Chārsadda (Pashto: چارسده; pronounceⓘ; Urdu: چارسدہ; pronounceⓘ) is a town and headquarters of Charsadda District, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

[6]: 2  An alternate explanation, given by Munshi Gopaldas in the 1874 Tawarikh-i Peshawar, is that the city was named after one of the sons of the Pashtun conqueror Ilyas Khan Muhammadzai.

[6]: 2 The earliest archaeological deposits recovered at Charsadda, in Bala Hisar, are dated to c. 1400 BCE, when a small community was established on a low natural mound of clay above the floodplain of the Kabul and Swat rivers, constructing structures of timber posts slotted into postholes,[7] in association with ceramic sherds and ash.

[22] The district is administratively subdivided into three tehsils – Charsadda, Tangi, and Shabqadar which contained a total of 49 Union Councils.

[24]: 192  These migrations would have been accompanied by violent conflict, and the battlefields were supposedly seen as unfit for cultivating or living on after they had been "stained with human blood".

[24]: 192  According to Qasim Jan Mohammadzai, the cemetery likely originated when the local population converted to Islam and thus began to bury their dead close to their villages.

[24]: 192  The site chosen for the cemetery would have originally been communal land, known in Pashtun as Shamilat, that had previously been used for cattle grazing.

[24]: 192  Whereas Makli primarily houses the graves of the ruling class and prominent holy men, Charsadda is used mostly by ordinary people.

[24]: 192  These tombs are sites of pilgrimage; annual urs are held where thousands of devotees gather at night to hear qawwals sung in the saints' honour.

[24]: 193  The larger enclosure houses eight tombs of the Ali Khel clan, who were the local rulers at the time of the Durrani hegemony; its gate is ornately decorated.

[24]: 193  Southwest of these two enclosures is a (now ruined) domed brick mausoleum on a raised platform, said to belong to a holy woman.

[24]: 193  About 90% of the graves are decorated with small black and white stones arranged to form geometric or floral designs.