian National Congress. He is the grandson of Feroze Gandhi and Indira (née Nehru) Gandhi, and fourth-generation scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Rahul Gandhi was born in Delhi on 19 June 1970 as the first of the two children of Rajiv Gandhi, who later became the Prime Minister of India and Sonia Gandhi, who later became President of Indian National Congress, and as the grandson of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He is also the great-grandson of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Priyanka Vadra is his younger sister.

Rahul Gandhi attended St. Columba's School, Delhi before entering The Doon School in Dehradun (Uttarakhand), also his father's alma mater, from 1981–83. Meanwhile, his father had joined politics and became the Prime Minister on October 31, 1984 when Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Due to the security threats faced by Indira Gandhi's family from Sikh extremists, Rahul Gandhi and his sister, Priyanka were home-schooled since then. Rahul Gandhi joined St. Stephen's College, Delhi in 1989 for his undergraduate education but moved to Harvard University after he completed the first year examinations. In 1991, after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by LTTE during an election rally, he shifted to Rollins College due to security concerns and completed his B.A. in 1994. During this period, he assumed the pseudonym Raul Vinci and his identity was known only to the university officials and security agencies. He further went on to obtain a M.Phil from Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1995. After graduation, Rahul Gandhi worked at the Monitor Group, a management consulting firm, in London. In 2002 he was one of the directors of Mumbai-based technology outsourcing firm Backops Services Private Ltd.