Lakhimpur Kheri district is the largest district in Uttar Pradesh, India, on the border with Nepal. Its administrative capital is the city of Lakhimpur.
Lakhimpur Kheri district is a part of Lucknow division, with a total area of . The national government designated Lakhimpur Kheri as a Minority Concentrated District on the basis of 2001 census data, which identifies it as requiring urgent aid to improve living standards and amenities.
Dudhwa National Park, and Pilibhit Tiger reserve are in Lakhimpur Kheri and are the only national park in Uttar Pradesh. They are home to many rare and endangered species including 65+ Tigers, leopards, swamp deer, hispid hares and Bengal florican
Etymology
Etymologically Lakhimpur was known as Luxmipur.
Kheri is a town from Lakhimpur. Theory suggests that the name derives from the khair trees that once covered large tracts in the area.
History
The early history of Lakhimpur Kheri district is obscure, but it has many ancient ruins, and several places are associated with episodes in the Mahabharata. According to tradition, this area was once under the rule of the Lunar race of Hastinapur. The village of Balmiar-Barkhar, near Muhamdi, is popularly identified as the capital of the ancient Virata Kingdom, although this is more commonly located in Rajasthan. Kundalpur, near Khairigarh, is said to be where Krishna carried off Rukmini, and Kheri itself is held to be where Kshemakarna performed the sacrifice to drive out the Nagas. (Ahar, in Bulandshahr district, is also popularly identified as the site of both episodes.)
One of the earliest known finds in the district is a stone horse of the 4th-century king Samudra Gupta (the fragmentary inscription mentions his name), which formerly stood in a heavily forested area near Khairigarh and has since been moved to the Lucknow Museum. This king of Magadha performed Ashvamedha yajna in which a horse is left to freely roam in the entire nation, so as to display the power of king and to underline the importance of his conquest. As in much of Awadh, coins of the 9th-century king Bhoja Deva of Kannauj are commonly found in Lakhimpur Kheri district.
This area was supposedly once ruled by the Pasis, although no traces of this remain today. Most of the cultivated areas in the district have been historically ruled by Rajputs and Muslims instead. The earliest Rajput clan known in the area are the Bachhil, who are described as rulers in an inscription at Dewal (in Pilibhit district) dated to 992 CE. The Bachhils probably ruled over the northern and western parts of Lakhimpur Kheri district, and they had strongholds at Barkhar, near Muhamdi; Kamp, on the Sarda; Nigohi, in modern Shahjahanpur district; and Garh Gajana near Dewal. The Ahbans are the only other early Rajput known to have been here at an early date; they came to the region at the time of the first Muslim conquests and ruled from Pataunja in today's Sitapur district.
As for the Muslims, they appear to have arrived in this district at a later date than elsewhere. There are no local traditions of the Muslim folk hero Ghazi Sayyid Salar Masud here, in contrast to neighboring Bahraich district, and Muslim rule was only established very gradually and was never very strongly felt. Lakhimpur Kheri was then something of a backwater, very heavily forested and barely mentioned in contemporary sources. One tradition attributes the fort of Khairigarh to Muhammad bin Tughlaq, but it is more commonly said to have been built in 1379 under Firoz Shah Tughlaq instead. Khairigarh was one of several forts constructed along the northern frontier, on the north bank of the Sarju, in order to protect the lowlands against incursions from Doti and Nepal. However, these forts were supposedly abandoned shortly after completion and remained so for centuries.