Pakistan's Constituent Assembly's 1956 constitution took effect, transforming the country from a Dominion of the British Commonwealth into the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Major General Iskander Mirza became the country's first president. The constitution attempted to balance Islamic identity with parliamentary democracy, though it survived only until a military coup abrogated it in 1958.
Nine years after independence and partition from India in 1947, Pakistan finally adopted a constitution of its own, replacing the interim arrangement that had left it a dominion still nominally tied to the British monarch. The 1956 constitution declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic — one of the first modern states to use that specific designation — while simultaneously establishing a parliamentary system with a national assembly and fundamental rights provisions.
Major General Iskander Mirza, who had been serving as governor-general, was sworn in as the republic's first president. The document represented years of fraught negotiation between East and West Pakistan (the latter now Bangladesh), religious conservatives who wanted greater Islamic content, and secular-minded politicians who favored a Western-style parliamentary democracy.
The compromise proved fragile. Political instability, regional tensions between East and West wings, and Mirza's own maneuvering led to the constitution's suspension just two years later, in October 1958, when General Ayub Khan seized power in Pakistan's first military coup. Still, the 1956 constitution set precedents — including the 'Islamic Republic' designation — that would echo through Pakistan's subsequent constitutional history, including the 1973 constitution still in force today.