Mica and hornblende K‐Ar and Ar‐Ar data are presented from each of the three crustal components of the Himalayan collision zone in North Pakistan: the Asian plate, the Kohistan Island Arc, and the Indian plate. Together with U‐Pb and Rb‐Sr data published elsewhere these new data (1) date the age of suturing along the Northern Suture, which separates Kohistan from Asia, at 102–85 Ma; (2) establish that the basic magmatism in Kohistan, which postdates collision along the Northern Suture, predates 60 Ma, and that the later granite magmatism spanned a range of 60–25 Ma; (3) show that uplift amounts within Kohistan are greater toward the Nanga Parbat syntaxis than away from it and that rate of uplift near the syntaxis increased over the last 20 Ma to a current figure of about 5.5 mm a year; (4) show that much of southern Kohistan had cooled to below 500°C by 80 Ma and that the major deformation which imbricated Kohistan probably predated 80 Ma and certainly predated 60 Ma and was related to the Kohistan‐Asia collision rather than the Kohistan‐India one; (5) imply that uplift along the Hunza Shear in the Asian plate together with imbrication of the metamorphics in its hanging wall took place at about 10 Ma and was associated with breakback thrusting in the hanging wall of the Main Mantle Thrust; (6) suggest that the Indian plate has a lengthy pre‐Himalayan history with an early metamorphism at about 1900 Ma, major magmatism at 500–550 Ma and early Jurassic lithospheric extension or inversion; and (7) show that the Indian plate rocks were metamorphosed shortly after the collision within Kohistan, which occurred at circa 50 Ma, and subsequently cooled back through 500°C at circa 38 Ma and 300°C at 30–35 Ma with ages of cooling through 200° and 100°C (as determined by fission track data) locally controlled by Nanga Parbat related uplift tectonics.

Abstrad: New field mapping and structural data, combined with published geochemical data, from the Kohistan arc in the NW Himalaya, enable a re-evaluation of the arc stratigraphy. Key lithological units and their relationships are more clearly defined, permitting the construction of a revised magmatic-tectonic history for the arc.The oldest units are transitional oceanic-type basalts, which form the basement to the subduction related sequence. Arc-type gabbroic sheets and plutons intrude the oceanic basalts: together these form the Kamila Amphibolite Belt. Metasediments and basaltic lavas were deposited, within an extensional basin, onto the Kamila Amphibolite Belt basement. This sequence, exposed across the arc, forms a distinct stratigraphic unit which is formally defined here as the Jaglot Group. Sediment-charged turbidity currents transported material into the basin, whilst submarine eruptions contributed the basaltic component. This period of extension culminated in the eruption of high-Mg boninites of the Chalt Volcanic Group which overlie the rocks of the Jaglot Group. The earliest granitoids of the Kohistan Batholith predate suturing and intrude the Jaglot and Chalt sequences. At c . 100 Ma Kohistan sutured to Asia. suturing being accompanied by thickening of the arc with the development of major intra-arc shear zones and a penetrative, regionally developed steep cleavage. At c . 85 Ma intra-arc rifting permitted the emplacement into the arc of the voluminous gabbronorites of the Chilas Complex which clearly intrudes the Kamila Amphibolite Belt to the south and the Jaglot Group to the north. The Chilas Complex has been regarded as part of the pre-suturing, juvenile arc sequence. Field evidence summarized here show this to be not so. Heat advection associated with emplacement of the Complex caused amphibolite facies regional metamorphism, melting of the lower arc and plutonism. Some of the resultant granitoid plutons were unroofed and eroded during a compressional phase at between 80 and 55 Ma, before emplacement of further plutons and extrusion of basaltic through to rhyolitic volcanic rocks at between 55 and 40 Ma. At least three phases of extension and rifting, each separated by short lived phases of compression, characterized arc evolution. Much of the magmatism is controlled by extensional tectonics within the overriding plate of the kind commonly associated with a retreating subduction zone.

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Early Tertiary, coesite-bearing eclogites crop out in the internal zones of the Indian Plate in the Kaghan Valley of North Pakistan. Field and geochronological data suggest that UHP metamorphism, at c. 46 Ma, accompanied subduction of the leading edge of continental India beneath Kohistan. A new U-Pb rutile age of 44.1 AE 1.1 Ma can be interpreted as either a growth or a cooling age, given the uncertainty of the closure temperature of rutile for Pb, but clearly documents a very short-lived metamorphic peak, with cooling occurring between 44 and 40 Ma. Eclogitic assemblages are preserved in Permo-Triassic mafic rocks in both cover and basement sequences, with the best-preserved eclogites hosted in the anhydrous basement. The eclogite-facies rocks lie on the hanging wall of a major south-directed ductile thrust zone, which placed basement rocks that contain coesite eclogites southward onto lower-pressure cover metasediments. Shear criteria show that those sequences that contain eclogite-facies rocks are flanked above by a zone of pervasive north-directed extensional shearing. Mineral assemblages contained within both the thrust and extensional shear zones are consistent with them both having operated synchronously during the amphibolite-to greenschist-facies transition. Amphibole Ar-Ar cooling history data suggest that this was at c. 40-42 Ma. As in the Alps this implies exhumation from the metamorphic peak to greenschist-facies conditions within a few million years. This short time scale has important implications, as it is likely that both the thrust and extensional shear zones represent the late stage of a deformation continuum that commenced at UHP and brought the UHP rocks back to 'mid'-crustal levels. This late Eocene extensional shearing, and associated exhumation of HP or UHP rocks, has not previously been recorded in the Pakistan Himalaya. The thrusts and shears were later folded by major east-trending folds, themselves cut by Miocene-aged, north-vergent extensional faults that currently separate the Indian Plate from the structurally overlying Kohistan island arc.

South of the Main Mantle Thrust in north Pakistan, rocks of the northern edge of the Indian plate were deformed and metamorphosed during the main southward thrusting phase of the Himalayan orogeny. In the Hazara region, between the Indus and Kaghan Valleys, metamorphic grade increases northwards from chlorite zone to sillimanite zone rocks in a typically Barrovian sequence. Metamorphism was largely synchronous with early phases of the deformation. The metamorphic rocks were subsequently imbricated by late north-dipping thrusts, each with higher grade rocks in the hanging wall than in the footwall, such that the metamorphic profile shows an overall tectonic inversion. The rocks of the Hazara region form one of a number of internally imbricated metamorphic blocks stacked, after the metamorphic peak, on top of each other during the late thrusting. This imbrication and stacking represents an early period of post-Himalayan uplift.