A province in the Bengal Presidency, occupying the basin of the Gumti, Gogra, and Rapti Rivers, and stretching from the N. bank of the Ganges to the lower Himalayas; is a great alluvial plain, through which these rivers flow between natural embankments, affording irrigation by their marshes and overflows. The sole industry is agriculture; the crops are wheat and rice, which are exported by rail and river. The population is one of the densest in the world, the labouring classes being very poor. The only large town is Lucknow, on the Gumti. One of the earliest centres of Aryan civilisation, Oudh became subject to the empire of Delhi in the 12th century, but was an independent State for a century prior to its annexation by the British in 1856.