SETTLING THE

FRONTIER
Land, Law, and Society in the
Peshawar Valley, 1500-1900

Robert Nichols

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
 OXFORD
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 CONTENTS

List of Appendices vii

...
List of Maps Vlll

Preface ix
Introduction: ...
The Peshawar Valley and the ldea of a Frontier Xlll

1. History, Anthropology, and the Eighteenth Century 1

2. Genealogy as Ideology 25
3. The Politics, Poetics, and Economy of the Land 48
4. Narratives of Continuity and Domination
5. Millenarianism: Religion, Class, and Resistance
6. Social Geographies
7. Settling the Frontier
8. Colonizing Institutions
9. Anglo-Pakhtun Society
10. Interpreting Resistance, the 'Fanatic',
and the Subaltern
Conclusion: Settlement as Metaphor
Appendices (Tables, comnzentary)
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
Index
 LIST OF APPENDICES

1. Typhus epidemic of 1853

Typhus in Akerpoora village
Villages affected by typhus
Typhus in Toru and local villages
2. 1855 Census data
3. 1873 village data
4. James Settlement data
Durrani revenue
Sikh revenue
Sikh revenue assignment
Revenue assessment
5. Yusufzai assessments and mowajibs
6. 'Eusofzie Levies' 1857
7. 'Mutiny' service awards
8. 1852 Education Statistics
9. Yusufzai 'Pay and Pensions'
10, Agrarian and Tenancy statistics
11. Yusufzai villages
12. 'Baizai' village statistics 1868 and 1891 Censuses
13. 'Baizai' village revenue
14. 'Tribes and Castes'
15. Appendix, F.C.R. Sec. 40
16. Akhund Darweza's genealogical narrative
 LIST OF MAPS

(Between pp. 50 and 5 1)

1. Peshawar District, Swat, Buner

2. General Tribal Map
3. Swat, Buner, and Bajaur
4. Distribution of Tribes
5. Assessment Circles
6. Peshawar District Survey Map
 PREFACE

Some years ago, while doing research on the Federally

Administered Tribal Areas along the border between
Afghanistan and Pakistan, I examined very different bodies of
literature explaining regional society and history. Religious
tracts, colonial reports of ethnic intractability, and post-colonial
texts of national resistance seemed to have little in common
with a growing development and scholarly, mainly
anthropological, literature that inevitably created an overly
normative, even static impression of Pakhtun, especially
'independent' or 'tribal' communities. The following study arose
from a sense that an important perspective, that of long term
socio-economic and political processes within the settled,
agricultural Peshawar valley, was still needed to fully illuminate
local twentieth century history. The task became challenging,
yet imaginable, with the realization that each of the different,
often controversial or disputed, earlier texts and studies of the
region remained important sources of insight, detail, and opinion
upon relevant issues.
To research a range of materials in diverse languages from
several generations of local and imperial sources, I have studied
Persian, the language of Mughal and pre-British elites, and
Pashtu (Pashto), an Indo-Iranian language of the Pashtuns
heavily influenced by Persian and north Indian languages. The
local dialect, where a letter pronounced to the west as slz
becomes kh, has led to 'Pakhtu' and the name Pakhtun. I have
also benefited from some Urdu training. Rather than attempt
any system of transliteration for literally generations of authors
and texts I have often simply used and acknowledged previous
efforts. My spellings of manuscript titles and of author's names
often conform to those in the noted editions; Dorn's text for his
History of the Afghans translation, 1829-36 (Karachi: 1976) of
X PREFACE

the Makhzen-i Afghani, remains the 'Makhzen Afghani' and his

author 'Neamet Ullah'. Persian-derived terms have been
transliterated as much as possible in conformity with
F. Steingass' Persian-English Dictionary (New Delhi: Oriental
Books Reprint Corporation, 1981).
Many more people need to be thanked than can be
acknowledged here. Professionally, the South Asia Centre at
Penn invested FLAS Fellowships in my South Asia Regional
Studies MA programme and Pashtu and Urdu language study.
Penn's Middle East Centre supported a summer of intensive
Persian language training, a study that continued during a year-
long Teaching Assistant Fellowship provided by the Penn
Department of History. My overseas archival research in 1995-6
was funded by both the American Institute of Pakistan Studies
and the Joint Committee on South Asia of the Social Science
Research Council and the American Council of Learned
Societies, funded by the US Near and Middle East Research
and Training Act. A History Department Mellon Dissertation
Fellowship supported my write-up work.
Personally, my language instructors need to be thanked, if
only for their patience; Benedicte Grima (Pashtu), Surendra
Gambhir and Farooq Hamid (Hindi-Urdu), Soheila
Amirsoleimani, Kamran Talattof, and T. Assefi-Shirazi
(Persian).
The staffs of the major archives and libraries need thanks,
especially a series of research officers, including Muhammad
Abbas in the Punjab Archives in Lahore and Zahir Ullah Khan
in Peshawar. The National Archives of India in New Delhi was
a productive stop, memorable for quiet and extended hours. The
National Documentation Centre in Islamabad was an island of
efficiency and air conditioning. Director Jelali of the N.W.F.P.
Library and Archives, the librarians, and the Records Office
staff under Muqarrab Khan were always courteous and
supportive. Raj Wali Shah Khattak, Director of the Pashto
Academy at Peshawar University, Abdul Hamid, Chief Librarian
of Islamia College, Peshawar University as well as the librarians
 PREFACE xi

of the University Central Library and the History Library were

uniformly interested, professional, and helpful.
It was a personal pleasure as well as useful to talk about my
work with Professor La1 Baha and the students and faculty of
the Peshawar University History Department. Azmat Hayat
Khan and the faculty and students of the Area Studies Centre
(Central Asia) allowed me to enlarge my horizons beyond piles
of archive files. Rukshana Iqbal, journalist and school director,
helped me make sense of obscure verse, while Khudadad, my
research associate, spent many hours with me considering texts
and exploring old bookstores.
Scholars deserving thanks for input, criticism, and support
include Lee Cassanelli, Margaret Mills, Beshara Doumani,
David Ludden, Ayesha Jalal, David Gilmartin and a cohort of
Penn colleagues.
 INTRODUCTION

The Peshawar Valley and the Idea of a Frontier

During the sixteenth century the village of Peshawar experienced
new growth as a trade centre, as a market-place, and as an
imperial outpost. Located in a large agricultural valley north-
west of the upper Indus river, Peshawar was positioned beneath
the mountains and passes leading to Kabul, Persia, and Central
Asia. As a garrison town Peshawar served as a transit stop for
Mughal armies and trade caravans that followed the emperor
Akbar's high road built through the Khyber Pass. Imperial
authorities raised revenues from local irrigated landholdings,
and tried to incorporate or manage the dozens of remote villages
scattered across the dry, rolling plains of the greater Peshawar
valley. Across these plains, livestock grazed, and scattered fields
depended upon sparse rains, seasonal watercourses, and
numerous wells to water often rich alluvial soils.'
This work explores the question of social transformation within
the Peshawar valley from the sixteenth through the nineteenth
century, an extended period when regional villagers and
pastoralists experienced and interacted with the demands of
evolving imperial and cultural ideas and institutions. For its
Mughal rulers the valley was a political frontier to tame for
stability and revenue extraction. Islamic scholars and proselytizers
regarded the valley as a spiritual frontier of flawed tribal believers
in need of guidance. Later, the British presented the area as one
on the frontier of modernity, and so as one requiring new systems
and technologies. Through this history, outside perceptions treated
the region as a cultural frontier in need of the values and resources
of neighbouring, imperial civilizations. Locally such influences
were modified to produce a social history composed of complex
degrees of change and apparent continuity.
xiv INTRODUCTION

In the decades before 1526, when the first Mughal emperor

Babur came down from Kabul to conquer Hindustan, the
Peshawar valley served as a settler's frontier for pastoral clans
from Afghan tribal confederacies migrating from the west. These
clans occupied the region between the Khyber Pass and the
Indus river by displacing or dominating local rulers and
agriculturists. These Afghans, styling themselves as Pakhtuns,
divided the plains and the highland valleys north of the Peshawar
valley among their main families and confederate allies. The
division followed a system of lineage-based land tenure designed
to ensure equitable shares in agricultural p ~ t e n t i a l . ~
This study explores the processes of contact, integration, and
confrontation that occurred across multiple social and agrarian
frontiers as successive imperial systems of order and political
hierarchy encountered Pakhtun 'tribal' practices shaped by
settlement, lineage dynamics, and local interpretations of Islamic
d ~ c t r i n eBetween
.~ the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries settled-
district Pakhtun social relations were fragmented by political
and economic innovations and challenged by alternative
hierarchical models. But evidence of clan continuity and
adaptation revealed Pakhtun cultural and social resiliency. Over
this period, imperial control of land policies and legal regimes
structured elite forms of patronage while institutionalizing
economic and social inequalities. Because the legacy of the
imperial system in place by 1900 shaped inequities that
continued to be experienced decades after the formal end of the
colonial era, this history offers an insight for those concerned
with twentieth-century issues of colonialism, nationalism, and
social justice.
Research on the social history of the clans of this region,
apparently marginalized on the fringe of well-studied empires,
brings into focus a sense of the complex 'settled district' cultural
and material interests generally bypassed in studies of
independent Afghan clans,4 or in studies of the competition
between the regional imperial elite and greater state s t r ~ c t u r e s . ~
Yet, in the end, it was the aggregate resources of apparently
marginal provinces and districts such as the Peshawar valley
 INTRODUCTION XV

which provided the tax base, soldiers, and labourers needed to

fully extend and manage the authority of far reaching empires.
A broad structural question raised throughout this work is
precisely to what extent imperial contact, recruitment, and
exploitation led to regional integration, subordination, and even
'underdevelopment' in relation to wider imperial and global
proces~es.~
As residents of a revenue unit of the Kabul province of the
Mughal empire, then later of a similar district for Afghan, Sikh,
and British rulers, Peshawar valley residents demonstrated
cultural, social, and archival continuities that inform a regional
study. Clan territorial stability, especially during the long
occupation by Yusufzai and Mandanr lineages of the Yusufzai
illaqa or sub-division of the north-eastern Peshawar valley, also
nurtured a wealth of oral traditions and textual materials that
contribute to a local, historical sensibility.

The Scholarly Context

A detailed study of Peshawar's agrarian-based society adds

complexity to past scholarly images of the area populations as
occupants of a socio-politically fragmented 'shatter-zone'
between Persian and South Asian civilizations.' If lacking the
larger population and accumulated wealth of major imperial
urban centres, the Peshawar region experienced many of the
same economic relations, political linkages, and conflicts over
authority which characterized districts closer to state cores. This
regional history has been conceptualized as a dynamic,
contingent process occurring 'outside' commonly accepted ideas
of essentially cultural or religious South Asian or Middle Eastern
'civilizations' .8
Politically, imperial-local interaction and contest, especially
during the British era, reflected both the strategies and lirnits of
state initiatives and the adaptations of local social agendas and
hierar~hies.~ Culturally, economically, and socially, the area
remained an imperial-local 'contact zone' of contingent power
xvi INTRODUCTION

relations. Here peripatetic traders, Islamic scholars, pilgrims,

warriors, and nomads constantly rested, studied, or transacted
business. This made the Peshawar valley less a site of timeless
village communities than a home or temporary base for diverse,
frequently mobile, and often contentious social actors.1° Heavily
taxed irrigated fields around Peshawar fed imperial troops and
supported a local court society anxious to expand control over
the land. Well known religious scholars and madrasas in villages
around the valley attracted students from as far away as Central
Asia. Villagers subjected to hierarchies led by Pakhtun
landowners tilled the land, wove textiles for local markets and
for export, and practised the skills and trades needed to maintain
village standards of living.
Evidence suggests that by degrees many Peshawar valley
producers and village merchants participated in the local and
broader networks of limited market agriculture, credit, and
commerce that characterized northern India, Afghanistan, and
Central Asia in the era before direct European conquest. Pakhtun
migration east from the Peshawar area was continuou~.~'
Within the ebb and flow of broader processes, the Peshawar
area possessed the cultural, geographical, and ecological
continuities considered by scholars to be important in defining
an analytically useful region for study within the South Asian
subcontinent.12 With the exception of the local court elite in
Peshawar town, the valley remained a cultural arena dominated
by the Pakhtu language, the Islamic religion, Persian literary
influences, and social codes based on Afghan lineage practices.
Hindu and Sikh traders and merchants lived protected throughout
the region, tolerated as necessary to village commerce.
Topographically a valley of the far eastern foothills of the
high, dry Iranian plateau,I3 the unirrigated portions of the
Peshawar basin were vulnerable to drought. Still, the valley
endured as a steady producer in the north-western Punjab wheat
belt. For much of each year, until seasonal rains fell, large
cultivable tracts of the valley appeared to be dry, untillable
wasteland. Pakhtun clans had settled to the east on the left bank
of the Indus river. But, east of the Indus, many clans exposed in
 INTRODUCTION xvii

lowland areas experienced degrees of subordination, including

linguistic, to a predominantly Punjabi society.
Better to illuminate this regional history, this study bridges
the early modern-modern periodization of South Asian
historiography that has divided eras, issues, and scholarship over
what could be complementary approaches to Mughal history
and what falls within the purview of British colonial studies.
Histories of the region that begin with the 1849 British
occupation of the Punjab and the Peshawar valley may too
arbitrarily dismiss the previous century of post-Mughal events.
Such histories risk reading evidence of long-term change or
processes simply as being derived from the British encounter.
Examining land-related initiatives and state-local relations over
several generations of Peshawar valley history diffuses
teleologies of inevitable change. Processes generating, shaping,
and resisting change may be recognized and placed in a long-
term context. Indeed, familiar imperial strategies of dominance
and village strategies of resistance were often reused, modified,
and resurrected as needed in different eras and circumstances.
The systematic failure of broader imperial strategies of
legitimacy and control periodically preceded the rise of a new
dominant political authority.
Histories of the decline of the Mughal empire emphasize the
role of weak emperors, court factionalism, and the emergence
of a1ternative provincial power centres. But any political
'decline' was probably not a direct consequence of disruptions
or dramatic changes in agrarian prod~ctivity.'~ Early eighteenth
century events in the Peshawar valley reveal at the micro-
political level how factional competitors were tied to imperial
networks of patronage, but could often successfully transfer
loyalties when shifts in power balances made change inevitable.
Locally, any dramatic dynastic activity often had less impact on
regional social relations than did gradual developments such as
the slow extension of Peshawar valley irrigation systems and
increased state control over agriculture.
To understand the recurring role of Islamic leadership and
moral vision in Peshawar valley events, including confrontations
xviii INTRODUCTION

with the state, this study ventures across academic area study
boundaries that traditionally divide Islamic scholarship between
Middle Eastern and South Asian fields of interest. In answer to
the question of whether 'Is it Islamic political movements? Or
social movements in Islamic societies?'I5 it will be seen that
Islamic activists operated within a sociological context of
historically specific economic, social, and political influences.16
A regional history able to cross temporal and spatial bounds
of historiographic inquiry also contributes to a richer insight
into theoretical and wide-ranging discussions of the nineteenth
century European encounters with colonized, often South Asian
'others'.17 If the European colonial presence brought cultural
imperialism and new levels of technological or administrative
sophistication, actual European conquest was often only the final
stage of long periods introducing economic, material, and
political innovations. For years before the British conquest of
the trans-Indus region Sikh governors deployed European tactics,
weapons, and even officers in confrontations with Pakhtun
villagers.
As well, forms and idioms of indigenous resistance were not
necessarily unique effects of European colonial activity. Early
nineteenth century sources suggest that Peshawar valley clan
and Islamic opposition to pre-European imperialism (in this case
Sikh expansion) might have much in common with other
resistance studied as 'millenarian' upheaval against a specifically
European colonial expansion and ideology.'*
The long history of Peshawar valley contact between Pakhtun
society and central authorities makes a useful contribution to
studies conceptualizing the interplay between imperial states
and 'subaltern', or nationalist, resistance to authority. Over
centuries, imperial networks provided the patronage and
protection needed to expand the agrarian tax base and to increase
control, order, and legitimacy. Pakhtun initiatives and reactions
recorded themselves along a socio-political continuum of
interaction with imperial authority that covered the spectrum of
collaboration, coercion, avoidance, resistance, and open
rebellion. A fragmentation of interests was continually noted
 INTRODUCTION xix

between and among independent and settled area Pakhtuns, the

imperially patronized Pakhtun elite and common landholders,
and the Pakhtun ruling elite and non-Pakhtun village herders,
tillers, craftsmen, and labourers. This complicates, perhaps
beyond viability, common perceptions of pre-twentieth century
proto-nationalist unity and resistance, or other theories of
dominator-dominated, binary opposition that view particular
historical events and relationships as comparable examples of
subaltern resistance to sources of p o er.I9
~
The set of relationships formed before 1900 continued to
influence the new political world order emerging with the
twentieth century. The 1901 separation of a North-West Frontier
Province from the greater Punjab, the rise of a 'public arena' of
popular press and political assembly during the Punjab agrarian
unrest of 1907,20and the pan-British-Indian religious and
nationalist activism that arose in the region after 1918
contributed to a new political and economic context that
reshaped regional social relations. Before 1900 the Peshawar
valley experienced direct political constraints that caused the
region to lag behind in forming the urban, issue-oriented
communities of interest that developed during the late nineteenth
century in other provinces. The set of relationships established
before 1900 within the Peshawar valley between provincial
authorities and Pakhtun landed clients more directly exhibited
the collaboration, vested interest, and high level competition
that post- 1947 'Cambridge school' historians would too neatly
document as the decisive aspect of provincial politic^.^'
Though the late nineteenth century British-Indian
administration introduced ever more sophisticated systems of
land control, law codes, and corresponding ideologies, the
political and economic domination of the Peshawar valley never
translated into the direct socio-cultural hegemony needed to
ensure the uncontested authority of the government. A constant
movement of trade, ideas, and people from independent
territories outside 'settled' imperial districts reinforced
traditional practices and offered competing views to the valley
residents. Of comparative interest for related South Asian
XX INTRODUCTION

scholarship was the local deployment from the mid-nineteenth

century of particular land and judicial policies. Post- 1849 Punjab
and specific Peshawar District initiatives marked the latest
British colonial efforts to balance the contradictions of imperial
policies that simultaneously embraced the rule of law, markets,
and private property, while attempting to ensure political
stability, support an intermediary class of indigenous landed
elite, and maintain an idealized paternalism over a broad layer
of village landowners, the 'agricultural tribes' regarded as the
base for social stability.22
Peshawar colonial land settlement policies conformed to an
established Punjab model. Some comparable social impact was
e ~ p e r i e n c e dYet
. ~ ~the unique 'frontier' situation gave Pakhtuns,
especially those in foothill villages, many opportunities to
modify official intentions and rulings. Continuing government
efforts to 'settle' the Pakhtuns involved both land revenue
control and the implementation of a new judicial regime. Legal
reform was deemed necessary to establish moral authority and
to reform and civilize a tribal society.
To fully understand the role of imperial concepts of authority
and criminality in British India, Sandria Freitag has suggested:

...it would be necessary to discuss at once ( 1 ) culture- and

concept-specific definitions of criminality and their relation to
concepts of the state; (2) evolving methods of crime control as they
related to changing ideological and practical concerns of both Raj
and ruled; and (3) the relationship of changes in Indian social
structure and economic organization to the definitions of authority
and perceptions of legitimacy of collective criminal and protest
activities. Most important, all three levels of analysis must be seen
as dynamic, part of a process of change in which they interacted
with each other and in which all three changed over time.24

Though not designed as such to address this full agenda, the

following Peshawar history details Pakhtun and Islamic
definitions of unacceptable social behaviour, including the role
of rulers in maintaining authority. Over centuries, especially
under the British, imperial methods of crime control reflected
 INTRODUCTION xxi

particular colonial interests and administrative concerns. And in

a dynamic socio-economic environment, late nineteenth century
Peshawar authorities imposed their own politically useful
definition of 'criminal' upon activities that were locally
legitimate expressions of collective mobilization and militant
protest. By 1900 the discourses arising from conflicting and
overlapping norms of legitimate rule, justice, and social
behaviour mapped the irregular, variable conditions of social
interaction in the zone of imperial contact.
This work foreshadows the socio-economic dynamics found
underlying twentieth century NWFP ethnic and nationalist
political mobilization. By the early twentieth century, British
rule had caused 'profound economic and social changes'
benefiting a 'Khani elite'. This elite used government patronage
to discard old patron-client ties and differentiate themselves in
status and wealth from 'lower class non-Pakhtuns' and a growing
'large body of Pakhtun tenants and labourers whose inferior
status ran counter to their egalitarian traditions and history of
land~wnership'.~"elated, complex Pakhtun and nationalist
political activism and competition spanning the 1919-47 period
was fundamentally shaped by such earlier dynamics.26The work
of Rittenberg and Jansson traces the political legacies of imperial
policies and social processes discussed here.

Sources

Sources for this study indicate that the periodization of much

South Asian research has been encouraged by linguistic
differences in documentation. During and after Mughal rule
Persian served as the language of official record and of much
elite literary production. In the Mughal era in the Peshawar valley
and the surrounding region the small literate population, mostly
elite clan families and Islamic scholars, wrote and recorded from
oral sources local histories, genealogies, poetry, and religious and
instructional texts. One history written in both the Persian and
Pakhtu languages, the Tarikh-i Hafiz Ralzr~zat Khani, was
xxii INTRODUCTION

apparently based on at least one near contemporary local

narrative of fifteenth and sixteenth century Pakhtun migration
and c ~ n q u e s t . ~It' remains a definitive text, if difficult to
corroborate.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the emergence
of polemical Islamic theological literature in the Pakhtu language
reflected the efforts of opponents in a socio-religious conflict
between orthodox and heterodox interpretations to appeal
directly to local populations for support. Tazkirat al-Abrar wa
al-Ashrar, a text, by Akhund Darweza (d. 1638), an activist
Sunni scholar, specifically integrated Pakhtun lineage stories
into a broader plea for clan social reform and proper religious
o b s e r v a n ~ e .Regional
~~ literature also included clan histories,
individual collections of verse (diwans), and scholarly texts
derived from Arabic and Persian literary, scientific, and religious
canons.
The present study has drawn upon Afghan histories, clan
genealogies, and religious texts in Persian, Pakhtu, and in
translation to interpret the multiple socio-political interests and
conflicts of the Mughal and later periods. Local cultural
materials, including verse from the diwans of famous Pakhtun
poets, particularly the renowned Rahman Baba, and from
collections of anonymous popular couplets, lartdeys or tapas,
have been incorporated into efforts to comprehend the
preoccupations, desires, and social consciousness of a
predominantly non-literate population. The verse of Rahman
Baba, translated in The Niglztingule of Peshawar by Jens
Enevoldsen in the broadest manner, remains of unique interest
to later students of agrarian condition^.^^ The thousands of
landeys collected by Salma Shaheen in Rohi Sandurai remain
undated, yet evocative sources of clan wisdom as well as provide
an insight into local culture and the human c o n d i t i ~ n . ~ ~
Textual materials were found on the shelves of the Northwest
Frontier Province Library and the Islamia College and History
Department libraries of Peshawar University. Key sources of
materials included publications efforts of the Pashto Academy
of Peshawar University and the small bookshops in the bazaars
 INTRODUCTION xxiii

of Peshawar, where editions of sixteenth and seventeenth century

religious literature remain in print and for sale. While the
complete editorial history of the manuscripts or previous editions
used in preparing the consulted texts has gone unacknowledged
in several works, the main texts utilized, viz., the Tarikh-i Hafiz
Rahnzat Klzarzi and the Tazkirat al-Abrar wa al-Ashrar remain
local literary authorities in useful conventional editions. The
Tariklz-i Hafiz Rahnzat Khani, published by the Pashto Academy
of Peshawar University, has an excellent introduction by now
retired Academy Director Muhammad Nawaz Tair noting that
the British Museum manuscript consulted by the Pashto
Academy remained unchecked by earlier British Orientalists who
simply assumed the text was only in Persian.
Other sources included documents from the Mughal period
and from later networks of news writers who periodically
dispatched Persian language newsletters to superiors. By the
early nineteenth century British agents around the Punjab also
began sending and receiving similar reports on local politics
and events. Collections of newsletters dating from the late
eighteenth century have been consulted in various libraries and
archives, especially the Punjab Archives in Lahore.
An increase in English language correspondence and reports
about the region followed the growth of British influence in the
area that culminated in the 1849 'annexation' of the Punjab and
the Peshawar valley. Elphinstone's two volumes on the
'Kingdom of Caubul' date from an 1809 diplomatic and
intelligence-gathering visit to Peshawar. From 1847, voluminous
correspondence was exchanged between local colonial agents in
Peshawar and officials in Lahore and Calcutta. These sources
record historical 'facts', but also the evolution of imperial
attitudes, strategies, and contemporary conventional wisdom
about their empire and the Pakhtun society under their control.
Sets of archival documents define imperial structures and
position the Peshawar valley in local, provincial, and British-
Indian contexts. The Records Office of the NWFP Archives in
Peshawar holds thousands of post-1849 files that originated in
the work of the Deputy Commissioner's office which
xxiv INTRODUCTION

administered the Peshawar District, essentially the main valley,

and in the Peshawar Division office that supervised Peshawar
and several other districts, and handled affairs related to the
tribal borders. These records reveal the problems and agendas
of local officials trying to understand and influence settled
district affairs.
In the Peshawar Archives, and also in volumes of
correspondence and records in Islamabad, Lahore, New Delhi,
and London, are found the standard bureaucratic collections of
regional land assessment and settlement reports, periodic
financial and judicial reports, and the files that formed a specific
Peshawar archive of colonial knowledge. In these volumes there
are letters about immediate issues, including emergency
situations, that revealed the differences between local,
provincial, and central perceptions and concerns. All these
official studies, analyses, proposals, and initiatives
simultaneously represent rich mines of statistical and first hand
historical data and colonial 'texts' likely to conceal, reveal, or
confuse a range of personal or imperial judgements or agendas.
In addition, a genre of colonial and post-colonial memoirs and
histories contributes to an archive of secondary literature that
helps to illuminate the colonial period. Tlze Patllarzs, originally
published in 1958 by Olaf Caroe, remains a definitive secondary
text that this work periodically comments upon.3' The last of
the colonial administrators to turn local scholar, Caroe, brought
an undeniable level of local empathy and knowledge to his text,
yet retained a British and an imperial perspective until the last.
The body of post- 1947 anthropological literature on tribal
and Pakhtun society is extensive. Pakhtuns, as a 'tribal' society,
attracted interest from scholars modelling non-state social
formations and patterns of social transformation in the wake of
earlier such studies in Africa and the Iranian plateau. As
anthropologists studying the Pakhtuns critiqued earlier works,
wrote new arguments, and in turn were critiqued, differing
themes of social organization within the discipline were debated.
I periodically comment upon this considerable body of Pakhtun-
related studies that emphasized consecutively the crucial social
 INTRODUCTION XXV

roles of individual motivation, segmentary dynamics, economic

difference, and psychological equilibrium.)' Akbar Ahmed, a
1970s tribal area government official and anthropologist, became
another in the long line of administrator-authors tied to their
subject in multiple ways.
As this work tries to expand creatively the temporal frame of
historical studies of 'tribal' and agrarian societies, it offers
understanding of an important world community, the Pakhtuns,
and their place within a society shaped over centuries by
imagined and actual social, religious, and economic frontiers. It
provides a historical context from which to view continuing
regional and national debates, especially in Pakistan, centred on
local culture, Islam, the state, and the rule of law.
A determined effort has been made in the research period
available to assemble the conventional documentary and textual
sources of historical study. Both pre-1849 and British era texts
and documents have been scrutinized as potential historical
sources that may well represent the biased views of less than
objective sources. Methods of examining colonial rhetoric for
the 'prose of counter-insurgency', and awareness of the
nationalist and elite bias of much of the historiography of
colonial India have aided a self-reflexive use of source
material.)' Problems confronted, never to be completely
resolved, included the veracity of 'first hand' reports, the
fundamental accuracy of politically motivated censuses and
tables of statistics, and the reliability of making even the simplest
of assumptions about under-documented events and
relationships.
This study was written from texts and documents, and within a
scholarly discipline, shaped by the trope of the ' n a r r a t i ~ e ' On
. ~ ~a
broad level, since 1947 historical perspectives on subcontinental
history and society have been framed within narratives serving
subjective interpretations of historical truth, socio-economic
theory, and national identities. A critical sensibility must be
applied to ensure that the processes of migration, agrarian
settlement, and 'state' formation conceptualized for earlier
periods, even earlier millennia," have not been too readily
xxvi INTRODUCTION

absorbed in later works or coloured narratives of tribal conquest

or assimilation. Recent narratives linking shifting frontiers,
agrarian expansion, and religious change continue to be used as a
vehicle to advance very powerful historical argument^.'^ As well,
on a documentary level this history recognizes the complex nature
of texts and that narratives, written and oral, may contain
allegorical references to other events and, in Pakhtun narratives
especially, may represent visions of 'non-institutional moral
authority and autonomy' .37
Two points emphasized in conceptualizing Central Asian
history are relevant to the region in question. First, similar to
'barbarian' Central Asians, stereotyped images of 'savage
tribesmen' long filled literature on the Pakhtuns and the British
'frontier'. But 'even when many people were nomadic
pastoralists, they were no more "barbarian" or "savage" than
many of their sedentary "civilized" n e i g h b ~ u r s ' .Second,
~~
pastoral nomadism:

was not a 'transitional stage' from hunting and gathering to

agriculture to urbanization. On the contrary, much nomadic and
highly specialized pastoralism was probably the adaptive reaction
to ecological, climatic and economic exigencies by agricultural
peoples who had once been settled,39

Other historical perspectives revolving around long term

agrarian continuity40 and contemporary social science insight4'
have presented alternatives to the personal and national histories
typical in South Asian historiography. By the 1990s 'subaltern'
theorists were questioning all deterministic and nation-state
narratives, viewing them as western constructions, designed to
reduce South Asian and world histories to mere adjuncts of
western economic and ideological narrative^.^^ Yet, neither have
subaltern theorists or others with ideas of alternative, 'de-
centred' cultural and historical perceptions to any great extent
achieved independence from the resources and institutions that
have long authorized and ultimately diffuse such narratives.
 INTRODUCTION X X V ~ ~

This study appreciates the merit of 'subaltern' methodology.

but also recognizes the 'western' influences that permeate all
considerations of social history and theory.43 Stylistically, this
history, as it pursues a chronological sequence, breaks free from
the narrative form to pursue thematic interests. In an era coloured
by an increasingly universal 'free market' view of history, this
work intends to remind that no perspective can fully succeed
that ignores legacies of socially and politically created
inequality, of state institutions compromised by asymmetrical
power relations, and of local cultures able to contest for power
and preserve dynamic social identities.
Scholarship recognizing the dual roles of communication and
social interaction in the traditions of literary texts, oral traditions,
and historical compilations supports an effort to sift information
relevant to social history from a diverse archive of textual and
oral cultural materials.44Without treating the 'information' in a
village proverb any less critically than village census data, such
non-traditional sources may be assumed to offer vital clues about
social relations, attitudes towards the land and authority, and
personal sensibilities. A consideration of the oral 'texts' of
largely non-literate societies can help in understanding problems
of time and bias, while accepting that oral tradition is a creative
process, and that 'the message is a social product'.4s
In considering Pakhtun society as it existed outside the direct
experience of imperial contact, including the period during the
pre-nineteenth century, available, conventional historical tools
have been supplemented with critical assessment of social
science research on the nature of Pakhtun and 'tribal' social
~rganization.~' The anthropological literature on the Punjab and
Peshawar region Pakhtuns, including studies and debates on
Swat valley society, is helpful in visualizing vanished village
lives that arguably existed within the bounds of general social
relations ordered by broadly familiar economic and political
environments. This effort traces the various attempts to gain
scholarly insight into Pakhtun social potential, while noting the
vulnerability of the entire project of anthropological inquiry.47
xxviii INTRODUCTION

Consistent with Richard Fox's sense of social dynamism,

Pakhtun society was 'not the result of a structure of cultural
values or essences', but the product of an ongoing historical
process, in which 'social action is constituted neither by an
inertial and stable weight of tradition nor by individual
maximizing strategies. It is an outcome, instead, of individual
and group confrontations, placed within a field of domination
and i n e q ~ a l i t y ' While
. ~ ~ exploring this theme an effort has been
made to recognize whether and when earlier ethnographic
studies read as constructed texts. Ethnographic representations
and rhetorical structures are no longer accepted as patently
objective or transparent in meaning. An awareness of the
possibility of narrative tropes, allegorical references, exclusions,
suspect claims to authority, and unacknowledged linkages to
local systems of domination implicitly accepts that often
exceptional studies remain written texts able to supply only a
'partial' sense of ethnographic truth.49
This regional material is drawn upon to support a broader
argument against assumptions that general 'settled district' social
tranquillity and conformity were brought about by colonial
political and economic domination, Narratives incorporating this
assumption have tended to ignore analysis of the settled areas
completely or have simply absorbed complex scholarship of
Pakhtun society depicting differences between settled district
clans, 'characterized by an often detribalizing stratification', and
unencapsulated 'independent' Afghan clans.50 Settled district
Pakhtuns, through proximity and personal initiative, experienced
different levels of imperial influence and maintained complex
levels of socio-political interaction simultaneously with both
colonial and lineage-based structures and institutions. At
particular times, involving specific issues there might be minor
or major differences between varying settled and independent
area perspectives and interests. Shifting 'frontiers' of political,
religious, agrarian, and cultural expansion and movement
influenced Pakhtun villages and clans in varying degrees from
the Indus river country to regions far to the north and west'of
the Peshawar valley.
 INTRODUCTION XX~X

Finally, it is time to rewrite much of the analysis of regional

religious activism presented in imperial reports and post-colonial
scholarship. Ideas of local, archaic 'fanaticism' and concepts of
'millenarian' movements against modernity are examined from
the perspective that 'Sacred authority is one kind of authority
among others. It is not predicated on the indivisibility of religion
and politics because not all authority is based on religion.'"
Over centuries, Islamic activists in the Peshawar valley often
saw themselves as religious missionaries on a spiritual frontier
ruled by lineage or imperial ideologies. But their involvement,
often as leaders, in complex periods of social and political
mobilization is best interpreted as reflecting a full and contingent
participation in the politics and political economy of that
moment.
Settled for millennia by tillers, herders, and traders, then for
centuries by Pakhtuns, from a local perspective the Peshawar
valley was no more a 'frontier' than any other region of agrarian-
pastoral society. That notions of a frontier were perceived,
constructed, and projected onto the valley and surrounding areas,
hint at the ironies implicit in this work's title.
The following chapters incorporate the 'facts' of a historical
narrative into discussions of tribal identity and ideology,
agricultural practice, imperial and Islamic texts and activism,
and the impact of evolving, especially British, land policies and
state institutions of social control. The history closes with a
sense of the complex late nineteenth century 'transcultural'
society produced in the Peshawar valley, and a final chapter
questioning both the achievement of any lasting British
hegemony and any facile conclusion that all regional protest
and revolt were undifferentiated 'subaltern' responses to
imperialism.
The chapters form three loose parts. Chapters 1-4 discuss
early valley society and economy and the Mughal era state-
local dynamics that set many patterns for future interaction.
Chapters 5-7 explore the issues and strategies involved as state
institutions of control and social knowledge expanded and
asserted new claims to authority. Chapters 8-10 discuss the
XXX INTRODUCTION

processes involved as a mature colonial presence both reshaped

old structures of education, lineage relations, and land control
and instituted innovations in systems of revenue, criminal and
civil law, employment, and patronage.
Chapter 1 offers a sense of the social organization of seven-
teenth and eighteenth century Pakhtun clans and discusses the
utility of anthropological modelling in understanding clan
political organization and village hierarchies.
Chapter 2 discusses the role of family and mythic genealogies
in unifying Afghan society and argues that textual
representations of these genealogies protected clan identities
against imperial culture and domination. A particular religious
interpretation of the local genealogical narrative was written
specifically to transform individual behaviour and 'reform' clan
social relations.
Chapter 3 discusses the impact of imperial influence in the
Peshawar valley, including long-term effects on agrarian practice
and clan authority in state controlled irrigated tracts. Insights
into related past socio-economic preoccupations and emotional
concerns are derived from Pakhtun literature and popular verse.
Chapter 4 explores how family and imperial narratives shaped
historical interpretations and created the textual authority for
particular claims to local influence, patronage, and the control
of resources and policies.
Chapter 5 examines the position of Islam as an agent in the
context of clan and state competition during the early nineteenth
century. Imperial assertions about fanaticism and clan claims
about social interference served to preserve established socio-
political hierarchies and to limit the long-term effectiveness of
religious appeals to clan or Islamic unity against foreign
domination.
Chapter 6 details the social and demographic impact upon
Peshawar valley populations of physical, biological, and imperial
geographies. Such geographical constraints determined
settlement, the flow of travel, the impact of epidemics, and
proximity to state authority. Desert tracts, poor roads, and lack
of medical expertise were modified over time and, especially in
 INTRODUCTION XXXl

the British period, colonial knowledge slowly integrated aspects

of village society into a bureaucratic context of records,
statistics, and objectification.
Chapter 7 gives a historical slant to the process of colonial
land administration, arguing that a flawed, incomplete early
revenue process achieved certain goals of political control at the
expense of delegating much socio-economic authority to local
systems of hierarchy. Colonial expediency and social analysis
led to the revitalizing and entrenchment of clan elite who were
able to influence the development of revenue and legal regimes.
Chapter 8 details the colonial process of influencing local
social institutions while gradually introducing new systems of
police, judicial, and land administration. While political and
revenue control was attained, the compromises struck with local
social practices and an inability to control 'criminal' behaviour
indicated the constraints of the 'Limited Raj' established in the
Peshawar valley. Consolidating the borders of a political frontier
did not mean other cultural or social frontiers had been, or
could be, sealed.
Chapter 9 explores how the late nineteenth century valley
social relations blurred the dichotomy between dominator and
dominated. State-sponsored clan elite frustrated local officials
while knowledgeable colonial functionaries used personal talents
better to confront local agendas. During this period the arrival
of 'modernity', with a railroad and state irrigation works, led to
accelerating market and capitalist economic influences (from
increased wage labour to cash cropping) that had specific local
consequences within the Peshawar valley and the surrounding
area. As in other parts of British India these consequences
included 'tribal' migration for wage labour and related, state
protected subordination and e x p l o i t a t i ~ n . ~ ~
Chapter 10 continues discussion of the relationship between
clan, empire, Islam, and inequality through a history of the
Pakhtun revolt of 1897. Documents of legal cases instituted
against individuals and villages in the Yusufzai sub-division of
the valley support an argument that the revolt was evidence not
so much of religious millenarianism as of a socio-political event
xxxii INTRODUCTION

that used common religious idioms and, in the absence of

co-opted clan leadership, had a nominal religious leadership.
The intricate social circumstances surrounding the revolt and its
aftermath confuse any scholarly judgement that a unified
'subaltern' or 'national' consciousness sustained or survived the
protest. Colonial reports, treated as 'texts', reveal both
irreconcilable perspectives and the inability of the British regime
to fully 'settle' even their political 'frontier'.
The conclusion summarizes that for centuries religious
interests, lineage relations, and colonial theories and agendas
continued to be in ideological and material competition. But,
importantly, it was a complex series of social interactions that
prevailed rather than simple opposition between absolute
partisans of Islam, the state, or Pakhtun society. Competing,
contested, and compromised values and opportunities affected
and divided villages, families, and individuals. In the end, neither
clan autonomy nor colonial authority survived intact within the
Peshawar valley.

NOTES

I . The political geography of the Mughal Kabul province (subah) has been
mapped and discussed in Irfan Habib's An Atlas of the Mughal Empire
(Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1982).
2. Both local histories, such as the seventeenth-century Pir Mu'azzam Shah,
Tarikh-i Hajiz Rahmat Khani (Pashto Academy, Peshawar, 1987) and
scholarly studies, particularly Joseph Arlinghaus, 'The Transformation of
Afghan Tribal Society' (Ph.D. thesis Duke University, 1988), detail this
migration. Pakhtuns have been studied as Pashtuns, 'Pathans', etc.
'Afghan' is a Persian name for Pakhtun, see Arlinghaus, p. 14.
3. The word 'tribal' evokes more imagery than substance and remains a
highly problematic term. See Akbar Ahmed's discussion in Pukhtun
economy and society (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980), pp. 8 1-8.
Though not always placed in quotation marks. 'tribe' and 'tribal' remain
problematic terms.
4. Colonial studies of Pakhtun 'tribes' include W. R. H. Merk, Report on
the Mohmands (Punjab Government Press, Lahore, 1898, reprint,
Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1984), L. W. King, Monograph on the Orakzai
Country a n d Clans (Punjab Government Press, Lahore, 1900, reprint,
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii

Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1984), and E. Howell, Mizh: a Monograph on

Government's Relations with the Mahsud Tribe (Government of India
Press, Simla, 1931, reprint: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979). H. W.
Bellew's A General Report on the Yusufzai (Government Printing Press,
Lahore, 1867, reprint, Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1994) compiles information
on a crucial settled-district clan.
5. Consult the vast, well-known literature on imperial competition between
the British of the 'North-West Frontier', Afghan amirs, and Russian and
Central Asian players of the Great Game, including Kipling. Useful early
post-colonial studies include V. Gregorian's The Emergence of Modem
Afghanistan (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1969) and L. Dupree's
Afghanistan (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1973, Princeton,
reprinted: Rama Publishers, New Delhi, 1994).
6. See this theme explored in both a wide, historical context (Kolff) and a
narrower study of district and tahsil level political economy (Pasha).
Dirk Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, The ethnohistory of the military
labour rnarket in Hindustarz, 1450-1850 (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1990). Mustapha Kamal Pasha, Colonial Political Economy,
Recruitment and Underdevelopment in the Punjab (Oxford University
Press, Karachi, 1998).
7. See essays in Pakistan's Western Borderlands. The Transformation of a
Political Order A. T. Embree, ed., (Royal Book Company, Karachi, 1979)
and Bernard Cohn, 'Regions Subjective and Objective: Their Relation to
the Study of Modern Indian History and Society' in An Anthropologist
among the Historians and Otlzer Essays (Oxford University Press, Delhi,
1992), pp. 100-35.
8. See David Ludden, 'History Outside Civilization and the Mobility of
South Asia', South Asia 17.1, pp. 1-23.
9. For a wide-ranging comparative study, including of the larger British
colonial experience, see Joel Migdal, Strong Societies arid Weak States,
State-Society and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1988).
10. The idea of the 'contact zone', the literal 'space of colonial encounters',
has been drawn from Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes (Routledge,
London, 1992).
11. Studies of the Asian overland trade include N. Steensgaard, Carracks,
Caravnns and Companies: The structural crisis in the European-Asian
trade in the early 17th century (Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies,
Denmark, 1973) and Stephen Dale, Indian merchants and Eurasian trade,
1600-1750 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984). Studies of
the commercial activity in northern India include C. A. Bayly, Rulers,
Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of European
Expansionism, 1780-1830 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1983). Jos J . L. Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire
xxxiv INTRODUCTION

c. 1710-1780 (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1995) positions the Peshawar valley in

a network of migration, especially for soldiering and trade, particularly in
horses, that ranged from Central Asia to Rohilkhand in northern India,
and beyond.
12. See Agricultural Production and Indian History, David Ludden, ed.,
(Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1994), introduction, pp. 16-18. A
colonial India 'district' history useful for the current work is Anand
Yang, The Limited Raj (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989).
See also studies of 'Middle Eastern' regions including Beshara Doumani,
Rediscovering Palestine (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985)
and Dina Khoury, 'The Political Economy of the Province of Mosul:
1700- 1850' (Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University, 1990).
13. See D. Dichter, The North-West Frontier of West Pakistan: A Study in
Regional Geography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1967) and 0 . H.
K. Spate and A. T. A. Learmonth, India and Pakistan: A General and
Regional Geography (Methuen, London, 1967) for detail of the dry
regional climate, complex subcontinental weather patterns, and 'Western
Borderlands' geography, pp. 480-503. Dichter's discussion and tribal-
linguistic mapping of the Hazara district just east of Peshawar details the
transition, 'both physically and culturally between the Frontier and the
Punjab'. See Dichter, pp. 72-3.
14. See John Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge University Press,
New Delhi, 1993); Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal
North India (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1986), and Richard Eaton,
The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier (University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1993), p. 312.
15. Edmund Burke 111, 'Islam and Social Movements: Methodological
Reflections', in Islam, Politics, and Social Movements, Edmund Burke
111 and Ira M. Lapidus, eds., (University of California Press, Berkeley,
1988), p. 18.
16. The case for reconsidering perceptions and narratives of Islam in South
Asian historiography has been made by Barbara Metcalf, 'Presidential
Address: Too Little and Too Much: Reflectidns on Muslims in the History
of India', Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 54,4 November 1995, pp. 95 1-67.
17. Edward Said, Orientalism (Pantheon, New York, 1978), Ronald Inden,
Imagining lndia (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1991).
18. Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion, Millenarian Protest Movements
against the European Colonial Order (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1987).
19. Important histories emphasizing rural and 'national' resistance include
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947 (Oxford University Press, New
Delhi, 1983), Eric Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian
Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial lndia (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1978), Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant
 INTRODUCTION XXXV

Insurgency in Colonial India (Oxford University Press, New elh hi, 1983),
and Peasant Resistartce in India 1858-1914, David ~ a r d i m a n ,ed.,
(Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1993).
20. See N. Gerald Barrier, 'The Punjab Disturbances of 1907: The response
of the British Government in India to agrarian unrest', in the Hardiman
collection mentioned above for evidence of press mobilization and the
role of organized public meetings in events. Little of the often symbolic
political and cultural competition discerned by Freitag in South Asian
urban 'public arenas' was found in the Peshawar valley until the post-
1918 nationalist campaigns, see Sandria Freitag, Collective Action and
Community (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989). Earlier,
public rallies for imperial assemblies and World War I support reflected
direct organization by local authorities and Pakhtun elites.
2 1. Locality, Province, arid Nation John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson, and
Anil Seal, eds., (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973).
22. David Washbrook concisely analyses this fundamental dilemma in 'Law,
State and Society in Colonial India', Modern Asian Studies 15 (1981):
pp. 649-72 1.
23. Studies of the impact of British policies in the Punjab include Tom
Kessinger, Vilyatpur 1848-1968 (University of California Press, Berkeley,
1974), Richard Fox, Lioris of the Punjab (University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1985), and Imran Ali, The Punjab under Imperialism,
1885-1947 (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1989).
24. Sandria Freitag, 'Crime and Authority,' in Anand Yang, ed., Crime and
Criminality in British India (University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1985),
pp. 142-3.
25. Stephen Alan Rittenberg, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Pakhtuns, The
Indeperidence Movement in India's North-West Frontier Province
(Carolina Academic Press, Durham, 1988), p. 8.
26. Another political study, Erland Jansson, India, Pakistan or Pakhtunistan?
The Natiorialist Movements in the North- West Frontier Province, 1937-47
(University of Uppsala, Uppsala, 1981) refers to the 'Feudalisation' of
Peshawar settled-district society beginning in the pre-British era.
27. See related discussion in Chapter 1.
28. Akhund Darweza Ningrahari, Tazkirat al-Abrar wa al-Ashrar (Maktaba
Islamia, Peshawar, n. d.)
29. Rahman Baba, The Nightingale of Peshawar, translations by Jens
Enevoldsen (Interlit, Peshawar, 1993).
30. Rohi Sandarai, Salma Shaheen, ed. 2 vols. (Pashto Academy, Peshawar,
1984).
3 1. Olaf Caroe, The Pathans (Macmillan, London, 1958).
32. Scholars pursuing these four themes include, on individualism, Fredrik
Barth, Political Leadership among Swat Pathans (Athlone Press, New
Jersey, 1965); on segmentary dynamics, Akbar S . Ahmed, Pukhtun
xxxvi INTRODUCTION

Economy and Society (Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston, 1980),

Millennium and Charisma Among Pathans; An Essay in Social
Anthropology (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1976); on class, Talal
Asad, 'Market model, class structure and consent: a reconsideration of
Swat political organization' in Man, 1972,7, No. 1, pp. 74-94; on
psychological aspects, Charles Lindholm, Generosity and Jealousy
(Columbia, New York, 1982).
33. See essays in Chapter I 'Methodology' in Selected Subaltern Studies,
R. Guha and G. Spivak, eds., (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988).
34. Hayden White, The Content of the Fonn (Johns Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore, 1987) has usefully theorized the effects of the narrative form
of communication, especially for historians.
35. Romila Thapar's work including From Lineage to State: Social
Formations in the Mid First Millennium B. C. in the Ganga Valley
(Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1984) raises questions of long-term
political evolution and speculation about the long co-existence of state
forms and 'tribal' communities. Neither an Aryan nor a Pakhtun
'invasion' can explain complex historical processes. Similarly, Irfan
Habib's causal narrative of Mughal decline due to jagirdar exploitation
cannot do full justice to the problem of political transition. See The
Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707 (Asia Publishing House,
Bombay, 1963).
36. See Andre Wink, Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. 1
( E . J. Brill, Leiden, 1990), Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the
Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (University of California Press, Berkeley,
1993), and Stephen Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The
Mappilas of Malabar 1498-1922 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980).
37. Margaret Mills, Rhetoric and Politics in Afghan Traditional Storytelling
(University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1991), p. 345.
38. Andre Gunder Frank, The Centrality of Central Asia (VU Press,
Amsterdam. 1992). p. 3.
39. Frank, Central Asia, 1992, p. 4.
40. David Ludden, Peasant History in South India (Oxford University Press,
Delhi, 1989).
41. Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (Oxford
University Press, Delhi, 1980) used anthropological ideas of the
segmentary state to conceptualize the development of early South Indian
society.
42. See articles by Frederick Cooper, Florencia Mallon, and Gyan Prakash in
the American Historical Review V. 99, No. 5, December 1994, including
Prakash's 'Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism' pp. 1475-90.
43. If direct references to the work of E. P. Thompson, French Annales
historians. Eric Wolf, and western scholars of peasant society are limited,
themes and methods derived from such work influence this study.
 INTRODUCTION XXXVll

44. Mary Louise Pratt, Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse
(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1977) and Marilyn Waldman,
Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative: A Case Study in Perso-
Islamicate Historiography (Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1988)
explore the content of literary, oral, and historical narrative forms.
45. Methodological concerns of Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History
(University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1985). Oral history scholarship,
including Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and other
stories, Form and Meaning in Oral History (SUNY Press, Albany, 1991)
details methods for deriving understanding from apparently ahistorical
materials.
46. The works of F. Barth, A. Ahmed, C. Lindholm and the contributions of
other anthropologists have studied various Pakhtun clans, compared them
from differing theoretical perspectives, and provided something of a
disciplinary genealogy of evolving and contending social theories.
47. A creative example of the potential of ethno-history to visualize the past
is found in Chapter I of the Ramon Gutierrez study of Pueblo Indians,
When Jesus Carne, the Corn Mothers Went Away (Stanford University
Press, Stanford, 1991). The critical anthropology of James Clifford, The
Predicament of Culture (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1988)
and others has been a guide to reading the classics of Pakhtun and Swat
anthropology. See Clifford and Marcus, eds., Writirtg Culture, (University
of California Press, Berkeley, 1986).
48. Richard Fox, Lions of the Punjab (Berkeley, 1985), pp. 198-9.
49. See James Clifford, 'Introduction: Partial Truths', in Writing Culture,
Clifford and Marcus, eds., 1986, pp. 1-26.
50. British colonial gazetteers, e. g. the series of Peshawar District Gazetteers,
were inherently conceived as records of the imperial domestication and
control of the local economy and society. See Akbar S. Ahmed, Social
arzd Ecortonzic Change in the Tribal Areas (Oxford University Press,
Karachi, 1977), pp. 20-22, and D. Hart, Guardians of the Khaibar Pass
(Vanguard Press, Lahore, 1985), pp. 15-16 for a typology of hill-plains
differences marked by honour and taxes (rtang-qalang).
5 1. See the discussion of 'Islam and Social Movements,' Chapter 2, in Islam,
Politics, arzd Social Moventents, E. Burke and I. Lapidus, eds., (University
of California Press, Berkeley, 1988). Quote from Dale Eickelman and
James Piscatori, Muslin1 Politics (Princeton University Press, Princeton,
1996), p. 57.
52. Tribal involvement in the colonial economy has been studied in Crispin
Bates and Marina Carter, 'Tribal Migration in India and Beyond', in The
World of the Rural Lclbozrrer in Colonial India, Gyan Prakash, ed. (Oxford
University Press, Delhi, 1994), pp. 205-47 and Crispin Bates, 'Regional
Dependence and Rural Development in Central India: The Pivotal Role
of Migrant Labour', i n Agricultrrral Prodrrctior~ and Indian History,
David Ludden, ed. (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1994), pp. 345-368.
HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Important among the physical and social geographies of the

Yusufzai settlement region west of the Indus river was the north-
eastern portion of the Peshawar valley settled by Yusufzai and
Mandanr lineages. Later understanding of the apparent
continuity over centuries of 'tribal' social relations can be
approached through consideration of both sixteenth and
seventeenth century regional literature and twentieth century
anthropological studies. Nevertheless, clan narratives and
particular models of lineage dynamics never completely explain
historically complex social hierarchies and relations between
clans, Islamic perspectives, and the imperial Mughal state.
From the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, norms
and codes regulating personal behaviour and responsibilities to
the group were derived from both lineage and religious
perspectives to shape the bounds of Pakhtun identities. As
modern anthropologists have used data from research to acquire
insights into contemporary Pakhtun culture and socio-political
organization, this chapter uses historical evidence to predicate
on the possible dynamics of Pakhtun society in earlier centuries.
The close identification of one particular Pakhtun confederacy
with a delimited territory has been clear to observers, including
those attempting to define precisely generalized perceptions:

Yusufzai is the name of a large and powerful tribe of Afghans. It is

also used by them to designate the country they live in; but by us
the term is only applied to that plain portion of their country now
under British rule.
2 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

The true Yusufzai country comprises all that.. .territory contained

between the Laorai and Laspisar mountains on the north, and the
river Indus on the south, and bounded by Bajawar and the terminal
portion of the Swat river on the west, and the Kohistan of Ghorband
and Yassan on the east.
The major portion of the tract thus limited, is a rough mountain
region throughout, and is drained to the Indus by direct and indirect
channels. The separate courses of these give to the country its
peculiar physical formation and natural divisions into districts.
The lesser, or south-western portion of the Yusufzai country, is an
extensive and open plain, forming a part of the great Peshawar
basin, but separated from the rest of its extent by terminal portions
of the Swat and Kabul rivers.. .
The plain, or samah of Yusufzai, as it is generally styled, occupies
the eastern portion of the Peshawar valley, and is bounded as
follows, viz:-
On the north, by a continuous and lofty range of mountains, which,
extending east and west, separate it from Swat.. .
On the south, the boundary is formed by the Indus from Mahaban
to Attak, and from that point up to the junction of the Swat and
Kabul rivers by the united streams of both. The first portion of this
boundary separates the plain from the Hazara country, and the latter
from that of the Khattaks.
The western boundary is formed by the Swat river from Nisattah,
where it joins the Kabul stream, up to Abazai, where it passes into
the Hatmankhail hills.
The Yusufzai plain.. .extends between 33 degrees 55' and 34 degrees
35' north latitude, and 71 degrees 40' and 72 degrees 45' of east
longitude. In its greatest length it is 64 miles from south-east to
north-west; and in its greatest breadth from north to south, it is 46
miles. Its area, including the tract at the foot of the hills, is about
3200 square miles.. .The country is an unbroken plain, with an
undulating surface gently sloping to the south. It comprises the
following local divisions or districts, viz. Ranizai, Lunkhwar,
Mandar, Gadun, Khattak, and Hashtnaggar.'

Around the year 1700, Utman Khel Pakhtuns constructed a

new village in the rising, broken 'tract at the foot of the hills',
beneath the peaks blocking the way north to the Swat valleys2
The new village of Barmoul spread along one of the many hill
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 3

tracks leading from the plains to passes into the northern

mountain^.^ Homes, built of stone and mud, with timbered door
frames and flat roof beams, housed related families which
patiently began constructing terraced fields on surrounding
hillsides. Sparse rainfall and run-off from mountain ravines
provided water. The village was situated on one of the northern
branches of the minor river draining the hills ringing the
Peshawar valley, the Kalpani nullah. Running north to south,
the Kalpani collected branch water from numerous side valleys
before emptying into the Kabul river near Nowshera. This
ecological and geographical setting represented a certain
'framework of organization' influencing Utman Khel ~ o c i e t y . ~
The Utman Khel of Barmoul raised sheep and goats on high
hillsides that rarely experienced the harsh, snowbound winters
found at higher elevations. Water buffalo and cows provided
dairy products and meat. Bullocks pulled field implements and
hauled trade goods. Traders carried timber, rice, glzee, and honey
from Swat to the Peshawar valley villages, while salt, textiles,
and other goods travelled north.
For almost two centuries comparatively small numbers of
Utman Khel had settled in the Peshawar valley amidst an ever-
growing population belonging to Yusufzai and Mandanr
lineages. The Utman Khel and other Pakhtun clans, the
Muhammadzai and Gadun, had migrated to the valley with the
Yusufzai and Mandanr, but with a dependent status as 'hamsayas
or clients'. Around 1525, they had joined forces with Malik
Ahmad to help defeat the Dilazak Afghans near the village of
Katlang. In the mid-sixteenth century they were among the clans
gathered by the Mandanr leader Khan Kaju before the important
battle with the Ghoriah Khel confederacy at Shaikh T a p ~ r All.~
considered themselves 'Afghans' sharing a common culture,
religion, and language. Across their new territories the Afghan
conquerors established themselves as a ruling elite at the top of
a stratified society of dependent farm labourers, herders,
craftsmen, and low status village servants."
Within the growing village of Barmoul an established system
of Afghan social relations reproduced itself. Families united by
4 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

lineage kinship and affinity built neighbouring homes. The

men's lives centred on their shares (bakhras) of village fields,
livestock, trade, and on the guest-house (hujra) of each
neighbourhood's leading figure, a man of esteem and influence
designated as lineage headman (malik ). Women's activities and
personal contacts, revolving around the home and family, were
restricted by the constraints of a closely observed moral-social
code of behaviour. The moral and spiritual authority of Islam
was represented by the building of the first village mosque.
No formally structured political authority regulated individual
actions. Maliks offered leadership based on wisdom, persuasion,
and personal ability, but this applied more to external village
contacts than to supervision of personal behaviour. Maliks
competed with each other in an ongoing rivalry for local
influence. Political power was measured daily by the number of
neighbourhood shareholders and dependants gathered together
in a malik's hujra to eat their patron's food and discuss the
day's news.
Acts of violence, theft, or immorality, proscribed by both
custom and religion, were periodically judged and punished by
the whole community. Disputes between Pakhtuns over land or
family matters might be arbitrated by a council uirga) of
shareholders. More often, individuals and families redressed
perceived injuries according to the rigorous demands of a social
code defined by honour, hospitality, sanctuary, and revenge.
Conflicting interpretations of justified assaults or killings meant
that many of the men moving to the new village of Barmoul
were involved in long-standing personal or family feuds that
might date back for decades. This patriarchal, male-dominated
society demanded the appearance of strict female circumspection
and morality, in large part because any divergence reflected on
the honour of the involved male.
By 1700, after several generations of regional settlement, this
Pakhtun social ideology, Pakhtunwali, still generally regulated
Utman Khel, Yusufzai, and Mandanr personal behaviour. This
contrasted with the social and political hierarchies of the Mughal
empire to the east, hierarchies replicated in the imperial
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 5

provincial centres in Peshawar and Kabul. Islamic social

guidance grounded in the shari'a and the Koran complemented
and competed with Pakhtunwali. Religious injunctions often had
little influence on specific customs such as inheritance
exclusively by male heirs. Figures of high sanctity, sayyids,
claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and
Mians, descendants of holy men, were considered social equals
of the land-owning Pakhtuns. Other men pursuing and studying
religious truth, shaikhs and murids, might eventually hope to
earn the saintly renown of a pir. Local mullas, preaching and
teaching in village mosques, often had less education and
sophistication than other religious figures, though they also
might earn high reputations for piety.
Though influenced for over a century by migratory settlement,
Islamic missionary efforts, and sporadic imperial interference,
social life in 1700 for the Utman Khel villagers of Barmoul, as
well as for the Yusufzai of Swat and most of the Mandanr
Yusufzai of the Peshawar valley, still exhibited many of the
characteristics of what have been called 'acephelous segmentary
lineage societies' .' Conquering Pakhtun clans, linked by kinship
and political ties, pursued an agrarian-pastoral livelihood
involving simultaneous cooperation and competition with other
Pakhtun lineages. Instead of complex hierarchies, this elite
society balanced itself in 'a genealogical ordering of political
alliances based on the principle of complementary opposition'.*
Cross-cousin marriage and an equal inheritance among male
heirs kept land tightly held i n family units, but also generated
often fierce competition between male cousins over their
grandfather's legacy. Yet, closely nurtured memories of
patrilineal descent allowed otherwise competing family and
village factions to recognize common links and unify when
outside competitors threatened all local interests.
The historical evidence about this Pakhtun ruling population
closely follows political patterns modelled by Lindholm for such
a system. By 1700, much of the elite population of the Peshawar
valley continued to be politically centred in segmentary lineages
that articulated both an ideology of personal conduct,
6 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Pakhtunwali, and an ideology of politics based on genealogy

that validated and balanced ever-shifting political alliances.
Though over the centuries almost all observers of Pakhtun
society have recorded similar impressions of lineage dynamics,
of 'doing P a k h t ~ ' ,no
~ historical work can unequivocally and
arbitrarily project back into the eighteenth century ethnographic
observations made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It
is important in a study arguing a contingent Pakhtun social
environment to understand the perceivable processes of long-
term social continuity and consensus. Useful for this is the effort
of Richard Fox to explain cultural production and social change
in the Punjab. Taking issue with earlier theories of social
innovation, from Barthian notions of individual initiative and
contract (transactional analysis) to the ideas of Geertz and others
about 'organismic' webs of structuring cultural patterns and
essences, Fox argued for recognizing historical process and
accepting that individual and collective competition continually
generated socio-cultural reality.
To Fox, apparent social continuity and stability over time,
within a dynamic of social action, was explained by '...looking
at dominant groups or classes and the interested social actions
they must constantly undertake to preserve position and
privilege. These interested social actions can develop into a
relatively unreflective and consensual understanding of the
world, a culture that is also a hegemony based on domination.
Thus, a culture, no matter how structured and doxic it may
appear, is nothing more than the sum and state of social
confrontations at the particular moment or the moment just
past.'I0 Putting aside the particularities of Fox's analysis of
hegemony and the work of Bourdieu and others, apparent social
continuity reflected a constantly self-correcting, contingent set
of relations that emerged from, and were adaptable to, the
material environment (including ecology and technology),
individual and group consciousness, and actions devoted to
protecting perceived interests.
Critiques of segmentary lineage society theory and
anthropological modelling in general have noted that non-
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 7

historical, static frameworks may lack the flexibility to reveal

change over time, hierarchy and class, individual initiative, and
ecological imperatives." Even if, at certain historical moments,
many Yusufzai clans in the Peshawar valley acted in ways
consistent with segmentary lineage theory, no conclusion is
possible without further analysis. In fact, within a historical
process constrained by cultural, ecological, and personal bounds,
many Pakhtun individuals and clans did enter into new social
relations necessitated by subordination to, and conflict with,
first imperial politico-economic and then socio-cultural
influences. As well, non-Pakhtun dependants in the region
experienced similar exposure to new influences that could be
variously welcomed, opposed, or subverted, but could rarely be
ignored.
Village life, as expressed in moral codes and behaviour,
reflected a complex diversity. This included continued
compromise between customs evolved over generations of
pastoral-agrarian experience and values based on Islamic
interpretations. The society that faced Mughal and later imperial
influences was not homogeneous. It was composed of
individuals and groups with different valuations of the emphasis
to be placed on custom, religion, independence, and cooperation
with the wider world. Throughout this period, landholding
Pakhtun proprietors represented only the dominant part of
'shallow hierarchies of the village';12 hierarchies that included
Pakhtun and non-Pakhtun tenants, subordinated families of
skilled craftsmen, and Hindu and Sikh merchants and
shopkeepers.
The first chapters of the Tariklz-i Hafiz Rahmat Khani
describe the late fifteenth century movement of the Yusufzai
from Nushki and Garah,I3 near Kandahar, to the Kabul region,
and then to the Peshawar valley. Rather than representing
successful tribal 'predatory expansion', the migrations followed
losses i n the Kandahar area in conflicts with the Pakhtun
Ghoriah Khel clans and the murder of Yusufzai leaders in a
famous banquet massacre staged by Ulugh Beg, the Chaghatai
Turk ruler of Kabul and uncle of Babur.
8 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Granted refuge in the Peshawar valley by dominant land-

holding Afghans, the Dilazaks, the Yusufzai and Mandanr clans
prospered. Reinforced by allied clans, including the Utman Khel
and Muhammadzai, the Yusufzai survived two or three
generations of competition with earlier Peshawar valley
residents, Afghan and non-Afghan clans forced to settle east of
the Indus, and with other migrating Afghans, including the
Mohmand, Khalil, and Daudzai clans of the Ghoriah Khel
confederation.
This era of Peshawar valley change, the first half of the
sixteenth century, illustrated the theorized expansionary political
phase of a segmentary lineage society. Nominally leaderless,
with each household head asserting equality, lineage clans at
war could and did unite under the banner of a competent,
successful chief able to deliver the anticipated fruits of victory,
especially land.I4 Indeed, much of the lands of Swat, Bajaur,
Buner, and the samah, or eastern plains, occupied by the
Yusufzai by 1700, were won under the notable leadership of
Malik Ahmad and his successor Khan Kaju. The tarikh,
chronicle or history, of Hafiz Rahmat Khani details how Malik
Ahmad, a youthful survivor of the Kabul massacre, led the
Yusufzai, the Mandanr, and their allies to victory against the
Dilazaks in the battle of Katlang. It then tells how, about 1550,
Khan Kaju directed victory against the Ghoriah Khel at the
battle of Shaikh Tapur.I5
By the mid-sixteenth century the Yusufzai had consolidated
their settlements in the Peshawar region as expansion ended in
the face of external opposition. After decades of Afghan rivalry,
as Caroe pointed out,I6 the best river-irrigated lands of the
Peshawar valley, the Doaba tract between the Kabul and Swat
rivers and the Hashtnagar region just to the east, were actually
occupied respectively by Gigiani (later Pakhtun migrants) and
Muhammadzai clans. If the Yusufzai had succeeded i n
conquering the temperate, agriculturally productive Swat river
valley, they had also been forced to settle for the sparsely
watered samah region east of the Hashtnagar district, north of
the Kabul river. Drained by creeks and nullahs rather than rivers,
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 9

this area offered only dry sandy soil for farming. Marginal
rainfall, the need for well-irrigation, and seasonal water flow in
many of the drainages meant that agricultural production was
more difficult than to the west. Much of the maira, or
uncultivated acreage, remained grazing land for herds. Pakhtun
proprietors held their own exclusive shares of village cultivated
land, while pasture lands in the surrounding maira remained in
common use.
From the earliest days of their consolidation in the Peshawar
valley, another competitor also constrained and influenced
Yusufzai society. In 1519 the ruler of Kabul, Babur, a Chaghatai
Turk and nephew of Ulugh Beg, swept through Bajaur and the
Peshawar valley to assert his authority before advancing
eastward in pursuit of the conquest of Hindustan. In several
earlier seasonal military campaigns through Afghan areas east
and south of the Khyber Pass, Babur had ruthlessly killed those
who opposed him. In 1519 he tried conciliatory tactics with the
Yusufzai, who had yet to complete their conquest of the highland
valleys, but were by then well established in the Peshawar plains.
Malik Shah Mansur, cousin of Malik Ahmad, served as an envoy
to Babur. He was present in Bajaur in January 1519 when Babur
captured a fortress of non-Yusufzai Bajauris and put up to 3000
men to the sword. In part, the massacre was intended as a
message of intimidation to the Yusufzai. In his memoirs, Babur
said, about Malik Mansur, that after the conquest of the Bajaur
fort, 'We allowed him to leave after putting a coat (tun ) on him
and after writing orders with threats to the Yusuf-zai'.I7
With his eye on Hindustan, Babur soon left the Peshawar
valley. But his passage had set the pattern for the future. Babur
had entered the area with Dilazak scouts and supporters who
saw the external, imperial power of Babur as a weapon against
their local enemies. Babur, noting the strongest opponents he
might face, attempted an alliance with the Yusufzai. He asked
for and received a daughter of Malik Mansur as a wife. From
1519 Yusufzai clans would be both tempted by the gifts and
intimidated by the threats of a developing Mughal dynasty.
Yusufzai maliks now had an alternate, non-lineage source of
10 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

honours and worldly success. Malik Mansur's son, Mir Jamal,

'rose to honour under Babur, Humayun and Akbar'.Ig
Babur's 1519 effort at conquest and domination in Bajaur
and the Peshawar valley was not unique in the long history of
this region. But it did introduce a two-century period of direct
contact between an increasingly wealthy and powerful Mughal
empire and the Afghans of the trans-Indus region controlling
important routes to Kabul.
By the reign of Babur's grandson, Akbar, a second form of
segmentary lineage leadership became apparent among regional
clans. Charismatic religious figures rallied fractious Afghans
against Mughal incursions even as more mainstream religious
and secular personalities remained neutral or espoused the
Mughal cause.
In the 1580s, the Mughal emperor, Akbar, sent armies to
accomplish the simultaneous annexation of the Khyber Pass
valleys, Kashmir, and the Yusufzai-held plains and highlands.
The town of Peshawar and the immediate surrounding districts
were now either under direct imperial control or were held as
land assignments by Mughal jagirdar appointees responsible
for order and revenue collection. Many individuals and regional
segmentary Pakhtun lineages, unwilling to defer to one lineage's
leadership, responded to this Mughal consolidation by rallying
behind Jalala, son of Bayazid Ansari, founder of the Roshaniyya
religious movement.
If theologically more complex than merely a 'Sufi mendicant',
Bayazid and the following two important generations of his
descendants did assert a unifying 'charismatic power'.19 Their
careers were historical confirmation of a second paradigm of
Lindholm's theory of segmentary lineage, religious figures
raised, at least temporarily, to leadership in response to 'external
threat' .20
But spectacular Mughal defeats in the mountain passes west
of the Indus in the 1580s only briefly obscured a longer term
process of Mughal oppression and consolidation in the Peshawar
region. And historical complexity must question the statement
that, 'Predictably, this invasion stimulated a great surge of
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 11

religious revivalism among the Yusufzai, who managed to defeat

Akbar in 1586'.21 At one time Bayazid had certainly attracted
many Yusufzai followers. But his religious doctrines were
opposed by many Yusufzai adherents of the disciples of the
late, revered Pir Baba. And after Bayazid's death ( c . 1572) his
son Umar's attempt to levy the Islamic tithe (ushr) and tribute
(kharaj) quickly fragmented support from Yusufzai leaders.22
Two of Bayazid's sons were killed by Yusufzai opponents.
Bayazid and his son Jalala fought the Mughals from the Khyber
Pass region where they had migrated and become accepted.
Any premise that only a religious figure could unify the Yusufzai
or other Afghans against 'external threat' must be modified to
acknowledge the possibility of pragmatic, communal resistance,
without specific charismatic religious inspiration.
The Yusufzai's communal resistance to Akbar hinted at a
third theorized form of segmentary lineage political organization.
After the death of Khan Kaju, sometime after 1550, with their
own expansionist ambitions curtailed and Akbar's external threat
still in the future, the Yusufzai and allied clans had failed to
accept a single new political leader. 'Cleavages and internal
fragmentation occurred', matching the 'state of dissidence'
described as typical of an unthreatened association of lineage
groups. Political factionalism would also be characteristic of the
period after the unifying invasions of the 1 5 8 0 ~ . ~ ~
When Akbar arrived at the Indus river in 1586 intending to
attack the Yusufzai, he was welcomed not only by Peshawar
valley Khalil and Mohmand nlaliks eager to see their neighbours
weakened, but by some of the Yusufzai tnaliks who had chosen
cooperation over conflict. The main Mughal road to Kabul
passed westward from the Indus at Attock along the south bank
of the Kabul river. Yusufzai' proximity to this Mughal highway
and their competition with non-Yusufzai neighbours led Akbar
to devise a three-part containment strategy: Khattak clans were
given official patronage with land grants and toll-collecting
privileges to protect the road. To support Mughal campaigns
into the highland valleys that continued into the 1590s and to
blockade the plains, a series of Mughal forts were erected across
12 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

the lower part of the valley plain. More importantly, the Mughals
cultivated a rudimentary network of Yusufzai allies to guide
troops, influence local villagers, and serve as permanent agents
responsible for a developing revenue and local order.
In 1588, Akbar issued a decree (fannan) to Muhammad Khan
of Hoti rewarding him for 'devoted services in connection with
the Yusufzai expedition'. The farman granting the 'entire
Malguzari (Land Revenue) of the Yusufzai Pargana
permanently and appointing you the Independent Hakim (Ruler)
of the said Pargana' was given, in part, 'to induce others to
render such like distinguished services'. The farman enjoined
Muhammad Khan to 'exert to guard our Imperial Domains,
adjoining the said Pargana of Yusafzai, from the inroads of the
Yusafzai people and our trust in this matter should be faithfully
d i ~ c h a r g e d ' .The
~ ~ village of Hoti, on the Kalpani drainage in
the southern part of the plain, was just a few miles north of
Nowshera, a 'new city' built on the Kabul river by the general
commanding Akbar' s Yusufzai campaigns.
The dovetailing of fragmented Pakhtun interests with Mughal
'divide and rule' policies was justified by claims that Allahdad
Khan, the father of Muhammad Khan, had fought alongside the
Mughal Babur at the 1526 battle of Panipat, though Baku Khan,
the uncle of Muhammad Khan, had led the 'great victory of
Karakar mountain resulting in the annihilation of 40000 Moghul
Troops under Raja Birbal and Hakim Abdul Fatah'.25
Such local leaders as the Khan of Hoti now relied less on the
legitimacy validated by ability, character, and clan consensus
than on the authority derived from imperial patronage, new
sources of revenue, and increasingly non-egalitarian patron-
client relationships with fellow clansmen. Imperial diplomacy
would fail as often as it would succeed. The Yusufzai leader,
Kalu, travelled to Akbar's court before his Yusufzai expedition.
Undecided, Kalu 'fled' the court. Detained and brought back,
he escaped again, rejecting Mughal i n d ~ c e r n e n t s .Local
~~
histories now increasingly detailed the successes and failures of
Yusufzai clan leaders in opposing, avoiding, or embracing
Mughal overtures.
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 13

Before 1700, Yusufzai clans experienced periods of

organization that closely, but not completely, corresponded to
Lindholm's patterns for segmentary lineage societies. A more
nuanced history would recognize secular leadership in times of
expansion. But charismatic religious authority participated in,
rather than monopolized, leadership in times of threat. A
leaderless, 'ordered anarchy' of complementary opposition may
have characterized most Yusufzai clans after the death of Khan
Kaju, but the success of the late sixteenth century Mughal effort
to co-opt Yusufzai khans indicated the grand reality that regional
lineages might lose political autonomy even as their structures
continued to frame social activity.
A 'rising' of the Yusufzai Afghans against Mughal posts in
1667 represented perhaps a complementary alliance between
leadership types, demonstrating the difficulties of reducing
complex events to preconceived norms. A contemporary Mughal
observer, the Mughal emperor's official historian, blamed the
resistance on the Yusufzai '...exalting as their commander a
silly beggar under the name of Muhammad Shah, the
disturbances caused by the exertions of that deceitful impostor
the wicked Mulla Chalak, and the leadership of the black-faced
B h a g ~ ' . ~Blaming
' individual 'rebels' and deceitful religious
charlatans, rather than the generalized unrest caused by
unwanted interference, was a recurring imperialist response to
instability. The last unsuccessful Mughal military effort in the
1670s to subdue the Afghan clans of the trans-Indus region
showed that most Yusufzai were still able to assert political
independence in the absence of direct military coercion.
Through the late seventeenth century, the Yusufzai plains
villages existed under the shadow of Mughal forts, harassed by
confident Khattaks, and increasingly dominated by favoured
Yusufzai jagirdars and maliks. Village society showed signs of
the stresses beginning to affect the lives of both leaders and the
common man. The degree of literal, subaltern regimentation
that could be achieved was demonstrated in 1646 when an
estimated five thousand men and a cavalry regiment were
recruited through Shahbaz Khan, Khan of Hoti, to supplement a
14 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Mughal army in transit to Balkh, north of the Hindu K ~ s h . ~ ~

Yet by 1700 the social life of most Yusufzai, even perhaps a
majority in the plains, still continued in accordance with familiar
patterns of political organization.
In the Peshawar valley, political divisions (tappas) remained
defined by the territory held by dominant lineages. In the plains
east of the Swat river, the Hashtnagar tappa, settled mainly by
Muhammadzai and other non-Yusufzai clans, included a large
area east of the Swat river extending down to the Kabul river.
In 1700, the river-irrigated villages of this tappa remained
divided from the eastern part of the plains by the dry, thinly
settled tract named the maira. The Ranizai tappa, north and east
of Hashtnagar, ranged from Pakhtun Ranizai lineage villages in
the southern Swat valley to settlements dispersed in the adjoining
foothills and the very northern Yusufzai plains. The main tappa
of the northern part of the plain, Lunkhwar, often referred to as
'Baizai', was settled by Baizai Yusufzai. Scattered Khattak and
Utman Khel villages, competitors, or perhaps allies invited to
populate a buffer zone area, were established in the highest
plains and foothills east of the Ranizai ridges, north and east of
Lunkhwar. A ridge line separated Lunkhwar from the largest
plains tappa, that of the Mandanr lineages. The Mandanr region
covered the remaining plains eastward to the Mahaban mountain
on the Indus and southward to the Sar-i Maira ridge along the
Kabul river.
Through the seventeenth century, the Sar-i Maira ridge
represented the contested border divide between Yusufzai claims
and Khattak encroachments from south of the Kabul river.
Mughal strategy to protect the Attock-Peshawar section of the
Kabul highway supported the Khattak as Indus ferry toll
contractors and as jagirdar holders required to patrol the
highway. Enriched and encouraged by this Mughal patronage,
expansionary Khattak ambitions conflicted with Yusufzai
interests. By 1670, the grandfather and father of the leading
Khattak khan, Khushal Khan, had died fighting the Y u ~ u f z a i . ~ ~
In time, a shift in Mughal policy brought an end to Khattak
concessions. Khushal Khan would begin his virulent anti-
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 15

Mughal crusade expressed in armed resistance and militant,

ideological verse.)O When Mughal diplomacy set various Afghan
clans in opposition to each other, manipulating internal clan
factions, it reflected a divide-and-rule policy designed to ensure
'that Pakhtun will hit P a k h t ~ n ' . ~ '

Pakhtun Society

Early eighteenth century social life in most Yusufzai villages

variously reflected the effects of the regional ecology, the
pervasive spirit of competition engendered by the Pakhtun
ideology of equality, and the status differentiation between the
elite and their dependents that was sustained by the Pakhtun
monopoly over coercive force and land. Endemic diseases,
especially malaria, smallpox, and tuberculosis, blighted and
shortened lives. Epidemic diseases, including typhus and
cholera, often recurred on an annual, seasonal basis. Sparse
rainfall led to intense competition for control of scarce sources
of irrigation. Variable soil conditions and terrain meant that
agricultural productivity varied even within a single village. Yet
the temperate, seasonably hot climates of the Swat and Peshawar
valleys and river irrigation did lead to successful cropping,
population increase, and consequently further land competition.
The link between ecological constraints and socio-political
development in 'tribal', 'Middle Eastern', Islamic, and pastoral-
agrarian societies has generated much debate.32 The Afghan
lineage system and the accompanying ideology of highly
competitive equality, Pakhtunwali, appear to be associated with
highly contingent, materially difficult lives. One tentative
explanation is that 'the symmetry and diffusion of power does
seem to be a kind of base-line for which the society seems
destined by the nature or poverty of its means of coercion*.33
The struggle for survival, based in a refusal to be dominated
and in efforts to ensure the success of one's own lineage,
continued between Afghan confederacies as well as within
Yusufzai clans, villages, neighbourhoods, and families. One
16 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

result was the dala pattern, in which first-cousin rivalries

temporarily allied themselves with larger factional rivalries that,
when pressed, might divide villages and whole regions in 'two
bloc' political factionalism. The tenuous nature of such alliances
meant that ideologically autonomous Afghan and Yusufzai
individuals pursued or abandoned such linkages whenever it
suited them.34 Villages and village factions competed over
disputed rights to land and water, claims to wives, and control
of the strategic position of village malik. Successful village
maliks, through ties of patronage and obligation (talgeri), might,
at least temporarily, unify most of the shareholders and
dependants living in their neighbourhood. The Utman Khel in
Barmoul and its neighbouring villages had to defend their claims
to high pastures against villagers living across the northern
passes and had to resist the efforts of assertive maliks to levy
tolls or fees on trade visits to Swat.
The family home apparently offered little defence against the
hard scrabble of this competitive life. The lineage system, in
which the family patriarch defined all rights and power relations,
meant that wives taken into a family might be seen as
representatives of rivals, while seeing themselves as defenders
of their own lineage's honour and pre-eminence. Marriages
could become a competition for dominance. Children were raised
in an environment of parental argument and fighting. Wife-
beating and verbal abuse of husbands marked Pakhtun
households in which the Pakhtunwali ideals of pride and
aggression, of strength and domination were pursued by both
parents.j5
Children grew up unpampered, expected to master those skills
needed to survive and prosper. Gender roles were quickly
learned. Simply, the 'girl is trained to wait on men, whereas the
boy is trained to expect service'. Girls were married off near the
age of puberty. Boys were favoured by fathers for extending the
lineage and by mothers for being potential allies in competition
against the father. With status and concepts of manhood tied to
land ownership, older sons were impatient to inherit or be given
control of their share of the father's estate. Children learned 'to
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 17

be tough and fearless, to accept violence as normal, and to be

essentially aggressive and self-seeking in their dealings with
others' .36
Yet social life involved more than just male-oriented patterns
of clan behaviour. Women interacted with other women in a
separate culture maintained through narrative expressions of
moral and emotional states that defined a particular, gender-
based notion of honour and social position.37Pakhtun customs
(rawaj) and Islamic strictures undoubtedly coexisted in daily
affairs. Grima recorded one woman's description of such social
synthesis:

The event itself is shari'at but what we do with it is rawaj. The

nikah (religious ceremony of a wedding), for instance, is shari'at,
but our celebration with guns and drums and singing and dancing is
rawaj. Death and funeral rites are shari'at, but our weeping and
lamenting is our own custom, quite against the law in Islam. Going
to visit the sick is shari'at, but the practice whereby only the elders
can go is rawaj .38

The relations of subordinated dependants to the Afghans and

the Yusufzai of the Peshawar region varied with village agrarian
conditions (irrigated or unirrigated land), agricultural production
relations (tenancy, simple farm labour), and service requirements
(the need for a tailor, oil presser, weaver, muleteer, or
shopkeeper). Pakhtun elite hegemony reflected as much the
reality of conquest as any 'caste' role in a system of 'secular
status and rank'.39 Barth perhaps de-emphasized the role of
power and dominance in relating notions of caste hierarchy to
the Pakhtun social system and he completely hedged his
definition of 'caste'. Barth himself opined that there is 'no ritual
occasion or idiom by which all groups are ordered in a linear
hierarchy' and there are only 'conceptually endogamous'
marriage relations. The 'castes do not form localized
communities' and do reveal a 'slow process' of occupational
mobility.40 Analytically, the society observed might be better
described as simply hereditary occupational groups politically
18 SE?TLING THE FRONTIER

and economically subordinated by elite, militarized clans able

to manipulate them through a monopoly on coercive force and
productive assets (land).
The tensions and contradictions inherent in such a social
arrangement were clear to the Afghans. In the sixteenth century,
Malik Ahmad faced the dilemma of how to balance the various
Yusufzai land claims on the new territories around Peshawar.
He turned to a religious figure of extreme piety to make an
equitable di~tribution.~' Shaikh Mali not only allocated shares
to each clan but, to guarantee that no group would gain any
undue advantage due to better soil, climate, or access to water,
decreed that at set periods, often ten years, neighbouring, related
clans would mutually exchange lands and villages. This
redistribution policy (wesh) was legitimized by the religious
authority of Shaikh Mali, and also by his social role as a neutral,
consensus-building figure outside the controversial political
sphere of the maliks.
By 1700 the aggressive, contentious elements of Yusufzai
society in the Peshawar region were also constrained by the
imposition of a more complex set of moral-judicial regulations
attributed to Shaikh Mali and the disciples of Sayyid Ali Shah
Tarmezi, Pir Baba. Pakhtunwali required that injury or murder
be avenged by blood. Adultery, elopement, or the kidnapping of
married women or young girls might be punished by a death
sentence or be compensated by a sum of money or another
female. Shaikh Mali attempted to bring the punishment for such
felonies into conformity with the Shari'a. He also attempted to
regularize the detection and punishment of misdemeanours such
as gambling, drunkenness, female immodesty, and inattention
to prayers through closer surveillance and the enforcement of
traditional punishments.
In each tappa and village Shaikh Mali assigned ulema and
figures of hereditary sanctity (stanadars) to maintain public
order. During one month of each year the morality of the whole
tribe (ulus) was reviewed. Punishments appropriate to each
infraction were ordered.42 It is unknown to what extent the
penalties prescribed by Shaikh Mali were enforced in particular
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 19

villages in the Yusufzai country in 1700. But it might be fair to

say that acts defined as infractions and regulations labelled as
'rules of morality' do describe an ideal moral universe intended
to guide the Yusufzai from at least the mid-sixteenth century.
The punishments prescribed revealed the degree to which public
humiliation was considered a primary deterrent to socially
abhorrent behaviour.
One punishment involved the carrying of a criminal slung
from a long pole through the bazaars and streets of the village.
Children, shaikhs, and religious students (taliban) followed
behind in procession with some chanting the Islamic profession
of faith, the kalimah. Here and there the procession stopped to
make the criminal's fate an exemplary lesson to the public.43
A second punishment involved seating the criminal, placed
backwards, on a female donkey, and then leading it through the
streets trailed by a crowd. Musicians followed playing horns
and drums, sartzay and naghary. Shaikhs followed, reciting the
kalimah. In squares and markets (chowks) ulema exhorted the
people to guard themselves against committing the evil acts of
the convict.
'Face blackening' with soot from a mosque lamp was
considered a more extreme punishment. Occasionally the
criminal's trousers were wrapped round his head as a turban
(patkay), then decorated with the feathers of an impure cock or
crow. With a necklace of old bones hung around his neck and
musicians following, the criminal might then be ridden through
the streets on a donkey. To complete his humiliation, the convict
might be showered with horse manure and cow dung. Head-
shaving was a punishment 'commonly' awarded to 'bad acting'
women.
Whipping was described as one of the lawful 'of the book'
punishments prescribed by the canons of Islamic jurisprudence.
Often given to men and women for misconduct, the limits to
this punishment were listed. On rare occasions stoning was
invoked. Each man of the community passed by the criminal,
being required to cast three stones. The appeal and durability of
these punishments continued into later ~ e n t u r i e s . ~ ~
20 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Sheikh Mali's local interpretation of Shari'a derived from

the same Islamic canon nominally used to guide Mughal justice.
With no written, civil, or criminal code, Mughal emperors
delegated degrees of authority to local officials, including judges
(qadis). Individual emperors and officials invoked often arbitrary
judgements. In 1672, Aurangzeb issued more specific guidelines
to his governor in Gujarat that later scholars would term as
Aurangzeb's 'Penal Code'.45 Punishments prescribed by the
Shari 'a to shape Mughal sentences were familiar. 'Punishments
were of four kinds:
1. Qisas, i.e. retaliation applied in cases of killing.
2. Diya or compensation paid by one who had committed
homicide.
3. Hadd, i.e. the fixed punishment prescribed by the Canon
law, e.g.
(a) stoning for illicit intercourse.
(b) cutting of hands for theft, etc.
4. Tazir: the punishment inflicted by a Qazi according to his
e~timation.'~~
Later state officials, attempting to understand lineage social
and land relations, recorded specific customs, transgressions,
and punishments. Discussing the Khyber Pass Afridi clans, a
nineteenth-century British land settlement officer said that 'Most
of the tribes set apart one of their families as the hereditary
preservers of their local customs, styled the 'Serishtah', which
is distinct from the family in which the 'Mullikee' or Chiefship
is vested'. Criminal penalties, obligations of defence, and other
common matters were decided by the serishtah. Murderers
received death sentences. A man shirking battle obligations paid
a fine (nagah) and had his house burnt. Adultery was punished
with the execution of the woman and then the man. After a
murder a jirga might arrange a compromise in which a fine was
paid to forestall a cycle of revenge.47
Later government officials saw these 'customs' as archaic
and fast vanishing. The origins of practices such as land
exchange were vague, now to be reclaimed from tribal folklore.
One late compilation of tribal 'Laws and Usages', intended to
 HISTORY. ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 21

be a last record of doomed institutions, saw wesh as 'coming

into existence when nomadic life gave way to settled agricultural
life'. It was a system 'inherited from ancient Arya tribes, for in
the time of Alexander the Great, it was in force over a vast
area'. Shaikh Mali apparently institutionalized a ten-year cycle
of land exchanges. Supposedly, the preservation of wesh was a
'main purpose' of the Roshaniyya movement against the
Mughals.'* The Marxist publishers of this last study faced the
same problems of establishing legitimate authority with
alternative codes and values that the Mughals had faced four
centuries earlier.

NOTES

1. H. W. Bellew, A General Report on the Yusufzais, 1864 (Sang-e-Meel,

Lahore, 1994), pp. 1-4. Peshawar town was at 1108 feet of elevation.
Mardan village in the Yusufzai area was at about 1200 feet of elevation.
From Gazetteer of the Peshawar District 1897-98 (Punjab Government,
Lahore), p. 2. See Map 1, 'Peshawar District, Swat, Buner'.
2. Barmoul was noted as 'being a very old village (some 150 years it is
said)', in a letter from Asst. Commissioner, Peshawar District to Comm.
and Supt., Peshawar Division, dated 14 February 1866, p. 4. Peshawar
Commissioner Office Records, Bundle No. 53, File S. No. 1310.
See Map 3 'Swat'.
3. One source listed twenty-three passes through the northern rim of the
Peshawar valley between the Swat River to the west and the last
mountains before the Indus on the east. Bellew, 1994, pp. 7-14.
4. Fredrik Barth, Political Leadership among Swat Pathans (Athlone Press,
New Jersey, 1965), p. 13. Barth discusses frameworks of social order
structured 'mainly to territory, stratification and descent', p. 13. Without
accepting all Barth's analysis, this study agrees on the pre-colonial
continuity between Swat and the Peshawar valley, an 'area which formerly
had an economic and social system similar to that of Swat today'. Barth,
1965, p. 80, f. n. 1.
5. Pir Mauzam Shah, Tarikh-i-Hafiz Rahmat Khani (Pashto Academy,
Peshawar, 1987), p. 159. This history, written in Persian and Pashtu, was
a revised draft, with simplified rhetoric, of an earlier History of the
Afghans probably written in 1623-24 by Khwaja Malezai. See the
introduction of the 1987 edition by Muhammad Nawaz Tair. The clans
were described as 'hamsayas or clients' by Caroe, The Pathans, p. 175.
22 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Barth, Political Leadership, 1965, p. 17, listed twenty occupational groups

('castes') after a census of four small villages in Swat in the mid-twentieth
century.
See Charles Lindholm, 'Models of Segmentary Political Action: The
Examples of Swat and Dir, NWFP, Pakistan', in Anthropology in Pakistan
(Indus Publications, Karachi, 1985), pp. 21-39.
Lindholm, 'Models,' 1985, p. 21.
Jon Anderson, 'Doing Pakhtu: Social Organization of the Ghilzai Pakhtun'
(Ph.D. thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1979).
Richard Fox, Lions of the Punjab (University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1985), p. 206.
Talal Asad, 'Market model, class structure and consent.', 1972. Jacob
Black-Michaud, Cohesive Force (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1975).
Lindholm, 'Models', 1985, p. 23.
Pir Mauzam Shah, Tarikh, p. 5 . See Caroe's discussion of locations, The
Pathans, 1992, p. 169.
Lindholm, 'Models', 1985, p. 25.
The date is estimated in Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, 1878, vol. 2,
p. 354. Caroe dated the Katlang battle as about 1525, The Pathans,
1992, p. 179.
Caroe, The Pathans, p. 178. See Map 2, 'General Tribal Map.'
Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Babur-nama, trans, by A. Beveridge
(Sang-e-Meel, reprint, Lahore, 1987), p. 37 1.
Babur-nnma, 1987, Appendix K, p. xli.
For an early, still valuable study, see J. Leyden, 'On the Roshaniah Sect
and its Founder Bayazid Ansari', Asiatic Researches, XI, 1810, reprinted
in Tariq Ahmed, Religio-Political Ferment in the North West Frontier
During the Mughal Period (The Raushaniya Movement), (Idarah-i
Adabiyat-i Delli, New Delhi, 1982) New Delhi, 1982, pp. 79-129.
Lindholm, 'Models', 1985, pp. 24-5. Arlinghaus argues that 'The fact
that the Afghans looked to charismatic religious leaders rather than to
their natural lineage heads', indicated 'how much Afghan tribal society
had changed during the sixteenth century', Arlinghaus, p. 330. Evidence
from the 1590s in the Akbarnama suggests that religious leadership was
often followed 'in addition to' and in alliance with' tribal heads in
opposition to the Mughals, thus revealing an aspect of social complexity
that had evolved by, or continued into, the late sixteenth century.
Lindholm, 'Models', 1985, p, 25.
See Arlinghaus, Transformation, 1988, pp. 304-8, for details, For
chronology see Tariq Ahmed, 1982 Ahmed's claim, p. 51, that the
Roshaniyyas were responsible for the famous Mughal defeat in 1586 in
Swat-Buner which cost Akbar an army and the life of his friend Birbal,
seems unsubstantiated by Abu-l Fazl, who clearly differentiates (Chapter
LXXXV) in the Akbarnarna between efforts against the Yusufzai and
 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 23

against the 'Tarikis', then in the Khyber region. Supporters saw Bayazid
as a Pir of Light (Roshan), detractors as a Pir of Darkness (Tarik).
Lindholm, 'Models', 1985, p. 25.
History of the Hoti Family, no date (c. 1944), no place of publication.
Published, apparently by the family, during the life of Muhammad Akbar
Khan, Khan of Hoti from 1914, p. 19.
History of the Hoti Family, p. 12.
Abu-l Fazl, Akbarrtama (Ess Ess Publications, reprint, Delhi, 1977),
vol. 111, p. 716.
Saqi Mustad Khan, Maasir-i-Alamgiri, trans. Sarkar (Munshiram
Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1986), p. 40. See Chapter 2, Bhaku Khan.
See farman of Prince Murad, son of Shahjehan, to Shahbaz Khan in
History of the Hoti Family, p. 19. Shahbaz Khan's younger brother and
most of the troops were lost in the campaign.
See Afzal Khan, Tarikh-i Murassa. (University Book Agency, Peshawar,
1984). Afzal Khan was a grandson of the famous poet, Khushal Khan.
For detailed period history see Bahadur Shah Zafar, Pahtana Da Tarikh
Pa Ranha Key (University Book Agency, Peshawar, 1965), pp. 599-640.
Also see Dost M. Kamil, 'On a Foreign Approach to Khusal' and
Kuliyat-i Khusal Khan Khatak (Pashtu).
Tarikh-i Hafiz Rahntat Khani, introduction, p. 16.
Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddintah, trans. Rosenthal (Princeton, 1967)
predates academic studies by Spooner, Gellner, and many others.
Ernst Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1981), p. 71.
See Barth, Political Leadership, 1965, Chapter 5.
This ethnography of Pakhtun family life was described by C. Lindholm
in 1982 in the Swat valley and may be representative of family life
among Yusufzai villagers living with the tensions inherent in even a
partial lineage system shaped by Pakhturt\vali. See Cherry Lindholm,
'The Swat Pakhtun Family as a Political Training Ground', in
Anthropology in Pakistan, Louis Pastner and L. Flam, eds. (Indus
Publications, Karachi, 1985).
Cherry Lindholm, 'Family', 1985, p. 57. For other discussion of gender
and women's social roles see Benedicte Grima, The Performance of
Entotiort nntortg Paxturt Wornert (Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1993).
See Grima, The Perfort~ranceof E~notjon,1993.
Grima, Performance, 1993, p. 46.
Barth, Political Leadership, 1965, p. 17.
Barth, Political Leadership, 1965, pp. 16-22.
So devout was he reputed to be that it was said a helper followed him
wherever he went carrying a pot of water for proper ablutions before
prayers. Tarikk-i Hafiz Rnlttttat Kharti, p. 145.
24 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

42. Tarikh-i Hafiz Rahmat Khani, introduction, pp. 28-9.

43. This section derives from Tarikh-i Hafiz Rahmat Khani, introduction by
Muhammad Nawaz Tair, pp. 29-31, from my translation.
44. The New York Times, 30 March 1997, p. 4, reported an Afghan woman
stoned to death in a 'Taliban'-controlled area for travelling with an
unrelated male companion.
45. Muhammad Akbar, The Administration of Justice by the Mughals
(Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1948), p. 54.
46. Muhammad Akbar, The Administration of Justice, p. 61. 11 February
1996, Pakistan newspapers, The Frontier Post and the News, reported
from 'Taliban-controlled' Khost town in Afghanistan the public execution
of two convicted murderers 'awarded death sentence under Qisas'. News,
p. 1.
47. Hugh James, Report on the Settlement of the Peshawar District, c. 1862
(Punjab Government, Lahore, 1865).
48. M. Ibrahim Atayee, A Dictionary of the Terminology of Pashtun's Tribal
Customary Law and Usages, trans. by A. Mohammad Shinwary
(International Centre for Pashto Studies, Kabul, 1979), pp. 104-5.
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY

Islamic, imperial, and clan literary texts narrating Afghan history

and genealogies constructed particular scriptural, dynastic, or
lineage interpretations of stories living on in the popular, oral
domain. By 1700 the core Pakhtun social identity, clan
membership in a network of linked, nominally egalitarian lineage
relationships, had been partially formalized in literary
productions that might criticize or glorify indigenous society,
but always recognized the sustaining power of the genealogical
idiom in Pakhtun imaginations and ideas of autonomy. These
narratives presented conflicting views on the desired role of
political hierarchies and religious authority. At least one clan
narrative revealed the complex relationship between local
political rivalries and the larger interests and strategies of the
Mughal empire.
In the first decades of the eighteenth century, Afghans west
of the Indus, including the Yusufzai and Mandanr of the
Peshawar valley, maintained a heightened self-awareness, a
specific cultural identity that served as a bulwark against both
recent external challenges and continuing social stresses. This
evolving 'imagined community" expressed itself in the
definition and practice of the tenets of proper behaviour,
Pakhtunwali, and in an identification with an ideology of
equality based on lineage genealogies.
Pakhtunwali, the Pakhtun social system regulating behaviour,
has long been a popular subject of study as a 'tribal' ethos
based on exchangelrevenge (badal), sanctuary (nanawati),
hospitality (melmastia), and notions of shamelhonour (nang),
especially in matters concerning women2 Broadly considered
26 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

as 'law, customs, manners, or mind-set', Pakhtunwali provided

'criminal, civil, or social' guidance for the punishment of injury
and immorality, the transfer of property, and the 'standards for
everyday behaviour' . 3 The 'ethnocentric' practice of
Pakhtunwali may have become more formalized in the early
seventeenth century as an alternative to the mores and culture
of the encroaching Mughal empire.4 This also presupposes that
this period perhaps fostered the reshaping and elaboration of
other markers of socio-cultural identity, including literary
histories and genealogie~.~
In fact, during the seventeenth century diverse manuscripts
recording centuries of lineage genealogies, dynastic histories,
and chronicles of Islamic expansion and conquest were gathered,
arranged, and given narrative shape to create new texts re-
inventing Islamic, Afghan, and local identities. Though much of
the literary production of this era occurred under the patronage
of various Afghan and South Asian Islamic rulers, regional and
religious interests soon recognized the possibilities of the
historical narrative genre. Within a generation, in the early
seventeenth century, numerous synthesizing works were written.
Though the dating of individual manuscripts remains
problematic, apparently some works influenced others.
If 'Muslims. ..always have shown a liking and aptitude for
the writing of professed histories, so that every Muslim dynasty
in Asia has found its ~hronicler',~ the exemplary chronicle of
this era may be the Akbarnama by Abu-1 Fazl. The Akbarnama
and the Ain-i Akbari, also by Abu-1 Fazl, were hagiographic
texts memorializing the long career of Babur's grandson, Akbar
(reigned 1556- 1605). These manuscripts were only the best
known of several histories compiled in the period, generally
under imperial patronage, glorifying a patron's rule and
projecting his virtues. For our purpose, the important works of
the period were the Tariklz-i Hafiz Rahmat Khani, original draft
finished about 1623; The History of the Afghans or Makhzen
Afghani, written about 1613 at the court of Akbar's son Jehangir;
the History of the Rise of the Mohamedan Power in India by
Muhammad Kasim Hindu Shah (Ferishta), finished about 1612
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 27

at the court of the Bijapur monarch Ibrahim Adil Shah 11; and
the Tazkirat al-Abrar wa al-Ashrar of Ahkund Darweza, dated
to 1612-13.'
The comprehensive history by Ferishta, the Afghan history
Makhzen Afghani attributed by Dorn to 'Neamet Ullah', Akhund
Darweza's work, and the Yusufzai history Tarikh-i Ha$z Rahmat
Khani, all emerged within a few years of each other. Lengthy
manuscripts taking months and even years to research and write,
these works appear to be the products of a similar intellectual
and cultural environment grounded in historical awareness and
dedicated scholarly production. Ferishta's work lists thirty-four
texts as sources and mentions another twenty. A version of his
history was said to have been presented to his patron monarch
in 160911018 AH,*though another source notes the work as
completed in 1612.9 Dorn dates the unrevised Maklzzen Afghani
to the period 1609-16 1111018- 1020 AH,while Raverty gives the
date as 161311021 A H . The Maklzzen Afghani revealed a typical
sequence of original author's compilations from various sources,
including simple copying, later revisions, and then a confusion
of original author, later revisers, and relevant dates.I0
The vitality and interrelated nature of the early seventeenth
century Muslim court literary scene was clearly apparent. Dorn
noted that the History of the Afghans was begun 'in the same
year when Ferishta finished his work; but he is nowhere
mentioned'. More importantly, 'The identity of the sources they
used . . .is evident, from the extreme, often verbal, coincidence
of the style and thread of the history of the reigns of the Lodi
race and the family of Sheer Shah'." If the degree of mutual
influence or contact between the era's authors may never be
fully established, the texts themselves reveal common efforts to
legitimize contemporary political authority through claims to
notable ancestors and the selective interpretations of narratives
alive in the public domain. These interpretations justified ruling
strategies, religious hegemony, and the moral pre-eminence of
certain codes of behaviour.
Framed by specific sets of socio-political perspectives, these
manuscripts reflected ideologies naturalizing images of divine
28 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

light radiating from Akbar's forehead or the teleology of the

inevitable expansion of Islam. If the question remained
unanswered as to why an early seventeenth century scholar at
the court of Akbar's son, Jehangir, would write a History of the
Afghans, so the inspiration for the style and method of his effort
also remained undocumented. Still, the elite court culture of
seventeenth-century South Asian Islamic kingdoms was a limited
world and it is known that in 1606, Ferishta visited Jehangir's
capital. l 2
Mughal expansion, court historiography, and the threat of
heterodox religious belief were the parameters that framed both
the conception and writing of the Yusufzai history and the socio-
political perspective of Akhund Darweza's text. These latter
two works repeated familiar narratives of Afghan origins, but
origins now rooted in competing logics. One logic derived from
an ideology of genealogy being at the heart of the egalitarian
lineage structure. The other logic embraced an ideological
interpretation of Islam that used lineage stories to create useful
religious polemics.
Readers of Caroe's chapter on genealogy in The Pathans, or
of the full-blown Afghan history found in Dorn's translation,
are familiar with the historical narrative in which Pashtu-
speaking Afghans from Herat to the Indus river claim common
genealogical links within a comprehensive kinship system. This
elaborate family tree tied all lineages to a common conversion
to Islam in the seventh century AD and, even further back, to a
common Afghan ancestor descended from the earliest Biblical
prophets. The speculations of generations of scholars, and of
English colonial officials, on the credibility of specific claims
to descent from variously the Bani Israel, lost Jewish tribes, or
particular Asian dynasties have been exhaustive and, perhaps,
exhausted. Of more local interest may be a comparison of the
use of genealogy in the Yusufzai history with such use in
Akhund Darweza's text. Written during the era of great court
histories that justified centralization under imperial authority,
these two less cosmopolitan works differed from each other in
their description and sensibility of descent narratives. The
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 29

differences reveal competing values within regional mentalities

that coexisted in the seventeenth century and continued to
influence socio-religious thought after 1700.
Long before the works of Abu-1 Fazl, Asian imperial and
religious biographies asserted claims to distinguished ancestry
and an early conversion to Islam. The Central Asian ruler Timur
(d. 1 4 0 5 1 8 0 7 ~ claimed
~) ancestry 'extending to Tumuneh Khan,
whose genealogy is carried back in history to Japhet, the son of
Noah'.I3 Prominent near the tomb in Buner of Sayyid Ali Shah
Tirmizi, known as Pir Baba, erected after his death in 1575, was
a family genealogy (shajarah izasab) listing thirty-two
generations that separated Pir Baba from Islam's Prophet.14 As
the idiom of descent had long conferred a sense of historically
grounded authority and legitimacy, so the regional narratives of
Afghan and Yusufzai origins employed the same idiom to
legitimate roots and socio-political relations.
The Tariklz-i Hafiz Rahinat Klzaizi, a simple narrative of
Yusufzai migration and conquest, traced without recourse to
ancient linkages the several generations that left Afghanistan
and consolidated their hold over territories west of the Indus
river. Near the manuscript's conclusion, just before narrating
the victory of Khan Kaju and the Yusufzai over the Ghoria
Khel in the battle of Shaikh Tapur, the author recorded the
deaths of Malik Ahmad and Shaikh Mali and listed their political
heirs and prominent descendants.
Drawing from Akhund Darweza's Tazkirat al-Abrar, the
author(s) recorded the final thoughts of the dying Shaikh Mali.
He declared that he had been generous and helpful to needy
people without any personal expectations and that he had
worked only for the sake of God. Pursuing the theme of group
solidarity, the narrative noted that the land settlement of Shaikh
Mali and the resulting stability continued to the present, with
his descendants living i n both the Yusufzai region and
Hindustan.''
However, averred the Yusufzai history, if another 'glorious
conqueror' was found in Khan Kaju, the sibling jealousy
between Malik Ahmad's most notable sons, Al-hoda and Ismael,
30 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

led to factionalism within the clan (Khan khel) that had produced
leaders. 'Uncles and cousins' fought and died and the family
eventually lost its established claim to leadership, even if, as of
162311033 A H , one family member, Sauda, remained an
honoured malik.16 The prevalence of factionalism in periods of
tranquillity seemed apparent, while a final contemporary
observation revealed the new place of imperial patronage in
supporting established families: 'And (a few of the) children of
Shah Mansoor, cousin of Alam Malik Ahmad, also in this
time.. .are in Hindustan in the service of.. .(the Mughal emperor)
Jehangir.. .' l 7
The Yusufzai narrative detailed the course of events of a
close set of allied clans over a relatively limited time frame. An
active Yusufzai historical consciousness may have caused them
to record names and events linked to political success as early
as the fifteenth century.'* The authority conferred by such
written histories may well have influenced the creation of similar
or competing narratives.
The author of the nineteenth century Hayat-i-Afghan l 9
(Afghan Life) attributed the motivation of the Afghan author of
the Makhzen Afghani as an attempt to establish Afghan
legitimacy to counter contemporary imperial claims to
prominence. As 'naively set forth ...in an introductory account,
which,. . .has been in many editions suppressed.. .', the story
went that at Jehangir's court the Persian ambassador once
mocked the Afghans with a fantastic tale of their origins:

Books of authority, he said, recounted that once King Zuhak,

hearing of a race of beautiful women that lived in some far-off
Western country, sent an army thither; which army was defeated by
the beautiful women, but afterwards, a stronger expedition being
sent under Nariman, they were reduced to sue for peace and gave
tribute of a thousand virgins when, on its return march, the army
was one night encamped close to a wild mountainous country, there
suddenly came down upon it a phantom of terrific aspect, smote
and scattered the troops in all directions, and then, in the one night,
ravished all the thousand virgins. In due time all became pregnant,
and when Zuhak learned this, he gave orders that the women should
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 31

be kept in the remote deserts and plains, lest the unnatural offspring
should breed strife and tumult in the cities. This offspring was the
race of the Afghans. This gibing taunt would seem to have touched
the jealous self-conceit of the Afghan, and he tells us that he then
and there determined to write the book Makhze~t-i-Afghani."

The Maklzzen Afghani, translated by Dorn, disposed of any

questions regarding 'unnatural' parentage or geographic origin
by beginning with Adam then tracing Afghan lineages through
King Talut (Saul) and religious orthodoxy through Khalid bin
Walid, companion of the Prophet (PBUH).This comprehensive
narrative detailed the early prophets, the spread of Islam, the
Afghan Lodi and Suri rulers in India, and the extensive
genealogical connections said to link the numerous Afghan clans
to Kais, renamed Abd al-Rashid, a contemporary of the Prophet
(PBUH).Kais' 'pedigree ascends in a series of thirty-seven
degrees to Talut, of forty-five to Ibrahim, and of six hundred
and three to Adam.'21A broad synthesis incorporating the finest
details of traditional Afghan folklore, the work connected the
ancient with the contemporary, prophetic lineages with the
founders of Islam. The unifying power of shared origin to create
a distinguished Afghan identity, one able to stand against
imperial Persian or Mughal cultural claims, was apparent to the
patron of the Maklzzelz Afgllarli, Khan Jahan Lodi, and to at
least one later observer:

Ferishta mentions that Kyse, the son of Haushein, and Huneef, the
son of Kyse, were two of the earliest Arab commanders in
Khorassaun (Brigg's Feri.rhtcc, Vol. 1, p. 3). He also states that
Khauled, tlre son of Ahcloollol~,being afraid to return to Arabia,
settled in the hills of Solimaun, and gave his daughter to a converted
Afghaun chief (p. 5). It was probably by these facts that the names
of Kyse and Khauled were suggested to the Afghaun author, who
first thought of ennobling his nation by connecting i t with that of
the Prophet.22

From the late sixteenth century a religious figure in the

Yusufzai territory, Akhund Darweza, appropriated Afghan
32 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

history and the Afghan genealogical idiom to serve another

purpose, the promotion of Islamic norms and values. The son of
another religious figure from the Ningrahar region, just east of
Kabul, Akhund Darweza, literally a 'mendicant teacher', lived
in the Buner valley and in the Peshawar area. A disciple of
Sayyid Ali Shah Tirmizi, Pir Baba was engaged in early, face-
to-face debates with Bayazid Ansari and claimed credit for re-
naming the self-styled Pir-i Rosharz (Pir of Light) as the Pir-i
Tarik (Pir of D a r k n e ~ s )Of
. ~ ~Turk-Tajik descent on his father's
side,24 Akhund Darweza turned a non-Pakhtun, reformist eye
on local society and waged an intensely personal theological
battle against the Roshaniyyas. The tolerance shown by the
Mughal emperor Akbar in a 1581 meeting with Bayazid Ansari's
son, Jalal al-Din, then leader of the Roshaniyya movement,
added fuel to the ongoing struggle of Akhund Darweza and
other regional proponents of mainstream Sunni Islam to
influence the Mughal court (especially the eclectic Akbar) and
suppress less orthodox religious interpretation^.^"
From the late sixteenth and well into the seventeenth century,
Akhund Darweza (d. 1638-3911048 A H ) and his descendants
wrote and revised a number of works devoted to this struggle.
About 1612-1311021 A H , Akhund Darweza completed one of
several versions of the Tazkirat al-Abrar wa al-Ashrar (loosely,
'History of the Pious and Evil'), in which he delineated and
critiqued the faults of Afghan ~ o c i e t y . ~ Vone
n section he retold
the Afghan descent story, now supplemented with interpretive
commentary elaborating on the failures of Afghan society and
pointing the way to ideal, Islamic norms of behaviour. Intended
to recall straying Yusufzai and other Pakhtuns to the teachings
of Pir Baba and the Shari'a, this genealogical narrative revealed
Akhund Darweza's reliance upon state influence to ensure a
proper status for religion in the social hierarchy. His text also
hinted at the extent to which Pakhtun society gave precedence
to established lineage practices over those shaped by strict
religious interpretation and convention:
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 33

On the origins of Afghan genealogies and clans, understand beloved

son that it is said that they are of the lineage of Mehtar Yaqub,
named Israel ...Once in an age of prosperity, peace, wellness,
security, and stability the people had complete kindness for clans,
dependants, and the poor. They sacrificed lives for even the small
affair of a dependant (faqir) who had settled in their shadow, to the
point a brother would draw a sword against a b r ~ t h e r . ~ '
But in time, trouble, the decline of the Afghans, disorder, and
confusion in the tribe (ulus), (they) dragged down and destroyed all
dependants and the poor. They (the Afghans) took away their
property from them (the dependants and poor) and sold their
families. They (the Afghans) even sold their own wives and children
among one another and they, in times of security, have also made
daughter selling (dukhtar-furush) their custom. These are the affairs
and circumstances of Afghans from Kandahar to the boundary of
Swat and Buner, that is Yusufzai country, that I observed. But
Afghans who are in other areas are not with these characteristics,
those people having a Muslim ruler.
Now I will state the origin of families and their circumstances,
by the grace of God.. .derived from the perfect commentary, etc.
Understand, precious one, that Abraham, the Friend of God, had a
son, Ismael. The Arabs were from his lineage and there were no
prophets in his line except Mustafa, upon him be peace, last of the
prophets. He had another son named Ishaq, and Ishaq had a son,
Yaqub, and Yaqub had twelve sons. From these sons one was Levi.
Prophecy was in his family. There was another son named Yahuda.
Kingship (n~aliki)was in his family. Often in the Bani Israel there
was a (separate) prophet (and) a (separate) malik. The army and
fighting were in the hands of the ruler (malik) and the ruler was
under the order of the prophet (nabi). Whatever the order of
Almighty God was, the prophet brought to the ruler and the ruler
brought to the people (qaum).
The Bani Israel had an ark (tabut, chest, also Pashtu for coffin)
that was taken forward when they entered into war. In this way the
Bani Israel had victory and success and enemy soldiers were
defeated. Until a time came of lawbreaking and sinfulness and the
abandoning of rulers of the orders (farnzan) of the prophets. The
Bani Israel were defeated, their sons killed, wives and girls and
property taken and the ark seized.
34 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

The prophet prayed to God for help. He was answered by God

who accepted his prayer, sending a staff. The prophet said whoever
matches this staff (in height) will be ruler. But none measured up to
the staff. Then one day a man named Talut of the sons of Bani
Amin came to the city seeking a lost donkey and passed the house
of the prophet. A servant said, 'Let us enter the prophet's house
and visit to find the donkey through his prayers'. When the prophet
saw Talut's height he measured him on the staff. The prophet said
to the Bani Israel, 'This is your malik.'
Surprised, the Bani Israel asked, 'What were his qualifications
for malik? He is not from a lineage of maliks and he has no wealth
to give the army.' The prophet said, 'Almighty God makes him
malik over you. If he does not have noble lineage, he is strong of
body and has knowledge of warfare.'
And this custom (sunnat) is continuing among Afghans until our
day. Whoever of them is full of strength and is skilled in war,
although he has no wealth, they take him as badshah and klzan.
When questioned as to how Talut had been proved, the prophet
said that he would bring back the ark. Jalut (who had overthrown
the Bani Israel and seized the ark) had placed their ark in a temple.
But every day those coming to the temple found the other idols
overturned. Others, while asleep, were devoured by animals. The
next day the catastrophe was blamed on the ark. It was tied to a
bullock cart and driven towards the Bani Israel. An angel drove the
bull to the Bani Israel and so the rule of Malik Talut was accepted.*

Akhund Darweza's version of the Afghan descent narrative

and origins indiscriminately mixed a basic genealogical listing
with critical commentary elaborating on social relations, a
nomadic history, and decentralized politics. Afghan society was
said to have declined from its earlier ideal state of peace and
security under a Muslim ruler. After a fall, venality and the
exploitation of dependants replaced justice, and even daughters
were sold. In Akhund Darweza's interpretation, 'bride price'
played no economic or symbolic role in Pakhtun society.
In interpreting the saga of Talut, Akhund Darweza passed
judgement on Afghan honesty, compassion, and respect for piety.

* See Appendix 16 for excerpts from Akund Darweza's genealogical narrative.

 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 35

Talut's experience was used to explain why Afghan political

leadership was not passed down through wealthy, noble lineages.
Competitive, lineage politics were attributed to ancient tribal
customs that encouraged ignorance, selfishness, and arrogance.
Environmental constraints, socio-economic circumstances, and the
stresses of imperial domination were ignored.
Akhund Darweza's historical vision produced an interpretive
'text' similar in form and function to other oral and written
histories. Such histories may be considered analytically by
examining the processing and content of the 'narratives' used to
build each historical text.28 Ahkund Darweza's genealogical
story, apparently derived from oral, manuscript, and personal
sources, was a 'display text' of familiar themes both giving
information and asserting a 'tellibility' to draw the author and
his audience into a common dialogue.29The narrative, portraying
and interpreting Pakhtun history and society, invited the
audience to evaluate his evidence and approve his judgements.
The power of core prophetical narratives to retain significance
over centuries is demonstrated in the tale of the wooden tabut,
or ark, carried into battle before the Bani Israel. After the death
of Bayazid Ansari and the threatened desecration of his grave,
his sons and followers literally carried his bones around in a
chest before their a s s e m b l i e ~ . ~ ~
Akhund Darweza tied a popular narrative of Afghan
conversion to Islam to a subsequent curse by the Prophet (PBUH)
that Afghan political fragmentation would doom them to a
dispersed life of unenlightened pastoral nomadism. Afghans
were required to subordinate themselves to an Islamic rule
asserting both religious and political supremacy. Islam was
equated with hierarchical authority and knowledge. While
declaring that the Afghans followed improper religious
principles and practice, Akhund Darweza delicately ascribed it
to pious ignorance, since they knew no better. More
sympathetically, the story of the supplicant Mahmud of Ghazni
linked the grand narrative of Islamic conquest to Afghan agency
and custom while paying tribute to Afghan valour, hospitality,
honour, and expansion.
36 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

The general polemic against Afghan customs and traditions

turned virulent as the genealogy interpolated commentary on
lineages accused of apostasy. The 'mountain kafirs', Roshaniyya
disciples, were 'absolute infidels'. Religious precedents dictated
killing such men, capturing their women, and seizing their
property. The utter intolerance of this rhetoric left little incentive
for Roshaniyya restraint. Even later scholars, not hesitating to
refer to Roshaniyya 'brigandage' and 'plunder operation^,'^' saw
little equivalence in Roshaniyya religious arguments justifying
their own seizure of property.
Akhund Darweza's narrative contained considerable details
of personal, family, and general material life, such as the fact
that hill dwellers subsisted on rain-fed millet crops, wore
woollen clothes, and, barefoot and bareheaded, gathered grass
and wood from forests. Minute observations, for instance that
Afghans lived among the Tajiks in Ningrahar, indicated close
personal knowledge of the region.
Akhund Darweza ignored the fictive potential of the extended
genealogical narrative nominally to unify all Afghan clans,
including through the recognizing of second or third wives and
through adoptions. Instead, the story of Sheikhi taking his wife's
sister, Basu, into his household was described as a typically
irreligious Afghan custom. With the concurrent marrying of two
sisters proscribed in the Koran,32Akhund Darweza used this to
accuse the whole community involved of religious infidelity.
He undoubtedly saw the descendants of Tark, the son of Basu,
being followers of Bayazid Ansari as no mere coincidence.
Akhund Darweza saved his most shocked reactions for his
commentary on Afghan family relations. Widows married a
brother of their deceased husband, though a saying of the
Prophet valued a widow's loyalty to her dead husband 'to the
time of dying'. According to Akhund Darweza's interpretation
of the Shari'a, parents were to be honoured. Fathers having
absolute control over the disposition of their property, sons had
to earn their daily bread and anything produced from the father's
resources remained his. Through characterizations of how the
sons of Yusuf treated their parents, Akhund Darweza described,
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 37

as well as condemned, an apparently customary, sensitive

Afghan practice of property and inheritance in which sons, upon
maturity, divided their parents' property among themselves in
equal shares. The Afghan morality tale cursing Badi for abusing
his mother indicated that if respect for elders was given due
importance, property, the prime marker of Pakhtun status, would
be distributed to anxious sons.
Akhund Darweza's genealogy represented a particular
interpretation of a fairly standard narrative of local lineages.
The soft pronunciations (Sherbun rather than Kharshbun,
Jarnand rather than Zarnartd, Sheiklti rather than K h a k h ~ y ) , ~ ~
possibly reflected a soft-toned, Persian reference source used by
Akhund Darweza, or indicated his own preference for Persian.
In later manuscripts and histories, the hard Pahktun letters,
representing local Yusufzai pronunciation, were used.
The comprehensive History of the Afgharts mentioned that
the three sons of Abd al-Rashid ('Sarbanni, Batni, and
Ghurghust') left behind 'three hundred and ninety-five tribes'.34
But Akhund Darweza quickly narrowed his focus to the line
that produced Abd al-Rashid, Sarbanni, Sherbun, Kand, Sheikhi,
Mundi (Mand), and his sons Umar and Yusuf. From Yusuf and
from Umar's son Mandanr, according to this narrative, came
most of the Pakhtun clans occupying Swat and the north-eastern
Peshawar valley.
In the early eighteenth century, with the aid of genealogies
such as that of Akhund Darweza, each individual in every
Pakhtun clan in the northern valleys and the relevant Peshawar
valley tappas, could link himself to one of the descendants of
Mandanr or Yusuf. Individuals required such ties to claim a
share of a village's landholdings, just as lineages needed links
to claim a share i n periodic land redistributions within a tappa.
If by 1700 the exact name and number of forefathers that tied
an individual to Yusuf or Mandanr might be debatable, this
sense of common ancestry, along with the reality of land
possession and a commitment to the set of relations known as
Pakhturtwali, validated and established Afghan identities. As
indicated, this ideology of genealogy was adaptive and flexible.
38 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Weaker or disreputable individuals or lineages were skipped or

absorbed in a process of compression and omission. As well,
peripheral clans might assert more respectable ancestry as
fortunes rose. The framework of lineage genealogy provided an
opportunity for specific families and individuals to stake claims
to leadership and resources, especially when these claims began
to extend beyond the bounds of egalitarian social practice.
Later, such legitimating features of Akhund Darweza's
narratives 'developed into an indispensable ingredient of
eighteenth-century Indo-Afghan identity' as Rohilla commanders
of diverse migrant Pakhtun soldiers, including many Mandanr
and Yusufzai, attempted to forge political loyalty out of a
common religio-cultural heritage.35
Akhund Darweza's ideological narrative of ghazis and
conquest evoked the thesis of Lindner suggesting a lack of
contemporary evidence for later histories of ghazi-driven 'jihad'
being responsible for spreading the early Ottoman empire. It
seemed to fit the 'historiographic pattern' discussed by Eaton
in which later polemical writers, and European scholars,
attributed a 'holy war ethic' to Ottoman expansion and the
spread of Islam in Bengal.'"khund Darweza did not hesitate
to justify violence in his era through references to the past.
Though Mahmud of Ghazni's many incursions into the
subcontinent were apparently quite violent, both Lindner and
Eaton made the case that it took generations of population
movement and settlement to establish permanent new Islamic
communities. Such histories of mobile pastoralists turning to a
more stable agrarian livelihood might find a convenient parallel
with the Pakhtun experience in the Peshawar valley.
Akhund Darweza's polemic joined the mix of regional
cultural voices in an effort to consolidate a recurring Islamic
perspective. As a lineage 'history' i t combined narrative, verse,
personal anecdote, and a moral theme that structured both
content and analysis. The preoccupation with the heritage of
Bayazid Ansari ensured that Akhund Darweza's narrative would
be helpful in recreating a specific Islamic sensibility, 'in writing
the history of that for which they are events i n and of
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 39

themselves-the history of images and representations of the

past.. .' 37

Lineage narratives
In 1645 the Mughal expedition north of the Hindu Kush to
Balkh and Badakhshan included followers not only of the
Yusufzai jagirdar, but also of the regional Khattak jagirdar,
Khushal Khan.38 The account of the life of the warrior-poet
Khushal Khan remains one of the most renowned of many elite
Afghan personal histories shaped by the interaction of lineage
and Mughal politics. Patronized by the emperor Shah Jehan,
then suspected and imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb, Khushal
Khan spent years, during the 1670s, organizing anti-Mughal
Pakhtun coalitions. These coalitions failed, in part from a lack
of Yusufzai support, and also because of a reward-oriented
Mughal diplomacy. Unable directly to defeat and subordinate
the various Afghan districts west of the Indus, the Mughals
reduced their confrontational approach and maintained access
to Kabul and the west with a policy, long found along imperial
borders, that combined 'coercion' (military threat) with
'seduction', that is 'gifts, trade opportunities, and pledges of
political support'.39 The success of this policy fragmented
support for Khushal Khan, even among his sons.40
Through the mid-to-late seventeenth century, political
competition within the Peshawar valley remained intimately
linked to imperially influenced lineage feuds and to factional
rivalries within the Mughal ruling leadership. Akbar's sixteenth-
century creation of a Khattak jagir to protect the imperial road
between Attock and Peshawar began a generations-long struggle
pitting the Khattak lineages against the Yusufzai and Mandanr
clans, especially as expansion-minded Khattak khans pushed
north of the Kabul river to seize land and establish villages. The
great-grandfather, grandfather, and father of Khushal Khan all
died in conflicts with the Yusufzai. In each generation, Mughal
divide-and-rule tactics attempted to weaken threatening, usually
40 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Yusufzai, Afghan clans. As Caroe has detailed, seventeenth-

century lineage heads, including Khushal Khan, nurtured
alliances among particular Mughal provincial and court factions
in an ongoing competition to increase the number of villages in
a jagir or to eliminate subsidies received by opponent^.^'
In the early eighteenth century, during a period of relative
stability within the Peshawar valley, Afzal Khan, grandson of
Khushal Khan and chief of the Khattak clan, wrote a new history
of the Afghans that gave prominence to his lineage and,
correspondingly, denigrated the Yusufzai and Mandanr clans.
Established Afghan histories and genealogies, previously used
either to confirm an Afghan identity or serve as a vehicle for
religious exhortation, now were used to document or invent
traditions of valour as well as to stake claims to territory and
imperial patronage.
Afzal Khan's Tarikh-i Murassa (Bejeweled History) began
with a Pashtu translation of the same Makhzen Afghani later
translated by Dorn. To this he added narratives of Afghan
migrations, Khattak genealogy, and Khattak history drawn from
Akhund Darweza's Tazkirat al-Abrar wa al-Ashrar and other

Afzal Khan related that Khushal Khan recorded 'in his own
handwriting' the tradition that there were 'twenty generations
between Karlan and our family'. Karlanri was the putative
forefather of the fourth branch of the Afghan shajarah, a branch
that neatly absorbed the various Pakhtun hill clans, from Afridis
to Wazirs, not tied to the three sons of Kais. A story revealing
the flexibility and the unifying potential of the genealogical
idiom held that Karlanri had been a foundling, discovered and
raised by sons of Urmar, an adopted son of Sarbanni's son
Sharkbun.
The first great Khattak, Malik Ako, had received his jagir
from Akbar, but rather than a noble title preferred, and was
given, an imperial grant to collect 'a transit duty on cattle'.
Soon enough, his descendants would drop the title 'malik' for
'khan', while rights to collect various duties and fees remained
important for the wealth and the prestige involved. Certainly, in
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 41

the early 1680s, when Aurangzeb's standing policy of ending

internal tolls justified provincial officials in abolishing the
politically sensitive Indus ferry toll concession of the Khattaks,
Khushal Khan may well have wondered how that would affect
the local balance of power.43
As Afzal Khan detailed the century of Khattak conflict with
the neighbouring Yusufzai and Mandanr clans, he portrayed an
elite history where heroic Khattak khans faced, and usually
defeated, opposing village headmen. From Akora, the main
Khattak village south of the Kabul river, Khattaks led by
Khushal's grandfather, Yahiya, crossed the Kabul river and
captured the village of Misri-kot. There, 'several chiefs of note
amongst the Yusufzai fell, while Yahiya Khan killed Mamo
Khan'. 'After the murder of Yahiya Khan, Shahbaz Khan'
(Khushal's father) 'levied tribute from the Mandanrs and the
Akozais and subjected the whole of the Mandanr tribe with the
sword' .44
Yet, the triumphal narrative also highlighted the political
factionalism that so often eroded Afghan and Yusufzai lineage
unity and opened the door to external interests. Afzal Khan
described how two feuding Mandanr clans, the Utmanzai and
Sadozai (an Utmanzai sub-lineage), intensified their conflict.
The Utmanzai attracted allies from other Mandanr clans, the
Razzar, Kamalzai, and Amazai. The Sadozai, whose khan was
friendly with Shahbaz Khan, approached the Khattaks for help.
In the end, Shahbaz Khan helped the Sadozai by burning a few
Utmanzai villages. He then appointed his own choice, Bhaku
Khan, as Sadozai leader. But soon Bhaku Khan turned on the
Khattaks, attacked their villages north of the Kabul river, and
fought several battles with Shahbaz Khan.4Vhis shifting pattern
of alliance and fission, involving sub-lineages, tappa level
lineages, and regional clans (ulus to Afzal Khan), was less
natural 'anarchy' than the condition that occurred when lineage
conflicts, intensified by a sedentary existence, operated in a
context of imperial jagirdars playing for higher stakes and
greater potential rewards.
42 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

This elite Khattak history had little interest in detailing the

effects of such feuding upon daily village life. One minor insight
came from Afzal Khan's description of Khushal Khan's raid on
an Akozai village in 1640. The raid was to avenge his father,
Shahbaz Khan, dead from wounds suffered in a cattle raid. It
was recorded that Khushal Khan ordered, 'Put to death whatever
you come across, dogs or men' and 'Accordingly, whatever
they came across, cattle, men, women, children, nothing did
they spare but killed them, and deluged their households with
blood.. . ' Such fighting and raiding, involving horsemen,
swordsmen, and archers, characterized the annals of elite khans,
though the retreat from Khushal's assault revealed something
of the social classes and technology involved in seventeenth-
century local warfare. 'When the Khataks had crossed the Balar
they halted. It was now near evening prayer-time. In the interval
one Basai, a minstrel, received a gun-shot wound; and came
home and died.'46
The impact of the introduction to the region of firearms
appears to have been mixed. Perhaps used by Babur's troops in
the 1519 campaign, matchlocks are known to have supported
the Mughal army trapped and destroyed in 1586 in the passes of
Buner and were undoubtedly carried by Aurangzeb's armies
defeated in area passes in the 1670sS4'It might be imagined that
the Mughals carefully guarded the control of firearms and that
such weapons were more effective used in numbers in the open
plains than in mountainous terrain. It is not known whether the
Peshawar valley jagirdars were armed by the Mughals. Little
evidence documents the steady spread of matchlocks throughout
the region. Into the early eighteenth century firearms appeared
to have complemented rather than radically transformed imperial
and clan military tactics.
The regional socio-economic impact of firearms was
incremental but apparently pervasive. New trade links and
manufacturing skills developed to meet a growing demand for
guns, powder, and shot. And more and more weapon-conscious
Afghans acquired and carried matchlocks, whether to guard
against enemies or project authority and status.
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 43

In the early eighteenth century, in the context of greater

regional political and cultural pressures, comprehensive Afghan
histories, regional histories of important clans, and finely
detailed genealogical shajarah nasabs equated Pakhtun clans
with other, often imperial, interests legitimized by textual
authority. Lineages, families, and individuals were positioned
in exact relation to common ancestors and rival clans. The
example of imperial hagiographers and a need to counter
competing ideologies spurred the production of regional texts
and new histories chronicling the events and concerns of local,
Pakhtun society.
The poetic and literary legacy of the Khattak khans revealed
the ability of a 'tribal' society to absorb, adapt and customize the
conventions of Persian verse, Islamic historiography, and imperial
polemics. As well, the didactic Akhund Darweza utilized the
historical and genealogical genres to comment upon Pakhtun
social failings and to promote the cause of Islamic-based social
transformation. Though literacy among Afghans was limited to a
handful, the customary reading of these texts to congregations
and villagers and the oral re-transmission of these reconstituted
narratives had gained them a far wider audience. Thus, by the
early decades of the eighteenth-century, stories of family lineage
and Pakhtun history, orally passed from generation to generation
over family cooking fires and by hujra storytellers, were
increasingly based on regularized narratives shaped by the
seventeenth-century effusion of literary production.
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY

NOTES

1. Benedict Anderson's theme in Imagined Communities (Verso, London,

1983) of 'national' consciousness arising from the effects of mass,
commercialized literacy and industrial transformation on groups linked
by language, culture, and geography, cannot be pressed too far in this
case. The twentieth-century 'Pakhtunistan' national movement might offer
a better case with which to consider Anderson's arguments.
2. See the prolific anthropological literature on Afghans and Pakhtuns
(Ahmed, Barth, Lindholm, Edwards) as well as James Spain, The Pathan
Borderland (Indus Publications, Karachi, 1985).
3. James Spain, Pathans of the Latter Day (Oxford University Press,
Karachi, 1995), p. 39.
4. Spain, Pathans, 1995, p. 39.
5. See Bernard Cohn's classic essay, 'Representing Authority in Victorian
India', in Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of
Tradition, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992).
6. Vincent Smith, The Oxford History of India (Oxford University Press,
Karachi, 1992), p. 16.
7. Again, the spellings of the manuscript titles and of the author's names
conform to the spellings in the noted editions of the texts, that is, History
of the Afghans, Bernhard Dorn, trans., 1829-36 (Indus Publications,
Karachi, 1976) and Muhammad Kasim Ferishta, History of the Rise of
the Mahomedan Power in India, Briggs, trans., 4 vols. (Longman,
London, 1829, reprint Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1977).
8. Ferishta, History, vol. 1, 1977, author's preface.
9. Ferishta, History, vol. 1, 1977, translator's preface, p. xi.
10. History of the Afghans, 1976, preface, p. ix; Raverty, Notes on
Afghanistan and Baluchistan, 1982, vol. 2, p. 343. Raverty, Notes, vol. 2,
p. 343, discusses 'Haibat Khan, the Kakar', as the author of the Makhzen-
i-Afghani, also known as the Tarikh-i Khan Jahani and the apparent
editing and revision on the work finished by 'Ni'amat-Ullah' in 16791
1090 AH. Dorn listed and consulted fifteen manuscripts 'in the Afghan
language' or concerned with the Afghans and another fifteen relevant
manuscripts covering broader subjects. After its 1829-36 translation, this
narrative of fully detailed lineage stories became the primary source
drawn upon by later scholars of Afghan tradition and lineages. See
Nirodbhusan Roy's conclusive discussion of related manuscripts,
including Dorn's, i n the Preface to his translation of Niamatullah's
History of rhe Afghans (Santiniketan Press, West Bengal, 1958).
1I. History of rhe Afghans, Dorn trans., 1976, preface, p. x.
12. Ferishta, History, 1977, vol. 1, translator's life of author, p. xliv.
13. The Mulfutat Timury, trans. C. Stewart, 1830 (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore,
1975), p. 22.
46 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

14. Date of death, p. 32, and genealogy found in the Urdu booklet, Sayid Ali
Ghous Tinnizi, no date, distributed at shrine in Pir Baba, Buner, 1996.
15. Tarikh-i Hafiz Rahmat Khani, p. 146.
16. Tarikh-i Hafiz Rahmat Khani, p. 147.
17. Tarikh-i Hafiz Rahrnat Khani, p. 148. See Mohammad Nawaz Tair's
preface, p. 7, discussing the dating of the writing of this history.
18. Raverty attributes a History of his tribe and their conquests in the
Peshawar Valley, and in the Sama'h or Plain, on the northern bank of
the Landdaey Sind or Kabul River to Shaikh Mali, written in 1417, and
another history in Pashtu to Khan Kaju, dated 1494. The existence or loss
of these histories and any possible influence on the later histories remain
subjects of speculation. See H. G. Raverty, A Dictionary of the Pukhto or
Pushto Language of the Afghans, 1860 (Indus Publications, Karachi,
1980), Introductory Remarks, pp. xv-xvi.
19. Muhamad Hayat Khan, Hayat-i-Afghan, 1865, trans. by Henry Priestley
as Afghanistan and Its Inhabitants (Indian Public Opinion Press, Lahore,
1874, reprint, Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1981).
20. Afghanistan and Its Inhabitants, 1981 edition, pp. 52-53.
21. History of the Afghans, Dorn translation, 1977, p. 37.
22. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1815
(Indus Publications, 2 vols., Karachi, 1992), vol. I, pp. 208-9. For a good
survey of Afghan and "Indo-Afghan" literature, including the political
context producing the Makhzen Afghani, see Gommans, Indo-Afghan
Empire, pp. 160-163.
23. Tariq Ahmed, Raushaniya Movement, 1982, p. 40.
24. Akhund Darweza, Makhzen (Pashto Academy, Peshawar University,
Peshawar, 1987), preface, p. b.
25. For a discussion of the meeting of Akbar and Jalal al-Din, see Antonio
Monserrate, The Commentary of Father Monserrate, trans. by J. S.
Hoyland (Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1922), pp. 141-2, and
Arlinghaus, Transjomation, 1988, p. 3 10.
26. For discussion of the several works of Akhund Darweza and their
revisions, see J.F. Blumhart, Catalogue of the Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali,
Assamese, Oriya, Pushtu, and Sindhi Manuscripts in the Library of the
British Museum (British Museum, London, 1905), from p. 2.
27. Author's translation, after many hours of discussion and language work
with my Peshawar 'ustad' Khudadad, aiming to capture spirit of the
original and a sense of its style, rather than any absolute exactness.
Parentheses hold interpretive suggestions and English transcriptions of
manuscript terms as found in F. Steingass, Persian-English Dictionary
(Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, New Delhi, 1981).
28. Waldman, Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative, 1988.
29. The idea of the 'display text' is described in Pratt, Toward a Speech Act
Theory, 1977, p. 136.
 GENEALOGY AS IDEOLOGY 47

30. Leyden in Tariq Ahmed, Religio-Political Ferment in the North West

Frontier During the Mughal Period (the Raushaniya Movement) (Oxford
University Press, Delhi, 1993), p. 102.
31. Tariq Ahmed, Raushaniya Movement, p. 43.
32. 'You are also forbidden to take in marriage two sisters at one and the
same time ...' Koran, Dawood trans., 1994, p. 63.
33. The hard pronunciation spellings are from Caroe, The Pathans, 1992,
p. 13.
34. History of the Afghans, Dorn trans., 1977, Second Part, p. 40.
35. Gommans, Indo-Afghan Empire, 1995, p. 11 I.
36. See Rudi Paul Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia
(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1983), Chapter 1 and Eaton, The
Rise of Islam, 1993, pp. 72-5.
37. Waldman, Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative, 1988, p. 141.
38. H. G. Raverty, The Poetry of the Afghans (De Chapzai Publishers,
Peshawar, 1981), p. 142.
39. R. Brian Ferguson and Neil Whitehead, 'The Violent Edge of Empire',
in War in the Tribal Zone, Exputtding States and Indigenous Warfare,
1992, p. 7.
40. See Caroe, The Patlzans, 1992, pp. 231-6.
41. Caroe, The Pathans, 1992, p. 232.
42. Blumhardt, Catalogue, 1905, p. 8. A recent edition is Afzal Khan, Tarikh-
i Murassa (University Book Agency, Peshawar, 1983-4).
43. Quotations from the Tarikh-i Murassa are from excerpts included in the
Kalid-i Afghani, English translation by T. C. Plowden (Central Jail Press,
Lahore, 1875) taken from the Pashtu version edited by T. P. Hughes in
1872. The above quotations are from Plowden, pp. 184 and 197.
44. Plowden, Kalid-i Afghani, 1875, pp. 200-1. The Akozai mentioned were
a Mandanr sub-clan.
45. Plowden, Kalid-i Afghani, 1875, p. 201. Bhaku Khan received a farman
from Shah Jehan in 16581 1068 A H , see Allah Bakhsh Yusufi, Yusufzai
Pathan (Sharif Art Press, Karachi, 1973), p. 265. His favouring of
Aurangzeb's brother Dara Shikoh may have spurred the 1667 conflict.
See A. H. Dani, Peshawar Historic City of the Frontier (Sang-e-Meel
Publications, Lahore, 1995). p. 107.
46. Plowden, Kalid-i Afghani, 1875, p. 207. The Tarikh Hafiz Rahmat Khani,
1987, p. 17 1, tells of 700 singers and musicians (s, dum) joining Khan
Kaju's army at the battle of Sheikh Tapur.
47. Baburncirna, 1987, p. 368; Akbarnama, 1977, vol. 111, p. 729.
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND
ECONOMY OF THE LAND

By the eighteenth century, contrasting approaches towards the

control of agricultural land and its produce became clearer as
imperial Mughal and Pakhtun confrontation and compromise
continued. Oral and textual sources, representing a remembered
traditional 'corpus of images, plots, figures, and forms of
narration', recorded differences. Revealing 'certain constant
elements' of social interaction and production, these sources
illuminated the psychological and emotional aspects of Pakhtun
agrarian social formations.' Imperial irrigation and revenue
priorities spreading out from Peshawar town slowly eroded
Pakhtun hegemony over village land use, while daily
preoccupations with weather, household needs, defence, and the
small hypocrisies of life informed oral popular culture. Archives
of oral legends and written texts offer evidence of the stresses
caused by changing agrarian structures and of the complex
'practices of remembering, transmitting, and performing these
constant elements' of the eighteenth-century Peshawar valley
historye2
For over a century, a limited group of Pakhtun jagirdars and
clan leaders used Mughal patronage to consolidate personal
claims to lineage leadership and to exert political authority over
agricultural tracts. In 1694, after his father died in Mughal
custody, Afzal Khan assumed the Khattak khanship. He survived
several decades of internal clan competition influenced by
periodic s w i n y in Mughal support between contending factions.
Characteristically, the final event described in Afzal Khan's
 THE POLITICS, POETICS. AND BCBNOMY OF THE LAND 49

history was af his fighting in July 172411136 AH for control of

the Khattak districts.
By the early eighteenth century, Mughal Kabul province
policies had degenerated, in part due to the centre being distracted
by imperial court factionalism and the rising Sikh militancy in
the Punjab.' Kabul provincial officials used divide-and-rule tactics
to extort exorbitant tribute (peshkash) from jagirdars, threatening
them with replacement by clan rivals, In 1724, with the Kabul
governorship temporarily vacant, Afzal Khan was challenged by
an uprising in southern Khattak temtories led by the descendant
of a line of well-known Shaikhs, and fled to the Yusufzai country
north of the Kabul river. The contingent political scene was
revealed by the fact that, encouraged by the Mughal governor
(subahdar) in distant Lahore, Afzal Khan was able to recruit
allies from 'some of the Mandanr and Yusufzi clans nearby, the
Kamalzis, Amanzis, and Radzars, and others' and defeat 'the
forces of the Mullas, Talibs, and Darweshes', and of allied clans.
Afzal Khan claimed 3000 supporters against 7000-8000
opponents, who suffered 'upwards of 600 killed, 140 of whom
were in mail and plate The scale and the intensity of
the violence evoked memories of the Roshaniyya challenge to the
authority of traditional lineage headmen and highlighted the
readiness of clan rivals to unify in defence of the political and
social status quo.
Reflecting the slow dissipation of Mughal imperial vision
and authority, the political ineptness of the Peshawar region
elite had become apparent as early as 1701. In that year,
neglected units of the Mughal garrison in Kabul approached the
emperor's son, then resident in Kabul, for arrears of pay. The
rejection of their demand precipitated a confrontation and the
massacre of five hundred garrison r n e m b e r ~ .Within
~ the
Peshawar valley, elite relationships, long structured and
supported by the empire, continued efforts to consolidate local
control, maintain a flow of resources, and accommodate local
interests less and less intimidated by threats of imperial
retaliation. In the heavily irrigated clan holdings ( t a p p s ) near
Peshawar town, influential lineage leaders, elevated and
50 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

entrenched by the Mughals, used ties to what remained of local

imperial coercive powers to manipulate access to water resources
and collect revenue dues on agricultural produce. During
Aurangzeb's reign, a leading Mohmand, Muhibb Khan, served
as overseer (nazir ) of the new Shaikh-ka-katha canal constructed
by the Peshawar ruler Shaikh Usman! Over the Mughal period,
the ambitions of Khalil and Mohmand maliks had surpassed
pretensions even to the title of Khan. In the seventeenth century,
a leading Khalil khan was first awarded the title of Arbab (lord
or master) by a grant (sanad) of the emperor Shah Jehan. Senior
Peshawar valley Mohmand khans, not to be outdone, soon
adopted the title.'
The presence of powerful arbabs and khans in the heavily
irrigated tappas around Peshawar town illustrated the Mughal
determination to maximize revenues from rich lands. It also
represented the social stratification that since the time of Akbar
had separated leading Khalil, Mohmand, Daudzai, and other
khans from village maliks and ordinary share (bakhra) holders.
Within these irrigated districts, this period of rising political
and economic hierarchies coincided with a change in shareholder
land relations. This may have included the disappearance of
wesh land redistribution among affected Afghan lineage
members.
While Malik Ahmad had originally parcelled out all the
conquered lands to the Yusufzai and their allied clans, Shaikh
Mali had apparently surveyed and distributed only the Yusufzai
t e r r i t ~ r y .While
~ acknowledging a lack of evidence on the
existence of wesh in the irrigated tappas around Peshawar from
the sixteenth century, and that any detailed evidence on wesh is
difficult to find,9 it seems apparent that originally wesh was
regionally widespread. It lasted into the nineteenth century
among the Yusufzai of Swat, the Utman Khel, the Mandanr of
the Peshawar plains, the Muhammadzai of Hashtnagar, some
Orakzai clans, and the Marwats of the Bannu region.1° More
isolated regions retained wesh the longest, including areas of
Bannu up to the late nineteenth century, Swat into the twentieth
century, and isolated villages in the Hazara District and the
2. General Tribal Map
From H. C. Wylly
From the Black Mountain to Waziristan (London: Macmillan, 1912)
I

3. Swat
From H. C. Wylly
From the Black Mountain to Waziristan (London: Macmillan, 19 12)
 * ,I

C
,'

C h d l c KoMamam Bniui

,.- ^.. .
--

I,,,
.,!-.-..,,
I
i.!
......

C*nhla Naam .,Y.;dm

-'-'- '.-;-
.... C.

.. /
I'
,,
0
C

1.
1,

--.
.........

.........
C I h I L 1 M L L . A O A M Y b

%.... ...-, C A e L Dvyn f i r

....-................... C l J k B-1-.----
b * I

...........
w.I(aAillklLl 0

.... . +

. - - --- --
........... '
n.mf n . , r d r &
(;dm", ( A W A *r,p)*
a- 8
anAn v
.--.. ( *-.k..m""l
R M W b n n A C-I I*I

ad& A m - 1 !,I . W limm (Nr

-Urn-
I*. .M,
..

5 . "Assessment Circles" (Showing newly consolidated circles in block type)

Peshawar District Settlement Map from 2nd Regular Settlement,
dated 1896. Printed by Nasir Ahmed: Islamic Press, 1898.
6. Peshawar District Survey Map
Map from 2nd Regular Settlement, dated 1896.
Printed by Nasir Ahmed: Islamic Press, 1898.
 THE POLITICS. POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 51

Khurram Agency as late as 1960." This suggests that direct

imperial and state domination, and proximity to markets,
contributed to the transformation of land relations near towns
and along major routes.
Mohmand khans in the hill districts west of the Peshawar
valley were patronized by Mughal emperors to protect trade
routes to Kabul. The presence of these hereditary jagirdars,
also supported by the post-Mughal empires, perhaps explained
the late nineteenth-century observation that, while western
Mohmand and Yusufzai 'social and domestic customs differ in
no material respect.. .' , 'It is noticeable, however, that the Vaish,
the periodical re-distribution of tribal lands, has entirely ceased
throughout the Mohmand tribe'.12
Around the town of Peshawar powerful lineage heads secured
imperial patronage and drew upon Mughal forces stationed in
the Peshawar garrison to help them increase the lands under
their personal control and to consolidate political and economic
influence. This does not suggest that historically the Peshawar
valley had never seen asymmetrical power relations reflected in
land tenures and revenue demands. But at least since the time of
Akbar formal grants authorising the collection of revenue and
the exercise of political authority eroded the egalitarian
consensus and competition motivating and regulating Pakhtun
lineage land politics since the sixteenth-century conquest and
settlement of the Peshawar valley.
The process of eroding the fact and ideal of wesh and its
impact on Pakhtun egalitarianism began around Peshawar town
and would take several more generations to encompass the entire
Peshawar valley. With landholding the central marker of Pakhtun
identity, those unable to retain their land would be relegated to
an inferior status. Opportunities would grow for some productive
non-Pakhtuns to turn tenancies into degrees of proprietorship
with de facto claims to social status.
The seventeenth-century Pakhtun cultural production
encompassed the complex and contradictory social role of land
and the changing land relations. In this period a contrast was
noted between older modes of life and production which centred
52 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

on lands held in outlying, non-irrigated villages in the Feshawar

valley, and those experienced by shareholders and dependqnts
competing for irrigation water rights from the Swat, Kabul, aqd
Bara rivers.
Indirect evidence has been presented of the late seventeenth-
century survival of wesh in the Mohmand villages near
Peshawar. To explain the discrepancy between the birth of the
son of a notable Mohmand lineage in Bahadur Kili village, a
few miles south-west of Peshawar, in 165311064 AH, and his
burial immediately south of Peshawar in Hazarkhani village, in
17 1 111123 AH, it has been speculated that the mao, Ahdur
Rahman, had moved to Hazarkhani in a wesh exchange.13
Educated infikh and tasawwuf by Mulla Muhammad Yusuf
Yusufzai, Abdur Rahman turned his back on worldly matters to
absorb folk, literary, and mystical traditions. He produced a
body (diwan) of verse that embodied the non-orthodox, yet
devout, spiritual longings permeating Afghan culture. Abdur
Rahman, remembered as Rahman Baba, wrote of personal
anguish, devotion, and love of God. He never aspired to, nor
achieved, a high position among the ulema or in Sufi orders.
Within the poetry of Abdur Rahman an occasional
contemporary sensibility stood out from the emotion of mystical
experience. One work in particular reads like an oral tradition
offering insights into Peshawar social formation of the period.
Oral and textual genealogical traditions, including such as those
recorded by Akhund Darweza, carried a potential risk.
Distortions could emerge from inaccuracies of time framing and
the need to adapt tradition to the realities of the narrator's social
'present'. There was also always the possibility of feedback
from textual sources into the oral domain. Yet, the oral
genealogical tradition, as in other 'tradition', was valued for
being able to 'testify then to opinions and values held, to
mentalities.. .not as a testimony of fact'.14 Similarly, the work
of Abdur Rahman contained integral historical 'messages' about
the attitudes, norms, and socio-political dynamics of his time.
His verse, meant for recitation, derived themes from real life
experience as well as from Islamic and Persian literary sources
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 53

such as the diwans of Sa'adi and Hafiz. He, and others,

consciously writing from an Afghan cultural perspective,
adapted Persian verse form to the rhythm of the Pashtu
language.Is In one ghazal of linked couplets, Abdur Rahman,
seeing no irony in aristocratic, land-owning Pakhtuns being
subordinated, revealed something of the stresses of agrarian life,
challenges to identity, and the social transformation occurring
in the irrigated Pakhtun villages near Peshawar:

The man whose crops depend on rain

Is passing all his days in pain ........................................................... 2
The land without a water ntain
Its tiller hardly can sustain ..................................................................4
His eyes are glued to heaven in distress
Will it send rain upon the waterless? .................... ... ....................6
He burns like fish in cooking oil
Into kabab he'll slowly broil .........................
.................................. 8
Will rain upon his thirsty soil
Soon grace his labour and his toil? ................... . . . ...................... 10
He day and night will make the same request:
0 God, have mercy on the waterless! ...............................................12

The sound of rain is music sweet

To him, more than the guitar's beat, .............................................. 14
If rain should fall for years replete
It could not calm his body's heat ................................................... 16
The heat and light has made him so obsessed
That even moonlight scares the waterless .........................................18

So priceless is each tiny drink

That all his wooden vessels stink, .................................................. 20
Of clean and unclean he can't think
From urine even he won't shrink .......................................................22
When he goes out to steal a pint or less
.
.
No sacred place deters the waterless ...................... ................. 24

B y distribution he must cheat

Though he be learned and can read, ....................... .
...
...............26
54 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

He can't afford the gracious deed

.
.
That would assure him heavenly meed, .................... ................ 28
If always walking in a cloud, still less
Will dare to trust in God the waterless .............................................. 30

For flushing dirt he has no power

He holds less liquid than a flower .................................................. 32
Don't ask if he has had a shower
.
.
When gold cannot one drop recover, ....................... .................. 34
Since he with sand ablutions must redress
It's mixed with stubbles from the waterless .................................. 36

The tiller of this aridness

Forever remains waterless ...................... .
................................. 38
But irrigated land no less
Can cause a similar distress ..............................................................4 0
The wretched farmer in backwaterland
Forever suffers from his fellow-man ..................................................42

His relatives will him abuse

He never gets what he can use ...........................................................44
He has no strength to tell the truth,
Like beaten snakes he twists and screws, ....................................... 4 6
For his own right he can't afford to stand
He's tied by shame to his backwaterland ..................................... 48

Shall he endure, this wretched one

Must feud and enmity he shun, .................... .
... .......................50
If he should slip an evil pun
Against himself it will be spun ..........................................................52
Unpunished, lowborn people taunt him can
That only happens in backwaterland ................................... 54

Into Pathans his workers rise

Though they be low caste othenvise, ............,...... .
... .............56
Soft words will take him with surprise
His dignity is shrunk in size .............................................................58
You think that in appearance he's a man
But he's a bastard of backwaterland ............................................... 60
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 55

His evil habits he'll enhance

Drunk in the wine of ignorance .........................................................62
When nobles fall into such hands
Of their release there is no chance ................................................ 64
God save us from a future of the brand
That flows in drops into backwaterland ............................................66

Than such a serf he's better, who

Regards all water as taboo, ................................................................68
To serve a dog would rather do
Though as nawab himself he view ................................................ 70
RAHMAN prefers the men of arid land
If soon he has to leave backwaterland ............................... . ........... 72
The English translation of this ghazal captures the pain and
struggle of Pakhtun shareholders in both heavily irrigated,
imperially dominated tappas and in poorly irrigated, dry land
areas. The Pashtu and Persian vocabulary used in this verse
form a glossary of local terms differentiating types of
agricultural land, levels of social hierarchy, and ideals of
Pakhtun behaviour. Crop land (kisht) was dependant on rain
(baran) or on rain-or runoff-induced seasonal flooding (sailab
land) (line 1). Land (mulk) irrigated from a nearby river (sind)
or stream (rod) (line 3) sustained cultivators (dihqan) (line 4).
Water (oba), when available for irrigation, was distributed by
share (weslz) (line 25). Rain-fed crops (lalmi) (line 37) in the
dry lands (khushk) (line 71) or irrigated fields (abi) (line 39)
sustained villages (kalaey) (line 40), including those in the
riverine area (do-ab) (line 60) and in the other revenue (jama)
(line 72) tappas. The social and occupational, categories
mentioned included arbab (line 42), dependant (hamsaya) and
farm servant (charekars) (line 55), leather worker (mochi) and
butcher (kassab) (line 56), noble (ashraf) (line 63), farmer
(zamindar) (line 67), servant (naukar) (line 68, 69), and
unbeliever (kafir) (line 68). Shame (slzarm) (line 48), enmity
(badi) (line 50), and modesty (hijab) (line 58) marked Pakhtun
self-consciousness.
56 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Abdur Rahman contrasted two opposite, difficult ways of

life. The unirrigated fields of the maira and dry land villages
were worked by cultivators obsessed with the sky and the
weather. Using occasional wells they grew wheat, barley, and
lesser food and fodder crops. Competition over surface water
distributions precluded acts of generosity that might bring future
reward (sawab) (line 28). But villagers forced to use sand for
their ablutions (line 35) were yet more fortunate than those
suffering under Pakhtuns who had risen to become masters
(arbabs).
A Pakhtun shareholder in the imperially policed revenue
villages around Peshawar, still bound by ties of honour to his
land, was confronted by competing sets of values and social
pressures. The Pakhtun family patriarch, used to a code of
independence, revenge, and domination over non-Pakhtuns,
faced petty humiliations from gossip and enemies he could not
attack. Instead, he watched productive dependents turn
subsistence patches of land into tenancies and achieve degrees
of independence.
The deviation of social reality from the Pakhtun ideal was
interpreted not as agrarian transformation but as moral decline.
Such a reduced Pakhtun, literally translated, had no shame or
modesty (honour) in his heart (line 58). The English translation
by a Scandinavian missionary diplomatically elided one of
Abdur Rahman's closing metaphors referring to a '...servant of
a mad black kafir..' (line 68), but his preference remained clear,
and nostalgic, for the people (qawm) of the dry lands over the
new society of the irrigated revenue lands. Both lifestyles
reflected the extent to which a nomadic, lineage-based social
structure had changed since the time of the sixteenth-century
conquests. Pakhtunwali would not be eliminated, but would be
subjected to other, often dominating, forms of social control.
And, if the reality of wesh declined, the consciousness of it
remained, arguably, '...as a mechanism to preserve the
mythology of territorial rights based on tribal conquests that
underlies Y usufzai brotherhood and equality . . .' l6
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 57

The effects of the decline of wesh in the Peshawar valley

jagirs may have been similar to the process of change analysed
in the later formation of a Pakhtun state structure in the Swat
valley. Under Mohmand and Khalil arbabs, then perhaps
Khattak and Mandanr jagirdars, the elimination of wesh meant
that 'as a result shifting and ephemeral land ownership became
permanent and a feudal, hierarchical stratification began to
emerge,. ..' Also, 'permanent settlement implies the beginning
of the end of the socio-political utility of the descent segment'.
If lineage position once guaranteed a share in common lands, a
trend to settled status foreshadowed private land control and
ownership that obviated the need to maintain lineage identities.
Perhaps a demystifying awareness of hierarchies clarified that,
'The ...Pukhtun is no longer a mythical figure inherently
superior and ordained by descent to rule the land. He becomes a
landlord.. .' l 7
In the early eighteenth century, as imperially structured
agrarian relations near Peshawar challenged and reshaped local
Pakhtun society, the north-eastern Peshawar valley experienced
political consolidation by elite Mandanr khans. These khans
acted as intermediaries between village-based clans under maliks
and imperial administrators seeking trade route security, military
recruits, and nominal revenue obligations that were largely
remitted as jagir and service awards.
In the Yusufzai plains districts, especially the Mandanr tappas
held by the Kamalzai, Amazai, Razar, Utmanzai, and Khudu
Khel clans, ground-level agricultural practice saw most
shareholders maintaining familiar patterns of production
relations and land distribution. But some privileged khans used
imperial patents and patronage to establish elevated levels of
legitimacy and control beyond the expectations of local lineage
dynamics. Through the period of the final dissolution of Mughal
hegemony and the rise of Persian and Afghan political authority,
the mid-eighteenth century Mandanr elite of the plains struggled
to avoid the degree of subordination experienced by the elite
settled in proximity to Peshawar, even as they attempted to use
extra-lineage coercion and income as leverage to make transcent
58 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

positions permanent and hereditary. Self-perpetuating practices

included maintaining forces of armed retainers and claiming
from dependants a growing list of produce fees and labour
services. But no Mandanr khan could yet fundamentally
challenge set practices of land distribution and control that
defined an idealized, egalitarian Pakhtun socio-political order.
Several Mandanr clans occupied the lands east of Hashtnagar
that stretched to the Indus river. Geographically and politically
the Kamalzai Pakhtuns were the most prominently situated.
Through the eighteenth century, holding shares based on Shaikh
Mali's settlement, they continued to control lineage lands despite
increasing elite khan interests. As in the other Mandanr tappas,
the Kamalzai genealogical table (shajarah nasab) translated
almost directly into territorial blocks of land possession. The
two main divisions of the Kamalzai tappa were the senior
(mashar) branch, the Mishranzai, with holdings (daftar) around
the village of Toru, and the junior (kashar) wing, the Kishranzai,
located around Hoti and Mardan. These settlements mapped
Shaikh Mali's original division of four hundred shares of
productive land for the Kamalzai tappa, the southern half (two
hundred shares) to the Mishranzai and the northern half to the
Kishranzai. I s
Around these villages, tracts (wand) of arable land had been
measured by rope lengths and divided into sections determined
by the configurations of internal clan lineages. Wands often
encompassed fields of similar soil quality and productivity
(sandy, hilly, irrigated, poorly drained, etc .) with eligible clan
segments receiving equal shares in each field. The Kishranzai
split their lands, one hundred shares apiece, equally between the
clans of Hoti and Mardan. The final allocation of the Mardan
shares illustrated the social composition of the ruling Pakhtun
population.
The one hundred Mardan shares were divided among three
Kishranzai clans, a clan of dependent allies, and a number of
religious lineages. After reserving twelve shares for Sayyids and
other religious figures, termed sairai, land not subject to revenue
claims or wesh exchanges, another sixteen shares went to allied
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 59

Manduri lineages. The three Kishranzai 'khails' (khels) at

Mardan then each took twenty-four shares (bakhras). These were
then further segmented into family lots, typically described as a
fraction (third, sixth, twelfth) of the share.
Any original ideal of equal share division among lineages did
not translate into an exact, per capita equity in acreage
distribution. The three Mardan Kishranzai clans, each receiving
twenty-four shares, included the 'Khankhail', in which one
family 'owns as its share the whole of the original twenty-four
lots undivided',19 the 'Rustamkhail', and the 'Badakhankhail'.
The Rustam khel lands were equally divided by the Bahadur
khel (five families) and the Bamo khel (ten families) sub-clans.
The Badakhan khel share was split into three main sections,
each of which was further divided by sub-lineages into smaller
holdings.
The apparently disproportionate area of land allotted to the
khan khel family in the Kishranzai distribution of land shares
seemed to contradict any past or current egalitarian ideal that a
leading khan '...has, by right, no larger share in the inheritance
than any other i n d i ~ i d u a l ' .Still,
~ ~ the inexact knowledge
possessed of the demography of the khan khel, and the extent to
which Pakhtun khan khels, historically, were given shares equal
to other clan khels, precludes any hasty assumption that the
1864 narrative of Kishranzai distribution was an elite version
created especially to be given to a British colonial observer to
consolidate mid-nineteenth century claims.
The distribution, and wesh-related redistribution, of subsidiary
lineage shares within a wand was accomplished fortuitously. A
white-bearded elder (spirt giray) randomly tossed on to sections
tokens representing the concerned clans. If population increases
saw numerous sons sub-dividing family lands beyond the point
of subsistence, the village jirga had the option to share out,
among all the original shareholders, an arable portion of the
common grazing lands. In general, the common use of grazing
lands around a village remained intact if the majority had
adequate harvests for subsistence.
60 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

The differential sizes of individual plots, determined within

each clan's shares by the number of lineages and, over time, by
the number of eligible sons, meant an ongoing process of
division continued in which some sons, unable to survive on
ever-decreasing holdings, might lease their land to a relative or
leave the land for foreign, often military, employment. Other
sons, especially those of non-Pakhtun tenants or labourers, might
join with yet others in establishing a satellite community (banda)
on unused land within the clan tappa. The banda land, with
proportionate shares being held by the tappa's Pakhtun khels,
was farmed by the Pakhtun shareholders or, more typically, by
non-Pakhtun tenants paying a quarter to a third of crop yields as
rent. Bandas often grew near the borders of Peshawar valley
tappas, serving as a buffer against territorial encroachments or
armed raiders.
The farming methodology of the eighteenth-century Peshawar
valley was determined by local soil conditions. Specific farming
techniques and crop selection and yields reflected the sources of
'water available for fields. Irrigated fields were usually manured
and double cropped. Barani, or rain-fed, lands were often of
lighter, sandy soils able to be broken up with a basic plough.
One slightly later observer recorded of the Peshawar valley that
'The inhabitants are excellent farmers but use the same kind of
plough as in Hindoo~tan'.~' Bullocks tied to a six-piece wooden
yoke pulled the apparently simple wooden plough (yiwa). The
plough itself included ten major components: three for the shaft,
two for the handle, and five for the plough blade structure."
Appropriate shovels, rakes, winnowing forks, axes, scythes,
levelling drags, and baskets served as functional tools for crop
tending, ditch cleaning, and field preparation. The levels of
woodworking skills, mechanical knowledge, and continuing
maintenance required to keep farm implements in good repair
might be judged by the bullock-operated Persian wheels that
used various combinations of over forty different wood, rope,
and pottery components to raise water to fields from wells or
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 61

Superior Mandanr khans who never touched a plough had a

very different experience of agrarian life from Utman Khel
Pakhtuns on fringe, dry land fields or Mandanr tappa tenants
and labourers who actually tilled the soil and gathered the wheat,
barley, corn, and other crops. Corn or maize may have been
introduced as a food crop in the Peshawar valley during the
1600-1650 period in which the American crop quickly spread
within the Mughal empire.24The experience of an agricultural
existence, often one of meagre resources and limited
expectations, survived in Afghan oral tradition. Anonymous
short, two-line verses, called landey or t a p p ~preserved
,~~ folk
sentiments and sensibilities that were passed down generation
by generation. Thousands of landey served as a cultural archive
of past and present experience:

I don't need a kingdom's throne

My beloved will reap, I will gather corn.26

Poverty is not a disgrace, beloved

At cock's crow I will grind grain for

Sky, make a good rainfall

So that the lalmi of my friend becomes green.28

Claimed by many as a women's genre, Grima argues that

'landeys are generally created by men to represent an idealized
woman's voice, and then called a n o n y m o u ~ ' .The
~ ~ related
observation that landeys were better known and more publicly
recited by men offered an insight into the moral guidance and
emotional release contained in many landeys. Imposed norms
of proper female behaviour and male fantasies of female passion
might have accounted for many landeys, even as the verse form
surely expressed female consciousness, defiance, and desire:

Every plant along the stream is a cure

The hems of young maidens have touched them.30
62 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Come in the morning of Akhtar

I will come to you with blackened eyes and reddened handsS3l

For God's sake, mulla, call the azan

My lover has worn hollows in the tip of my chin.32

Isn't there a single daring man in this village?

My flame coloured pants are burning my thighs.33

The mountain songs (rohi sandarai) were undatable, yet their

preoccupations and imagery were cogent expressions of complex
folk mentalities. For a historian they were oral sources that
helped to 'tell us which questions to pursue. They set forth
basic hypotheses that must be addressed first'.34The landey and
popular verse revealed hidden emotion, social complexity, and
gender-based values, while being suggestive of the intensity of
ideologies and ideals concerned with homeland, honour, and
God:

Pakhtuns uncover heads before God

That he supports he who is honourable and brave.35

I prefer the bitter fruit of my country

To the flowers of another land.36

. . .Father has gone to war

A well sharpened sword by his side
He will give his head for honour
To the country comes the Farang

You are the grandson of Khalid

And the son of Ghori
So have a brave heart.37

Afghan oral popular culture complemented over a century of

more formal, and more exclusive, Peshawar valley literary
production. One nineteenth-century listing recorded dozens of
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 63

works written in Pakhtu and in Persian on theology, religious

practice, the Pakhtu language, and Afghan history.38 Poetic
diwans and Pakhtu translations of classic Persian and Hindu
texts and stories circulated among the Peshawar town elite and
the families of the most cosmopolitan local khans. Of the two
dozen Peshawar valley literary figures identifiable in the period
before 1750, most were members of the Pakhtun clans,
Mohmand, Khalil, and Khattak, in closest contact with the
cultured Mughal elite found in Kabul, Peshawar, and Lahore.
The affluent elite of the Pakhtun clans, including a few wives
and daughters, as well as some religious figures certainly had
the education and leisure necessary to create an extensive local
literature, one heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian stylistic
and thematic conventions. In addition to writing a large poetic
diwan, Khushal Khan translated texts from Arabic and wrote on
the care of hawks, on medicine, and on numerous other subjects.
At least five sons of Khushal Khan wrote diwans and translated
works such as the Gulistan, Bustan, and Tutinama along with
such folk tales as 'Khusrau and Shirin' and 'Yusuf and Zulikha'.
The long history written by Afzal Khan was but a small portion
of his family's literary production. The poet Kazim Khan, great-
grandson of Khushal Khan, continued to produce verse as late
as 1740.39
In addition, a structured if limited educational regime for
boys and girls extended into many villages. Local mullas acted
as teachers of the alphabet and of a sequence of rote readings
that included the Koran, in often poorly comprehended Arabic,
and vernacular religious commentaries and lessons. Akhund
Darweza was only one of the many clerical scholars who made
the Peshawar valley an important Islamic centre. In 171311125 AH
Akhund Kasim, a Khalil, and the leading religious figure in
the Peshawar-Hashtnagar region, wrote his commentary on
Islamic law, Fawayad-ush-sltariat. One later observer remarked
that the region 'in those days, rivalled Bokhara itself, in
learning*.40One indication of the relative place of Yusufzai
scholarship in this context was that the list of seventy-nine
authors of over one hundred works found in the mentioned
64 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

bibliography of Pakhtu and Persian texts included, apart from

Shaikh Mali and Khan Kaju, only three Yusufzai authors.

Imperial Political Economy

The period after 1700 saw a relative eclipse of Khattak
cohesiveness and political weight and the corresponding rise of
Mandanr, specifically Kamalzai, fortunes. When the Mughal
emperor Aurangzeb died in the spring of 1707, one of his three
sons, Muazzam Shah-i Alam, was serving as Kabul governor.
Before marching east to fight his brothers for the throne, the
future emperor Bahadur Shah attempted to persuade Afzal Khan
to accompany him with offers that included the rank (mansab)
of 4000 h ~ r s e .Also
~ ' mistrustful of the sincerity of the Mughal's
promises, Afzal Khan's refusal to leave his district seemed more
directly related to his fears of factional Khattak rivals. In the
Tarikh-i Murassa he wrote, '...and in case I went away, there
were certain parties among my tribe only too ready to carry out
their own designs, and the tribe would be ruined, the territory
become desolated, and I should in consequence, acquire an evil
name'.42Nazoh Khan, the Mandanr and Kamalzai Khan of Hoti
(between 1707-1747), did not miss an opportunity. A farman
from the new emperor, Bahadur Shah, dated 20 April 17071 28
Muharam-ul-Haram 11 19 A H , thanked Nazoh Khan for
providing an escort of five thousand footmen and cavalry for
his march to near Lahore, where he formally proclaimed himself

In the following generation, Mughal political in-fighting and

regional challenges weakened imperial authority and interrupted
revenue flows to the centre. The revenue system had long been
based on the effective administration of the formal zabt system
in which mansab and jagir revenue awards from surveyed and
registered lands went to a closely supervised cadre of loyal
Mughal retainers." If in this period, especially in the northern
Mughal provinces, 'Rising production and monetization of the
~ u r a leconomy put more resources at the disposal of both
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 65

zamindars and peasants',45 political instability at the centre also

allowed the increased assertion of politico-economic interests
by local Pakhtun elite and clan groups willing to risk conflict to
gain a greater degree of political autonomy. In the Peshawar
valley, subsidized khans maintained imperial ties, yet at the
same time consolidated their positions as semi-autonomous
heads of clans of marginal interest to Mughal authorities
increasingly preoccupied with a series of regional Sikh, Rajput,
Maratha, and other revolts.
The ascending official revenue assignments recorded in the
Hoti family history may indicate 'rising productivity and
monetization', or the partial effect of those factors in
combination with possible increases in territory under the
Yusufzai Malguzari or increases in internal village, especially
banda, settlements. According to the Hoti history, the first Khan
of Hoti, Mahdud Khan (Khan from 1440-1509) was appointed
by Malik Ahmed Khan himself. His grandson, Muhammad Khan
(1550-1590), was given the Yusufzai Malguzari by Akbar as a
perpetual jagir, an award 'estimated from Rs 1000-6000'.46
Khadi Khan's (1590-1636) revenue was about Rs 10000 per
year. Shahbaz Khan (1639-1685), who sent followers north of
the Hindu Kush to help conquer Balkh, saw his annual revenue
increase from Rs 12000 to Rs 50000, an amount that remained
stable into the time of Nazoh Khan.
Since the early sixteenth century regime of Sher Shah Suri,
north India had experienced a varied implementation of
sophisticated revenue techniques that could involve payments
in cash rather than produce rent, based on market-valued crop
assessments calculated from surveys of productive land and
actual crop yields. In the Yusufzai Malguzari, limited written
comments about the perpetual jagir award preclude any detailed
knowledge of the district's revenue regime. But undoubtedly,
during the early eighteenth century, predecessors of the Hindu
and Sikh grain dealers and merchants mentioned in later records
collected an unknown percentage of crop production in the
villages of the Peshawar plain and the Mandanr tappas for the
market in Peshawar.
66 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

A later revenue official related an anecdote that by the mid-

sixteenth century, 'The Khuleels, Momunds and Daodzais being
now seated in the plain and exposed to attack, became the
frequent victims of the local governors; a treatment which finally
effected a change in their character and habits,.. .'47 Again he
noted, during Akbar's attempt to subordinate the Afghans, that
'The local records of this period are full of the burnings,
expulsions, and massacres by the Moguls amongst the tribes
occupying the plain, whom they compelled to pay tribute'.48
Based on the combined evidence of Nadir Shah's later demand
that tribute in tappas near Peshawar be paid through local
arbabs, the fact that 'Yusufzai, the Khattaks, and the hill tribes
remained independent and paid no tribute',49 and similar early
nineteenth century imperial revenue demands calling for a flat
cash rate per Mandanr tappa to be delivered through leading
khans, it appears that much or most of the Peshawar valley,
including the north-east Yusufzai plain, may never have been
subject to any systematic cropland or harvest measurements and
may not have delivered any direct payments to Mughal officials.
No local revenue statistics were included in such conventional
sources as the writings of Akbar's historian Abu-1 Fazl.
In the late Mughal period the function of the perpetual
Yusufzai Malguzari jagir may have been simply that of a typical
jagir, to keep the 'revenue', claimed in produce or cash, in the
hands of the Khan of Hoti as a service award for the expenses
of maintaining armed retainers and for redistribution to allied
maliks within the Mandanr and plains tappas. The degree of
influence of the Khan of Hoti, who was a Kamalzai khan, on
khans and maliks in other Yusufzai plain tappas, including the
Mandanr tappas, must have varied with physical distance,
personal relationship, and lineage affinity. Utman Khel villagers
in distant Barmoul would have had different ties with the Khan
of Hoti from those of Mandanr villagers living directly adjacent
to the Kamalzai tappa. The vast majority of the 'revenue' may
simply have been redistributed to allied maliks, some of whom
undoubtedly traded degrees of subordination for levels of
support.
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 67

In any case, the record of escalating awards to the Hoti khan

indicated a certain continuity of agricultural productivity under
a stable, locally legitimate polity, neither pastorally egalitarian
nor imperially stratified on the Mughal model, that had evolved
from generations of imperial and 'tribal' interaction. It may be
argued that this interaction produced a historically particular
'tribal society' that would later be noted in the Yusufzai plains
by other imperial observers.
The record of conflict and interaction between the empire
and local clans gave several indications as to how the process
transformed and reconstituted local clan dynamics and changed
perceptions of Pakhtun society. Mughal patronage undoubtedly
protected the Khattak settlers who occupied portions of the
Lunkhwar tappa at the foot of the Malakand Pass into Swat.
This settlement may have been related to the Mughal need to
secure the early imperial road, Babur's first route, to Kabul,
running from the Peshawar valley into lower Swat and through
the Bajaur valley.
James' relation of an old narrative as to why at some point
the greater Yusufzai clan divided, politically and territorially,
into the Yusufzai lineages of Swat and Buner and the Mandanr
khels of the Peshawar valley (still called the Yusufzai plains)
also hinted at imperial machinations. Historically, two related
lineages lived side by side, 'The two divisions remained for
some time together, but quarrels ensued, which were enhanced
by the confusion caused by the oustings and intrigues of the
M o g ~ l s ' .Finally
~ ~ the Yusufzai in the northern valleys expelled
the Mandanr clans and the Mandanr retaliated by expelling
Yusufzai families from the Peshawar valley. Only a few Baizai
Yusufzai remained in the Lunkhwar valley under the Swat
passes.
Was this separation" simply a natural process that occurred
over generations as the dominant Yusufzai in the north and the
Mandanr in the Peshawar valley slowly absorbed and realigned
minority identities? Did the division come about because the
Mandanr and Yusufzai were tired of making long distance wesh
exchanges between hill valleys and the plains? Or did the
68 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

Mughals, attempting to consolidate the authority of an allied

Mandanr jagirdar, engage in familiar divide-and-rule tactics,
including, perhaps, the 'oustings' from the Peshawar valley of
antagonistic, especially Yusufzai, maliks and villagers? That the
relocation of clans figured prominently in regional imperial
strategic considerations was observable in the Mughal reaction
to the disruptions caused by a Daudzai malik. It 'was on this
occasion that Akbar endeavoured to make the Eusufzai change
seats with the Khuleels, Momunds and Daodzai, but the attempt
was not successful' .52 Similar considerations informed one later
explanation for the presence of the Khattak and Utman Khel
villagers along the northern Peshawar valley foothills, that 'the
last two tribes were called in by the Baizais to strengthen
themselves.. .'s3 in the Lunkhwar valley against Mandanr clans.
Ferguson and Whitehead refer to the unencapsulated 'area
continuously affected by the proximity of a state, but not under
state administration', as the 'tribal zone'. Similar in
conceptualization to Pratt's socio-cultural 'contact zone' of
overlapping imperial and indigenous interests, Ferguson and
Whitehead argue that within this region, 'the wider consequence
of the presence of the state is the radical transformation of
extant socio-political formations, often resulting in
"tribalization", the genesis of new tribes'.s4 Not arguing for any
definition of tribe, imperial contact within the Peshawar valley
throughout the Mughal period did contribute to new political
and territorial alignments among regional Pakhtun clans as well
as new levels of social differentiation and hierarchy within clans.
Imperial dynamics may well have had some bearing on the new
formation of separate Yusufzai and Mandanr economic and
political interests that would be later seen as evidence of two
separate 'tribes'.
 THE POLITICS. POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF THE LAND 69

NOTES

The idea of social formation, rather than 'society', emphasizes the lack
of 'inherent unity of economy, polity or culture within a historical
ensemble, when in fact this unity and identity does not exist', an argument
of Perry Anderson elaborated upon by Mustapha Kamal Pasha, Colonial
Political Economy (Oxford University Press, Karachi), p. 22 n. 16, see
Chapter 3. Quotes from Prakash, footnote 2.
Quotes in Gyan Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labour
Servitude in Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1990), p. 38. See his discussion of oral tradition, pp. 38-45.
Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Entpire in Mughal North India (Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1993).
The quotations are Raverty's, from his sections of Notes on Afghanistan
and Baluchistan derived from Afzal Khan's writings. See Raverty, 1982,
pp. 415-21.
Niccolao Manucci, Storio Do Mogor, trans. Irvine (John Murray, London,
1907), vol. 111, p. 25 1.
Gazetteer of the Peshawar District 1897-98 (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1989),
p. 177.
Gazetteer of the Peshawar District 1897-98, pp. 136-7.
Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, 1982, p. 207.
Akbar S. Ahmed, Millennium and Charisma, 1976, p. 39.
The various ethnographies mention the survival of wesh in Swat. Various
Peshawar District settlement reports, from James, 1865, mention the end
of wesh in the Mandanr territory, also see Elphinstone, An Account of the
Kingdom of Caubul, vol. 11, p. 16, and the Gazetteer of the Bannu District
1883-4 (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1989), pp. 2 11-229.
In his field work c . 1960 Dichter noted the survival of local land
redistributions in 'the more remote parts' of the Haznra district just east
of the Peshawar valley and in Jullandar village in the Kurram Agency
south-west of Peshawar. See David Dichter, The North- West Frontier of
West Pakistan, A Study in Regional Geography (Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1967), pp. 81, 141.
W .R.H. Merk, The Moirmar~ds,p. 2 1.
Jens Enevoldsen, introduction and translation, The Nightingale of
Peshawar, Selections from Rahrltarl Baba (Interlit, Peshnwar, 1993),
pp. 11-12.
Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison. 1985), p. 31.
Enevoldsen, Nightingale, p. 26. For the following verse from Rahman
Baba's diwan, translated by Enevoldsen and titled 'Thirst,' see
Nightingale, pp. 143-47.
70 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

16. Ahmed, Milletrniurn, 1976, p. 38.

17. Ahmed, Millerrnium, 1976, p. 35).
18. Based on Bellew, A Ce~rerulReport on the Yusufzcri, 1994 (1864),
pp. 193-200. Apparently, the information on the Kulnalzai distributions
was gathered from local informants during Bellew's many years of service
in the Peshawur vulley.
19. Bellew, A Gctrcrul Report, p. 195.
20. Hugh James, Report on the Sertletrtettt of the Peslruwar District (Punjab
Government, Lahore, 1865), p. 106. Written from settlement work done
in the 1850s.
2 1. John Macartney, Merrroir (,$ u Map of Cuboul, ms, London: India Office
Librury, approx. 1809, p. 142. Lt. Macartney accompanied Elphinstone's
1809 mission to Peshawar.
22. Gopal Das, 7'urikh-l Peslr~wur(Globe Publishers, Lahore, unduted), (after
1874). Urdu volumc, p, 1035,
23. Gopill Dus, Turiklt-i Peshtrwcrr, p. 1029.
24. Richards, The Mugltctl Enrpirr, 1993, p. 190.
25. The lattdey form, like htriku, required u set number of syllables per line,
nine in the first line, thirteen in the second, 'trrttdeys follow a stress
meter, with three degrees of stress strength used in a consistent pattern in
alnlost a l l luntlcys', sec Grimrr, 1993, p. 148.
26. Rolri Satrclcrrui, compiled by Salma Shuhccn (Pashto Acudemy, University
of Peshuwur, Pcshawar, 1984), vol, 1, p. 8 I.English truliolations of Pashtu
lundeys, ufter discussions with locals, are my final responsibility.
27, Rohi Suttrlurui, p. 624,
28. Rohi Sundurui, p. 68.
29. Grima, Performutrcc, 1993, p. 148 urid Grima, 'Pushtun Quoting
Behaviour: The Cuse of the ~ ~ r t t l ulrnd
y the Proverb', Unpublished paper,
1984.
30, Rohl Strtrclnrcrl, p, 343.
3 1, Rohl Sutrdurul, p. 172,
32, Rohl Sarrdurul, p, 604,
33. Prom Inger Boesen, 'Woman, Honour and Love', qfahunlsmn Journal,
1980, 7 (2): 50-59, p. 58.
34, Vanslna, Orti1 Trcrrli~ion,p. 200.
33. Rohi Sund(trcrl, p. 1 13,
36. Rohi San(lurcrl, p. 358.
37. Allah Bakhsh Yusufi, Yt~.vujzcti Prrthun, Urdu text, (Sharif Arta Prcss,
Karachi, IY73), p, 102. My tranrlation from Pashtu verse, These
trenalatiano wcre diacuuned with Rukshana Iqbal, Peshawur educator.
38, Peshawar Scttlemorr Report, 1878, Appendix No. 111, pp, vi-xili, 'Liat of
works in Pakhto, and of works in Persian on the Pukhto lanuuage or
history'.
 THE POLITICS, POETICS, AND ECONOMY OF TI-1E LAND 71

39. See the Peshawar Settlonent Report, 1878, Appendix 111, and H. G.
Raverty, A Grumrnar ofthe Pukhto, Pushto, or Lcrnguage of the Afghatts,
1860 (De Chapzai, Peshawar, 1981), pp. 27-35.
40. Raverty, C;rcir,rntar, 1981 , p. 33.
4 1. Raverty, Notes on Afghn11i.stc~11,1982, p. 4 16.
42. Translated by Raverty, Notes, 1982, p. 416.
43. History of the Hoti Family, p. 15. See pp. 19-20 for translations and
reproductions of the different Mughal fumtans.
44. Richards, The Muxhltl Etnpiro, 1993, pp. 79-86, 290-07.
45. Richards, The Mugh(r1 Etnpire, 1993, p. 295.
46. History cf tlte Hoti Fumily, p. 13.
47. Hugh James, Report on the Settlcnter~tofthe Peshnwar District, 1865,
p. 30.
48. Jnmes, Settlement, 1865, p. 33.
49. Gazetteer of the Peshnwar District 1897-98, p. 62.
50. James, Settlement, 1865, p. 34.
5 1. Caroe, The Puthun.~,p. 182-3, presents persuasive evidence of an earlier
compatibility.
52. James, 1865, p. 33.
53. Gnzcttecr of the Pcshnwar District 1897-98, p. 132.
54. Ferguson and Whitehead, 'The Violent Edge of Empire', in War ill the
Tribal Zone, 1992, p. 3.
 NARRATIVES OF CONTINUITY
AND DOMINATION

The eighteenth-century transition from a Mughal to an Afghan

imperial presence in the Peshawar valley displayed the empire-
wide processes of commercial activity, delicate negotiation, and
implicit violence that incrementally weaned old political
loyalties and economic interests away from the Mughal centre.
The history of one elite family written in the classical form of a
tazkirat (biographical dictionary) detailed the successful
political transition of one increasingly influential Pakhtun
lineage. Other personal journals from the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century mapped the mosaic of Peshawar valley
clan settlements and the complex, subtle role of status and
hierarchy in Pakhtun social formations. Local Pakhtun society,
according to Tala1 Asad, appeared heavily marked by broad
'horizontal' cleavages between groups or classes possessing
asymmetrical levels of power and resources. This persisted
despite continuing factional competition between groups or
blocks led by the Pakhtun elite.
The political events surrounding the early eighteenth century
dissolution of the Mughal and Safavid empires and the
subsequent rise of the empires of Nadir Shah and the following
Afghan Durrani dynasty provided the drama and the characters
for numerous narratives of the regional history of this period, an
important context forced even upon those concerned with
sparsely documented events in the Peshawar valley.' But at
least two narratives offered insight into local events and the
subjective nature of historical perspective.
 NARRATIVES OF CONTINUITY AND DOMINATION 73

One narrative, the History of the Hoti Family, condensed the

eighteenth century history of the Yusufzai plains into the lives of
the era's three important Khans of Hoti. The family genealogy
recorded Nazar Bahadur Shah, known as Nazoh Khan (Khan
1707-1747), as nineteenth in descent from Kais, and one hundred
and nineteenth in line from Adam. Following him were Fateh
Khan (Khan 1748- 1780), and Lashkar Khan (Khan 1790- 1820),
who succeeded to the position after the death of two older
brothers. The lineage represented the Kishranzai branch of the
Mandanr Kamalzaim3As empires fell and rose, the Hoti Khans
manoeuvred for personal and clan pre-eminence.
Explanations for the longevity of the Mughal empire have
noted the constant flow into northern India of Persian and
Central Asian warriors, administrators, and artisans. Welcomed
as allies from a common religious and, often, socio-political
background, these immigrants effectively served the Mughal
cause in regional struggles to displace and subordinate older
Afghan and indigenous rulers. But this common Islamic cultural
terrain, often ruled with similar courtly idioms and ideologies,
meant that migration could as easily be out of, as into, the
region. Around 1691, after an argument with an uncle, the
eighteen-year-old Nazoh Khan left the Peshawar valley for
Kabul, Persia, and then Baghdad. He joined the Ottoman army
and served for sixteen years, including 'under the command of
Mustafa Afzal in his campaigns in E ~ r o p e ' .Returning
~ to Hoti
in 1707, Nazoh Khan succeeded almost immediately to the
khanship, after which he provided an escort to Bahadur Shah
during his return to the Punjab. Nazoh Khan's long rule became
a local metaphor for the subcontinental reality that long-
established imperial agents i n the provinces suffered little, and
might often benefit, when central disarray weakened imperial
ties."
Kabul subah events now offered perspective on the problems
besetting the Mughal system. Financially, at the moment of
Bahadur Shah's success, imperial revenue flows and
accumulated resources remained at a high level. The Agra
treasury alone held coined and unminted precious metals worth
74 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

perhaps Rs 240 m i l l i ~ nMid-seventeenth

.~ century revenue from
the Kabul subah, according to one eighteenth-century source
equal to fifteen crore dams, climbed to over sixteen crore dams
during Aurangzeb's reign.' Yet within twenty-five years,
shifting trade patterns and political competition and factionalism
fragmented the loyalties of regional Mughal agents.
Gommans has traced how the Mughal centre was challenged
by regional claimants on agrarian revenues, including Marathas,
Sikhs, and the East India Company, and by a 'commercial
circumvention of the Mughal heartland of Lahore, Delhi and
Agra' as Afghan and Central Asian trade networks found
alternate routes to the rich Rohilla kingdoms north-east of Delhi
and realigned north Indian financial and political interests and
loyalties.*
By the mid-1730s Mughal allowances to Afghan clans, able
to disrupt the passes between Kabul and Peshawar, had ~ t o p p e d . ~
By the summer of 1738, when Nasir Khan, Mughal subahdar of
Kabul, wrote to Delhi for resources to prepare defences against
the approach of Nadir Shah, he particularly complained that his
personal income was now five years in arrears.I0 Though a
private letter written from Delhi in January 1739 declared that
'About forty Lacks by Bills at different times were remitted to
Navob Nacir Khan, Soubahdar of Peishor, that he, joining with
the Afghans of that Quarter, might make Head against Nadir
Shah, ...'," the belated effort, and the absence of a relieving
army from Delhi gave Nadir Shah an advantage.
Mughal failures to ensure the loyalties of key players in the
Kabul subah derived less from imperial material bankruptcy
than from a mutually reinforcing cycle of increasingly
irreconcilable assertions of regional and central self-interest and
imperial factionalism, inertia, and diplomatic negligence. One
near contemporary report mentioned that on capturing Kabul in
June 1738, 'Nadir Shah found Treasure, Jewels, Arms, etc. to a
great Value, which since the Great Moghol Babr's Time, had
been shut up in vaults'." Nadir Shah's ability to coerce and
then co-opt trans-Indus Afghans and ~ u ~ h a l - a p p o i n t e d
authorities quickly overcame early resistance by the Afghans of
 NARRATIVES O F CONTINUITY AND DOMINATION 75

the mountain passes, and by the Mughal subahdar, supported

by many Yusufzai levies." He swept into Peshawar in December
1738.14
After victories in India, Nadir Shah forced a treaty that
annexed the Kabul province and the Peshawar valley to his
empire. A continuity of imperial and local vested interests
ensured the quick stabilization of the Peshawar region. The
former Mughal subalzdar, Nasir Khan, became the new governor
for the Persian empire. As mentioned, the Afghans of the Khalil,
Mohmand, Daudzai, Gigiani, and Muhammadzai tappas near
Peshawar generally 'submitted to the local governors, and were
forced to pay tribute through their chiefs'.I5 Whether or not this
simply continued established local Mughal revenue practice, the
payment of peslzkaslz tribute through arbabs revealed the
inability or unwillingness of Nadir Shah's Peshawar
administrators to directly subordinate individual Afghan rnaliks
and cultivators.
Before leaving Peshawar on his drive to conquer India Nadir
Shah attempted to establish dominion across the rest of the
Peshawar valley. While Lockhart briefly stated that he
'dispatched a strong force to ravage the country between
Peshawar and the Indus.. .',I6the Hoti family history documented
a high-risk strategy often pursued by Pakhtuns of the Yusufzai
plain when confronted with attack by passing imperial armies.
Nazoh Khan withdrew with his followers to hill passes where
he defeated the first Persian force sent against him. Though
Nazoh Khan lost a second battle at 'Chinglai and Shahkote', the
potential for continued instability on a vital route led the Persian
leader to open negotiations. Nazoh Khan offered his loyalty and
presented his son as a hostage. In return he was appointed
'Muajibdar for the Yusafzai Illaqa, yielding a revenue of
Rs 70000 a year'." Soon, with or following behind Nadir Shah's
army, large numbers of Pakhtuns, 'most of them Yusufzais and
other Afghans from the Peshawar valley', migrated to the east,
especially to the Rohilla states.I8
The almost pro forma resistance, then accommodation
displayed by the Mughal governor and the Peshawar valley
76 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

arbabs and khans illustrated an elite political etiquette in which

contending imperial powers revealed just enough of their
potential for dominance or weakness to trigger the defections
and new alliances that preserved the interests of the ruling elite
without destroying the established hierarchies and relationships
that controlled agrarian productivity and revenue flows. This
method of producing new coalitions had been pursued in the
many Mughal era succession struggles, only to be discarded
after the death of Aurangzeb when vindictive, murderous
political competition fractured a basic Mughal elite ruling
interest.
The Hoti family history integrated these imperial events with
regional history to produce a lineage hagiography. Long
generations of Yusufzai competition with Khattak clans became
a victorious narrative, in which '...there were constant inter-
tribal skirmishes between the two clans generally resulting in
the defeat and rout of the latter at the hands of the former'.19
Another family hagiography, the Tarikh-i Murassa, written in
164011050 A H , described the skirmish in which Khushal Khan's
father received his mortal wounds as a Khattak raid on Mandanr
cattle to collect overdue tribute from the Akakhel Kamalzaia20
In contrast, the Hoti narrative, perhaps conflating an unrelated
sequence of events, said, 'In a battle.. .the leader of the Khattaks
Shahbaz Khan ...was slain and their capital Akora sacked and
ruined by the victorious Y ~ s a f z a i s ' . ~Such
' irreconcilable
historical interpretation was interspersed with simple statements
of 'fact' about the life of Nazoh Khan, including that, 'During
his time the second sack of Akora, the capital of the Khattaks,
took place in the year 1158 A H corresponding to 1745 AD'.
Given i n hostage to Nadir Shah for his father's good
behaviour, in 1739 Fateh Khan accompanied Nadir Shah back
to Persia as a commander of Afghan troops. Upon the killing of
Nadir Shah in 1747, 'Fateh Khan made the Afghan Troops
consent to the submission of Ahmed Shah ~ b d a l i ' .He ~~
followed the Abdali clan Afghan ruler to Kandahar, and then
returned to the Peshawar valley to assume the Hoti khanship in
1748.
 NARRATIVES OF CONTINUITY AND DOMINATION 77

The long subordination of much of the Peshawar valley to

Mughal governors had been punctuated by periodic resistance
from clan leaders and religious figures able to rally both the
alienated and the ideologically driven. The Durrani empire's
late eighteenth century domination of the old Kabul subah was
a different, yet familiar experience for Peshawar valley residents.
Local ruling administrators and garrison commanders now
looked to Kandahar or Kabul to a leadership quite cognizant of
lineage politics and Afghan culture. But familiarity did not
always exactly connote sympathy. At the death of Ahmed Shah,
his son, Timur Shah, a Persianized courtier with many years in
Herat, moved his capital from Kandahar to Kabul to escape
local lineage political pressures and attempt to build a ruling
elite more loyal to him than to clan id en ti tie^.^^
The fortunes of the elite Mandanr Khans of Hoti peaked in
this era, especially during the career of Fateh Khan. In 1761,
Fateh Khan, leading five hundred horsemen, joined Ahmed Shah
Durrani's invasion of northern India. At the third major historical
battle at Panipat, it was claimed that Fateh Khan killed ' ...the
Marhatta General Sivadas Rao Bhao (commonly called 'the
Bhao') with his own hand'.24 A fourth imperial farman, issued
in 176311 176 A H , rewarded the family with a new perpetual
jagir of ten villages in Hashtnagar worth Rs 12000 annually.
This supplemented the revenue of the Malguzari of Yusufzai,
which 'in those days is said to have amounted up to Rs 96000
annually'. Clearly the Peshawar valley coming under Afghan
rule did not signify any return to a distant pastoral ideal of non-
hierarchical, egalitarian Pakhtun social relations. Instead the
Afghan polity attempted to link a nascent central authority to
the established legitimacy of dominant regional lineage chiefs.
Before his death in 1780, and decades after Afzal Khan's
Khattak history ended with events i n 1725, Fateh Khan
apparently left a manuscript as a legacy intended to influence
the historical annals of his family and the Peshawar valley. This
text 'was meant for the advice and future guidance of all the
members of Fateh Khan's family and deals with the history of
Yusufzai clan,. . . ' 2 5 This historical 'memo' may have been the
78 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

source for a family history written in 183211248 AH, that in turn

may have been the chief document contributing to the History
of the Hoti Family referred to in this study, published after
December 1944.
The Hoti family historian(s) used the narrative literary form
to give specific socio-cultural and political importance to the
life experience of each eighteenth-century Khan of H ~ t i . ~ ~
Through the use of the narrative genre, the history used
contingent acts of ongoing inter-clan warfare to promote an
interpretation of continuous victory and clan ~uperiority.~~ In
the Mandanr history, specific acts of the khan khel lineage of
the Kishranzai branch of the Kamalzai, were visualized as the
socio-political focus of regional events and described in a style
able to 'charge them with ethical or moral s i g n i f i c a n ~ e 'This
.~~
validation and significance in turn justified an increasingly rigid
Pakhtun social hierarchy and a continuing elite family claim to
political legitimacy. The detailed Afghan and family genealogy,
in part derived from ' . . .the Shajra-i-Kalan Ghoria compiled
by Imam-Fakkar-ud-Din Razi, Chief Justice of the Ghories in
12th Century, ...',29 was a clan marker fully developed to
establish legitimacy. A sedentary lifestyle and even social
stratification did not mean a decline in the social utility of
lineage awareness. The manipulation and redeployment of
lineage genealogies and cultural traits served elite political and
other purposes long after lineage standing no longer guaranteed
a definitive material or social share in the Peshawar valley.
In the Sikh era, during the British colonial period, and on the
verge of partition in 1947, the Hoti narrative of continuity and
service supported family claims to social prominence and a share
of political power. More pragmatically, it substantiated specific
claims to subsidies, local influence, and rights over land and
revenues. Shortly, i t will be seen how this history supported an
effort to identify and fix control over resources threatened after
Durrani rule.
The narrative form and its ability to shape and manipulate
historical experience also framed texts describing Pakhtun
'tribal' or 'frontier' society. Few authors remained content
 NARRATIVES O F CONTINUITY AND DOMINATION 79

simply to recognize regional patterns of the kinds of symbiotic

relationships that had existed for centuries across the Islamic
and Asian social landscape between settled agriculturists and
pastoralists and between the hierarchies of cities and empires
and the diffused authority of rural lineages.30 Centuries earlier,
Ibn Khaldun had extolled the virtues of 'cities and sedentary
people' over the Bedouin who, in his teleology of the progressive
nature of civilization, were prior to, and beneath, the urbane and
e d ~ c a t e d . ~Akhund
' Darweza had adapted this ethnographic
narrative with its 'dominant story'32 of tribal anarchy and
inferiority to fit his vision in which Afghans could be redeemed
by appropriate rulers and, especially, proper religious
observance. These elite narratives were consonant with a style
of communication and storytelling in which the narrator, verbally
or textually, employed perceptions common to his audience in a
fluid process involving mutual evaluation and response, in which
all participants 'contemplate, explore, interpret, and evaluate,
seeking pleasure and interactive c o n s e n s ~ s ~ . ~ ~
A second narrative illuminating eighteenth-century Pakhtun
society would not completely avoid being influenced by this
notion of elite consensus about tribal society, even as it ranged
further afield to try and understand Afghan and non-Afghan
social differences through comparisons with foreign examples.
During the reign of Timur Shah ( I 772-93), Ghulam Muhammad
passed through the Peshawar valley and recorded his
observations, including details of the stages of his journey. His
journal elaborated on current regional social geography and the
residue of two centuries of imperial efforts to protect the Shah's
road (Shahrah) to Kabul. Passing the Attock Fort built by Akbar,
he crossed the Indus to Khairabad and described the stone fort
erected by Nadir Shah. Khairabad had been a dynamic centre
when the Khattaks received maximum imperial patronage, 'but
now, with the exception of a few Hindu grocers' shops, all is
desolate and deserted.. .'34
To Afghans the Kabul river was the 'Landey Sin', the little
river, or the 'Nil-ab', the blue water. At Khairabad the clear
water of the Kabul river merged with the muddy water of the
80 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Indus, the 'Aba Sin' or father river. From Khairabad the land
route continued west to 'Nara'i' then Shaidu, then 'Akorah'.
'The fort of Akorah, which is not devoid of strength, lies on the
opposite bank of the river, north of the town. North of the fort
again is a long hill running east and west, rising abruptly from
the plain, and under it, on the Akorah side, is the village of
Misri or Misri Banda'h.. . '35 Here travellers crossed the Kabul
river for the road north to the Doaba, Hashtnagar, Shabkadr,
Buner, and Swat. A dozen miles west of Akora was situated the
village of Shahbaz Khan. 'From Atak to this place the rule of
the Khataks extends. They are subject and pay obedience to
Timur Shah, Sadozi, Badshah of Kabul.' Further west the road
came to the river ford at N ~ w s h e r a .The
~ ~ 'Noh-s'hahra'h-i
Khalisa'h' south of the Kabul river was a 'Tajzik' village, while
the 'Noh-s'hahra'h-i-Hasht Nagar' north of the river was a
'Muhammadzi' village. A few miles west of Nowshera, still
south of the Kabul river, the road passed through 'Pir-pae' of
the 'Da'udzi Afghans', then through Azi Khel, Dagi, Bani
'Banda'h', and 'Pabbian', where the Do-bandi ferry crossed the
Kabul river. After Chamkani, 'a good sized town called after
the small Afghan tribe of that name', came Peshawar. 'This is a
large city of Afghanistan under the rule of Timur Shah, Sadozi,
and here all the precious and useful commodities of various
countries are disposed of, and hither come the merchants of
Iran, Turan, and Hind, to buy and sell.'37
Ghulam Muhammad observed the extensive irrigation canals
bringing water from the Kabul river to fields around Peshawar,
including a new branch extended by Timur Shah to near
Chamkani. The Shah's canal (Nahr-i Shahi), and one from the
Bara river south-west of Peshawar, had an appointed
administrator (daroghah) and produced water use fees for the
government. 'Wherever a fall of water can be obtained, the
people here cut canals, and convey the water to the lands, and
the revenue derived from them goes to the State.'38
Ghulam Muhammad observed that traders and travellers
bypassed the Yusufzai plains and used routes going north
through the Hashtnagar region or west via the road south of the
 NARRATIVES OF CONTINUITY AND DOMINATION 81

Kabul river. Ghulam Muhammad, a sayyid, made two or three

journeys to the court of Timur Shah, the second in 178611201
A H . His minute observations of distances, terrain, and inhabitants
created an early ethnographic record of regional society. His
journal became integral to a developing system of knowledge of
indigenous regions and populations being assembled by other
successful conquerors who, like Timur Shah, were attempting
to metamorphose the rule of arms into the legitimacy of a state.
Ghulam Muhammad's first mission to Timur Shah involved
carrying messages for Warren Hastings, governor of the British
colony based in Calcutta. His last mission to Afghanistan was
in the service of a later Governor-General, C o r n ~ a l l i s . ~ ~
In 1809, the English authorities despatched a higher official
to Peshawar. He visited a region disrupted by a ruling family
civil war over which heir to the throne would rule. Elphinstone's
mission spent three months in Peshawar but proceeded no further
west. He assembled most of the information included in his
two-volume account during a two-year process of reaching
Peshawar, returning, visiting Afghan colonies in northern India,
and reporting. His information came from 'numerous natives'
who travelled to Bombay with him after his mission and from
the 'accidental circumstances (that) brought a number of
Afghauns from the parts of the country with which I was last
acquainted to Bombay and Poona. . . ' 4 0
The English diplomatic initiative, to negotiate an alliance
with the Afghan ruler against threatened French interference in
Persia, lost its urgency with changes in the Persian situation and
with the quick loss of Peshawar and the dissipation of the
political power of Elphinstone's host, Shah Shuja. But the
mission's political-military intelligence project succeeded. After
an early phase of acquiring general information about the region,
'during the remainder a precise plan was arranged among the
party, and a particular branch of the investigation assigned to
every gentleman who took a share in East India Company
employees and army officers compiled information about
'geography' (Lt. Macartney, a surveyor, and Captain Raper),
'climate, soil, produce, and husbandry' (Lt. Irvine), 'trade and
82 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

revenue' (Richard Strachey), 'history' (Robert Alexander), and

'government and the manners of the people' (Elphinstone).
Elphinstone, encouraged to publish results and using some of
the various reports, wrote the two volumes published in 1815.
Elphinstone portrayed the wide socio-political diversity of
the numerous regions and populations subsumed within the
'Kingdom of Caubul', from Persian-speaking farming
communities to autocratic local Afghan rulers able to suppress
lineage politics. One of Macartney's notebooks conveyed a sense
of the distinctiveness and separation of the Mandanr plains and
the Yusufzai hill valleys: 'The roads thro' this country are
excessively difficult and few of them practicable for a horse.
Few travellers ever pass thro' it.'42 'It is said no traveller can go
thro' their country unless he has a Mollah or Priest with him.'
Politically, 'The Yoosufzyes do not acknowledge any particular
Chief: every zernindar is master of his own village and
acknowledges no superior. There are sometimes three or four in
a village all equal. They do not pay tribute to the king or furnish
troops. They have no regular army or commanders, but turn out
in the general course and fight as they like.. . ' 4 3
Elphinstone's chapters combined first-and second-hand
knowledge with shrewd observations and conventional wisdom
about less understood regions and Afghan clans. The conceptions
of educated Englishmen coloured interpretations of the Afghans.
Khushal Khan was 'a far superior poet to R e h m a ~ n for ' ~ ~if
frequently rude and 'often intolerably flat and prosaic', his
verses often 'inspired with the unconquerable spirit of their
author; and glow with the noblest sentiment of liberty and
independence'.
The Afghan historical experience was compared to that found
in Europe, in the British Isles, and, especially, in Scotland. Some
'Eusofzyes', including those in the Panjkora hill valley west of
Swat, were 'under a more aristocratic government', but most
remained 'democratic', in one of their 'little republics'. 'I have
got the names of at least thirty of them'.45 Khushal Khan was
compared to William Wallace, '. . .sometimes succeeding in
destroying royal armies, and sometimes wandering almost alone
 NARRATIVES O F CONTINUITY AND DOMINATION 83

through the mountain^'.^^ The imagery of Afghans as crude,

violent, anarchic tribesmen needing nothing so much as external
civilizing influences and, as Scotland, eventual integration into
a state-structured polity was reminiscent of Akhund Darweza,
of the 'wild Pathans' of a later anthrop~logist,~' and of a more
subtle assimilationist narrative traceable in other regional
anthropological literat~re.~'
The British imperial archive also received tentative statistics
from the Elphinstone reports. Akhund Darweza had credited
Shaikh Mali with carrying out a census of the Yusufzai, before
making his land divisions. The Akozai, Isazai, Malizai, and
Iliaszai clans had been estimated to each total three thousand
men, women, and children, while the Mandanr clans together
equalled another twelve thousand people.49These twenty-four
thousand descendants of Yusuf and Mandanr had divided the
mountain valleys and north-eastern Peshawar plains between
them. Allied Afghan clans and conquered and dependent
populations, perhaps equal in number to, or more than, the
Yusufzai clans went uncounted. Now, from sources just as
impossible to confirm, Macartney wrote that, 'In the reign of
Timour Shah it is said the country contained sixty thousand
houses, three lacks of souls'.50 In his considered opinion,
Elphinstone downplayed the 'nine hundred thousand spears'
once said to be under the authority of Khan KajuTslto
'conjecture that their numbers, including all their Fakeers and
dependants, did not exceed 700000 souls'.S2
Elphinstone described, in familiar analogies, the social
hierarchies of the region. He saw the condition of the
subordinated Swatis remaining in the northern valley as being
'reduced to the condition of villains, or as the Eusofzyes call
them Fakeers.'" If Elphinstone too readily accepted many elite
perspectives, a criticism levelled against Barth, also at the
expense of not recognizing such forces as 'the underlying class
tension and conflict situation'," he did write an early description
of the subaltern classes in Yusufzai society.
'The Fakeers are much more numerous than the E u s o f ~ y e s . ' ~ ~
Most were 'Swautees', plus 'Deggauns', 'Hindkees',
84 S E T L I N G THE FRONTIER

'Cashmeerees' 'Hindoos', and stray, non-Yusufzai Afghans.

Some 'Hindkees' (Muslims of north Indian heritage) had fled
famine in the Punjab. Kashmiris and Hindus were led there 'by
the desire for gain', while some migrant Afghans had come 'in
circumstances which have degraded them to the rank of
Fakeers'. Most fakirs (faqirs) worked the land or herded animals
on hillsides.
'The Fakeers have no land, they are not considered as
members of the commonwealth, nor allowed to be present at
Jeergas'. A fakir was 'subject' to his 'Khawund or master', to
whom he paid a 'tax', and provided free labour, 'like the villains
in Europe'. The fakir could be beaten or killed, but would
usually be protected as an asset. The fakir could follow a trade,
work for profit, or 'rent land as a Buzgur or Metayer' (tenant).
He would owe the 'established tax', customary fees, and some
labour. Elphinstone noted the ability of an oppressed dependant
to flee to another Yusufzai shareholder, 'a right which he can
always exercise', due to 'a great competition for Fakeers'.
'The masters have not the power of extorting money from
their F a k e e r ~ .Dependants
'~~ paid to shareholders fees and fines
for settlement on the land, marriages, and for compensation for
personal injuries, but only to the extent of customary rates.
More 'would be reckoned gross oppression'.
Fakirs included the village masons, weavers, dyers, and
artisans. Blacksmiths, carpenters, barbers, and drummers had a
dependant, but different status. Affiliated with specific
neighbourhoods, 'Cundies', they received some land in return
for services and 'work gratis for the Cundy, which they follow
when it changes its residence'. Unknown Afghans had to accept
the status of fakirs, while migrant Yusufzais were 'received as
equals', though not 'consulted on public affairs'." For military
services some 'Deggauns' received lands to work 'under chiefs
of their own', The status of fakirs and the existence or rates of
'tax' or fees varied from Yusufzai clan to clan.
Elphinstone saw a living society undergoing the processes of
transition and change. Migration, commerce, and contingent
events characterized the life histories of the dependant
 NARRATIVES O F CONTINUITY AND DOMINATION 85

population. Dependant Swatis, in the northern valley still toiled

for others. Kashmiri and Hindu shopkeepers and moneylenders
pursued trade. Ecological events, including famine, caused short-
term social effects. The relative mobility of the fakir population
was apparently less of a threat to Yusufzai shareholders than
the group movement of Pakhtun clans or others perceived as
imperial agents. The ability of fakirs to negotiate their status, to
exercise at least half of the dependant agriculturist's classic
'fight or flight' strategy, reflected something of the process of
continuous interaction that may have reproduced, but, at this
time, still limited degrees of elite domination.
Elphinstone compared the situation to a 'commonwealth',
where a Yusufzai shareholder, a 'master', had a 'subject', the
fakir who paid a 'tax', gave a percentage of the crop, and provided
forced labour (begar), somewhat like a subordinated European
farmer, called a 'villain'. The terms of agricultural practice were
only hinted at in the reference to rented land. A fakir tenant
might simply rent land on his own responsibility or might receive
seed, etc. in exchange for an agreed share of the crop.
Any sense of a finely stratified, caste-like social order seemed
inappropriate. Elite Yusufzai shareholders clearly dominated,
but the subordinated population seemed to be more simply
categorized as either general village servants or affiliated artisans
and service providers, perhaps more skilled and valuable, in
service to specific village lineages. The sense derived from
Elphinstone of the Yusufzai regional social order, is consistent
with a later critique of Barth's analysis of the relative importance
of elite competition organized through blocs centred on the
social environment of the hujra. The critique, by Tala1 Asad, as
also discussed by Ahmed," was in reference to a twentieth-
century analysis of a rapidly changing post-1947 economic and
political environment. But Asad's argument illuminates a
historical inability fully to recover subaltern histories. 'I have
been arguing, against Barth, that horizontal cleavages into
asymmetric classes are more important than vertical ones into
homologous blocs'.59If Barth's 'Khan's eye-view of the world'60
has survived in Yusufzai perspectives, often the only surviving
86 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

view, any elitist discourse must be recognized for what it is,

especially when encountered in later colonial and scholarly
documents.
By the second half of the eighteenth century, around
Peshawar, Pakhtun shareholders were increasingly subordinated
to Pakhtun arbabs and khans who had developed as an elite
class tied to imperial destinies. In the Yusufzai country the
development of khans able to impose dependence on other
Pakhtuns remained limited to specific locations such as the
Panjkora valley and certain tappas in the plains under chiefs
such as the Khan of Hoti. But Yusufzai fakirs, though still able
to gain advantage from surplus land and labour shortages,
already suffered to the full the tensions and frustrations
generated by political and economic domination. Such social
tension would find relief, including in socio-religious reaction
to new imperial activity.

NOTES

1. Caroe, in The Pathans, moved from Khushal Khan, at the end of his
Chapter XV, to 1793 in the fifteen pages of his Chapter XVI, titled
'Ahmad Shah'.
2. The History of the Hoti Family, no date (c. 1944), no place of publication.
Published, apparently by the family, during the life of Muhammad Akbar
Khan, Khan of Hoti from 1914.
3. See the Kamalzai genealogical table in Henry Priestley's translation of the
Hayat-i Afghan by Muhammad Hayat Khan, c.1865, published as
Afghanistarl and its Inhabitants, 1874 (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1981), p. 94.
The close correspondence between sections of the translation of the
extensively, if imperfectly, researched Hayat-i Afghan and Bellew's shorter
A General Repon on the Yusufzai, 1864 indicated that wholesale, uncredited
transposition was not just a flaw of earlier, pre-British era writers.
4. History of the Hoti Family, p. 15. A European army would not reach
Delhi until 1805.
5 . See a similar process in the Ottoman context in Dina Khoury's work on
the Mosul province.
6. Richards, The Mughal Empire, 1993, p. 253.
7. James Fraser, The History of Nadir Shah ( A . Millar, London, 1742)
pp. 27 and 34. One crore was equal to ten million, forty dams one rupee.
 NARRATIVES OF CONTINUITY AND DOMINATION

8. Gommans, Indo-Afghan Empire, 1995, p. 43.

9. Fraser, History, p. 135.
10. L. Lockhart, Nadir Shah (Luzac & Co., London, 1938), p. 125.
11. Fraser, History, p. 145. From 'A Translation of a Letter wrote by
Sirbullind Khan's Secretary at Dehli, to Mirza Moghol, Son to Ali
Mahommed Khan, at Ahmedabad ...'
12. Fraser, History, p. 132.
13. Raverty, Notes, vol. 1 , p. 38.
14. Lockhart, Nadir Shah, p. 129.
15. Gazetteer of the Peshawar District, 1897-98, p. 62.
16. Lockhart, Nadir Shah, p. 129.
17. History of the Hoti Family, p. 15.
18. Gommans, Indo-Afghan Empire, p. 121.
19. History of the Hoti Family, p. 14.
20. See excerpts from Tarikh-i Murassa in Plowden, Kalid-i Afghani, 1875,
pp. 204-5.
21. History of the Hoti Family, p. 14.
22. History of the Hoti Family, p. 16.
23. Ganda Singh, Ahrnad Shalt Durrani (Tariq Publications, Lahore, 1981),
p. 387.
24. History of the Hoti Fanlily, p. 16.
25. History of the Hoti Family, p. 16.
26. See Hayden White, The Content of the Form (Johns Hopkins University
Press, Baltimore, 1987), Chapter 1 , for discussion of the potential meaning
of narration.
27. See Edward Bruner, 'Ethnography as Narrative', in Victor Turner and
Edward Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience (University of
Illinois Press, Urbana, 1986), p. 142. for discussion of such 'organizing'.
28. White, Content, 1987, p. 1 I .
29. History of the Hoti Family, p. 5 .
30. See Brian Spooner, The Cultural Ecology of Pastoral No~nads(Addison-
Wesley, Reading, 1973) for a sense of such symbiotic co-existence.
31. Ibn Khaldun, Muclcrdclininh, trans. Rosenthal (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 1989), p. 93.
32. Bruner, 'Ethnography as Narrative', 1986, p. 142.
33. Mary Louise Pratt, toward.^ a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discorirse
(Indiana Un~versityPress, Bloomington, 1977), 140.
34. Raverty, Notes, 1982, vol. 1 , p. 33. Raverty's sources were often vaguely
and only occasionally referred to, but the writings of Ghulam Muhammad
apparently were gathered in a text named Sair-ul-Bilad. See reference,
Raverty, Notes, vol. 1 , p. 38. The following transliterations in quotation
marks are examples of Raverty's rigorous grammatical precision, an
accuracy that, to his great frustration, could not be ingrained in the maps
and writings of his countrymen.
88 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

35. Raverty, Notes, vol. 1, p. 34.

36. Nowshera, Persian for 'new town', began as a fort built north of the river
by Akbar's general Zain Khan at a cost of about Rs 50000. Jehangir
remembered, 'They say that Humayun used to hunt rhinoceros in this
region', including with Akbar. Jehangir, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, 2 vols., trans.
by A. Rogers, 1909-14 (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1974), p. 102.
37. Raverty, Notes, vol. 1, p. 35. Ghulam Muhammad measured his stages by
the 'kuroh', the term used between Attock and Kabul for the Hindustani
'kos'. Distances varied regionally, commonly a kuroh or kos was about
two-to-two and one half miles. See Raverty, Notes, vol. 1, p. 1 f.n. and
Fraser, History, 1742, p. 20, f.n., 'A Coss is the measure they commonly
go by in India, in computing distances; they are of two sorts. Jeribi, or
measured, which are 4000 English yards each; and Rismi or computed,
which are from 2000 to 2500 yards, according to the different Provinces...'
38. Raverty, Notes, vol. 1, p. 35.
39. Raverty, Notes, vol. 2, p. 504.
40. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 2 vols.,
1815 (Indus Publications, Karachi, 1992), Preface, pp. vi. and vii.
4 1. Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1992, vol. 1, Preface,
p. v.
42. John Macartney, Memoir of a map of Caboul and the adjacent countries ...'
ms, c . 1809, India Office Library and Records, London, p. 140.
43. Macartney, Memoir, c . 1809, p. 141.
44. Elphinstone, An Account, vol. 1, p. 251.
45. Elphinstone, An Account, vol. 1, pp. 25, 26, 27.
46. Elphinstone, An Account, vol. 1, p. 255.
47. See Akbar S. Ahmed's discussion of Bailey's stereotype in Ahmed,
Millennium and Charisma, 1976, p. 134.
48. See Akbar S. Ahmed, Social and Economic Chatlge in the Tribal Areas
(Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1977).
49. See Raverty's longer discussion of Swat, Notes on Afghanistan, vol. 1,
pp. 194-214, including this census, p. 207.
50. Macartney, Memoir, c . 1809, p. 141. One lakh was equal to 100000.
51. Noted in History, Dorn trans., part 2, p. 44.
52. Elphinstone, An Account, vol. 1, p. 27.
53. Elphinstone, An Accountl, vol. 1, p. 14.
54. See Ahmed, Millennium, 1976, p. 131.
55. Elphinstone, An Account, vol. 2, p. 27.
56. Elphinstone, An Account, vol. 2, p. 28.
57. Elphinstone, An Account, vol. 2, p. 29.
58. Akbar S. Ahmed, Millennium, 1976, p. 131.
59. Tala1 Asad, 'Market model, class structure and consent: a reconsideration
of Swat political organization', Man, vol. 7, No. 1, 1972, pp. 74-94.
60. Ahmed, Millennium, 1976, p. 130.
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION,
CLASS, AND RESISTANCE

In Peshawar the transition from Afghan to Sikh state authority

preceded the rise of British colonial interest in the trans-Indus
region. Authoritative interpretations shaped a growing
accumulation of colonial knowledge about local populations,
including interpretations characterizing complex socio-political
movements as reflecting fundamental religious identities.
Though religious authority claimed the indivisibility of din wa-
dawla, religion and state, such authority operated within a
broader social context in which all politics, including that of
religion, existed 'as the contest over the interpretation of
symbols and as the setting of and negotiation over boundaries
between spheres of social activity and institutions'.'
In the early nineteenth century an era of anti-Sikh activism
reflected divergent clan and Islamic interests. This divergence
complicated theories of religiously inspired unity against foreign
invasion and challenged ideas of ephemeral, emotional social
mobilization based on concepts of 'jihad' or 'millenarian'
upheaval. Reported observations from an 1840 journey offered a
rare, partially alternative thesis to later reductionist histories.
Pakhtuns were seen as complex social actors possessing legitimate
political authority, fragmented religious voices, and differing
perceptions of impending British colonial influence.

The Mandars are a very large and powerful tribe of the Afghan
nation, computed to number about one hundred thousand families
in all. They are descended from the same common ancestor as the
90 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Yusufzai tribe.. .The Mandars are not now subject to the authority of
a single chief, as in former times, nor are they taxed by the Afghan
sovereign, Timur Shah. In time of war a few of the Muhammadan
'Ulama or clergy are despatched, by the Badshah's command to
rouse their patriotism, and by this means a small force can always be
raised among them as a contingent to the Badshah's forces ...
The tract of country held by the Mandars is known as the
Sama'h . . . 2

Any late eighteenth century political and economic autonomy

in the north-eastern Peshawar valley could not deny the historical
interaction between the Afghan amirs in Kabul and the residents
of the Peshawar valley. Peshawar often served as Timur Shah's
winter residence and his sons, by a Yusufzai wife, Zaman and
Shuja, became central characters in the succession conflicts that
followed Timur Shah's death in 1793.
Valley events reflected the changing fortunes of the Afghan
emirate and the nascent Sikh kingdom in the Punjab. Yusufzai
recruits joined the winter 1778-9 compaign to capture Multan,
after which a caravan with, '...the heads of several thousand
Sikhs laden on camels, was sent to Peshawar as trophies, and
exhibited there to the terror and astonishment of the people'."
Local soldiers accompanied Shah Zaman on his increasingly
fruitless invasions of the western Punjab in 1793 and 1795. His
forces last reached Lahore in 1797 and 1798. By 1801 an Afghan
civil war raged. Shuja marched from Peshawar to Kabul with
Yusufzai and Afridi supporters against his half-brother Mahmud
who had deposed and blinded Shah Zamanq4
This Afghan fraternal conflict meant that a useful Sikh leader
left by Shah Zaman in control of Lahore in 1799 slowly
consolidated his authority across the Punjab. Ranjit Singh
captured the Attock fort on the Indus in 1813. He occupied
Multan in 1818, entered Peshawar for the first time the same
year, and occupied Kashmir in 1819. In Peshawar he left the
Afghan governor nominally in charge and withdrew to the Indus
where the Sikhs built another fort at Khairabad.
The Afghan-Sikh rivalry for influence in the Peshawar valley
resolved itself in March 1823 in a battle north of the Kabul
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 91

river at Nowshera. A Sikh army that included Gurkhas from

Nepal fought the Afghan amir's coalition, composed of a Kabul
army, Khattak and Yusufzai clansmen, and at least one Sikh
opponent of Ranjit Singh. The Afghan army, located on the
south bank of the Kabul river, watched unchallenged as the
main Sikh force confronted several thousand regional Pakhtuns.
Many hundreds died in a day-long struggle. The next day the
stalemated battle ended in defeat as the Afghan amir's army
retreated to Kabul without fighting. A British colonial writer
interpreted it as a clash of religions rather than a defence of
homeland and the politics of power:

...The Moosulmans, however, also felt their battle to be a religious

one, and met the fanatic Sikhs with corresponding zeal and
bigotry;. ..There were not more of the Moosulntans engaged on this
occasion, than between four and five thousand men, and these were
mere mountaineers and villagers, who turned out for the Ghazee,
that is, to fight the religious battle against the infidel Sikhs.
Disciplined professional soldiers there were none amongst them,
yet they did resist for a whole day the entire army of Runjeet
Singh, who had in the field against them not less than 24000 men,
and all his best troops. There were upwards of 1000 men (Captain
Wade says 2000) killed and wounded on the side of the Sikhs... 5

Caroe narrated a complex story of empires in transition. For

locals, 'Jehad had been preached* and the 'laslzkars of Yusufzai
and Khatak tribesmen had now gathered to the number of 20000
under the leadership of a well-known Sayyid, Akbar Shah, of
the family of Pir Baba in B u n e r ' . W h i l e the Afghan army
observed, 'tribal Ghazis' fought 'Sikh Akalis', the 'Amritsar
fanatics'. Caroe wrote of the 'utmost gallantry' of Yusufzai and
Khattak, of an 'exultant tribal advance', and 'tribal valour'.' Of
interest was the facile use within the history of a kind of
religious imagery that would be applied, contemporaneously or
in hindsight, to every regional movement of large scale Afghan
resistance to Sikh and then British imperial activity through the
nineteenth century.
92 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

From the 1820s the common Islamic idioms employed by the

Afghan elite and by clans opposed to Sikh, then British,
imperialists coloured the descriptive and analytic language used
by outsiders to discuss regional social mobilization. Colonial
views of Islamic 'fanatics', irrational tribesmen thirsting for
martyrdom, and of manipulative religious leaders became a
justification for conquest, repression, and, often, the
indiscriminate destruction of villages and communities. If in
Timur Shah's time during offensive operations the ulema had
only been able to use religion to recruit 'a small force', and
then only as a component of a larger army, might religion have
been only one motivating factor within a larger context in later
moments of war and crisis? Perhaps it might not have been
required of a later religious figure, Akbar Shah, to provide any
extraordinary 'leadership', against an invading Sikh army,
beyond the general commitment of the community.
Over time outside observers viewed Pakhtun culture and
religious expression in absolute, binary opposition to rational,
technologically superior imperial states vying for authority in
the Peshawar valley. The notion that religious sensibilities were
the primary Pakhtun motivation became entrenched in a body
of authoritative imagery and analysis.* In discussions of
indigenous and religious reactions to imperial expansion, this
conventional wisdom would be absorbed into colonial and post-
colonial history and scholarship and would colour opinions of
tribal leadership and 'millenarian' religious movements. This
lingering colonial supposition too often obscured the genuine
Islamic dimensions of Afghan anti-imperial activism. This
perspective diffused any accurate assessment of the web of
socio-economic and political relationships that underpinned a
complex regional social movement of anti-imperial resistance
persisting through the nineteenth century.
The imperial history of this period was recorded in letters
and reports sent to British authorities who had news writers and
political agents scattered across the Punjab and in territories
under the rule of Kabul. One agent reported that on 21 April
1793 as Timur Shah left Peshawar for Kabul his 'horse started,
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 93

His Majesty's crown fell to the ground and he immediately

observed that the throne would now fall to the lot of a n ~ t h e r ' . ~
Apparently already ill, Timur Shah died within a month.
By the 1820s in Delhi a British 'resident' of the expanding
East India Company empire received translated summaries of
regular Sikh newsletters (akhbar). His informant was a British
officer stationed in Ludhiana in the Punjab. In March 1822 the
'Lahore Akhbar' reported the arrival of two foreigners dressed in
Persian clothes wearing long beards. Their names were recorded
as 'Ulur' and 'Wuntoor'.'O In June 1822 rumour had it that Ranjit
Singh hoped to use these two men (French officers named Allard
and Ventura) to seize Peshawar and Kabul. And by March 1827
the British agent in Ludhiana wrote of disturbances near Attock
caused by a 'Mahomedan Fanatic' whose followers had clashed
with Sikh forces. News reports of the period revealed the
convergence of interests between the anti-Sikh feelings of an
outside Islamic reformer and of local Pakhtun clans:

...The Rajah's attention has lately been particularly drawn to the

appearances of a large body of men in the vicinity of the Atok,
under a Mahomedan Fanatic, who has for sometime past been
exhorting the people in that part of the country to liberate
themselves from a foreign yoke and join him in the prosecution of
a religious war. The man who is engaged in exciting the commotion
made himself notorious about two years ago by attempting to
promote similar designs in Hindostan from which 1 believe he was
ordered by Government to desist or leave the country. He availed
himself of the last alternative and proceeded to Scind-whence he
made his way into Khorassan, visiting Candahar, Cabul and Peshaur
and working on the religious prejudices of his sect wherever he
went, until he has succeeded in gaining a host of enthusiasts.
It is stated by many that his present adherents amount to nearly
100000 men. I am not aware of the exact number and tho I am
inclined to think that statement considerably exaggerated, there can
be no doubt that a very numerous Party is assembled under his
banners and that the minds of men have been strongly moved by
the spirit of Martyrdom he is endeavouring to diffuse.
94 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

His name is Sied Ahmed Shah, a native of Barreilly ...I1

...it would appear that Raja Ranjit Singh estimates the amount
of the Insurgents on the Atok at 40 000 men. Their numbers have
... been greatly increased by the Eusufzies who were already in a
state of Insurrection.lz

The noticeable distinction between a comprehensive, anti-

Sikh, conservative religious reform movement and a regional,
clan-based reaction to Sikh advances complicated any imperial
stereotyping of Peshawar valley resistance. Any simple
assumption of segmentary lineage unity for defence solely
through the '...elevation of a Sufi mendicant, who holds the
clans together through his assertion of charismatic power,'13
does not fully explain the complexity of the social resistance
that soon involved local orthodox religious figures, clan kJza12s
and shareholders, non-Pakhtun agriculturists and dependants,
and the followers of an Islamic reformer from the Punjab.
A realization of the ideas and interests that coalesced and
clashed during this period presented a counter to nineteenth-
century imperial observers who would gladly have dismissed
manifestations of a decades-long movement as spontaneous,
emotional, transitory expressions of a depoliticized 'fanaticism'.
This complex history also created complications for later
scholars tempted to adopt insightful, but not uniformly
applicable analyses of 'charismatic' Pakhtun religious figures
or other anti-colonial 'prophets of rebellion'.I4

Resistance and Reform

After 1823 the Sikhs allowed the Durrani governors of

Peshawar, several brothers, to remain in charge once they had
acknowledged and accepted the new imperial reality. Mobile
Sikh military units forcibly ensured revenue flows, especially
during annual sweeps through villages distant from Peshawar.
In 1824, a militant resistance against the Sikhs was launched
by Akbar Shah, the Utmanzai Mandanr clans, and others living
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 95

in tappas east and west of the Indus river. Though a sayyid and
a descendant of Pir Baba, Akbar Shah was not simply a unifying
Islamic figurehead. Eighteenth-century Mughals had granted his
grandfather a jagir in the Hazara region just east of the Indus.IS
Thus Akbar Shah also represented the kind of locally legitimate,
intermediary authority that had, through alternate diplomacy and
violence, long negotiated or rejected new imperial demands
through changing eras. Akbar Shah settled in Sitana village in
the hills north-east of the plains, just west of the Indus.
The Islamic challenge to an expanding Sikh empire gained
momentum in late 1826 when Sayyid Ahmad Shah arrived in
the Peshawar valley. He was accompanied by numerous disciples
and supported by a highly developed network of personal friends
and partisans spread across northern India organized to recruit
and despatch men and financial aid.16 Sayyid Ahmad was a
direct spiritual descendant of the Delhi Sufi scholar Shah
Waliullah (1703-1762), through his disciple Shah Abdul Aziz
(1746-1824). Before he died fighting the Sikhs in May 1831
Sayyid Ahmad institutionalized a form of self-renewing Islamic
resistance to continuing non-Islamic governments in the
Peshawar valley. His successes and failures revealed the various
conflicting interests and the contradictions that fragmented the
anti-imperialist coalition. His story illustrated how in this era
even popular religious idealism could not supersede Peshawar
valley elite political networks linked to imperial patronage and
able to appeal, across class and power divides, to customary
social practice and ethnic ties.
A reformer, Sayyid Ahmad believed in the religious and
social agenda that had come down to him through his spiritual
lineage (silsilah). Seeking a return to an imagined original
Islamic purity, Sayyid Ahmad preached adherence to the Shari'a
rather than mystical union with God. He rejected the
compromises of faith discernable in established ulema. He
rejected the idea of saintly shrines or saintly intervention as
intermediary steps to God. He defended monotheism (tauhid)
and denied innovation (bid'at). Personal reasoning (ijtihad) was
necessary to deal with new and unforeseen events. Importantly,
96 SEl'TLING THE FRONTIER

Sayyid Ahmad had been exposed to Shah Waliullah's

interpretations of the nature of society and the relation between
religion and the state.
The Islamic state was to be organized by a 'Khilafat-i Khassa'
and a 'Khilafat Amma', the 'former is conceived as a spiritual
super-authority regulating the affairs of the latter, which may be
equated with temporal rulers and chiefs'." Society was
composed of various occupational groups, 'soldiers, artisans,
traders and agriculturists as well as the Ulama, Sufia and
members of the aristocracy', whose performance of their duty
kept society in equilibrium. Disrupting this equilibrium would
lead to disorder. This disruption had occurred. Monarchy, 'as
opposed to the early elective tradition of Islam and the cessation
of Ijtihad had much to do with the prevailing state of affairs'.'*
Dogma had replaced initiative. The resulting moral decay and
political decline could only be reversed by a spiritual renewal
broadly embraced across society.
Before his journey to the Peshawar region, Sayyid Ahmad
had served in a military unit of Amir Khan of Tonk. He had
performed the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca with many supporters
and spent two years organizing popular and material support for
his Peshawar campaign. Arriving in the Peshawar valley in late
1826, Sayyid Ahmad and perhaps one thousandi9followers first
made their base at Charsadda village in Hashtnagar. The history
of the next five years, until Sayyid Ahmad's death, saw a
repetition of much of the political and social mobilization and
fractiousness that had marked previous generations and would
continue to confuse interpretations of later events.
In December 1826 Sayyid Ahmad and his followers clashed
with Sikh troops at Akora. Many Sikhs died, but with no
decisive result. A Mandanr malik, Khadi Khan, allied himself
with Sayyid Ahmad in Hund village, 'which became the first
organized centre'20 of the group. The inability of Sayyid Ahmad
to shape local Pakhtun villagers into a disciplined and effective
military force led to an 1827 decision consistent with his sense
of the proper relationship between religious and secular
leadership. 'It was accordingly decided by all those present at
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 97

the time, faithful followers, Sayyids, learned doctors of law,

nobles and generality of Muslims that the successful
establishment of jihad and the dispelling of disbelief and
disorder could not be achieved without the election of an
Imam.'21
This moment of religiously inspired unity attracted the
allegiance of maliks, shareholders, and apparently even the
governors of Peshawar. But the illusion of commonality of
political interest was shattered when, during the next clash with
Sikh troops, at Shaidu south of Akora, the Peshawar rulers
withdrew. Sayyid Ahmad and his followers were forced out of
Hund. They retreated to a new base in Panjtar, another village
secure in the hills north of the Peshawar plains. By 1828 the
religious fervour generated by Sayyid Ahmad had dissipated to
the point that his movement could be perceived as a finite
regional faction unable to count on the loyalty of alliance
partners. In an 1828 encounter at Usmanzai, the Durrani rulers
of Peshawar, now acting in their role as Sikh tributaries, lost to
the followers of Sayyid Ahmad. But 'the advance on Peshawar
had to be abandoned due, once again, to the defection of the
tribesmen who were expected to help'.22
In their fine details, the events of these years revealed a
fragmented Yusufzai and Mandanr support for Sayyid Ahmad's
movement. Social concerns, and a combination of pressure and
support from Sikh generals and Peshawar governors, forced a
range of local decisions while presenting new opportunities. In
1829 at a large meeting organized in Panjtar Sayyid Ahmad, at
the peak of his local influence, obtained agreement that the
khans and others present '. ..would administer their principalities
according to the laws of the Shariat and would give up the
"customary" practices, such as family feuds, usury, polygamy,
distribution of a deceased man's wife and children among his
brothers, e t ~ ' . ~
In' August 1829 Khadi Khan was charged by the
followers of Sayyid Ahmad with conspiring with the Sikhs to
disrupt communications with India. Khadi Khan died in an attack
on Hund. In September 1829 a force composed of clan relatives
of Khadi Khan and of troops led by a governor of Peshawar
98 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

suffered defeat at Zaida village. The governor, Yar Muhammad,

perished.
The decisive moment for Sayyid Ahmad, and for any hope of
establishing a legitimate political authority consistent with his
vision of Islamic rule, came in 1830. In addition to the stated
social agenda, Sayyid Ahmad also attempted to collect the
Islamic tithe (ushr) of ten per cent of crop yields. In coercing
reluctant khans to pay, Sayyid Ahmad antagonized the 'chief of
Hoti Mardan,' who then formed a power alliance with Sultan
Muhammad, governor of Peshawar. This union was defeated in
fighting at Mayar village and the Islamic reformers finally
occupied Peshawar.
Over several months during the autumn of 1830 Sayyid
Ahmad tried, but failed to conciliate established power
hierarchies. The Peshawar ulema, who had earlier declared
Sayyid Ahmad a non-believer (kafir), were granted forgiveness.
Sultan Muhammad was restored to his rule with the stipulation
that ushr would be collected and Islamic judges (qazis),
including one in Peshawar, would be appointed and would
preside. But before the end of 1830 an organised uprising
occurred; the agents of Sayyid Ahmad in Peshawar and in the
plains villages were murdered and the movement retreated to
the hills. Contemporary and later writers analysed the failure of
this supposedly broad-based religious movement to reform elite
political relations or displace entrenched socio-economic
practices.
In October 1830 the British political assistant in Ludhiana
wrote to Delhi that Sayyid Ahmad had withdrawn from
Peshawar due to the approach of Sikh troops sent 'towards the
Attok for the coercion of the Fanatics'. On 17 November the
agent wrote that the old Peshawar authorities had regained
control of the city. 'It is also reported that the Eusefzies alarmed
at the consequences which were likely to follow their adhesion
to the Syed have made indiscriminate slaughter of everyone
belonging to them who happened to be residing in their villages
in the plains between Peshaur and the A t t ~ k . ' ~ ~
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 99

Slightly later another observer recorded that 'The Governor

consented to allow free passage to men and money proceeding
to join the reformer-to place the administration of Peshawur in
the hands of a Kazee, and officers of the reformed faith and
principles, and to pay monthly to the Seyud the sum of 3000
rupees.' But soon, '...the Kazee and two Moolvees' were slain
'in a popular tumult' as Sayyid Ahmad was rejected by
Yusufzais offended 'at innovation he desired to introduce into
the marriage ceremony' and by the uslzr demanded 'for religious
and state purposes'.25
The scholar Qeyamuddin Ahmad attempted to vindicate
Sayyid Ahmad's declaration of the Irnanzat, 'The decision was
criticized by some as unjustified and as an assumption of
dictatorial power. But it was a necessary step if the movement
was not to be lost in a welter of petty ~ k i r m i s h e s ' .While
~~
explaining the movement's end he noted that, 'Certain religious
charges were fabricated against the Wahhabis, and some of the
measures enforced by them were utilized for inciting the
people'.27 Caroe wrote that the trouble came when Sayyid
Ahmad spoke against the bride price given at marriage and then
advocated the marriage of all single women of marriageable
agea2*Caroe added, 'And when Ahmad was accused, as many
say unjustly, of assigning maidens one by one to his needy
Hindustani followers, the people were greatly incensed and made
a conspiracy against him'.29
Clearly, Sayyid Ahmad's Islamic ideals presented challenges
to local practices. Yet, Sayyid Ahmad had been prudent enough
not to confront directly the Peshawar ulema or ruling structure.
He undoubtedly was aware of the sensitive nature of his
controversial social agenda, one quite similar in rhetoric to the
sermons of Akhund Darweza. In the end it appears that Sayyid
Ahmad faced accusations by detractors of demanding radical
social innovations that were in direct conflict with Pakhtun
notions of family privacy (parda) and of how women
represented clan honour and shame. Certainly in an intense
political struggle he might be charged with making demands
that he probably would not have actually risked.
100 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Caroe concluded with a benignly post-colonial rephrasing of

colonial conventional wisdom. Sayyid Ahmad's story:

typifies. ..the strength and weakness of the Pathan tribal system. A

leader appears, and unites tribal sentiment in a surge of enthusiasm
that carries all before it. For a while internal jealousies are laid
aside, and an enthusiastic loyalty is forthcoming. Individuals are
found ready to face death for a cause, and no one counts the cost.
The idea of sacrifice is in the air. The crest of the wave bursts over
the barrier, and the victory seems won. Then the leader gives way
to vainglory, the stimulus which gave unity fails, envy and malice
show their heads. The effort, steady and sustained, which is needed
to maintain the position won proves to be beyond the tribal reach.
The ground won is lost, and the leader forfeits confidence and is
discarded.30

Caroe blamed Sayyid Ahmad's failure on a typical 'tribal

system' that could mobilize emotion for valour and sacrifice,
but also at the same time for the vainglory, jealousy, envy, and
malice that destroyed unity and success. Caroe's narrative of
the leader that appeared, generated an emotional 'wave', and
then failed, when confronted with a steady and sustained
imperial presence, recalled scholarly analysis of leaders of
'millenarian protest movements against the European colonial
order'.3' Little discussed was the role of considered, justifiable
local political and economic self-interest.
Adas theorized a 'number of common patterns' in the lives
of leaders of 'millenarian' movements, though he avoided any
entanglements implicit in the use of Weber's concept of
charismatic leadership. From his case studies Adas perceived
such leaders as being often both well educated and 'extensively
exposed to esoteric, magico-religious beliefs and healing
techniques'. They had been 'well-travelled individuals with
extensive exposure to the agents of dominant alien group^'.^'
They might have been soldiers or policemen in possession of
colonial military knowledge and most probably began their
activities 'after severe personal setback^'.^^
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 101

Parallels exist between Adas' profile, designed to study

figures specifically motivated to confront the expanding empires
of industrialized European nation-states, and the life of Sayyid
Ahmad. Sayyid Ahmad had been fully aware of the
dissatisfaction generated by legal and land-related uncertainties
in the territories in northern India newly occupied by the East
India Company.34 Arlinghaus also noted the applicability of
Adas' theory to Bayazid Ansari's life.35Just as the Roshaniyya
movement threw down the gauntlet to not only the Mughals,
but the established religious ulema and the role of clan lineage
leaders, so the movement of Sayyid Ahmad challenged the
authority of Sikh imperialists, the Peshawar ulema, and khans
such as Khadi Khan of Hund.
But, if Akhund Darweza '...had lived among the Yusufzais
and represented the Sunni religious e~tablishment',~~ Sayyid
Akbar, descended from Pir Baba, opposed the Sikhs and
supported Sayyid Ahmad. As well, Sayyid Ahmad continued to
be welcome in many, if not most, of the Yusufzai villages of
the hills north of the Peshawar valley and east of the Indus.
And, as in the Roshaniyya movement, there was, in reality, no
spontaneous movement that peaked in an emotional wave and
then disappeared. In a later 'Brief Chronology of the Hindustani
Fanatics', the latest entry discussed events in February 1915.37
It was neither a dysfunctional 'tribal system' nor the
technology of a western, or non-western, imperial power that
defeated the movement of Sayyid Ahmad. In actuality, even the
appeal of Islamic reform combined with the appeal of an anti-
Sikh jihad could not overcome the power relationships
institutionalized at the local level where, as posited by Burke,
'The pulling and tugging of factions, the pressures of political
and economic exploitation at the level of everyday life, the
influence of local political and religious figures shaped the
responses of particular groups.. .* 3 8
Here, at the local political level, some insight might be gained
into the fate of Sayyid Ahmad's movement. The opinionated
Bellew, who claimed that Sayyid Ahmad with the help of the
future Akhund of Swat had treacherously lured and assassinated
102 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

Khadi Khan of Hund, recorded that after Sayyid Ahmad had

removed to Panjtar, his policies were ignored in the 'Hoti tappa'.
In 1829, '. . .Hoti and Mardan, persisting in their obstinacy, were
attacked, plundered, and burnt'.39 Bellew's narrative of Sayyid
Ahmad was laced with gossip and slander. He said, 'the Sayad's
foreign agents'. . .had been.. . 'forcibly taking the Afghan
maidens as wives'.40 Still, the opposition offered by Hoti and
Mardan raised questions as to whether there had been simply a
general reaction against Sayyid Ahmad's social policies or
whether elite khans, including those protecting Hoti family
interests, had attempted to secure old imperial ties by, perhaps,
encouraging rumours about the reformer's social policies.
The evidence was intriguing. Only thirty years later James
wrote that Sayyid Ahmad, first, killed Khadi Khan, 'but the
principal Chief in Eusufzai at that time was Ahmud Khan of
Hotee who shortly met with the same treatment at his hands'.41
Yet, the Hoti family history recorded that the ruling khan
between 1820 and 1851 was Muhammad Khan, second son of
Lashkar Khan. In the family history an Ahmed Khan, the eldest
son of Lashkar Khan, had been struck out of the khanship.
'Owing to the extravagance, debauchery, adultery, drinking and
ease-loving habits of Ahmed Khan, his father Lashkar Khan
disinherited him and deposed him from the Khanate of Hoti and
banished him to Mardan, appointing Muhammad Khan to be the
Khan of Hoti,,., vide his Disinheritance Deed dated the 21st
Rajab-ul-Murrajjab 1230 A H corresponding to the 29 June
1815'.42Whether or not Ahmad Khan was the principal Khan in
1829-30, or was even the Ahmud Khan mentioned by James,
both Hoti and Mardan seem to have opposed Sayyid Ahmad.
And yet in the Hoti family history there to no mention of
Muhammad Khan opposing Sayyid Ahmad; he is only recorded
as fighting the Sikhs in 1823, 1835, and 1843.
The key comment in the family history may be that 'He
(Mohamed Khan) as well as his father Lashkar Khan were
opposed to the invasion of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the interest
of their masters, the Mohamedzai Sardars of Barakzai clan,
who were also related to them'.43 These Peshawar 'Sardars*
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 103

served as Afghan governors of the district. Holding their jagirs

in 'Illaqa Yusufzai' and Hashtnagar at the pleasure of the
Peshawar governors, it would seem only logical, based on their
history, that when the former Durrani governors shifted their
allegiance to the Sikhs, if only under coercive pressure, the Hoti
family may have reconsidered any sympathy for Sayyid Ahmad.
The fact remained that Sayyid Ahmad's name is not mentioned
in the Hoti family history, nor is Muhammad Khan listed as
fighting the Sikhs between 1823 and 1835.
Unknown was the degree to which elite Pakhtun opposition
to Sayyid Ahmad derived from his desire to eliminate the
customary payment of bride price by prospective husbands.
Sayyid Ahmad wished 'that all Pathans should give their
daughters in marriage at an early age, without receiving money,
and if not then betrothed they might be claimed by their nearest
relative^'.^^ This directly threatened any ruling group continuity
reinforced by the exchange of daughters among elite families
whose status was also affirmed by marriage payments.
With Sayyid Ahmad defeated, the Hoti family holdings
survived a few years longer. But the 1834 Sikh annexation of the
Peshawar valley led to a May 1835 confrontation with the Afghan
Amir, Dost Muhammad. In this confrontation the Hoti klzarz
backed the losing Afghan side. Ranjit Singh struck a deal with
the Peshawar governor Sultan Muhammad, who despite being
Dost Muhammad's brother, looked to his own interest. The
Afghan arlzir retreated. The Hoti kharl fled to Swat. Sultan
Muhammad was awarded the Hoti Hashtnagar jagir and the Sikhs
confiscated the Malguzari of Yusufzai. Only later would a smaller
jagir be granted to Muhammad Khan, being progressively reduced
from Rs 6000 to Rs 4000 to Rs 2000 in 1843.
The history of the movement of Sayyid Ahmad further
illustrated that assumptions of Islamic or Pakhtun solidarity,
whether 'fanatical' or 'millenarian', in the face of imperial
invasion were too simplistic. In any single confrontation with
the Sikhs the adversaries might have included Hindustani
ideologues, Pakhtun shareholders and dependants defending their
crops, and local elite gauging where their best interests lay. Any
104 S E T L I N G THE FRONTIER

religiously or ethnically inspired social movement for common

defence could not withstand the forces of coercion and latent
interests. 'The more we look, the more the micropolitics of
protest appears an affair not of heroic poses and radical
flourishes, but of bets artfully hedged, old grudges paid off in
kind, and (sometimes) old solidarities reempha~ized.'~~ Skilled
at the art of survival, the Hoti family emerged from the Sikh
period to switch allegiance to new rulers:

In 1849, Mohamed Khan voluntarily submitted to the suzerainty of

British Government, retaining his Jagir and the position of
Kamondar of Y u s a f ~ a i . ~ ~

Imperial Transition
The Sikh polity, constrained to the east by the encroaching East
India Company empire, reluctantly assumed direct administration
of the Peshawar valley after the events of 1834-5. As with every
empire that would occupy the valley the policing expenses
involved in securing the district and subduing landowners
exceeded local revenue collections. This made the area a
perennial deficit region. Sikh Peshawar valley rule involved a
more sophisticated military organization that included European
officers, British colonial army deserters and veterans, cavalry,
and mobile artillery. The Sikhs attempted to reduce the
intermediary elite and lineage leaders to a historically
unprecedented level. Sikh policy transformed the former once-
powerful Durrani governors into revenue farmers responsible
for districts near Peshawar. A Sikh post north of the Kabul river
at Jehangira menaced the plains of the north-eastern valley. A
body of Sikh cavalry annually patrolled the north-east region on
revenue collection forays.
Correspondence sent to Ludhiana by a rising British officer
traced the progression of the East India Company interest in the
region. A letter dated 21 September 1831 recorded work on a
bridge of boats being built over the Sutlej river at Rupar. In
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 105

April 1833 the lieutenant was in Bahawalpur negotiating terms

for British navigation on the Indus. In June 1837 he scheduled a
meeting with Captain Burnes at Dera Ismail Khan to assist him
in his 'commercial' mission to Kabul. On 8 November 1837,
the officer acknowledged a letter from Ludhiana, '. ..directing
him to stay at Peshawar or in its vicinity for a short time, and
pointing out the objects to which his attention should be directed
while there' .47
From Peshawar the officer would forward reports on local
revenue and political conditions. Later that winter, from Lahore,
he wrote of the repressive nature of a Sikh regime maintaining
authority through sheer violence. Sikh coercion had raised the
Peshawar valley revenue from the nine or ten lakh rupees of the
time of the Durranis to thirteen lakh rupees for 1836. In May
1837 the twelve hundred Sikh troops sent to 'Isafzai'
undoubtedly were a contributory cause of the agrarian
disruptions that led in January 1838 to a Peshawar grain shortage
or 'famine'. Because of food shortages Ranjit Singh then
remitted octroi taxes to encourage Lahore traders to provision
P e ~ h a w a r .In~ ~January 1838 the Sikh-appointed governor of
Peshawar, an Italian officer named Avitabile, executed three
men charged with theft, quartered their bodies, and hung the
pieces from town gates. 'Another person who had been caught
throwing oranges from a garden was deprived of a hand and
ear, and thus mutilated, after being paraded through the streets,
was turned out of P e ~ h a w a r . ' ~ ~
The judicial regime instituted by the Sikh governor seemed
based upon religious or customary punishments, though distorted
in a remarkable exhibition of terror and the implied symbolic
control of Afghan bodies. By 1838 the Sikh-appointed governor
was negotiating with the Ludhiana British agent for the
reimbursement of one hundred thousand rupees advanced in
1837 to the British officers. In an effort to repatriate funds
safely for a retirement in Europe the governor requested '...the
amount due to him to be invested in Government s e c u r i t i e ~ ' . ~ ~
And also in 1838 the Peshawar valley would become enmeshed
in a greater imperial competition pitting a Russian and Persian
106 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

alliance against the British-Indian empiree5' The Tripartite

Treaty signed in June 1838 allied the East India Company, the
Sikh state, and the long-deposed Afghan Amir, Shah Shuja, in
an agreement to restore Shuja to power in Kabul. The intent
was that Shuja would regain his throne, the British would secure
a firm buffer against any Russian-backed Persian advances
against Herat or Kandahar, and Ranjit Singh would render
assistance in return for being formally ceded all former Durrani
lands east of the Khyber Pass.
The failure of the British policy, their defeat in the Anglo-
Afghan war of 1839-42, the death of Ranjit Singh, the
fragmentation of the Sikh empire, the two British-Sikh wars,
and the British imperial annexation of the Sikh territories,
including Peshawar in 1849, have been well covered elsewhere.
Of particular interest to the history of the Peshawar valley in
this period were minor journeys and now forgotten reports
illuminating the status of the north-eastern Peshawar valley, the
greater Yusufzai country, and certain other issues under
discussion. These reports revealed a threshold of uncertainty, in
which village institutions showed the stress and disrupting
effects of imperial British and Sikh contact and competition.
In 1840, after the signing of the Tripartite Treaty and the
installation of Shah Shuja in Kabul by a British-Indian army,
the British resident in Kabul reasserted territorial claims of the
Afghan monarch to areas around Peshawar not specifically
defined in the treaty as Sikh possessions. A lack of accurate
maps and precise geographic knowledge of the region had led
to a vague statement in the treaty's first article, in Persian:

It speaks of Peshawar with the Eusoofzai 'wo Ghaira, wo

Khattak, wo Hasht Nagar, wo saie, towali Peshawar, ta had-i-
Khaibar.' The words 'wo Ghaira' may be construed to mean Swat
and Booner, or any other places, but the word 'towali' concluding
the sentence, and confining its sense, cannot apply to places that
are not actually dependant on, and under the rule of Peshawar, at
the present timess2
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 107

The British political agent in Peshawar, quoted above, accepted

Sikh authority over the 'Eusoofzais of the plains', though the
word 'wo Ghaira', literally 'etc.', was definitely vague. He noted
that for five years troops sent north 'across the river' had collected
from thirty to seventy thousand rupees in revenue and that two
years before the region had been 'farmed' out to one of the
Peshawar 'Sirdars' for thirty thousand rupees. Currently 'Arsala
Khan the Eusoofzai, Chief of Zeda is the person through whom
the Sikhs now hold the country, and whom they assist with troops
to collect the revenue'.53 The Sikhs now manned forts at Hund,
'formerly held by Amir Khan a rival of Arsala Khan', and at
Jehangira, north of the Kabul river near Attock.
In January and February 1840 Edward Conolly, another
British lieutenant, traversed the north-eastern section of the
Peshawar valley to map the region. He was to contact local
khans, including those in the northern valleys, in an attempt to
counter local Sikh diplomacy and win over the 'Munders' and
the 'Eusofzyes' to the cause of Shah Shuja. His reports ended
up in secret files, their importance quickly overtaken by the
dramatic events of the 1840s. But they were significant for
revealing a rare, short-lived British colonial perspective in which
the Afghans of the Peshawar region were viewed
sympathetically as potential subjects of Shah Shuja in Kabul
and as potential allies in looming confrontation with the Sikhs.
Conolly apologized for the inaccuracies of his map, which he
ascribed to the fact that 'our every action was regarded with so
much suspicion, that we only took bearings by stealth.. .I do not
however fear any material error, and hereafter propose
forwarding a complete map of all the Eusoofzye, accompanied
by a more comprehensive report on the productions and
resources of the ~ o u n t r y ' . 'He
~ noted that the Mandanrs because
of their vulnerability to invaders, 'seem ...to have early sought
the protection of, and willingly to have submitted to, some one
chief, of their own clan, though their peculiar democratic
institutions prevented their acknowledging obedience to any
minor a u t h o r i t i e ~ ' . ~Conolly
' reported that the Mandanr
'Chieftainship has been in the family of Pungtar, since the days
108 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

of Aurungzebe, whose letters patent it still possesses'; that is,

since the days of 'Bagho Khan'. His analysis was that since 'the
dismemberment of the monarchy' other 'chiefs' had risen to
'limited authority' in the 'Sum', but all, obedient or not,
acknowledged the rank of the family.
During two months of travelling through the plains and hill
country Conolly was denied admission into Buner and Swat. He
and his party received advice from the 'Mir' of the Sudhum
valley and 'Ahmed Khan of H o t i - M ~ r d a n ' .Conolly's
~~
politically oriented perspective crystallized during a journey into
the north-eastern hills where he visited Panjtar village, sixteen
miles from the Sudhum valley, then Sitana, Gandaf, and Amb
village near the Indus river.
He commented that the 'Bareezyes' (Baizais) or Khattaks of
the northern plains 'are always spoken of as the richest people
in the country, and many of the Hindoos, settled among them,
are said to possess great wealth. This is not improbable, as the
principal road from Swat to the south passes through their
country' .57
He discerned the political insecurity of the Yusufzai tappas
menaced by Sikh cavalry and divided by personal enmity. The
Mir could not accompany Conolly into the hills, due to a feud
with the next village. Only a local Sayyid acting as a guide
could ease their passage past well guarded communities. At one
village, 'Mistaking us for their enemies, hardly less than a
thousand men, turned out in 10 or 12 bodies, each having a
flag'." He described villages organized in a confederation, a
'goond' against other villages. It was an environment of
wariness, not desolation, 'Such is the state of the Eusofzyes
throughout ...In spite of this the country is one sheet of
cultivation, the villages are numerous and large (some of them
having from 2 to 3000 houses) and have an appearance of
comfort about them, which is seldom seen i n western
Afghanistan.. .'59
Conolly emphasized the role of 'Futteh Khan sixth in descent
from Bagho Khan,' in the success achieved by the movement of
Sayyid Ahmad. 'It was during the short but brilliant reign of
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 109

Syud Ahmud, whose principal supporter he was, and to whom he

may have been said to have given the crown, that Futteh Khan
attained his greatest power.. .' Though the Sikhs practised divide-
and-rule strategies and threatened to defeat the 'disunited
Mundurs', 'one man alone prevented this. As his physical
resources and apparent means of resistance grew less, the courage,
the moral influence, and it may be almost said, the actual strength
of Fatteh Khan i n ~ r e a s e d ' .Conolly
~~ wrote that, though offered
'a jageer of three lacks, and the khanship of all the Eusofzyes' by
Ranjit Singh, if he would only render a token object or gift,
Futteh Khan responded, 'Horses and hawks are found with rich
nobles at the courts of kings; I a poor zemiizdar, have nothing of
the kind, but I can send you a fat cow if you please'.61
Conolly's agenda was transparent. In other pages, he
expressed the hope that one day the authority of Shah Shuja
would be 'distinctly proclaimed' in the region, that a son of
Shah Zaman or Shah Shuja would be sent to the area as a
governor for Kabul, and that the 'residence of the Prince (since
the most fit place Peshawur is out of the question) might for a
time be Punjtar ...' 'As respects the chiefs, it should be our
policy to increase their power and to support their authority. In
the Sum, the restoration of Muqurrab Khan to his hereditary
rights, as Lord of the Mundurs would ensure the steady
obedience of his tribe.'62
Conolly pursued his superiors' mission of recruiting regional
Afghans to support the Arnir in Kabul. The Islamic 'superstition
and bigotry of the Eusofzyes' would be a 'most powerful engine'
to aid Shah Shuja, though an engine to be handled cautiously.
Conolly repeated a Mandanr history that seemed straight from
the mouth of his Panjtar host Muqarrab Khan, son of the late
Fatteh Khan. He was told that when a Sikh army finally attacked
and burned Panjtar an unbowed Fatteh Khan had to be carried
off the battlefield by his own supporters." Conolly emphasized
the secular authority of local khorls in influencing clan decisions
about forming an alliance against the Sikhs. Only later would
the English wish to decry the political authority of established
lineage leadership, including the kharis of Panjtar, and, by
110 SETTLING T H E FRONTIER

shifting the focus of their discourse, denigrate any manifestations

of resistance to imperialism as the irrational, transitory eruptions
of religious fanaticism.
In his confidential report Conolly advised, 'The main
principle to guide our conduct should be that everything (in
appearance at least) remain on the same footing, as in the days
of Ahmed Shah, and no innovation should be attempted, but
with great caution and gradually. Above all the interference of
Europeans should be studiously ~ e i l e d . ' ~
Hints of regional political economy and social relations could
be glimpsed in the details of Conolly's narrative of Sikh and
Pakhtun power struggles. For instance, Muqarrab Khan's actual
authority over the Samah was limited to 'about 70 villages'
from which, Conolly noted, he collected ushr, the 'jizua (or tax
on the Hindoos)', and 'the tax on the Fakeers'. His standing
body of fifteen hundred foot soldiers at Panjtar received three
rupees a month. To Conolly, the Hindu community in the Kakar
village of Gandaf in the hills appeared the largest and the most
affluent in the region. Every man was a soldier. All answered
the call of the alarm drum (nakara), gathering with matchlocks
and spears, a few in chain armour or with bows and arrows.
Conolly's correspondence with Arsala Khan of Zaida village,
the only Pakhtun khan to collaborate with the Sikhs, revealed
the historic, micropolitical process in which local khans kept
their options open, playing both sides i n any imperial
competition. One message received by Conolly from Arsala
Khan's son said 'that circumstances alone seduced him to the
disgrace of seeking the support of image worshippers; that he
was devoted, body and soul, to His Majesty; and that if I would
only say the word, he would at once renounce a connection
which he detested'.'j5
In Panjtar village Conolly described Muqarrab Khan's
appearance, demeanour, and dress in disparaging terms, but
excused all this as 'owing to a narrow or rather an absence of
education'. He praised him as 'generous to a fault'. Fatteh Khan
had died sixteen days before Conolly reached Panjtar and, at
that point, the number of visiting Afghans paying their respects
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 111

averaged six hundred a day. Conolly interpreted expressions of

religious piety as insincere. He thought Muqarrab Khan affected
piety to gain 'popularity'. 'The people of Panjtar all affect the
strictness of morals, preached to them by their favourite saint,
the Syed king.' Many came to visit him, including to 'get cured
of every description of disease'.
Travel in the hills was uncertain and stressful. Sergeant
Cameron, who kept survey bearings in his papers, did not go
beyond Panjtar due to ill health. On their return the party was
delayed in Panjtar for ten days by winter rains. On a journey east
from Panjtar to the Tanawal region along the Indus, another
religious figure, Sayyid Hussain, facilitated the party's passage.
A 'scion of one of the best (saintly) families of Peshawar he has
received an excellent education.. .His conversation is a string of
quotations, Hindoostanee, Persian, and Arabic.. ..' He was blunt,
well respected, and described by Conolly as 'demi-saint, demi-
mad'. Conolly thought him greedy and avaricious, and noted that
he occasionally condescended 'to relieve some grey senior of his
rheumatism by the infallible process of rubbing the affected part
with his hands, muttering a few words, and blowing on
When Conolly reached Sitana he met 'a Syud (mentioned in
my public report) named Akbur Syud...,' descended from 'Peer
Baba'. 'We had to converse by interpreters, for he speaks a
confused dialect one half Pooshtoo, one half the barbarous Hindee
peculiar to Tanawul, having never I believe stirred more than a
few miles from his home. Persian is seldom spoken, unless a
broken sentence by some Moollah ...Ahmed Khan alone, of the
chiefs I had met, could carry on a conversation in it, and to him it
was difficult, and he had frequent recourse to P o o s h t ~ o . ' ~ ~
Indeed, Sayyid Akbar of Sitana may not have been an
impressive 'charismatic' or 'millenarian' figure. But he was
representative of the reality that many religious figures, local
and outsider, survived dramatic moments of crisis and continued
to hold, as did many khans, shareholders, and fakirs, an
unencapsulated perspective. This perspective, more than any
figurehead leader, remained the prime basis for periodic bouts
of violent resistance against imperial domination. Such
112 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

resistance was triggered by historically specific stresses caused

by socio-political and economic change and conflict. In
describing the Buner jirga negotiations that would decide
whether or not Conolly would be allowed to visit the valley, his
Buner contact, 'Syud Russool', told of the split opinion within
the jirga and the social context limiting religious influence.
'Wait said Syud Russool, the approaching change, the moment
the scale turns, we can interfere, and confirm the wavering-
but our power is of a peculiar kind, it is lost in these tumults:
we can lead, but not drive.. .'68
Conolly represented one extreme of the Englishmen who
would work in the region over the next century. There were
many like him who served for a short time, made arbitrary
judgements about people and issues they little understood, used
these judgements to shape policies, and then left the
consequences for others to resolve. Other, more experienced,
English officials stayed in the region for longer periods. One
example was Mackeson, who built bridges on the Sutlej in 1831,
and in 1849 became the first Peshawar Commissioner. In 1852
he died at the hands of an Afghan opposed to imperialists.
Conolly's venture offered a rare window into a period of
common interest between some regional Afghans and the
English. He travelled openly and undisguised to villages that
remained unvisited in the future except by assaulting armies.
Unmolested on his journey, he even visited the mosque in
Panjtar. There he talked with a noted Islamic judge (Qazi) whom
the next day he amused with the playing of a small music box.69
Conolly recognized the need to end Sikh violence in the plains,
but his agenda also involved ensuring the population fulfilled
their obligations as tax-paying residents of a state. In passing,
Conolly noted that in December 1839 a 'Hadji Abdoolla' arrived
in Sitana with one follower. He was then joined by a dozen
'Hindoostanis' and '1000 others were said to be coming'. Conolly
ridiculed his prospects of continuing the Islamic movement, but
noticed that he received funding from India 'and since his arrival,
had received a hoondee7" from Peshawur'. In the end, Conolly
decried him as a 'weak minded fanatic'.
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 1 13

Genealogy of the Munders

I
Eusof Omar
Munder
I
Aman, zye Kurnal, zye Ruzur Marnoo, zye Kudur, zye
I
Mullick, kheil Mano, kheil Ako, kheil
I
Osrnan Othman
I I
Kurnul, zye Ama, zye Sudo Ali Kaner Aka
I
Dooroo, zye Zulo, zye
I I
Bezat kheil Mir Ahrned kheil Koodoo kheil Abba Ornur
I I I
Ali kheil Burra kheil Osrnan kheil Nusrat

Boorne Mudjit Mudar Beri kheil Litaf Khan Buland Khan

I I I I
- Bagho Khan Ashruf Khan Mubulla Khan
Hybu (time of Aurungzebe) I I
I Arsilla Khan Ameer Khan
Dewan Mohubut Khan (of Zaidah) (of Hound)
- I
Ismael Khan Zynoodeen Khan
(of Killah But) I
Aehrnar Khan
I
Narndar Khan
I
Alif Khan
I
Futteh Khan
I
Mokurrib Khan (of Punjtar)

Conolly's 'Genealogy of the Munders' attached to Letter No. 200 in Foreign Department
(Secret) Consultation 4 May 1840, National Archives and Library. New Delhi.
114 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

NOTES

1. Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics, 1996, p. 57.

2. Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, vol. 1, p. 215. An unattributed quotation
that appears to be of a style and period similar to the route description
material previously quoted from Ghulam Muhammad.
3. Syad Muhammad Latif, History of the Panjab (Eurasia Publishing House,
New Delhi. 1964). p. 299.
4. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 272.
5. Henry T. Prinsep, Origin of Sikh Power in the Punjab and Political Life
of Muha-Raja Runjeet Sirtgh ( G . H . Huttman, Calcutta, 1834), p. 138.
6. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 295.
7. Caroe. The Pathans, p. 296.
8. The colonial literature on the 'savage', nineteenth-century British 'North-
West Frontier' illustrates the problems of representation analysed by
Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage Books, New York, 1978).
9. Calendar of Persiart Correspondence, vol. 10 (Punjab Govt., Lahore,
n.d.), p. 320, item 1569. 'paper of intelligence from Kabul from
10 Ramazan (21 April) to 3 Zul-qada (12 June 1793)'.
10. Correspondence recorded in Press List of Old Records in the Punjab
Secretariat, vol. V (Punjab Govt., Lahore, n, d.) of Ludhiana Agency
misc. correspondence. Letter copied in Punjab Archives, Records Book
93, Letter S. No. 47, p. 42, dated 20 March, 1822.
11. Punjab Archives, Lahore, Records Book 95, Letter S. No. 69, p. 70,
dated 3 March 1827, from Captain Wade, Ludhiana, to Metcalfe,
Resident, Delhi. Sayyid Ahmad was from Rai Bareli in Awadh.
12. Punjab Archives, Lahore, Records Book 95, Letter S. No. 70, dated
5 March 1827.
13. Lindholm, 'Models', 1985, p. 24.
14. Akbar S. Ahmed, Millennium and Charisma, 1976, Chapter 6 discusses
the historically specific case of the Akhund of Swat, while Michael Adas,
Prophets of Rebellion, 1987 models millenarian protest specifically
against the 'European Colonial Order'.
15. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 299.
16. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movement in India (Manohar, New
Delhi, 1994), p. 47.
17. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movement, p. 25.
18. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movement, p. 26.
19. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 302.
20. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movement, p. 49.
21. Quotation from a letter of Sayyid Ahmad in Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The
Wahhabi Movenlent, p. 50.
22. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movement, p. 51.
 MILLENARIANISM: RELIGION, CLASS, AND RESISTANCE 115

23. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movement, p. 51.

24. Punjab Archives, Lahore, Records Book 98 11, Letter S. No. 131.
25. Prinsep, Origin of Sikh Power, 1834, p. 150.
26. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movement, p. 73.
27. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahkabi Movenleizt, p. 54.
28. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 304.
29. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 305.
30. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 305-6.
31. The sub-title of Michael Adas' Prophets of Rebellion.
32. Adas, Prophets of Rebellion, 1987, p. 119.
33. Adas, Prophets of Rebellion, pp. 120-21.
34. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movenlent, pp. 17-19.
35. See Arlinghaus, Transformation, 1988, Chapter VI.
36. Arlinghaus, Transformatiort, p. 289.
37. V. Vivian, Assistant Director, Criminal Intelligence, 'Brief Chronology
of the Hindustani Fanatics,' undated, microfilm, National Documentation
Centre, Islamabad.
38. Edmund Burke 111, 'Islam and Social Movements: Methodological
Reflections', Islam, Politics, and Social Movenierzts (University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1988), p. 23.
39. Bellew, A Gerzeral Report, p. 88.
40. Bellew, A General Report, p. 92.
41. James, Settlement, 1865, p. 44. Repeated in the Peshawar Gazetteer
1897-98.
42. History of the Hori Family, pp. 16-17.
43. History of the Hoti Fantily, p. 17.
44. James, Settlement, 1865, p. 46.
45. Burke, 'Islam and Social Movements', i n Islcint, Politics, and Social
Movements, p. 23.
46. History of the Hoti Farnily, p. 17.
47. Punjab Archives, Lahore, Press List, vol. V , abstract listing Mackeson
letter to Wade copied in Records Book 108, Letter S. No. 87, dated
8 November 1837.
48. Lala Sohan Lal Suri, Umdat-ut-Tawarikh, Dajiar 111, Parts I-V, trans.
V.S. Suri (S. Chand and Co., Delhi, 1961), pp. 359, 400. Author was
Lahore Court Vakil who chronicled the 1831-39 period.
49. From abstract in Punjab Archives, Lahore, Press List, Vol. V , letter copied
in Records Book 110, Letter S. No. 43, dated 5 February 1838.
50. Punjab Archives, Lahore, Press List, vol. VI, abstract of letter from
Ludhiana Agent Wade to Sec. Govt, of India Maddock copied in Records
Book 147, Letter S. No. 120, dated 1 1 July 1839.
51. The larger imperial context is detailed in Dupree, Afghanistan, 1994,
Chapter 17.
116 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

National Archives and Library, New Delhi, Foreign Department (Secret)

Consultation 4 May 1840, Letter No. 197, dated 7 February 1840, from
Mackeson to W. H. Macnaughten.
Letter No. 197, dated 7 February 1840, p. 1.
Letter No. 198, dated 28 February 1840, p. 1, in same file of
correspondence as Letters No. 197-200 above and below.
Letter No. 199, dated 28 February 1840, 'Political Report on the
Eusofzyes', p. 2.
Letter No. 200, p. 1, p. 17 of sequence beginning with No. 199.
Letter No. 199, p. 6.
According to Conolly, each flag marked a neighbourhood group drawn
from a hujra association, No. 199, p. 7.
Letter No. 200, p. 2, p. 18 of sequence beginning with No. 199.
Letter No. 199, p. 2.
Letter No. 199, p. 3.
Letter No. 199, p. 16.
In 1837 Burnes, perhaps reflecting Sikh sources in Peshawar, wrote that
Fatteh Khan 'has sent horses and hawks to the Sikhs, but pays no regular
tribute'. India National Archives, New Delhi, Foreign Department
(Political) 1837, Consultation 20 October, Letter No. 72, p. 3.
Letter No. 199, p. 15.
Letter No. 200, p. 10, p. 26 of running sequence from Letter No. 199.
'Massage of the manual therapylchiropractic type is practiced by religious
persons in most village areas. Primarily, patients suffering back pain and
troublesome joints seek this type of treatment.' In Hans Husum, The
Other Side of the Border (Norwegian Afghanistan Committee, Peshawar,
no date), p. 34.
Letter No. 200, p. 6, p. 22 of running sequence from Letter No. 199.
Letter No. 200, p. 18, p. 34 of sequence running from Letter No. 199.
Letter No. 200, p. 5, p. 21 of sequence.
A hundi was a financial draft that indicated the continued existence of
the mentioned network of finance and communication.
 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES

Peshawar valley social formations were forged by natural

events, disease, and the shifting fortunes of local and imperial
political competition. Early British administrators confronted
local social practices that might structure the course of a typhus
epidemic or claim customary rights to redress grievances.
Local communities only grudgingly acknowledged colonial
claims to authority or state efforts to gather detailed knowledge
about village and family populations and agrarian practice.
The initial British presence in Peshawar reflected continuities
in imperial political and economic interaction with local clans.
Future efforts to impose systematic British management and
control policies inevitably were challenged by relations of state
and clan shaped by long-term processes of assertion, resistance,
and compromise.
Physical geography played a role in shaping Peshawar society.
Settlement occurred along watercourses, on routes to high
passes, and along defensible imperial highways. As in similar
regions settled by pastoral communities, rivers acted as
substantial boundaries to movement and clan expansion, perhaps
more so than did mountain ranges.' Discrete areas south of the
Kabul river, in the doaba between the Kabul and Swat rivers,
and north of the Kabul river east of the dry maira were each
dominated by a major Afghan lineage.
Also evident was the ability of agrarian Pakhtun villagers
'whether they are agnatically related or not.. .to reify their co-
residence in the traditionally sanctioned idiom of patrilineal
descent in order to express their group solidarity over and against
118 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

all outsiderL2 At the same time, the close identification of local

clan lineages with their place of settlement was apparent in the
naming of particular sub-valleys and districts, including political
sub-units, after the dominant clan. Razar, Kamalzai, and Amazai
represented territories exactly equated with the authority of the
equivalent lineage.3
Human agency and natural occurrences also had dramatic
short-term impact on social spaces. The shifting of imperial
boundaries disrupted the hills and plains causing grain shortages
and local displacements. In early 1840 'Every day news came
in, of some Malik taken prisoner, some village burnt ...the
country was overrun with a horde (15000 it was said) of starving
Tanawulees, turned out of their homes alike by their friends and
enemies' .4
In 1841 natural disaster added a new dimension to political
disruption. The Indus river, dammed in a far northern valley by
a glacial fall or a landslide, burst through at night to flood the
lower Peshawar valley. It 'is estimated that between 5 and 6000
lives were lost: all the villages within several miles of the banks
were washed away'.s The flood destroyed the village of Hund
and the Sikh fort at N ~ w s h e r a .Whatever
~ the social composition
of Hund before the flood and the British conquest, these key
events influenced the reality that thirty years later Hindus
occupied three hundred out of three hundred and eighty-four
village houses in Hund.'
In 1842 a 'great earthquake' caused a decline in water flows
from numerous springs feeding into the Yusufzai plains drainage
~ y s t e m .In~ the summer of 1858 unusually low water in the
Indus was a harbinger of another flood, one that finally came in
August. The river at Attock rose ninety feet. Water flowed back
up the Kabul river at the rate of four to five miles an hour for
twelve hours. Eight villages were entirely destroyed and twenty
damaged. Fortunately, because the flood occurred during
daytime, human losses, were minimized, though cattle and
property ~ u f f e r e d . ~
The British displacement of the Sikh government in the
Punjab 'and in the Peshawar valley during the 1840s illustrated
 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES 119

another kind of circumscribed regional geography. For years

colonial administrators remained extremely constrained in both
their areas of residence and their ability to influence local affairs.
The British strategy of slowly infiltrating and gaining control
over Punjab revenue and political affairs after the death of Ranjit
Singh matched a pattern earlier perfected by the British in
Bengal, Bihar, Awadh, and the Bombay Presidency. Even at the
time, this process based on treaties and patron-clientism had
been understood by local observer^.'^ The relevant broader
political events of this period were reflected by the expanding
authority acquired over time by the British agent in Lahore. In
1846, Henry Lawrence, as Agent to the Governor-General, was
assigned charge of political relations with the Sikh court. He
had support from a British garrison allowed by treaty after the
first Anglo-Sikh war. After the December 1846 Treaty of
Bhairowal, in which the Sikhs agreed to a 'more direct
supervision' during the 'minority of the Maharaja', Lawrence
served as Resident as well as Agent to the Governor-General
for the North-West Frontier. On 6 March 1848 John Lawrence,
replacing his ill brother, became Resident at Lahore and Chief
Commissioner of the Cis- and Trans-Sutlej States. In April 1848
the second Sikh war began. After the Punjab's formal annexation
to the East India Company empire on 29 March 1849 it would
be run by a three-man Board of Administration. The board
included the two Lawrence brothers.
A third brother, George, served in Peshawar as Principal
Assistant to the Lahore agent from February to November 1847.
His political effectiveness was constrained by uncertain relations
with the Sikh governor, poor lines of communications outside
of Peshawar town, and an unfamiliar socio-political environment
that neutralized colonial methods and systems.
In March 1847 Lawrence arrested several Sikh sepoy troops,
called Ramgoles, who had deserted their post on the southern
edge of the 'Eusufzye' country. They had returned to Peshawar
to complain about pay arrears. The arrears, for perhaps five
thousand men, covered the previous eight to eleven months.
Lawrence noted the empty treasury. He had the Sikh governor
120 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

recall the troops from 'the Eusufzye country, where they had
been since September, nominally collecting revenue, but really
realizing none'."
The failure of Sikh diplomacy in the Peshawar valley surfaced
in April when Lawrence secured the release of leading Mandanr
maliks imprisoned in the Attock fort. Imprisoned khans included
'Meer Khan of Sidoom', 'Meer Afzul Khan, Hotee', and Bahram
Khan, the son of Arsala Khan of Zaida. The Sikhs had attempted
to suppress local political intermediaries and collect revenues
directly. The suppression had succeeded, but no effective
replacement mechanism secured agrarian or political stability
and revenue flows. With Lawrence in Peshawar and many
anticipating an impending British rule, old strategies and
political networks were revived. In April, for instance, '.. .Sirdar
Sultan Mahomed, Barukzye, returned to Peshawar with his
family after a lapse of seven years.. .'
The British cultivated elite political contacts. The released
Mandanr khans of the plains tappas, '...express themselves our
slaves forever; that had it not been for us they would have
lingered till death released them; that for the eleven months of
their imprisonment, till I saw them, not a soul had ever inquired
after them; that they are men risen from the grave'. Other khans
came to visit, though 'Mohomed Khan of Hotee declined going
near the Governor till I told him he must'. Lawrence said of the
Mandanr khans, 'I hope to make a settlement for the revenue of
their country through them'.I2
Revenue collection, even in the more settled tappas in the
Peshawar valley, remained difficult. Lawrence attempted to
moderate violent Sikh tactics and introduce a more disciplined,
systematic regime. Faking difficulties in attracting 'contractors
to take the farm of many villages,' Lawrence suggested direct
arrangements with 'respectable zeniindars'. He was told it would
not work. Valley tillers and rrzuliks often saw little material
change in relations with Peshawar, in spite of Lawrence's
rhetoric. He said of the Yusufzai plains, that, 'From all I can
hear it has been shamefully treated, the people ground to dust;
much is expected from us, and I trust we shall not disappoint
 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES 121

them'." Yet in early May when Lawrence sent a British

lieutenant off to the north-eastern plains he fully relied upon the
fear implicit in the presence of Sikh troops. Lieutenant Lumsden
was accompanied by a Sikh colonel, Sikh cavalry and infantry,
and 'several of the khans'.
The presence of a nominally neutral authority in the Yusufzai
country attracted a rare outpouring of subaltern voices and
concerns. Lumsden wrote back to Lawrence of being 'besieged
by thousands of complainants', that, 'it is impossible to say
what has really been paid to government, taken by the Sirdar,
plundered by the troops, or made away with by the khans'. The
British were concerned less about suffering agriculturists, than
with the evidence of local authority. Noting Lumsden's report
that 'the khans keep large bands of horse, fed and equipped by
the plunder of the people', Lawrence recorded that, 'I have
written to Lt. Lumsden not to enter too minutely into all the
cases of oppression brought before him, but only such as appear
to require immediate attention'. . .and 'to try and make the khans
understand that the sooner they dismiss their bands of predatory
horse the better'. 'I have also told him not to press too hard on
the khans ...and that the zernirtdars must be led to hope more
from the future than to expect redress for the past, etc.'I4
Lawrence's August diary entries exposed the ambiguous
political situation in the valley and the attempts of local villagers
and maliks to take advantage of the collapse of central authority.
The 'Mulliks of Nowdeh and Kulloo in the Eusufzyes' refused
to pay the revenue demanded i n a letter delivered by a
government messenger. Troops armed with artillery rode out to
force them into payment. Lumsden, accompanied by local
cavalry under the son of Sultan Mahomed Khan, joined the
main Sikh troops led by a European officer. In September,
Lumsden wrote that he rode around area villages with artillery
and, 'by making them think we were going to blow them out of
the world', gradually began to collect revenue. Conolly had
described this Sikh tactic in 1840. Lumsden settled a fixed rate
revenue demand upon villages 'which includes the kharts' and
Mullicks' allowances'. He ordered the khans to not take 'beyond
122 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

what is in black and white'. The maliks of Nowdeh and Kulloo

escaped the raid, but were forced to surrender after Lumsden
seized their wives and ~ h i l d r e n . ' ~
On 27 September 1847 Lawrence visited Toru village while
on a tour of the north-eastern plains. He described the twelve-
mile route north from Nowshera that crossed the low hills north
of the Kabul river, then traversed the apparently rich but
uncultivated dry land north of the hills. He passed villages with
cultivated fields, including cotton and bajra (millet), and Persian
wheels raising water from the 'Culpanee' stream. It was
Lawrence's objective to repopulate the plains with the villagers
and maliks who had fled to the hills. He 'stuck up' a proclamation
in village mosques giving agriculturists one month to return 'on
pain of forfeiture of land and rights' and stating that 'an equitable
settlement of revenue to include all demands, government or their
khans, was about to be made'. He wrote, 'The khans are troubled
and appear to think their reign at an end.' 'Ursulla Khan of Zedah
called ... he has evidently a high sense of his own importance
which must be lessened ere long. He is shrewd and intelligent
and professes great devotion to us.'I6 In the diary entry for 11
October Lawrence recorded the basic technique used to persuade
villages to pay 'revenue'. That day Sikh troops, including four
hundred and seventy cavalry, nine hundred and seventy-two
infantry, and six pieces of artillery, gathered outside Babuzai
village in the Sudhum valley. They attacked the village for
refusing any communication with Peshawar. 'The troops through
the day behaved admirably; not an attempt was made to plunder
or leave the ranks till I gave the order to fire the village, when 1
told them to help them~elves."~

The colonial political geography of 1847 showed a limited

authority confined to a presence in Peshawar town, a few forts,
and forces in the field. Lumsden referred to the communities he
coerced in the Mandanr plains as 'yaghee villages', that is, rebel
or independent villages. Yaghistan or independent tribal areas
would be labels later used to define Afghan districts outside the
imperial settled districts. Within the town of Peshawar itself
 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES 123

British agents also confronted the complex regional social

structure that presented hurdles to their increasing authority, but
could not be repressed simply through force.
In July, Lawrence had removed the Peshawar Islamic judge
('Cazee') after charging him with laziness and poor decision
making. From that point on Lawrence and his successors
struggled with the consequences of attempting to concentrate
civil as well as political authority in British hands. During
efforts to impose a judicial regime based on British norms and
previous colonial experience, British agents in 1847 encountered
the very different interpretations of acceptable social behaviour
existing among Pakhtuns. These not only contradicted British
colonial judicial logic, but refused to be easily reducible to a
single 'Islamic' or 'customary' Afghan perspective.
In his own 5 May 1847 diary entry of news from Peshawar,
the British agent in Lahore logged the report that Lawrence had
remitted some 'customary taxes and fines' for owners of homes
damaged in a storm, 'and secondly that a woman who poisoned
her husband has been paraded through the city on an ass with
her face blackened'.18
In November, a Lt. Taylor recorded a 'cold-blooded murder'
committed 'by a man who found his niece sleeping with a
servant; he was accompanied by the father of the girl,. . .'
Because Lawrence had ordered that 'blood must atone for
blood', Taylor held the man for execution. The rationale
conveyed in the diary entry was less about the social 'wrong'
committed by the lovers, than about who should have the
authority to punish wrong-doing. It 'seems to me just that when
an individual has taken upon himself the office of executioner
for an offence committed against himself, he should pay the
penalty to the power in whom the right is really vested'.I9 For
the remainder of the British occupancy of the Peshawar valley,
this colonial claim to be 'really vested' with the 'power' to
decide innocence or guilt continued to be challenged, and often
ignored, by Pakhtuns who never 'conceded' to the colonial state,
through consensus or election, the legitimacy needed to validate
such authority.
124 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

In the Mandanr plains, Lumsden struggled with the problems

inherent in the November case. In a case in December in Zaida
village he attempted to understand the complex logic of Pakhtun
norms of justice. A man, suspicious of his wife, 'at last caught
her intriguing with a neighbour'. The Afghan killed the
neighbour, then his wife. 'It appears a rule among these Pathans
that in these cases a man must first kill the woman before it is
considered lawful to finish the a d ~ l t e r e r . 'Though
~~ the
'murderer' was confined, the December case directly raised the
issue of what was to be considered 'lawful' and by whose 'rule'.
If the 'murderer' were executed British authority would be
diminished in the eyes of Pakhtun shareholders, though perhaps
not in the eyes of lovers or those who felt oppressed by lineage
and patriarchal hierarchies.
The problem of local practice versus colonial code also
surfaced in less violent cases. I11 March 1848 Lawrence wrote
of a village girl carried off by Afridis in the hills west of
Peshawar who had been recovered 'through another custom'. A
person from the suspected Afridi village had been seized by
locals and held hostage until her release. This tactic, used
especially against hill dwellers who preyed on plains cattle or
property, was called burar?lpta and though a practice Lawrence
originally 'put a stop to', he soon was under pressure from 'the
Urbabs' and felt he would have to accept the practice.*'
With all judicial authority centralized in his hands, Lawrence
changed the nature of punishments and restructured offences
into criminal and civil spheres. The Sikhs had levied fines for
lesser offences and avoided the expense of maintaining prisons.
Lawrence now introduced an institutionalized punishment
regime of confinement derived from the earlier Indian colonial
experience and based on a European concept of penal practice.
'Since I have discontinued fining for crime the prisoners have
greatly increased; they now amount to 230.' 'I have classified
them, keeping defaulters and debtors in the city, burglars and
thieves at work on the roads in the Agency compound, and
convicts and felons in the Fort of Shahmeer G h ~ r . It' ~was
~ the
birth of the prison in Peshawar.
 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES 125

The fragile, anomalous nature of the British presence in Sikh

Peshawar was made clear in 1848. In April, Lawrence reported
that 'the Klzans of Eusufzye are still debtors to the State to the
amount of 45000 rupees of the revenue for the (Sikh) year
1904; this following so quickly the settlement.. .augurs ill for its
permanency'. In May, Lawrence noted that the Yusufzai klzans
were still in default and keeping a close watch on the Sikh
imperial disarray triggered by a revolt in Multan. These events
preceded the final Anglo-Sikh war, local turmoil, and the
October 1848 flight of Lawrence from Peshawar.
Returning in 1849, the British remained physically isolated
as they focused on restoring political authority and revenue
collections. They concentrated revenue flows by cutting out
revenue farming and collections by the arbabs and khans. Yet,
it was also integral to British policy to make use of these local
figures of influence to build political stability, encourage
agricultural production, and maintain civil peace.

Disease and Knowledge

At first the British had little interest in learning details of life in
the villages they ruled. This early distancing of themselves from
local society and the unique Peshawar valley social geography
grounded in networks of human movement and settlement
became apparent i n 1853. A typhus epidemic revealed the wide
gulf between indigenous beliefs about health and illness and
western medical notions of the body and a colonial interest in
social order.
A geo-medical perspective on the Peshawar valley placed it
within the bounds of a greater 'Iranian-Turanian' or arid Middle
Eastern physical world, rather than the humid, riverine lowland
regions of dense South Asian settlement." The geographic
barriers of the Hindu Kush mountains to the west, and of the
Sulaiman range just south of the Peshawar valley, served not
only as geographic and climatic bounds but as 'epidemiological
barriers' to the spread of disease. Low rainfall, high runoff and
126 SETT'LING THE FRONTIER

irrigation, and hot summers all contributed to a particular

Peshawar valley environment that created certain endemic health
conditions and promoted or discouraged the spread of infectious
diseases.
Seasonal diseases such as typhus or malaria or epidemic
diseases such as smallpox or cholera were named and managed
according to indigenous beliefs and practices. Yet causal
mechanisms, including transient caravans and heavy irrigation,
remained little understood. Strategies for disease prevention
included wearing a talisman of a written prayer encased in a
leather or silver container. Visits to the tomb of a holy personage
could prevent or cure not only disease but ill fortune and other
maladies. Pre-Islamic, 'magic squares, constructed in accordance
with the ndjad number series', were 'drawn on the sick parts of
the body'.24
More formally, local medical practitioners (hakinzs) had
training in Persian and Indian concepts of health. The same
notions of hot, cold, damp, and dry qualities were applied to
food, medicine, and strategies for treating disease. Hakims
understood the medicinal properties of numerous herbs and
plants. Local 'folk medicine' used preparations called 'dawa-i
jurzarzi, i. e. ionic or Greek' medication^.^^ Tales circulated of
diseases caused by winds in body vessels or of cures effected
by blood-letting. Then and later, 'most male or female heads of
families' learned massage techniques, something practised as
well by religious figures.26
The typhus (homaye lakadur) in the Peshawar valley in 1853
was an infection characterized by a high fever and transmitted
among humans through the agency of body lice. A disease of
the cold winter months, i t spread when villagers huddled
together indoors, often under a blanket draped over a table
(sartdali) above a charcoal brazier. In April 1853 a British
assistant surgeon investigated a case of typhus in 'Akurpoora'
village about nine miles east of Peshawar and found that typhus
had been present in the village for three months. The proximity
of the disease to Peshawar and the risk to British forces stationed
there spurred quick survey visits around the valley. Reports
 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES 127

filed discussed the nearby outbreak, but also the typhus outbreak
known to be occurring that winter 'in the Eusofzai'.
Near to Peshawar thirty per cent of the infected died. But
'Great as the mortality has been the character of the disease
when I saw it was much less violent than that in the Eu~ofzai'.~'
Villagers near Peshawar received little or no medical care and
the death rate in the north-western plains was assumed to be
even higher. Of one hundred and sixty-six cases in
'Ak~rpoora',~'forty-nine had died. In related observations the
doctor's report presented what amounted to an early census of
the village. He counted four hundred and sixty-six residents in
eleven neighbourhoods he called 'muhillas'. Neighbourhoods
were named after a leading nzalik, in Hindustani gramtnar and
Pakhtu vocabulary, including 'Haji Ka Kundie' or 'Alie Shah
Ka Kundie'.
Early in the winter of 1852-3 i n the middle of the Mandanr
plains in Yar Hussain village a member of the household of a
t~lullahad fallen ill with typhus. Gradually the infection spread
to neighbouring homes, 'until one or more of the people in
almost every house in the neighbourhood of the Tllarla have had
the ~omplaint'.~'Yar Hussain, in the Razar tappa, was about
fifteen miles east of the twin villages of Hoti-Mardan. The
typhus affected villages close to Yar Hussain before spreading
to Toru on the Kalpani river. I t moved south along both banks
of the Kalpani drainage, here more a large creek than a river.
The typhus spread first to larger villages having the most
frequent traffic with Toru. The typhus quickly reached Nowshera
on the north bank of the Kabul river, carried from Yar Hussain
by a member of one of several Yar Hussain families settled in a
Nowshera neighborhood.
The typhus then spread west along the north bank of the
Kabul river. It moved through Kheshgi village, then north into
the main villages of the Hashtnagar region, all located on the
eastern bank of the Swat river. Here again the typhus leapt
ahead striking the larger village of Prang, then later moving in
the reverse direction to infect smaller villages such as Nisatta.
By April 1853, the disease had travelled north to Umarzai village
128 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

and crossed to villages to the west over a fordable section of the

Swat river. The typhus also finally crossed south of the Kabul
river at the heavily ferried area at Nowshera.
The path of infection was observed to have been along
waterways rather than across the uncultivated nzaira between
the Kalpani and Hashtnagar, first striking larger villages along
main travel and trade routes. Within a village the typhus was
observed typically to spread from the first infected individual to
the general village population in about a month. Within a village,
typhus often 'occurred in distinct knots of houses separated in
several instances by very considerable intervals of unaffected
houses'. At least one plains village suggested they should be
allowed to enforce an epidemic strategy practised by Buner and
Swat, denying persons from an infected village access to a
healthy one.
Cultural customs within individual households dictated the
treatment and course of the typhus epidemic. In the Mandanr
plains, though women cared for patients' immediate physical
needs, men might spend the whole day sitting at patients'
bedsides providing comfort and simple nursing to both men and
women of the family. In consequence, such men faced more
frequent exposure to infection than others.
By April 1853 the one thousand households of Toru had
suffered hundreds of infections and over two hundred deaths. In
April, about ten per cent of homes still had typhus in the
compound. But each of the nine neighbourhoods of Toru, here
recorded as lineage 'kundas' (kandis), suffered differently. Only
one household of the seventy-eight in 'Judi kheyl' kandi was
'now affected', while thirty-six of the two hundred and seventy-
six in the 'Ahmood kheyl' section had typhus. The substantial
Hindu merchant community suffered in numerical proportion to
the larger village, but of forty-five Hindu households recorded
in Toru, only two suffered fatalities, six in one home and three
in another. Speculations as to why only one Hindu was ill in
April included the Hindus' 'more comfortable circumstances',
'more cleanly habits', or their 'exclusive mode of living'.
 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES 129

One observation noted that the spread of the disease was

caused by 'actual contact with the affected.' Close relatives
visiting the ill apparently carried the disease to their own homes.
A woman ill for six days in Nowshera had been observed being
moved to 'Nowsutta' (Nisatta) where, the report assumed, she
would spread the typhus.30
The suffering of Hashtnagar and the north-eastern plains was
aggravated in late April 1853 when the British stopped all but
three ferries across the Kabul and Swat rivers. Those who
crossed underwent a three-day quarantine and were given a
health certificate before being allowed to proceed to P e ~ h a w a r . ~ '
British military authorities did not officially provide medical
officers, supplies, training, or direct relief to the villagers of the
Peshawar valley. A single 'Izukeem supplied by the civil
authorities at Hotee and Mardan' treated the Mandanr sick.
Stopping or reducing the severity of the epidemic in the villages
was not a British priority. One assistant surgeon suggested
increasing the number of Izakinls or that 'Mahornedan Native
Doctors be sent into the villages'. British superiors in Lahore
simply agreed 'that all Hukeenls willing to go into the country
and attend the sick may be encouraged and invited to do so'. As
well, rules for treatment and disinfection of infected sites should
be translated into 'Pushtoo' and distributed. Ideas of 'cleanliness
both of person and habitation' were stressed, though the agency
transmitting typhus remained unknown.
East India Company military officers in Peshawar ordered
and conducted the typhus surveys. They collected village data
directly from local rnaliks and 'kotwals' responsible for the
peace. Rudimentary stat istical data about Akbarpura, thirteen
Hashtnagar villages, Toru, and four other north-eastern plains
villages, assembled in less than a two-week period in April, was
included in the reports filed by the British medical officers.72
They counted houses, neighbourhoods, and families. But,
admittedly, the accuracy of the numbers was doubtful. Able
literally to name each male householder who had died, village
nzaliks, 'could with difficulty be got to include women and
children in the account they gave'. The difference in the numbers
130 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

of sick and dead between one April report and an earlier report
was explained as being due to malik 'exaggeration' or, perhaps,
'giving the numbers in the "Tuppah" of Toro, which includes
several villages, instead (as I understood) confining themselves
to their own particular village'.
In Toru, officials classified one hundred and sixteen of the
one hundred and fifty-three sick in April as 'zumeendars'. The
others were listed craft and service occupations. But were the
agriculturists (zanzi~zdars)Pakhtuns only, or a combination of
Pakhtuns, hamsayas, and fakirs? In 1853, to a British officer,
was a zanzirtdar simply a farmer or a superior landlord, as were
zanlindars in Bengal? Were women and children included in
the zanzindar total? Such were the problems involved in
analysing such statistics.
The typhus epidemic surveys marked the first British efforts
to statistically understand the Peshawar valley. The process
would continue among officials to map, quantify, and label
districts and communitie~.'~ Eventually, this knowledge would
be used to 'reorganize' these social 'facts' into new frameworks
and systems dedicated to introducing innovations in agricultural
production, revenue collection, and civil authority.
Whether or not a result of the typhus epidemic, by December
1854 a dispensary to serve local people was authorized for the
colonial military outpost at Mardan. The assistant surgeons
mentioned earlier had been treating villagers for various
problems. In late 1854, 'the people still continue to apply, at the
rate of between 50 and 60 per m e n ~ e m ' . ' A ~ dresser,
compounder, Muslim cook, Hindu cook, water carrier, and
sweeper were budgeted for the dispensary at a cost of Rs 28 a
month, plus sixteen rupees for native medicines and food for
poor patients. Altruism, keeping revenue payers productive, and
protecting the health of the colonial forces were diverse
motivations that could not be disentangled.
 SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES 131

NOTES

1 . Jacob Black-Michaud, Sheep arid Lattd (Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, 1986), p. 1 1 .
2. Black-Michaud, Sheep, 1986, p. 28.
3. See Map 4, 'Distribution of Tribes'.
4. Conolly, Letter No. 199, dated 28 Feb. 1840, p. 13, in National Archives,
New Delhi, Foreign Departrr~ertt(Secret) Coris~rltatiorl4 May 1840.
5. James, Settlement, 1865, p. 5.
6. Caroe, Tlie Patharls, p. 453, n. 14.
7. MacGregor, Central Asia, vol. 1, Northwest Frontier of Britisli India,
1873, p. 647.
8. James, Settlement, 1865, p. 8.
9. James, Setrlenlent, 1865, p. 6. Caroe, The Pathnns, p. 453, n. 14, also
mentioned a 1929 flood.
10. Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahhabi Movenient, pp. 5-6.
1 1 . Information above from Jourrlals arld Diaries of the Assistarlts to the
Residerlr at Laltore, 1846-1849, vol. 1V. (Allahabad, 191 1 ) in lndia Office
Library and Records, London (Vl2714714). Quotation from 19 March
diary entry, vol. IV, p. 330.
12. Jourrtals ar~dDiaries, April diary entries from vol. IV, pp. 335-6, 341.
13. Journals and Diaries, April diary entry, vol. IV, p. 346.
14. Journols and Diaries, 17 May diary extracts, vol. IV, p. 35 1 .
15. Jourriuls and Diaries, August and September diary entries from, vol. IV,
pp. 381-387.
16. Jourrlals arid Diaries, 28 and 29 September diary entries, vol. IV,
p. 396-7.
17. Journals arid Diaries, 1 1 October diary entry, vol. IV, p. 402.
18. Lahore Political Diaries 1847-1848, vol. 111 (Punjab Government, 1915).
p. 126.
19. Jorrrnals arid Diaries, 18 November diary entry, vol. IV, p. 415.
20. Journals and Diaries, 1 December diary entry, vol. IV, p. 419.
21. The practice was still used against the Afridis of the same area one
hundred and fifty years later, this time by government political agents.
22. Jourr~alsand Diaries, 2 March 1848 diary entry, vol. IV, p. 454.
23. See Ludolph Fisher, A Geotnedical Mortograph or1 Afgkartistari (Springer-
Verlag, Berlin, 1968) including p. 129.
24. Fisher, A Georr~etlicalMortograph, p. 85.
25. Fisher, A Geonledical Monograph, p. 85.
26. Husum, The Other Side, n. d., p. 34.
27. National Archives and Library, New Delhi, Foreign Department 1853,
Political Cortsultation 27 May, Letter No. 299, p. 2, dated 8 April 1853,
from R. Lyell to Mackeson (Peshawar Division Commissioner and
Superintendent), p. 2. In notes below referred to as Letter No. 299.
132 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

28. Probably today's Akbarpura.

29. Letter No. 299, p. 3. The following narrative is drawn from Letters
299-300 by R. Lyell, Assistant Surgeon, dated 8 April 1853 and Letter
No. 680 by T. Farquhar, Assistant Surgeon, parts dated 14 and 16 April
1853. All letters together in the above Foreign Department 1853 volume.
30. See Grima, Performance, 1993 for the socio-cultural importance for
women of visiting the ill and sharing related tapos narratives of
misfortune.
31. Letter No. 335, dated 27 April 1853, in same file as above
correspondence.
32. For village typhus data see Statistical Appendices: Tables 1-3.
33. See 1855 Census data and 'Yusufzai Division' 1873 village data in
Statistical Appendices 2 and 3.
34. National Archives and Library, New Delhi, Foreigti Department (Political
Branch) Corisultutior~15 Decernber 1854, Letter dated 9 November 1854.
Also, from Letter No. 987, dated 15 December 1854, same file.
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

After 1849 the British attempted to develop a systematic land

policy able to guarantee steady cash revenues, eliminate political
intermediaries, and assure Peshawar valley social stability. But
these problematic land 'settlements' suffered from the
unintended consequences of market-oriented policies and
multiple forms of elite and village-level resistance. Policies of
recording the fields and imposing the status of 'proprietors' and
'tenants' forced fixed socio-economic identities upon what
earlier had been hierarchical, but less sharply defined local
identities. Varying state relations with different Peshawar valley
clans led to uneven degrees of conformity with district revenue
agendas derived from Punjab and British-Indian models. Earlier
colonial policies designed to suppress lineage heads as revenue
intermediaries were transformed into strategies intended to
patronize the 'feudal' leaders of 'agricultural tribes'. Clan klla~zs
were enlisted as agents of social control within a structure of
colonial hierarchies ranked by status and class.
After the 1849 occupation of the Punjab the first efforts of
new colonial administrators were focused on regularizing the
flow of land revenue that had so troubled the Sikh government.
By 1849 the East India Company had accumulated over seventy-
five years of experience in collecting an imperial share of
agricultural produce in districts across Bengal and northern and
southern India. The revenue regime introduced into the Punjab
represented a collective wisdom distilled from the lessons learnt
from a succession of approaches employed since Warren
Hastings first used late eighteenth century revenue farmers to
gather the 'surplus' of Bengal. Later strategies, including the
134 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

1793 Permanent Settlement of Bengal, the ryotwari settlements

in the Madras Presidency, and the early village-based revenue
agreements in northern India, were superficially designed to
address imperial concerns about security and ease of collection.
More broadly, these revenue policies reflected continuing
European theories about agrarian development, the nature of the
indigenous economy and society, and the need to use revenue
and legal initiatives to encourage change in the status quo.'
Problems with these earlier policies had been studied and by
the 1840s were apparently redressed in revenue settlements made
just east of the Punjab in the north-western provinces. Colonial
managers attempted to minimize the 'sale of land for arrears of
revenue and debt; privileges of superior landlords (za~~ziizclars);
overassessments and consequent balances; and suffering
resulting from former misgovernment'.* These aspects
influenced the revenue settlements now required for the twenty-
seven new districts of the Punjab. After determining the average
district crop yields and prices for a number of years the Punjab
settlements set a demand for an annual cash payment equal to
'one-half net produce', that is, half the average crop remaining
after deducting all cultivation expenses. Considered to be a
moderate demand, this rate was fixed for an extended term of
up to thirty years. In theory this policy, which did not tax any
additional, later productivity, would encourage investment in
new wells and other agricultural improvements.
The intent was to create a body of prosperous, peaceful
'proprietors' motivated to expand production and able easily to
pay the revenue. This involved the creation of private ownership
in land and a class of self-motivated, industrious small-holders,
protected in law. The British rationale was based on the logic
that, historically, the Asian state had owned all rights to land
and thus, nominally, was 'entitled to the entire net produce.
Until it limited its demand to a fixed proportion of the produce,
to remain unchanged for an extended period of years, landed
property, or preferably, landed properties, could not be said to
exist.'j Cash revenue demands and the ideal of private property
were linked to British theories of increasing agrarian
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 135

productivity and prosperity through the development of a market

economy and individual interest. When these policies were
implemented, logical developments, such as the free sale of
land and free market prices, had unintended, Punjab-wide
consequences.
From 1849 the entire Punjab, including the region west of the
Indus, was politically organized into a hierarchical chain of
authority supervised by a Board of Commissioners. The Punjab
was set up as a 'non-regulation province' in which 'the
Regulations in force in Bengal and the Northwestern Provinces
were not automatically introduced into the Panjab; and judicial
procedures were intended to be less c~mplicated'.~ The twenty-
seven districts, individually managed by Deputy Commissioners,
administratively were grouped into seven divisions supervised
by Commissioners. Deputy Commissioners, the key district
executives, 'combined the functions of Revenue Collector,
Magistrate (chief of police), and Civil and Criminal J ~ d g e ' . ~
This centralization of authority implicitly meant that in the new
colonial regime revenue defaulters would be characterized as
lawbreakers, liable to the coercion of 'police' powers and
'criminal' sanctions. Rather than a check or balance, the law
served as an adjunct to the Deputy Commissioner's executive
authority.
The Peshawar valley became the Peshawar District. Over time
it acquired a full complement of executive, judicial, and revenue
officials. Established colonial ideas of revenue administration
came into conflict with entrenched local agrarian practices and
interests. Colonial rule never would be threatened in a valley
that soon contained one of the largest British military
cantonments. But the multiple failures of early efforts to fix a
suitable 'demand* in valley tappas permeated the very colonial
reports chronicling apparently routine and successful revenue
settlements. From the beginning, residents of the valley
employed all the survival tactics learned over previous
generations to avoid and mitigate the impact of the new regime.
As in previous generations, expedient imperial compromises
with local socio-political realities eased the initial conquest but
136 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

later presented stubborn obstacles to an absolute colonial

domination of the Peshawar valley Pakhtun economy and
society.
The first generation of British-local competition within the
settled Peshawar district attracted little of the attention generated
by British colonial conflict with Afghanistan or with the
independent mountain tribes of British-India's north-west
'frontier'. Nevertheless a process of settled district confrontation
and accommodation was fueled by the proximity of non-
encapsulated clans and individuals who rarely acknowledged
the validity of 'settled' district borders or regulations. Within
the Peshawar valley contact zone, especially within the area
soon to be known as the 'Yusufzai sub-division,' local
authorities recognized this reality. Frequently, the rhetoric of
imperial fiat and the fact of imperial power were watered down
by pragmatic, often unacknowledged concessions and
compromises. These compromises, often struck with those
familiar figures of local authority, the khans, remained buried in
the minutiae of revenue remissions and land title allocations.
They underscored a dynamic process of continual struggle
between colonial domination and local choices of cooperation
or conflict.
Resistance to British revenue demands were a clear indication
of the lack of local sympathy with new colonial notions of
property, law, and legitimacy. This resistance meant that while,
for example, authorities in Ludhiana district in the eastern
Punjab completed an 1853 'Regular Settlement' involving
complete surveys of fields, lists of proprietary rights, and agreed
allocations of revenue liabilities, officials eventually set aside
an inadequate 1856 Peshawar District settlement. In hindsight,
'it was held by Government i n 1871 that Major James'
Settlement must be considered to have been summary only?
and the first Regular Settlement in the Peshawar District was
not considered to be completed until 1876.
Initial or 'summary' land settlements in the far western districts
of the Punjab were highly flawed experiments. If judged by the
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 137

simple criteria of creating a prosperous agricultural population

easily able to pay the revenue, in several instances the settlements
ended as initial failures in a long learning process. In the Multan
district, 'serious errors were committed in the crucial areas of
revenue settlement and canal management'.' Under pressure
quickly to 'settle' the district after the 1849 conquest, Multan
revenue officers did not measure fields or productivity, but made
a demand based on an average of the previous four years of
collections. Because officials cancelled all Sikh extra fees and
charges, referred to as cesses, and made concessions for struggling
villages, the settlement appeared lenient. Multan's eighteen Sikh
revenue areas (taluqas) were restructured into five sub-districts
(tallsils) and the gross demand (jarna) was reduced anywhere
from ten to twenty-four per cent from the Sikh eras8
The Multan settlement, completed by the end of 1849, was
planned to last three years. In the Sikh era the revenue had been
gathered in kind as a percentage of the crop. In bad crop years
the governor made up the shortfall due the Lahore court from
accumulated savings. After 1849, the set cash demand in Multan,
and across the Punjab, forced crops on to a less than fully
monetized market system. This lowered prices and forced
agriculturists to assign a higher percentage of their crops to the
market to meet the fixed charge. Many tillers were squeezed
between the government failure to understand the economics of
an inelastic demand for produce, determined in part by annual
crop sizes, and unbalanced revenue demands caused by
inadequate differentiation fields according to soil productivity
and access to water. Many tillers failed to pay their dues. In
1852 one Multan talzsil received 'remissions' of ten to twenty
per cent of the demand. Officials ordered a second 'summary'
settlement of the district. Over the next few years a second
talisil had its demand lowered seventeen per cent. Revenue
officials struggled to adjust differences in claims on villages
and fields based on soil differences, access to wells and
irrigation, and seasonal inundation.
The same pressures, and multiple 'summary settlements',
confronted agriculturists in the neighbouring Muzaffargarh
138 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

District and in the Peshawar District. Sikh revenue collectors in

the region had used tested old tactics adapting collections to the
unpredictable harvests of rain-poor districts in which water-
courses frequently shifted and disrupted even canal and inundation
land yields. After 1849 this policy had been rejected with other
aspects of a Sikh system labelled as oppressive and unscientific.
The need to 'settle' the many districts of the Punjab
simultaneously so that not a single crop season passed
unexploited meant that in the 1849-50 revenue cycle (equivalent
to the Sikh Sambat year 1906) the new Peshawar District Deputy
Commissioner, George Lawrence, simply continued to employ
established methods of collection. In the Hashtnagar, Mohmand,
Khalil, and Khalsa 'perganahs', revenue farmers, who might be
arbabs, kltans, nzaliks, or Hindu merchants, continued to act as
agents collecting the government share. The cost associated with
these revenue farmers was the price paid for their local
knowledge and influence. In the Khattak pargana the plains
region continued to be 'farmed to cultivators', while the directly
administered villages in the Doaba and Daudzai parganas paid
revenues without the use of intermediaries. The Yusufzai
pargana continued to pay revenues through the khans of each
lineage tappa.
Over the next four years the various sub-districts of the valley
received summary settlements. A district-wide settlement was
completed in 1856, though this included only one tappa of the
Yusufzai pargarta. In the period 1849-56 the Peshawar District
became a political-military anchor of the Punjab and of British-
India and home to the most famous of the 'Punjab school' of
field-oriented administrators. Many of these warrior-officials
acted out, or were assigned, roles as village-wise, rugged
pragmatists in eternal competition with desk-and regulation-
bound bureaucrats based in Lahore and Calcutta.
In this same period Peshawar District residents suffered from
many of the same socio-economic problems generated in other
districts by land settlements overly reliant on established models.
Peshawar District and Punjab administrators reacted to the
consequences of these problems with immediate concern for
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 139

political tranquillity. Often violent reactions to the new revenue

regime heavily influenced official strategies for modifying
indigenous society, including through revenue policy. Earlier
colonial theories of property and society were used selectively
to treat problems sparked by the new revenue regime and to
rationalize unavoidable imperial compromises forced upon
administrators. Political policies and rudimentary social
engineering formally structured less definitive social hierarchies
in a subtle process intended to ensure control over a poorly
understood local population.
In the Peshawar District many ad hoc social policies and
compromises with the indigenous political structure would be
frozen after the momentous events of 1857. The great revolt
silenced even the most fervent British proponents of the idea of
forcibly reshaping the internal dynamics of Pakhtun society.
Ironically, the perceived reality of the local 'tribal' society,
apparently a world of rigid customs, religious intemperance,
and lineage-based politics, became the basis for a broad Punjab
strategy to legitimate colonial authority. Imperial authorities
claimed to protect indigenous society, lineage-based 'agricultural
tribes', even as these authorities restructured lineage leadership
into an intermediary class patronized to facilitate the
subordination of settled district populations into colonial political
hierarchies.
The same junior officer responsible for the first Multan land
settlements supervised the problematic Peshawar District
summary settlements and the 1856 district-level settlement.
Again the officer, Hugh James, apparently made modest
demands. He eliminated Sikh surcharges (hububat) and the
intermediary roles of arbabs and kltans as tappa revenue
farmers. But the same problems still emerged. In the Daudzai
pargana of the district the Rs 127820 demand imposed during
the Sikh rule was reduced in the 1851-52 (Sambat 1908) revenue
year to Rs 102324, yet the 'rates were, however, found to be too
high with reference to the fall of grain p r i ~ e s ' .A~ new three-
year settlement instituted for the pargana in the next year asked
only Rs 100144.
140 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

In the Khalil pargana the rate dropped from Rs 1 1 1307 to a

first summary demand of Rs 89473 in 1851-52. Until the
summary settlement the Khalil villages had paid their revenue
through the agency of their own arbabs who acted as revenue
farmers. These arbabs, in addition to their hereditary lands, also
held insecure border areas as jagirs worth Rs 20000 of the
nominal revenue. The ending of their revenue-farming roles
directly challenged the authority and status of the arbabs. In the
second year of the summary settlement 'the misconduct of the
Arbabs led to their seizure and transportation to Lahore,. . .' l o
The 'great confusion' this caused among the Khalil villagers
meant that many village maliks could not guarantee that revenue
obligations would be met. Such villages had to be directly
managed by the government. Other villages, at first agreeable to
forwarding their revenue, 'broke down'. It 'became evident that
the revenue was greatly in excess of what might offer a
remunerative return to the proprietors, now called on for the
first time to pay their rent in cash'." A compromise to the
confrontation was negotiated and the arbabs released. Their
jagirs were 'resumed', but their hereditary lands continued to
be exempt from revenue demands. James' summary settlement
essentially failed in the Khalil pargana, 'where the annual
balances consequently became large, and where everything
presented the appearance of over taxation'.
The simple expedient of continuing the Sikh revenue demand,
with minor reductions, and converting this demand into monetary
terms did not work. Revised summary settlements now structured
a series of lowered demands for revenue. Long held jagirs were
usually continued, but the revenue-farming roles of local elite
were eliminated as soon as possible. Colonial officials struggled
to enroll village maliks as their intermediary collection agents.
They attempted to acquire an understanding of local soil and
water conditions to frame more realistic claims. Villagers took
advantage of inadequate village censuses and land surveys.
Officials faced numerous headaches in efforts to determine and
respect traditional revenue exemptions of lands tied to religious
institutions, the maintenance of village servants, and the personal
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 141

plots (inams) of Pakhtun share (dafrar) holders. By the completion

of his district-wide Report on the Settlement of the Peshawar
District, which recommended rates for the five-year period from
1855-6 to 1860-1, James had learned some hard lessons about
balancing the provincial need for maximum revenue with the
district need for internal political stability. He also became familiar
with the litany of excuses that revenue officers used to explain
flawed settlements. He attributed the 'large balances' of past-due
revenues in the Mohmand pargana to not only the fall in market
prices for grain, but to the 'characteristic improvidence' of maliks,
lineage factionalism ('hostile relatives'), and to the government
tahsildar, 'Mahomed Ahsan Khan, who was too much in the
hands of the leading men of the district'.12
The heavy hand of the colonial military establishment
enforced demands on Peshawar valley villages, arbabs, and
khans. The military settled a local dispute over access to river
water in 1854 by seizing the jagir of Mohmand elite in the
Daudzai pargana. The military attacked villages reluctant to
pay revenue, including Palli and Sangao in the foothills between
the north-eastern plains and Swat.
In these early years of the Punjab administration James
struggled with the problems of inadequate land surveys. He felt
that only comprehensive field surveys could guarantee accurate
records of rights, fair revenue assessments, and proper justice in
courts forced to award portions of a share in a land or inheritance
dispute. James first hoped to train local Hindu grain merchants,13
who doubled as official weighmen, to fulfil new responsibilities
as village field surveyors (patwaris). His efforts to train what he
called 'an ignorant class of Hindoos' failed and he opened a
school for field surveying in Peshawar that attracted men
employed in villages by the Sikhs as revenue accountants
(mohurrirs). For patwari work, the 'Persian character', 'for the
sake of neatness and uniformity', was 'adopted to the exclusion
of Hindee' .
The colonial project of assembling local knowledge, including
detailed topographical and agricultural land surveys, was not
perceived as a neutral function of progress and science. In early
142 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

March 1852 a team of the Trigonometrical Survey preparing to

map the north-eastern plains was attacked at Gujar Garhi village
just east of Mardan by 'about 180 sowars from Swate and
Ranezai under Mokurrum Khan',14 an angry clan leader. In the
context of the ongoing coercion of khans, the forcible
introduction into villages of police and revenue officials, and
the region's still fragile colonial authority, officials did not
simply assume that the survey effort itself was being attacked.
Still the nature and extent of colonial reactions to the attack
exposed the sensitive position of the 'frontier'. Reactions
illustrated the dual roles that conciliation and coercion played in
colonial debates on segregating the new 'British territory' from
neighbouring areas occupied by clans with historic, complex
ties with Peshawar valley affairs. The Secretary to the Punjab
Board of Commissioners advised authorities in Calcutta that
'. . .Until some of the Tribes bordering on Peshawar shall receive
signal chastisement from a British Force, it cannot be hoped
that they will learn to respect our Territory. There could not be
a better season of the year for making reprisals than the present,
when the crops are approaching maturity'.I5 The Governor-
General of India, Dalhousie, displayed a more moderate reaction,
recalling his previous doubts about 'the expediency of carrying
on surveys in these quarters at present'. It was neither an
appropriate 'time nor a place' to expose officers and small
escorts to risk. He advised 'the discontinuance of this survey
under Lt. James until further order'.I6 On 20 March 1852 a
letter from Fort William, Bengal advised the military that
villages 'taken' in any operations were not to be retained nor
was the frontier to be extended. Another letter cancelled the
survey.
The evolution of other post- 1849 Peshawar District strategies
of local control, through revenue policy and social engineering,
was traceable in events and debates connected with the revenue
settlement of the 'Yusufzai District'. Ideas of eliminating the
intermediary role of local elite for contacts with villages and of
establishing agricultural entrepreneurship through developing
private property and a market economy underwent a complete
 SElTLING THE FRONTIER 143

metamorphosis after the early years of colonial-local interaction.

An asymmetrical balance of interests developed within the
Yusufzai tappas. The remainder of the nineteenth century would
experience the conflicts generated by this uneven balance.
Conflicting and intertwined claims of religion, custom, and
personal choice continued to shape local survival strategies and
political ambitions even as broader economic forces and imperial
policies generated new social stresses and opportunities.
For some in the Mandanr tappas of the Peshawar valley the
transition from Sikh to British rule proceeded incrementally and
seamlessly. Local khans committed to collaboration with the
government in power established relations with the British even
before 1849. In October 1847 when Sikh troops led by George
Lawrence attacked Babuzai village they received assistance from
Mir Baba of Rustam village." Years before, Mir Baba had
advised Conolly, Mir Baba had collected the Amazai tappa
revenue for the Sikhs and become the Sudhum valley's most
powerful khan.I8 In October 1848 Lawrence, attempting to
forestall the impending revolt of local Sikh troops, had recruited
twenty-six hundred local Afghans from valley and mountain
clans. Before the troop revolt and his flight from Peshawar he
had negotiated early local alliances, so that 'from 2000 to 3000
Eusufzyes under their Khans are watching the movements of
the rebels on the opposite side of the river.. .'I9
After the collapse of the Sikh state and the introduction of a
new revenue regime, Mandanr villages and maliks, freed from
the intermediation of khans in collecting the revenue, had to be
patiently encouraged and frequently coerced into delivering the
revenue demand. The British established a new imperial outpost
in the region, this time at Mardan. From there locally recruited
troops supported the settlement operations conducted in the area
by Lt. Lumsden. His report,*O completed by the end of 1852,
described his first administrative efforts and the early changes
introduced into the region.
His first 'summary settlement' had come in the midst of the
1847 autumn harvest and simply involved Lumsden riding
through the district, with a cannon or two, counting the 'wells
144 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

and ploughs' liable to the demand in each village. The previous

ideal Sikh demand, one hundred thousand rupees, 'was divided,
by the consent of the khans, over the whole; taking irrigated
lands at double the rate of unirrigated; the result was a uniform
rate of Rs 5 a plough, and Rs 10 a well, throughout the
~ o u n t r y ' . ~The
' elite khans in each tappa were eliminated as
collection agents, but each leading khan was permitted the
allowance (mowajib) granted by the Sikhs for revenue services.
The continuation of the mowajib was politically motivated
though nominally it subsidized the khans for maintaining the
peace within their tappas. Each khan was 'bound to forward all
offenders against the law to Peshawur for trial'.
In the early post-1849 period a deputy collector, Maulvi Abdul
Haq, completed village revenue papers, while a non-English
collector (tahsildar) was 'introduced' into the district as a 'check'
on the khans. Police posts (thanas) were set up in Garhi Kapura
and Swabi villages and a 'system' of village watchmen
(chaukidars) was organized.22 The northern Lundkhwar tappa
remained free (until the James district-wide settlement) of direct
revenue settlement, paying a flat six thousand rupee demand
through two Khattak maliks of Lundkhwar village.
Lumsden's settlement pursued the same goals set for the
Peshawar area parganas. He managed to arrange collections
through village maliks, though he was obstructed when he tried
to ascertain the exact possession of village 'shares' held by
village 'petty proprietors or biswadars'. He was 'opposed by
the Lumberdars or heads of villages, who concealed shares, to
obtain a light assessment, and who, having usurped many shares,
not belonging to them, were opposed to the truth being laid
bare'.23 However interpreted by Lumsden, this resistance by
Pakhtun shareholders to the determining of personal holdings,
and thus revenue liabilities, may have been related partially to
the shareholder tactic of deflecting imperial revenue demands
on to the harvests of village fakirs and other non-Pakhtun tillers.
Lumsden's observations reflected an agrarian knowledge and
terminology derived from Punjabi rather than Pakhtun experience.
He equated Pakhtun clan maliks with the village headmen or
 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER 145

lambardars of eastern Punjab districts. Regarding Pakhtun land

tenures as equivalent to 'Bhayachara'" village brotherhoods, also
found in the eastern Punjab, seemed logical to an administrator
attempting to define an apparently similar set of agrarian
relationships. Yet this use of Punjab idioms marked the beginning
of a colonial process that re-conceptualized the Peshawar valley
and the nature of its society. Mandanr khels held a share (bukhra)
of the clan land assignment (dafar). A shareholder (dafari)
measured land by the jarib and tilled with a plough (yewa).
When characterized as being within a greater Punjabi context, as
b i s w a d a r ~in~ ~a brotherhood tilling acres or bighas with qulbas,
it meant that residents were now perceived less as Pakhtuns, with
unique and nuanced cultural and social relations and institutions,
and more as colonial 'subjects', the same as those in other Punjab
districts. Maliks regarded as lambardars would be expected to act
the role of state agent. Villages viewed as 'brotherhoods' would
naturally be assumed to take 'joint responsibility' for revenue
payments. This process of transplanting colonial perceptions to
new soil helped to restructure social roles and relationships,
transforming shareholders into 'land owning proprietors' and
locally defined hamsayas and fakirs into generic 'occupancy
tenants'.
In the short term, Lumsden's settlements ended certain
practices, including, after 1847, residual survivals of land and
home exchanges between clans that continued among a few
villages. Along with wesh, he abolished the eighty to one
hundred rupee fee claimed by khans for each Hindu marriage.
But even James, a few years later, remained cautious about
forcing changes in Pakhtun relations with their dependants.
James said that in 'Eusufzae' though Hindu traders and artisans
had to contribute '...a share of the revenue, each house being
reckoned as half a plough' (share), 'I deemed it imprudent at
this stage of our proceedings entirely to free them', with the
exception of the most indigent.26
Lumsden noted differences between customary social
practices and Islamic law, especially as related to land
inheritance. A 'kazee' would rule that all sons by any number
146 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

of wives were entitled to equal shares of a shareholder's estate.

But, 'Patan usage' only gave equal shares to each wife, then to
be distributed among her sons (four wives with sons divided the
estate into four shares). Lumsden observed villages of slaves,
'golams' tied to the cultivation of a khan's land. Others,
'chorekars', tilled the land for shareholders to pay off advances
and debts. They received a quarter or less of the crops. Lumsden
reported that the Sikhs had sold off the wives and daughters of
revenue defaulters 'on account of Government at auction in the
bazaar'. These included young girls sold for eight to ten rupees.
Outside traders brought other young women down from the
'Kashtkar' (Chitral) region in the far north. These sold for forty
to three hundred rupees, providing servants for elite Pakhtun
women. 'Weavers, dhobees, carpenters, blacksmiths, graziers,
Cashmeeree labourers, and traders in salt, fill up the remaining
portion of the Yusufzai p ~ p u l a t i o n ' . ~ ~
From the beginning, Lumsden's settlement subtly pursued
the intended or unintended social and political agenda evolving
within colonial Punjab. His tacit acceptance of malik refusals to
list personal shares in village lands protected the secrecy and
prevented true knowledge of Pakhtun holdings, including those
of absentee shareholders. But this acceptance also eliminated
any possibility of recognizing the de facto shareholding status
of non-Pakhtuns.
In Peshawar area villages James noted that though generally
fakirs (equal to hamsayas) were forced to meet village revenue
demands, they were 'in the actual possession of all proprietary
rights, except that of sale or transfer' and former service
demands 'had in the course of years, and the social changes
created by successive governments, gradually become less
definite, and may be said indeed to have depended solely on the
power of the dufturee to exact them. Everything tended to make
their position one of independence; on the one hand, the
proprietors were interested in retaining them on the estate; and
on the other hand, the government farmers supported a class to
which they mainly looked for profit'.28 Because in the Mandanr
villages Lumsden did not immediately set aside the old
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 147

'primitive system,' fakirs continued to pay not only one-fourth

of yields towards the government revenue, but also one-third to
Pakhtun khans and maliks. Ironically, the Sikh 'oppression' that
had reduced the status of Pakhtun elite to a considerable degree
in the greater Peshawar valley had to an extent consolidated the
status of non-shareholders, while the elite comparatively best
able to resist Sikh demands, the Mandanr Pakhtuns, had better
preserved established village internal relations of domination
and inequality.
With Mandanr maliks monopolizing communications with the
new government, colonial policies nominally designed to decide
legal ownership rights in land and define the status of tenants
tended to stratify and solidify customary social differences and
threaten historic, slow processes of social mobility for non-
Pakhtuns. Across the Punjab a British colonial shift in emphasis
from village-level policies geared solely to basic revenue to
new policies dedicated to 'extending the scope of the village
record to cover all classes of village resident^',^^ served to define
village relations of custom and lineage and formalize the 'rights'
of dominant 'agricultural tribes', Even in the Yusufzai sub-
division, a 'turbulent' district in which socio-economic
innovations were closely scrutinized, social stratification based
on land-ownership or tenant status, as recorded in new surveys
and land settlements, increasingly became a reified 'fact' of the
colonial social landscape.
Lumsden, very conscious of the levelling of the Mandanr
khans, thought the Sikhs had changed the khans 'at will' and
invalidated their legitimacy. Village nialiks were 'the real heads
of the people'.30 But, 'It is not to be expected that this class of
people, can, all at once, settle down, from being absolute rulers
in their own division, to mere machines in our hands, however
well we may remunerate them'.31
Lumsden possessed a European consciousness of categorical
social divisions. This sensibility emerged in the indigenous
religious and caste categories detailed in colonial census
operations that slowly evolved new forms of social and political
awareness.j2 Statistics assembled during and after the 1855 and
148 SETTZING THE FRONTIER

1868 Punjab censuses increasingly quantified local knowledge

of regional 'castes', 'tribes*, and social status. Also, as
mentioned, land settlement operations simplified complex
agrarian relations into specific categories directly catering to
the needs of the colonial regime. Shareholders became land-
owning proprietors and landlords. Non-Pakhtuns became
'occupancy tenants' permanently barred from 'ownership* and
the right to alienate or sell 'private property'. Less fortunate
tillers, on the land for less than an arbitrary period, in the
Peshawar valley twelve years, became 'tenants-at-will* liable to
expulsion by 'landlords'. These categories had less meaning in
1850, but acquired greater significance in later decades as a
growing market economy placed increasing value on property
in land, wage labour, and contracts.
Lumsden's colonizer's consciousness of permanent social
difference was more immediately reflected in his attitude
towards recruiting local men to serve in the cavalry force
stationed in Mardan, the Guides:

He would take no low caste men; he would have naught to say to

the washermen, sweepers, and fiddlers' of the village ...he would
take only the highest, which in this land is the fighting caste. His
argument was one which still holds good. It is not in reason to
expect the classes which for hundreds of years have been hewers of
wood and drawers of water, and for hundreds of years have been
accustomed to receive the cuffs and kicks of their village superiors,
to face readily the fighting classes in the day of battle. The prestige
of the soldier would be wanting to them, and prestige counts for as
much in the East as el~ewhere.~'

It might be anticipated that if the British self-image required

prestigious, warrior adversaries, it might also require suitably elite
allies. In conjunction with pragmatic political expediency, this
attitude helped to ensure that the 'highest' subjects, the Mandanr
khans, would soon find a place in the colonial hierarchy.
When James revisited the Yusufzai district a few years after
Lumsden he gathered enough information to present a concise
narrative of the recent past and the ongoing state of flux in the
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 149

local political economy. According to James, in the early Sikh

period the governors in Peshawar had been able to gather a
symbolic 'nuzzurana' or present that was 'increased to a regular
revenue of 10000 rupees per annum from each of thirteen
Tuppahs, and 5000 from that of L ~ o n d k h o r ' .TWO
~ ~ khans, Kadir
Khan of Toru and Arsala Khan of Zaida, initially 'engaged for
the whole', collecting the revenue from khans and maliks in the
north-eastern tappas and forwarding it to Peshawar. This
continued until local khans, resentful of the 'apparent
superiority' conferred upon their peers, arranged direct payments
to the Sikhs. Each leading khan deducted a mowajib payment
from tappa gross revenues. Each tappa was allowed to gather
the revenue in its own way, 'it was not therefore separately
assigned in villages'.
James wrote that the original position of 'khan' was old and
hereditary from father to son, though 'in many cases' power
determined succession among the relatives. The khans 'were in
fact the feudal chiefs of their several divisions, giving land to
their retainers in lieu of pay, and receiving from them military
and personal service'. No tax was charged or service taken from
the 'brotherhood' of Pakhtun shareholders. On the original
settlement in the valley, the khan received 'something in excess
of his ancestral share' as 'seree' or 'free gift'. The khan's own
lands were cultivated by 'retainers' for service only, 'no share
of produce being taken.. .' Able to raise an armed force when
needed and to offer the customary hospitality, khans were
content with collecting 'only a small fee at births and marriages'.
James described political changes occurring over time within
different tappas. One of his examples dealt with the distribution
of produce fees received from newly settled villages within
tappa bounds. In 'Dowlutzye, Ismaelzye, Loondkhor and other
places' new villages 'were planted by the whole brotherhood',
who split fees of one-tenth to one-quarter of the harvests.3s In
other tappas, including 'Hotee, Tarooh and Sadoom', new
villages were initiated by powerful khans exercising an 'assumed
right.'
150 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

The 'system was materially affected' by the ability of the

Sikhs to extort annual revenue payments, and the Yusufzai
district 'Pathans ...endeavoured to cast the burden upon the
cultivators.' 'It is now even difficult to explain to a Pathan
proprietor that he cannot take a quarter of the produce and leave
the revenue of the whole to be paid as before by the cultivators
out of the remaining 314.. .' James' proposal to end this double
taxation on non-shareholding tillers demonstrated the kind of
compromise employed by local revenue officers afraid to enforce
fully administrative conformity to a broader district or Punjab
standard. He proposed, subject 'to the revised settlement', to
declare that in 'the whole of Eusufzye', Pakhtun 'proprietary
right is acknowledged', and ten per cent of the revenue given
'as commutation' for any service obligations or produce fees
demanded from new villages. James was pressured not only by
the elite, but by fakirs in new villages, who 'paying the
Government revenue now refuse to give such share to the
proprietors' .36
Revenue differentiation within the different Mandanr area
tappas indicated how political hierarchies had evolved in a
historically complex pattern created by the local interaction of
empires, khans, maliks, shareholders, and fakirs. In one statement
James listed the mowajibs that continued to be paid from tappa
revenues. In seven tappas the khans alone were authorized to
received the payments. In five others, the allowance was
distributed 'amongst the brotherhood'. In a second statement
James listed the 'rent free lands' aid associated incomes received
by the khans. Another table listed details of 'their hereditary and
acquired proprietary possession' and related income. A final list
tried to estimate the indirect income that khans received in kind
from 'household servants' who took land rather than wages from
the khans. From his percentage, the khan was responsible to make
revenue payments on such land and, if agreed, for expenses for
seed and draft animals, If the 'servant' agreed to pay all expenses
and revenue the khan received no share of the harvest.
Rather than lobby to abolish the ntowajib in general, James
argued for eliminating only the allowances for the
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 151

'brotherhoods' as they were the cause of 'continued jealousy,

strife, and violence' among claimants to a share. James wished
to continue payments to the individual khans to uphold their
prestige and ensure peace in the countryside. He explained that
the mowajib was the largest source of elite khan income and its
loss would result in 'comparative poverty'. The khans had lost
the 'independent power' of their position, lost their exemption
of personal lands from revenue demands, and 'are now incapable
of guiding the people of their Tuppahs for either good or evil'.
Continuing the mowajibs would allow the khans to 'improve
their estates and income', and persuade them 'to look to
agriculture as to the source of wealth and influence', especially
'during the great social change which is necessarily taking place
in the ~ountry'.~'
James, as Lumsden before him, was drawn into a Hoti family
feud that originated from a nzowajib division between the sons
of Lashkar Khan a generation earlier. The two sons, Ahmed
Khan in Mardan and Muhammad Khan in Hoti, had divided the
mowajib, then were succeeded by their respective sons, Mir
Afzal Khan and Sirbuland Khan. On the death of Mir Afzal
Khan, his share of the mowajib reverted to the government for
allocation and was claimed by both his brother and his widow
with an infant son. James proposed to restore the complete
mowajib to Sirbuland Khan because the original division, done
'immediately after annexation', was improperly approved and
was 'not in accordance with Pathan custom'.38
The micro-politics of the Yusufzai sub-division spawned
personal rivalries, family enmities, and appeals for imperial
intervention and the support of independent clan allies. The Hoti
family split was an example of the kind of colonial interaction in
a complex lineage situation that might further polarize factions,
increase the stakes involved, and lead to unintended consequences.
Lumsden's original division of the Hoti nzowajib had been dictated
by unknown 'motives of policy', setting the stage for James'
involvement in a dispute of lineage inheritance. In the mowajib
correspondence was another reference, 'that after Afzul Khan's
death quarrels ensued in the family; fostered by intrigues on the
152 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

part of our Tahsildar'. The Hoti family competition continued for

several decades more, emerging in new institutional arenas offered
by the colonid state. Disputes over the control and inheritance of
land were submitted to the colonial judicial system in numerous
court cases, while Yusufzai sub-division British and local officials
were subjected to the full range of imaginable pressures and
influence.
Three years after James' recommendations on Yusufzai
district mowajibs Lumsden added his endorsement for continuing
the allowances. They would compensate for the drain on khans
still expected to maintain the hospitality of an open hujra and
other social obligations, despite 'the loss of power and position'.
Lumsden detailed the usefulness of khan allies and collaborators,
recalling how Ajab Khan, son of Mir Baba of Rustam, informed
him of the hill path that allowed the military force to successfully
outflank Babuzai 'when the village was destroyed' in 1847.
Lumsden remembered how Ajab Khan had saved him from an
ambush organized by men from Buner.j9
The commitment of local administrators to elite interests was
clearly demonstrated in particular land settlement decisions. In
1855 Sirbuland Khan benefited from a decision that lands around
Hoti village 'over and above those already partitioned are
attached to the Khanship and are your property and all the men
in Kandi Ghulaman cultivate your land and live in your Kandi
Ghulaman, therefore they are exempt from Sirkari Begar and
you are entitled to receive service from the people.. .'40
During the 1857-8 time of the 'Indian Mutiny' a final decision
on the status of the Yusufzai district khans remained i n
abeyance. In the Peshawar District, north-eastern khans in
addition to Ajab Khan took an active role in raising irregular
levies. Such irregular forces helped subdue a ~ i n d u s t a n i
regiment that revolted at Nowshera and Mardan. The irregulars
provided regional guards and joined the Punjab relief column
sent to aid in the final capture of Delhi. The great revolt served
as a turning point in opening colonial eyes to the advantages of
co-opting not only local elites, but literally thousands of regional
Pakhtuns into various types of government service.
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 153

Cooperation paid immediate dividends. On 21 May 1857 the

M a r d a n garrison revolted a n d the British Assistant
Commissioner took refuge with the Hoti Khan. Sirbuland Khan
gathered loyalists, including followers of the khans of Zaida
and Ismaila, to aid in the pursuit of the 'mutineers' into Swat.
On 19 June 1857 a British p a r w a n a from the Assistant
Commissioner's court notified Sirbuland Khan that the lawsuit
filed by Hoti 'lambardars' for an equitable partition of the Kandi
Ghulaman neighbourhood and lands had been 'dismissed for
want of proof .4i
In 1859 James' original commander in Multan, H. B .
Edwardes, now Commissioner and Superintendent of the
Peshawar Division, made a case to the Punjab Financial
Commissioner for continuing to patronize the 'Khans of
Yoosufzai'. Edwardes recommended that the mowajibs be
declared hereditary, with the revenue still to be collected through
the village maliks. Edwardes had the concomitant interests of
local political stability and greater imperial security in mind as
he offered his interpretation of local society. He thought it:

...deeply injurious to us on a Frontier to have a Native Aristocracy

uncertain about their future. The border must necessarily remain in
a feudal state; and these are the natural feudal chiefs. ..Experience
has showrthat .it is not sufficient, even if it be just, to make the
agricultural population prosperous. To preserve peace and lay up
friends for war, we must keep the natural leaders of the country on
our side, else ensues the strange phenomenon of a prosperous people
led astray like sheep by a malcontent nobility. The expenditure
involved in thus maintaining both our own and a native system
forces us in the interior of the empire to a compromise; but on the
outer frontier we had far better accept the difficulty.42

Arguably, within the Peshawar valley the downward revisions

of revenue settlements, the continuing patronage of local elite,
including the Yusufzai Khans, and the expensive 'difficulty' of
maintaining an extraordinary border situation all suggested that
the early British colonial regime made pragmatic local
compromises to Punjab and e m p i r e models of r e v e n u e
154 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

management and political consolidation. Valley residents, with

different and with common interests, were encouraged by
revenue and employment incentives to cooperate in the colonial
project. In return they acquiesced in decisions leading to political
subordination and economic integration. Khans and maliks in
the Yusufzai district tappas received in total mowajib allowances
slightly more than fifteen per cent of their subdivision's revenue.
On a socio-cultural level, even before 1857, Peshawar
colonial officials had carefully assessed the impact of their
policies as violence around the valley fringes continually
challenged claims to legitimacy. After 1857-8 in the Peshawar
District, as across the newly created Indian empire, the post-
'Mutiny' colonial state more consciously avoided the direct
social interventions blamed by many for sparking the 1857
turmoil.
Events in the Peshawar valley in the decade before the
'Mutiny' suggest that immediate and salient relationships were
in place, anticipating the post-1857 development in British India
of an indirect, yet ranked colonial 'social order.. .with the British
crown seen as the centre of authority, and capable of ordering
into a single hierarchy all its subjects, Indian and Engli~h'.~) In
the Punjab, this hierarchy was structured around notions of
'tribal' social organization and 'an indigenous ideological
framework that would facilitate and legitimate the inclusion of
rural intermediaries in an imperial admini~tration'.~~ It was an
approach that appealed to imperialists unable to claim religious
affinity and anxious to develop idioms of legitimacy other than
those of Islamic solidarity. The difficulties encountered in
eastern and central Punjab districts when administrators tried to
define and manipulate actual 'tribal' dynamics of lineage, village
organization, and land usage4s were also experienced in the
Peshawar valley, including in the socially complex tappas
around Peshawar city. But, while revenue officials would
gradually succeed in transforming some main valley maliks into
conventional lambardars and zaildars responsible for new
'revenue circles' ( t a i l s ) , to the extent of controlling
appointments and dismissals, the khans and maliks of the
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER 155

Yusufzai sub-division retained unique levels of control over the

mechanics of revenue collection and village organization.
Across the Punjab selected aspects of 'tribal' leadership and
influence were supported among a reconstituted class of local
\
elite now useful as intermediaries and interpreters between the
colonial state and village society. Simultaneously, modified
models of 'tribal' social customs and institutions were promoted
and deployed to achieve a degree of regulation over social
behaviour that the British failed to understand or control. In the
Peshawar District and the new Yusufzai sub-division a unique
set of local and colonial initiatives and reactions guided the
direction of events after the 1847-57 period, even as the larger
dynamics of changing colonial and world economic structures
slowly intruded into valley social relations.

NOTES

A primary history of the internal colonial discourse about early British

revenue policy remains Ranajit Guha's, A Rule of Property for Bengal
(Duke University Press, Durham, 1996).
J. Royal Roseberry, Imperial Rule in Punjab: The Conquest and
Administration of Multan, 1818-81(Manohar, New Delhi, 1987), p. 120.
Roughly, the North-Western Provinces became the post-1947 Uttar
Pradesh state.
Roseberry, Imperial Rule, p. 120-2 1.
Richard Saumarez Smith, Rule by Records, Land registration and village
custom in early British Panjab (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1996),
p. 393.
Roseberry, Imperial Rule, p. 114.
Gazetteer of the Peshawar District 1897-98, p. 296. For Durrani, Sikh,
and early British revenue figures from the James Settlement see
Appendices 4 and 5.
Roseberry, Imperial Rule, p. 137.
Roseberry, Imperial Rule, p. 143. This Multan history follows Roseberry's
Chapter Eight.
James, Settlement, 1865, p. 120.
James, Settlement, 1865, p. 124.
James, Settlement, 1865, p. 124.
James, Settlement, 1865, p. 127.
156 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

13. 'In most villages there were two or three putwarees, attached to different
factions, and remuneration was inadequate, consisting of fees in kind
levied at the harvest.' James, Settlement, 1865, p. 114.
14. National Archives of India, New Delhi, Foreign Department 1852 (Secret)
Consultation 27 March No. 1441145, Letter 'No. 3 of 1852', dated
7 March 1852 (from Lumsden, Guides Commander to Mackeson,
Peqhawar Division Commissioner), p. 1. Sowars equal horsemen.
15. Letter 'No. 243', dated 11 March 1852, with above file.
16. Letter 'No. 146', dated 19 March 1852, with above file.
17. Journals and Diaries of the Assistants to the Resident at Lahore,
1846-1849, vol. IV, p. 404.
18. MacGregor, Central Asia, vol. 111, p. 390. Mir Baba was the 'Meer Khan
of Sidoom' released in April 1847 by Lawrence from Sikh imprisonment.
19. Journals and Diaries, vol. IV, p. 569-70. 'Mutinous' Sikh troops had
been camped across the Indus river.
20. H. B. Lumsden, 'Report on the Yoozoofzaee District' (1853), in Selections
from the Records of the Government of the Punjab, vol. 1, No. 15, 1863.
(Vl231335, India Office Library, London).
21. Lumsden report quoted in E. G. Hastings, Report of the Regular
Settlement of the Peshawar District (Central Jail Press, Lahore, 1878)
and India Office Records, London (Vl271314/598), p. 201.
22. Lumsden, 'Report', 1863, p. 37 1.
23. Lumsden, 'Report', 1863, p. 346.
24. Lumsden, 'Report', 1863, p. 347.
25. One biswa was one-twentieth (bis, Urdu for twenty) of a bigha. A bigha
was equal to one square jarib. Exact local dimensions may have varied.
In Richard Saumarez Smith's tables one bigha equals five-eighths of an
acre (55 yards by 55 yards). The word qulba was a Persian word for
plough used across northern Hindustan.
26. James, Settlement, 1865, p. 132.
27. Lumsden, 'Report', 1863, p. 368.
28. James, Settlement, 1865, p. 112-3.
29. R. Saumarez Smith, Rule by Records, 1996, p. 67.
30. Lumsden, 'Report', 1863, p. 377.
31. Lumsden, 'Report', 1863, p. 376.
32. Bernard Cohn, 'The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South
Asia', in An Anthropologist among the Historians and other Essays
(Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1990).
33. G. J. Younghusband, The Story of the Guides (Macmillan, London, 19081,
p. 53.
34. National Archives of India, New Delhi, Foreign Department (~olirical)
1859 Consultation 15 July Letter 'No. 146', dated 2 May 1856, p. 3.
Letter from James, Deputy Commissioner, Peshawar to ~dwardes,
Peshawar Commissioner.
 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

35. Letter No. 146, above, pp. 6-7.

36. Letter No. 146, above, p. 8.
37. Letter No. 146, above, p. 12.
38. Letter No. 146, above, p. 14.
39. Letter 'No. 4', dated 2 May 1856. This Lumsden note on James' letter
No. 146 found with related correspondence under a cover letter dated
24 June 1859, all copied in above Foreign Department 1859 (Political)
Consultation 15 July.
40. From British parwana dated 20 February 1855, printed in History of the
Hoti Family, p. 27.
41. Parwana dated 19 June 1857, from Assistant Commissioner, Yusafzai.
Copied in History of the Hoti Family, p. 29. For 'Mutiny' service and
rewards see Appendices 6 and 7.
42. Letter 'No. 42 of 1859', dated 19 March 1859, assembled with related
correspondence mentioned above under cover letter dated 24 June 1859.
43. Bernard Cohn, 'Representing Authority in Victorian India', The Invention
of Tradition E. Hobsbawn and T. Ranger, eds. (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1983), p. 180.
44. Gilmartin, Empire and Islam, 1988, p. 26.
45. Gilmartin, Empire and Islam, 1988, p. 18.
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS

Early British authority in the Peshawar valley exercised itself

through governing idioms and relationships established by
imperial predecessors. Over decades the British expanded and
reconfigured local systems of education, land control, socio-
political order, and taxation. Interactions with local social
structures were guided by the special perspectives of a rising
British-Indian imperial state. After 1857, subtle and aggressive
new colonial policies were introduced, designed to consolidate
state control over economic and political activity while
nominally respecting Pakhtun family values and cultural
autonomy. Administrative reports documented local schools and
village landholdings, traditional agrarian practices, the creation
of a bounded 'British territory', and the formalization of criminal
law codes. Literally thousands of files provided a written record
of the first fifty years in which indigenous institutions and social
ties struggled to come to terms with the colonial presence while
state initiatives were adapted to local realities. These processes
involved ad hoc personal choices as well as increasingly
formalized social relationships defined by colonial hierarchies,
legal precedents, and an imperial milieu emphasizing western
technology, thought, and culture.
In 1852, in addition to village lands, James had surveyed
Peshawar valley schools. His report traced the intended and
unintended social consequences of apparently simple land
settlement operations. Observing that the majority of Muslim
schoolteachers were mullas attached to village mosques, James
recorded that he 'brought on to the rent roll' the average two to
three bigahs of land dedicated by villages to maintaining each
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 159

mosque.' Though village mullas received fees at marriages,

funerals, and other ceremonies, the only remuneration received
from families of students consisted of a present, two to ten
rupees, given when the student finished reading the Koran.
Village teachers not attached to a mosque received payment
in grain, a plot of village land, or parental gifts. Some motivated
by religious fervour taught without charge. Hindu teachers
connected to dharmsalas held 'inheritable grants', while
Brahmin teachers tutoring in private homes generally earned
two pice a week per student, plus a two to four annas monthly
fee. These teachers also received presents on holidays and school
leavings.
The British policy of eliminating intermediary revenue
farmers sent the number of Hindu students enrolled in Muslim
schools into decline. Though Hindu schools also taught
commercial and agricultural accounting, many young men
training to be revenue secretaries (munshis) had attended Muslim
schools to learn the Persian script and language. Now only forty-
six Hindus studied in Muslim schools, where they read the Koran
and Hindi texts translated into Persian by Kashmiri p a n d i t ~ . ~
The Peshawar schools attracted students from many
surrounding regions and offered a progression of studies. Young
boys in Muslim schools began reading at five-and-a-half to six
years of age and continued for five to seven years until they
were able to read the Koran. James was of the opinion they
understood little of the Arabic. The best students continued with
Persian. At the age of sixteen or seventeen they might enter an
exclusively Arabic language school to study 'the Koran, two
works on grammar, divinity, law, medicine, philosophy, rhetoric,
astronomy, and mathematics'. Only students well versed in
Persian read Pashtu texts. Persian schools taught the literary
classics. Hindu schools taught 'the Thakooree and Gurmookhee'.
In Peshawar four schools for girls educated thirty to forty
students. The proportion of young males in school to those of
school age but not attending school remained higher in the
region than in Delhi, 12.9% to 10.9%.3
160 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Colonial preconceptions about Islam affected education

policies. Officials regarded student-scholars, 'talib ilm', with
suspicion and reduced former levels of official support to them.
Existing personal stipends were eliminated. The quality of the
education received in Muslim schools was denigrated as tainted
with 'their religious prejudices'. Any hope for improvement in
education through these schools seemed a 'visionary project',
though at the moment vital government intervention seemed
unlikely. 'The style of their education, their teachers, the very
place of their studies, are all eminently calculated to retard
improvement and to confirm in the rising generation, the bigotry
and ignorance of their father^.'^ After discussions with 'several
respectable natives', James opined that an English language
school would attract many students.
British policies of non-interference and fear of civil unrest
restrained overt administrative control over mosques and Islamic
education. Yet the imperial ability to manipulate the status of
rent-free lands and subsidies and strategies to expel from the
district religious figures charged with having no legitimate
means of support helped constrain involvement in secular affairs
by religious institutions.
In the 1850s Peshawar Commissioner Edwardes reversed an
earlier decision banning Christian missionary activities west of
the Indus. He personally patronized the Christian Missionary
Society (CMS) in Peshawar. But Christian preachers in Peshawar
bazaars daily faced intense arguments from Islamic partisans
and were officially discouraged from travelling to villages
outside the city. A CMS English language school at last opened
and supporters erected a Christian church in the old city of
Peshawar run by Punjabi missionaries. Edwardes viewed
Christianity as the key to reforming Asian and local society.
Medical missions and clinics eventually attracted thousands of
patients. But Pakhtun family and clan resistance to missionary
spiritual efforts, initiatives identified with imperial domination,
allowed only the merest handful of local conversion^.^
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 161

Land as Property
The administrative regime consolidating in the Peshawar District
was more directly involved in introducing colonial concepts of
law and property into every village. Land tenures, revenue
liabilities, and various agrarian 'rights' were categorized,
assigned, and committed to paper. At first, settlement conflicts
and decision appeals were resolved directly by revenue and
district officers who possessed all executive and judicial
authority. Over time, as a basic system of civil and criminal law
evolved from local experience interacting with imported models,
villagers and administrators mastered new codes and procedures.
All parties also confronted the consequences of implicit
philosophical contradictions contained within the general
principles underlying established legal and revenue policies. In
essence, the Peshawar District saw the rule of property
subordinated to the rule of established practice, especially
practice ingrained in hierarchies of power and influence.
In theory, the Permanent Settlement of Bengal established
the rule of colonial law, supported by an independent judiciary,
that would balance executive authority and act as the guarantor
of personal economic rights. These rights included the ability to
own and alienate property, especially land, and to enforce
contracts. English and European economic theories of agrarian-
based development, encouraging private gain through market
forces, framed an approach in which 'the revenue demand of
the state on the land was limited, rights to ownership of the land
were separated from rights to collect revenue on it and the role
of the state in the economy was cut back to the simple
preservation of law and ~ r d e r ' . ~
But almost from the beginning colonial moral legitimacy had
been based also on respecting social and religious conventions,
'customs' that limited personal and economic autonomy.
Individuals were now increasingly defined by revived 'ancient'
law codes7 and 'tradition' as being bound by family and group
obligations. Using early ideas of 'Hindu law', then of Muslim
and 'tribal' customary practice, colonial authorities codified and
162 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

established norms to resolve unfamiliar family and social

conflicts. This approach avoided the full-scale imposition of
British legal concepts and structures and helped to validate a
colonial social role as impartial arbiter. But the idea of
encouraging private ownership of land did not coexist well with
another colonial strategy of maintaining political tranquillity by
accepting rather than challenging caste, lineage, or village
practices, including established methods of land control. 'The
public law rules concerning the validity of sale for value and
the enforceability of debt contracts tended to stick fast on the
question of hereditary ancestral landed p r ~ p e r t y . ' ~
In the Peshawar valley, as much as or more than in any other
district of the colonial empire, concepts of free alienation and
contract enforcement foundered when a member of any non-
landowning class staked a claim to village acreage and thus
challenged clan possession. A Pakhtun shareholder leaving the
Peshawar valley for service in Hindustan might mortgage his
share in village fields to a brother or a relative. A Hindu
shopkeeper might have a claim on crop harvests based on debts
owed by a clan member. But even well after 1849 non-Pakhtuns
in the Peshawar valley who aspired to outright ownership of
land through the takeover of a defaulted mortgage or in lieu of
unpaid advances or loans were deterred by a colonial system in
which numerous layers of court proceedings and appeals
protected colonial and lineage interests.
During the 1857-8 period any lingering doubts about the
permanency of the British colonial presence in the Peshawar
valley were dispelled as the military institutionalized an absolute
regional domination through force. During the great revolt, the
unsettled political climate encouraged Islamic activists in Panjtar
and Sitana. The British blamed these groups for corresponding
with Hindustani regiments in the Peshawar area and for rallying
dissident maliks and individuals in British-controlled villages of
the north-eastem valley. In response, in the summer of 1857
British forces raided Narinji, a 'British' village, and in 1858
attacked and destroyed Panjtar and Sitana. Any fundamental
political implications of these local conflicts were submerged in
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 163

colonial polemics condemning the 'most rancorous and seditious

letters ...intercepted from Muhammadan bigots in Patna and
Thanesar.. .'; other correspondence regarding 'the fanatics in
Swat and Sitana'; and unrest attributed to the 'red hot fanatic'
from Kunar province in Afghanistan. Religion stirred emotion
among many, but remained only one element influencing local
politics. Support among border Mohmand clans for the 'fanatic'
Sayyid from Kunar rapidly declined when the British
compromised and restored to Mohmand arbabs subsidies that
had been revoked in 1854.9
Through the 1860s the Peshawar District administration
continued to perfect an internal structure of order and control.
Successes in regularizing revenue processes and developing a
court system encouraged attempts to draw fuller distinctions
between the rights and obligations of villagers nominally within
the extreme limits of settled district borders and those viewed
as residents of independent territories. Illusions of having
understood and controlled valley populations led colonial
decision-makers to badly misjudge their ability to draw an
absolute border or to permanently alter the behaviour of
neighboring clans.
Internal administrative conformity to the greater Punjab model
was evident by mid-1865 as the formal surveying and land-
rights allocation process slowly revising James' Peshawar
District settlement reached the Yusufzai sub-division. Issues
outstanding for years, even decades, were closely considered.
From 1849 Punjab officials had faced multiple revenue and
land claims, including those based on official agreements dating
to the Sikh era and earlier. A typical case involved a submission
for renewal of a forty-rupee payment given by Ranjit Singh in
lieu of a land grant. 'The claimant stated that the original sanad
from Ranjit Singh had been given to Governor Avitabile in
return for an order (pawana). This in turn had been submitted
to officials early in the British period when such claims came
under review. An 1855 decision said that with the pawaria now
missing and no existing deed of grant from the original grantee,
the claimant's father, the award was 'resumeable' or ended.1°
164 S E T L I N G THE FRONTIER

Such decisions now accumulated in the permanent institutional

memory of the files of British records offices.
From the beginning, the general Punjab policy stated that
because District Revenue and Civil courts had no documentary
evidence on the basis of which to settle land disputes, revenue
officers must simply assemble records of land possession until
actual settlement operations put a settlement officer in a position
to consider direct evidence of field and village land use. Only
then could final 'rights in the soil' be assigned." And only then,
after an initial decision, could cases be submitted to the Civil
Court system. Early efforts to minimize disputes emphasized
the arbitration skills of settlement officers. A policy to limit
disputes to a revenue context included the decision that no claim
'...shall be heard as a question of possession or right in any
criminal court' . I 2
A conservative approach was nominally taken, apparently
securing the status of non-land-owning hereditary cultivators
(hamsayas or fakirs). As 'occupancy tenants' they could not
sell rights of cultivation, but could make 'temporary'
arrangements leaving others to work the land. As long as such a
tenant paid the 'rent' due he could not be evicted.I3 But rules
now defined 'tenants' in residence less than twelve years as
tenants-at-will liable to arbitrary eviction.
The literal groundwork for the formal 1869- 1876 Regular
Settlement slowly proceeded in the mid- 1860s. In May 1865 an
Extra Assistant Commissioner, 'Atta' Muhammad Khan, with
thirteen secretaries and assistants began taking exact
measurements of one hundred and ninety-two villages in the
Yusufzai sub-division. They adjudicated the range of possible
land-related litigious disputes and prepared village 'genealogical
trees' illustrating statements of village shares. Early work in the
Yusufzai sub-division continued until December 1865. Details
were summarized in a standard four-page printed report that
contained fifty-four sub-headings detailing disputes, rent-free
investigations, measurement and assessment details, and
settlement expenses.I4 Over the eight months the effort resulted
in complete measurements of thirty-five villages, with the
remainder 'pending'.
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 165

In the past, in an era of abundant land and fixed shares, an

indeterminate or disputed claim to a particular plot of family
patrimony or land held by others had remained either a
negligible issue or one not worth settling through confrontation
and a potential feud. Now, with a permanent record being
assembled, several claims were advanced, including some from
the powerful and influential. Claimants filed twenty proprietary
claims to entire villages, though only one such case was resolved
in the early period.
The order symbolized by complex procedures and field
reports could not disguise the human shortcomings of the
revenue administration and local strategies of accommodation.
At the end of 1867, officials unearthed 'defalcations' in the
Yusufzai settlement office. 'Much of the settlement office' local
staff were found guilty of stealing penalty funds paid into the
department for village breaches of minor criminal or settlement-
department regulations. Between eleven and twelve hundred
rupees had disappeared.I5 Low-level British officials, frequently
transferred and rarely interested in the finer details of village
documents first recorded in the Urdu language, never solved the
problem of absolute internal controls. No comprehensive
surveillance could be guaranteed over relations between
tahsildars, village revenue patwaris, and villagers desiring to
manipulate records of field maps and tenures.
After 1947, a retired official with decades of local experience,
including duty as Assistant Commissioner in the Yusufzai Sub-
division, remembered:

...and the richer people were in a very strong position to bribe the
local recorder-er-to record more land or different land or the
enemy's land or something of that kind, and the patwari was very
low paid and the corruption to some extent was inevitable,
although there was a very good system of checks and balances
and it was usually put right, but I think there was a good deal of
corruption; also there was corruption in certain cases in the
courts.. .in the-er-certainly in the Police and the.. .and the-er-lower
ranks of the police i n bringing cases to court and probably to
some extent in the -um- in civil law, too.I6
166 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

The 1869-74 Regular Settlement, only completed in 1876,

symbolized the full integration of the Peshawar District
administration into the Punjabi and larger colonial pattern.
Trained personnel freed from completed settlements in other
Punjab districts arrived to revise and complete earlier Peshawar
revenue work. By then, old political bounded areas based on
clan settlement tappas had been reorganized into tahsils. The
Mohmand and Khalil tappas now formed the Peshawar Tahsil.
The Hashtnagar, 'Naushahra', and 'Doaba Daudai' tahsils
completed the western valley. In 1872 officials divided the early
Yusafzai Tahsil, considered 'an unmanageably large one', into
the Yusafzai (Mardan) Tahsil and Utman Bolak Tahsil. For
revenue purposes the new Yusufzai tahsil was internally split
into eight 'assessment circles' (chaklas) that divided the area by
soil types, access to water, and geography rather than original
clan boundaries.
During the Regular Settlement one hundred and fifty-two
patwaris, one hundred and thirty-four assistants, and three hundred
and twenty-two 'extra amins' surveyed the Peshawar District. A
local unit of measurement, the karu, equal to sixty-six inches,
scaled all maps. Surveyors used plain tables, sixty-six foot-long
chains, and rods one karu in length. Field maps (shajras) and
'pedigree tables' detailed and structured complex village
holdings." Officials compared village genealogies with greater
clan genealogies. It took twenty-two months to finish the
measurement process, though 'errors' were assumed in data about
border villages. In some border areas officials simply could not
complete the process as, 'the cultivation was generally in the
hands of men of independent territory whose attendance at the
same time with the proprietors was not always advisable or
obtainable'. l 8
The institutional policies of the revenue administration had
potential social consequences in Peshawar as in the greater
Punjab. The simple choice of the 'village' as the 'unit of
administration'I9 might begin fragmenting the familial and clan
ties and obligations that linked diverse neighbouring settlements,
including bandas and lineage offshoots.
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 167

The leeway given to early settlement officers meant that

policy decisions could express personal views of local social
conditions and how best to influence them. James continued
mowajibs to elite north-eastern khans, but recommended against
continuing grants to non-hierarchical tappas. The bringing of
mosque (masjid) inam lands on to the tax rolls symbolically
subordinated Islam to the colonial state, though political
considerations left the lands exempt from actual revenue
demand.20Early analysis of Peshawar 'feudal' society by James
and Edwardes justified expedient political and revenue policies
and exemplified local understandings recognizable in more
sophisticated form in later Punjab policies.
The British rationalized applying the principle of collective
responsibility for village revenues to Punjab districts and the
Peshawar area as being consistent with maintaining the lineage
bonds of 'bhaiachara' village organization. Yet the act of
recording village genealogical 'pedigrees' could stifle social
processes of lineage fragmentation while structuring divisions
for future political competition. A Pakhtun sense of being one
among proprietary shareholders unified by a common history of
village settlement was contradicted by awareness of being
considered among now jointly responsible 'owners' of personal
pieces of land; ownership no longer secured by clan practice
but regularized by settlement office records and court-based
legal d e ~ i s i o n s . ~A' steady increase in land-related cases in
Peshawar courts was an indication of the extent to which
resources, ambitions, and family futures realigned themselves
to the authority of colonial institutions.

Codifying Custom
During the 1869-74 period the Settlement Officer, E. G .
Hastings, asked settlement officials to compile a record of local
customs about the inheritance and transfer of property. Officials
gathered tappa and village-level responses about rights in
168 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

property and land, including the rights of widows and children,

and listed whether particular rights originated in Islamic 'law'
or clan 'custom'. As Hindu law codes had been compiled and
consulted by legal authorities to resolve personal and property
disputes, officials codified Punjab 'customary law' to provide
convenient, locally legitimate guidance.
Creating a record of local customs of property inheritance
and transfer could be done only through the limited, elite
contacts developed by colonial authorities. The method of
gathering customs involved drafting questions that the settlement
officers needed answered. Questions related to property rights
were distributed to 'leading men' who were instructed to explain
the questions 'to all concerned within their circles'. On an agreed
day the leading men 'with representatives from all villages
within the tahsil' met with officials.22 Though the questions
were later released for public comment, in essence, only khans,
arbabs, maliks, and revenue lambardars considered the
questions and provided the answers.
The methodology required the listing of precedents and
exceptions. Officials compared personal statements to evidence
revealed by genealogical tables and a 'separate statement of
customs for each village'. Implicit was the notion that
unchanging village 'custom' existed and had only to be logged
and elaborated. But such an artificial process contained the
inherent risk that any 'custom' specific to the village level might
represent as much recent family practice as any clan or tribal
tradition. Officials actually recorded 'New customs wished for
the future'. Admittedly an unusual step, this occurred because
the Financial Commissioner had not yet furnished officials with
either 'the definition of what was to be considered a custom' or
any idea of 'what was necessary to be recorded'.23
Clan leaders in each tappa were to provide an accurate view
of the accepted ability of a proprietor to dispose of his property,
of the inheritance shares of a childless widow, and of shares of
sons, daughters, and their children. But a process that allowed
the major stakeholders to consider their answers and weigh
possible consequences inevitably produced a sanitized set of
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 169

responses. Specific Pakhtunwali practices differing from Islamic

norms might be publicly associated with religious orthodoxy
from motivations of piety or respectability despite being contrary
to the facts. Pragmatic handling of family land by sons-in-law,
daughters, widows, or others might not be practices clan leaders
would want formalized for future reference.
When reviewing about the rights of a widow 'whose husband
has died childless', officials decided that 'in many cases' in
villages of the old Khattak, Khalsa, and Qasba areas the answer
given, that 'Muhammadan law' was followed, 'was nothing
more than what they wished for the future'.24 In other words,
widows without children despite having an Islamic claim to a
share of their husband's property did not receive it. The need to
declare a definitive 'answer' inevitably discarded a range of
practices favoured in different tappas. 'Exceptions' discussed
indicated that, in fact, sdme widows might receive a share or a
percentage of produce. Others might expect only maintenance
for life. Yet others might be allowed a strong supervisory role
over a husband's land under the nominal protection of male
relatives.
The 'general custom' recording how sons divided a father's
property hinted at the influence of hierarchies. The Islamic rule
about equal division among sons was modified in tappas where
clan internal stratification had occurred. Was it actual custom,
elite respondents, or power that ignored an equitable distribution
ideal dating to Sheikh Mali to insist that in the Khalil tappa 'the
share attaching to the arbabi is separate, and is the sole right of
the successor to the arbabi or chiefship'? In the Doaba and
Amanzai areas the eldest son of a ntalik or khaiz was entitled
not only to his personal share but to the whole of the family
inam. In the Yusufzai sub-division areas of Kamalzai, Razzar,
and Utman Nama 'the eldest son of the khan who succeeds to
the khanship is said to be entitled to two shares' of family
property, 'over and above the rights attaching to the k h a n s h i ~ ' . * ~
Explaining 'these modifications of the general custom*, in
the Yusufzai region it was said 'that the sons have not received
equal shares, but this is usually traceable to the act of the father
170 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

during his lifetime distributing his land unequally among his

sons'.26 That is, personal choices of elite khans dating back
perhaps only a generation or two could create a 'custom' that
now codified 'modification' and unequal distributions of clan
shares. Shifting inequalities arising from fluid contests decided
by power, personality, and imperial patronage were now frozen
as precedents for future generations.
Genuine differences of property relations existed in the
Peshawar valley. In the main valley sons by different mothers
divided estate shares equally among themselves (pagri vesh). In
the Yusufzai tappas shares were divided equally among sets of
sons by different wives and were then subdivided among each
wife's sons (parunai ~ e s h ) . ~Widows' and daughters in the
Yusufzai tappas had the least apparent or proclaimed rights
under 'custom'. In the Razzar tappa patriarchy dominated,
especially for childless widows. 'The proprietors gave as their
custom that the widow was only entitled to maintenance.' Unlike
in other valley tappas, in Razzar proprietors could not gift land
to daughters, as in occasional dowry gifts (dahez). In fact,
'Tappa Razzar does not under any circumstances allow property
to go to the daughter'.28
In valley tappas, excepting Razzar, proprietors could dispose
of their land as they wished in their lifetime, disinheriting or
giving inequable treatment to different sons. 'Custom' said that
a verbal gift of land was sufficient to secure the possession of a
son-in-law. But now that written records existed in which
leading proprietors could define their own 'rights', 'For the
future, all wish it to be obligatory to have a written deed, but
that the son-in-law in possession be continued as a tenant with
right of o c ~ u p a n c y ' .Sons-in-law
~~ and daughters who might
have expected their sons, the original proprietor's grandchildren,
to be recognized as shareholders, even without a deed of gift.
now might see their sons defined by dominant lineages as
'tenants' and denied 'ownership'.
This last refinement, turning an inheritance matter earlier
subject to acceptance or dispute among Pakhtun shareholders to
the advantage of main lineages, previewed the way colonial
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 171

codes and policies narrowed previously contingent possibilities.

In its details, the exercise in creating a body of knowledge
about property relationships exposed how the powerful could
conveniently define their actions as Islamic or 'customary' and
literally write the precedents to be followed in future disputes.30
The colonial process of defining a body of landless tenants
continued with the production of a customary code that did not
recognize loose practices leading to social mobility and excluded
non-shareholders from any stake in historic land devolution
practices of apparent antiquity.
The Peshawar District customary law, assembled during the
Regular Settlement, was printed in the final report and in a
portion of a related Urdu volume3' written by Gopal Das, an
experienced Punjab settlement officer. This early record
preceded a formal district Customary Law Code published in
1899.32The wide range of evidence gathered suggested that,
historically, Pakhtun custom existed less in a normative sense
than as a body of flexible practices adapted by clans, khels, and
individual families from broad patriarchal, lineage, and Islamic
ideals. The effect of codifying this social practice was to turn
locally negotiated, adaptive processes of family and lineage
practice into formal lists of precedents to be picked over by
magistrates and village rivals." Social identities were reduced
to fixed economic relationships. Even at the time, one colonial
observer analysed the way these codes diminished the moral
authority of village councils, as courts appropriated the right to
make 'customary' decisions." Colonial legal sanction derived
from such customary law codes bypassed village councils,
including Pakhtun jirgas, even as i t displaced religious
injunction and authority as an imperial basis of l e g i t i m a ~ yIn
.~~
this way Edwardes' idea of negotiating between two systems of
authority in the colonial border area was partially realized.
David Gilmartin has argued that by using lineage custom to
understand and control Punjab society British administrators
attempted to marry colonial power to 'an "ideology" of tribal
organization'. This effort derived from expediency and a
growing body of ethnographic and government analysis
172 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

visualizing the colonial empire as a guardian nurturing the less

fortunate towards ci~ilization.)~ The patronage of customary
practice became a key policy validating this colonial ambition.
At the same time, this patronage neatly appropriated clan
knowledge and authority into colonial institutions. Lineage and
genealogy that had served as clan ideological armour against
Mughal hierarchies now faced subordination within an imperial
hierarchy headed by a queen-empress, Victoria.

Constructing Boundaries
After 1857-8, East India Company territories came under the
direct rule of the English crown and the populations west of the
Indus experienced the effects of intensified efforts to establish a
morally legitimate colonial political authority. More than
previous empires primarily concerned with influencing
individuals, clans, and strategic locations the new power claimed
absolute control over a spatially defined 'British territory' and
its population. West of the Indus this involved creating both
political differences and a recognized border between colonial
districts and diverse 'independent' 'tribal' regions. Pursued
through military coercion and the development of police,
revenue, and judiciary systems, these institution-building
.activities represented themselves as socially beneficial and
progressive.
A complementary achievement of this period was the
development of a colonial archive of studies of local languages,
history, and society. Reference to this archive further helped
validate policies claimed to be based on a scientific foundation
as opposed to indigenous despotism, fanaticism, and ignorance.
Official reports presenting a singular, authoritative perspective
now screened current local perspectives.
Between 1849 and 1878, one source listed twenty-two
different 'frontier expeditions against the Afghans on our
border^'.^' Rarely could the British military decisively defeat
foothill and independent highland clans able to withdraw into
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 173

mountain refuges and pursue endless irregular war. Peshawar

authorities perfected the surprise punitive dawn raid in which
villages were attacked, crops threatened, and concessions
extorted from local maliks and khans, either before or after
fighting. A dual imperial potential for ongoing 'diplomatic'
communications and violent military action contributed to the
polarizing effect upon internal Pakhtun political stability. During
this process, the British attempted to create a body of separate
British 'subjects', while asserting indirect influence over
nominally independent neighbouring clans.
Episodes of colonial coercion traced the ambiguous
relationship between power and colonial knowledge. In 1849
government troops assaulted Babuzai village and the adjacent
Bazdurrah sub-valley in the foothills leading to Swat. An
experienced linguist accompanying this expedition, Lt. H. G.
Raverty, eventually wrote a Pashtu grammar and a dictionary.
His translations of Persian and Pashtu manuscripts gradually
gave to the west access to centuries of regional history and
literatures3*But soon after 1849 he transferred with his regiment
from the Peshawar valley. He remained unable to turn his local
expertise to advantage either in a posting in Peshawar or a
satisfying military career. His retirement, at a relatively young
age, perhaps related to an uncompromising personality revealed
in text footnotes, indicated the subordinate position that
uncommitted scholarly knowledge had in the post-1857 colonial
establishment. A large portion of his most exceptional historical
research was actually published as filler in two volumes of route
descriptions assembled for the use of units engaged in the second
Anglo-Afghan war of 1878-82.39
In 1852 the British continued efforts to extend their 'frontier'
across the north of the Peshawar valley to the final passes into
Swat. A letter of 18 May 1852 told how a force marched that
morning 'with a view to commence the destruction of all the
villages in the Ranezai Valley'. 'After burning Iskakot', Dargai
village was 'completely destroyed'. At the time, Shergarh village
seven or eight miles from Iskakot served as 'our frontier village'.
The schedule for the next day included orders 'to proceed to
burn other villages in Ranezai.. .'40
174 SETT'LING THE FRONTIER

The British forced the area into submission by making claims

against specific villages, then using locally recruited troops,
some in service since the 1839-42 first Anglo-Afghan war, to
enforce compliance. These confrontations were not absolute
imperial-local conflicts based on ethnicity or religion. Colonial
patronage and power did offer alternative choices for villagers.
The 1852 report, made after the first day of action, included the
information that ' . ..some other men of Captain Coke's Regiment
have lost relatives who were fighting against us, and many of
our own subjects were doubtless arrayed against us, yet recruits
flock to Captain Coke's and Lt. Lumsden's Regiments for
service after as before the fight'.41
When Lawrence described his December 1849 attacks on
several 'Loonkhor' villages of the northern foothill area, he
wrote that 'foreigners' from Swat aided the defenders of Sangao,
Palli, Zormandi, and Sher Khana. He said they were 'driven
like sheep' back across the 'frontier' and that there nothing
prevented a pursuit into 'their country' had it been wished 'to
add Swat to the British dominion^'.^^ But by 1852 high
casualties caused the British military commander 'to be less
than ever disposed to attempt to enter Swat...'
Imperial reasoning that included conceptions of subject,
frontier, 'their country', and British dominion left little room
for any historical understanding of regional culture and society,
and even for scholarship like Raverty's. Afghans defined as
'subjects' now were judged from the perspective of an imperial
state in the process of consolidating its authority. Residents of
the hill country between the Swat and Peshawar valleys had
long histories of trade, grazing, and agrarian relations that
followed established patterns of interaction and conflict
resolution. As the British presence menaced the passes into Swat
and Buner the mutually transforming effects of imperial state-
tribal clan contact became apparent. The Peshawar
administration, often requiring only token conformity to
standards of revenue and order, nevertheless frequently polarized
village opinions, creating new factions in dual opposition. This
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 175

fragmentation substantially contributed to a new 'border'

sensibility. Between 1861 and 1866 the practice of sheer
coercion peaked, giving this interactive dynamic a more
prominent role.
The great security threat to imperial interests in the Peshawar
valley had ended in 1858. The lesson learned seemed to be that
properly deployed power would enforce the colonial will, not
only within the imperial boundaries but in immediately
surrounding territories. In 1858 the Islamic communities in
Panjtar and Sitana villages had been displaced eastward to Malka
village in the small Chamla valley south-east of Buner. The
British exerted pressure on local clans declaring them proprietors
of the Panjtar and Sitana lands and in return holding them
responsible for enforcing a ban on the return of the Islamist
'Mujahideen'. But the imperial need to impose its own standards
on local village practices continued to involve Peshawar officials
in less vital situations, especially along the northern border of
the Yusufzai sub-division.
As the British slowly assimilated the Lundkhwar or Baizai
region into the colonial mainstream, villagers of the adjacent
Ranezai and Utman Khel foothill regions found their local
activities redefined and subject to unfamiliar consequences. In
the Bazdurrah valley of the Ranezai clan villages of Palli, Sher
Khana, and Zormandi and in the nearby villages of three Utman
Khel clans,43British concepts of law and order encroached upon
a borderless society in which '...political decisions, the conduct
of law, and the protection of life and property (were) the
responsibility of members of the local community, whose actions
(were) governed by internal consideration^'.^^
The hills and ridge lines dividing Swat, Bazdurrah, and the
Utman Khel tappa channeled rather than blocked foot and pack-
animal traffic. Peshawar valley and Utman Khel villagers
travelled to Swat through the Bazdurrah valley to purchase rice,
bullocks, and clarified butter (glzce). Feuding Utman Khel
villagers took refuge in the Bazdurrah valley. Bazdurrah
residents moved temporarily to Utman Khel villages for family
or agrarian reasons. Some Palli residents tilled fields in the
176 S E T L I N G THE FRONTIER

Utman Khel tappa. Betrothals occurred and loans given and

returned between residents of the different areas. Agreements
existed over rights to cut grass for fodder, including on the hill
dividing Palli from Kharkai. In Palli, transit tolls were levied
with varying fees per bullock load of ghee, rice, iron, cloth,
fruit, and indigo. Traders with mules travelled in one day from
Qasmi village iri Lundkhwar through the Bazdurrah valley to
Tannah village in Swat. In one day loaded bullocks from Tannah
could reach Palli or Gujar Baba village south of the Bazdurrah
area.45
Such normally benign behaviour experienced disruption when
aggrieved parties attempted to recover defaulted loans, redress
broken promises, and avenge perceived injuries. Individuals and
families used 'bota barampta' to seize guilty persons, their cattle,
or their produce to force payments or exact concessions.
Individuals and property from the village of the accused were
subject to capture. When such seizure was declared unlawful
and when outright robbery occurred, revenge-seeking and feud
resulted.
In 1861-2 numerous local incidents consistent with Pakhtun
ideas of justice and honour occurred in the Bazdurrah and Utman
Khel territories. A Zormandi villager named Kurram seized three
head of cattle being led down from Swat by a resident of Katlang
village as leverage to force agreement over a claim he had on a
house in Katlang. Amirullah Khan of Palli seized thirteen rupees
from a Kharkai resident because another Kharkai shareholder
had gone to Hindustan without repaying a loan. The men of
Palli held two men of Kharkai for cutting grass in the wrong
place. Amirullah Khan was blamed for several seizures,
including that of the agricultural implements of a passing tiller.
The brother of a Palli woman who had eloped with Asaf, a Palli
man, tracked the pair to Kharkai where he stabbed to death
Asaf s cousin in partial redressal of the family honour.46
These commonplace details of Pakhtun life gained
significance in 1861-2 because in this period the British claimed
the Utman Khel villages as government territory, while
Bazdurrah was still considered outside the 'border'. Utman Khel
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 177

maliks appealed for action to local police authorities and to the

office of the Assistant Commissioner in Mardan. The authorities
compiled many of these acts on a 'List of offences' committed
by the Ranezai clans. 'Crimes' defined as detainment, robbery,
and murder now became the responsibility of British officers.
Officials attributed nineteen offences from May 1861 to
December 1862 valued at eighty-nine rupees to Sher Khana
residents. Another forty-five rupees in losses were ascribed to
'the Bazdurrah men'.
On investigation in late 1862, the Assistant Commissioner
found the root of much conflict in an eight-year-old loan of two
hundred and sixty rupees from Amirullah Khan to 'Masom' of
Kharkai. Masom had gone to Hindustan while his brother, still
tilling Masom's share, 'failed to make restitution'. Other trouble
came from a twenty-year-old debt of thirty-three rupees, a six-
year-old payment owed for the price of a buffalo, and small
property and grazing dispute^.^' Because of the death of Ghulam
Shah, the Lundkhwar malik long responsible for collecting
revenue and maintaining order, the Assistant Commissioner
'appointed' a jirga of northern village maliks to arbitrate the
conflicts.
Political events in Swat and Bazdurrah precluded any
immediate resolution of the cases, but proposed possible
solutions included 'enforcing compensation', levying fines,
making local maliks responsible for security, or blockading
Bazdurrah and cutting it off from markets in the Peshawar
valley. For neither the first time nor the last, it was clear that
the mere ability to claim authority and define crimes and
offences did not necessarily resolve the grievances or erase long
standing socio-economic relationships. In the end, the exercise
was 'more to arrive at a satisfactory arrangement for the future
than retain redress for the past' and to 'convince' Palli residents
that they could not continue to harass 'our people'.48
The patient processes of establishing communication, and of
developing local knowledge and confidence in a new legal and
political environment were little valued by many British military
authorities who continued to supply the administrative cadre of
178 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

the Peshawar valley. When the Islamic activists of Malka, now

in alliance with the late Sayyid Akbar Shah's son Mubarik,
continued agitation and, in late 1863, reasserted claims in the
Sitana area, 'the Government decided to make an effort to
extirpate this centre of di~affection'.~~ The Peshawar Division
Commissioner was now Reynell Taylor, earlier a lieutenant
under Lawrence in Peshawar in 1847.
Malka was in Amazai Mandanr country at the eastern end of
the short Chamla valley south-east of Buner. To reach it from
Rustam village in the Sudhum valley of the settled district,
travellers went over the Ambela Pass then, instead of turning
left into Buner, turned right into the Chamla valley. British
authorities planned to march a column, quickly and
unannounced, up the Sudhum valley, cross into the Chamla
valley, and seize Malka. Authorities overestimated the actual
threat of the Islamic figures and misjudged too the long approach
valley and rugged terrain of the Ambela Pass. It took two days
.to assemble the attacking column on the pass. The decision not
to notify the Swat and Buner clans of the expedition's limited
objective led thousands of men from different hill valleys to
mass to stop the column. Hundreds of pages of colonial
justification fail to conclude that this ultimate village raid was a
fiasco second only to the loss of an entire colonial army in the
1839-42 first Anglo-Afghan war.
Opposition stopped the column in the rugged pass country.
British prestige required reinforcements and some demonstration
of success. In six weeks of heavy fighting from late October
1863 one source estimated that nine hundred colonial soldiers
died. Another source listed two hundred and thirty-eight killed,
with nineteen hundred and thirty-three wounded." The British
marshalled their resources and succeeded in traversing the pass.
But the column halted with clan reinforcements arriving and
twenty-one miles left to reach Malka. Continued fighting
threatened not only the independence of Buner and Swat but
also several British careers. A compromise formula was devised
that saved face on both sides with an agreement that a few
British officers would be escorted to Malka. There Buner and
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 179

Swat khans would oversee the destruction of the village. Again

the Islamic activists were symbolically dispersed to other hill
villages. But the event ended for a generation any efforts at
military coercion north of the Swat and Buner foothills.
By mid-November 1863 Hugh James had replaced Taylor as
Commissioner. By August 1864 the Peshawar Division had a
new Commissioner, the Peshawar District a new Deputy
Commissioner, and the Yusufzai sub-division a new Assistant
Commissioner. Colonial and post-colonial discourse diffused
responsibility and softened judgements on British policy.
Popular literature blamed fanaticism inspired by Swat's pre-
eminent spiritual leader Abdul Ghaffur, respectfully titled
'Akhund'. In discussing Ambela, Caroe suggested that the
Akhund of Swat eventually 'came in' against the British. Caroe
speculated that Ajab Khan, the Amazai Mandanr khan, had
incited opposition because he had not been consulted about the
campaign. But, in fact, Ajab Khan was rewarded for his
participation in the Ambela campaign" and on 1 January 1877
was one of twenty-seven klzarzs to receive a certificate
commemorating the district 'Imperial Assemblage' celebrating
the crowning of Queen Victoria as Empress of India. And though
religious rhetoric did inspire clans fighting the British, the
Akhund of Swat was probably neither present at Ambela nor
acted as a political opponent organizing a religious war." A
British overconfidence in the effectiveness of military solutions,
derived from years of minor 'frontier campaigns' and
increasingly condescending attitudes towards Afghan
populations, led to a flawed analysis and mistaken policy. In
discussing Ambela Caroe praised British elan, chivalry,
manliness, and gallantry, but never once blamed British
overreaching and distorted colonial mentalities.
The perceived role of the Akhund of Swat at Ambela was
important in understanding the colonial substitution of
fundamental political issues with images of individual Islamic
fanaticism. The British demonized Abdul Ghaffur, an ascetic
religious scholar who had left studies in the Peshawar valley to
return to Swat during the Sikh period. Popular histories and
180 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

secondary official reports portrayed him as a constant

conspirator against the British, as the power able to appoint a
'king' of Swat, and as the one personally responsible for the
holy war at Ambela. In his near contemporary discussion of
these claims Raverty demolished such orientalist constructions
on an item-by-item basis.53 He analysed the complex secular
and religious connotations of the title 'Badshah' conferred by
the Akhund upon Sayyid Akbar Shah before the Sayyid's death
in 1857. And he also recorded the reaction of an old Buner
acquaintance who had been present at Ambela. The Pakhtun
scoffed at the idea that the Akhund, characterized by Raverty as
a 'poor decrepit old recluse', had been there. Any later
knowledgeable disagreement about the level of secular and
spiritual authority actually possessed by the Akhund or by
Sayyid Akbar Shah54came long after reductive colonial annals
that, for the rest of the nineteenth century, characterized clan
resistance as springing from an outdated, irrational religion.

Tribal Formation
The aftermath of the Ambela events witnessed a series of local
and imperial reactions typifying the process in which imperial
contact altered clan and village socio-political structures.
Residents of the Peshawar valley, especially from the Utman
Khel tappa, had attacked the British army on the Ambela Pass.
During the conflict James apparently intended 'to make a severe
example of their disloyalty'. But the expensive check to British
military ambitions, the large number of villagers involved, and
a wish to defuse 'the excitement of what had been proclaimed
as a Ghuzza or religious war', induced a pragmatic, non-violent
solution. In March 1864 officials summoned the Utman Khel
'jirga' and levied a fine of twenty-five hundred rupees.55
Bitter internal Utman Khel differences of opinion about the
jirga summons meant that not all the leading maliks attended,
though the fine was paid. Soon after, dissension, 'stimulated by
the incidence of the fine', arose as those who had boycotted the
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 181

jirga abused those rnaliks who had attended. The three Utman
Khel clans, the Ismail Khel, Daud Khel, and Sesadda, suffered
internal splits. The Ismail Khel village of Barmoul, in the
foothills, expelled Malik Bazgul who had favoured the jirga
solution. Bazgul took refuge in the Ismail Khel village of Kui,
located in the plains three miles below Barmoul. Malik
'Summut' of Kui, opposed to the jirga and payment of the fine,
was expelled from Kui and moved up to Barmoul. The Daud
Khel experienced the same split and interchange between the
highland village of Mian Khan and the plains village of Pipul.
By July 1864 the two Utman Khel hill villages, joined by
Sangao, a third hill village, confronted the plains villages, which
now held 'the majority of those disposed towards the
Government'. In August the Ismail Khel villages fought,
resulting in several fatalities. In late September fighting
continued between the plains villages and Mian Khan and
Sangao, now reinforced with supporters from Sher Khan and
Zormandi in the Bazdurrah valley. Fighting continued into
October 1864.
Commissioner James did not involve himself in the conflict,
despite pleas for help from the plains villages to the Assistant
Commissioner in Mardan. One official speculated that James felt
that the villages all deserved a kind of self-inflicted punishment
or perhaps that when the villages were finally exhausted they
might be 'more amenable to punishment and subjection'. A new
Division Commissioner replaced James in late October 1864.56
After Ambela another military solution was not a serious option,
yet events had moved beyond simply compiling another list of
offences. Officials attempted a political solution. A new Deputy
Commissioner called another jirga from all the involved villages,
then immediately put twenty-one maliks in jail.
After variously considering punishing 'the more influential
and disloyal Mulliks', imposing a heavy fine, or taking hostages,
officials decided to pursue an old strategy recommended by
area khans and maliks and used in Sangao village by Edwardes
in 1855. The Bazdurrah valley villages were to provide
temporary hostages. But the final answer was to move the Utman
182 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Khel hill villages down to the plains, 'where they would be

available and open to attack and control'. The earlier Sangao
removal had failed due to a lack of surveillance during the 1857
emergency and the site had been reoccupied. Now officials
prepared a detailed plan that considered water sources and
logistics.
In January 1866 soldiers evacuated Sangao, Mian Khan, and
Barmoul, then levelled every building in the villages. Elephants
were used to flatten walls. Labour drafted from local villages
built new homes in selected locations in the plains. Officials
relocated Barmoul residents at Kui. A 14 February letter reported
'the perfect re-establishment of the new' village^.^' After
inspecting the old village sites the Assistant Commissioner wrote
of the 'striking and impressive' change. At the old site of Mian
Khan he felt 'staggered for a moment'. It gave the appearance
'uncultivated ground', it being easier to walk over the ruins
than to search for the old lanes. Odd wall sections survived,
none over three feet high. He wrote that,

...as regards the perfect demolition the same remarks apply to

Sunghao and Burmoul, except that the latter being a very old village
(some 150 years it is said) and built in a succession of terraces gave
it, after seeing Mian Khan and Sungao 9 somewhat less desolate
appearance, still here I walked without difficulty over the ruins;
one or two trees left on this old site will be cut down and the
facings of the terraces broken up, this will be completed in the
course of two or three days..

Referring to the new houses hurriedly constructed, he said,

I see no great difference between the present erections and those of

other villages, and it must be borne in mind that the speed itself
was necessarily an important element in the plan, which could only
be effectually carried out at once while the punishment was still
fresh and the impression of the power of government irresistible,
leaving alone the important fact that delay would have caused
extensive injury to well grown crops and possibly to the gathering
of the harvest.s9
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS

Codifying Authority
By the 1870s, this kind of border-making had framed areas of a
tentative settled district. Internal Punjab and Peshawar valley
legal innovations had defined and secured occupancy rights for
non-Pakhtun tenants, used codified custom and appointed jirgas
to resolve sensitive family and civil disputes, and protected the
position of elite landowners. Such new laws included the
Encumbered Estates and Court of Wards Acts that placed the
land of bankrupt khans under court supervision rather than
letting it fall into the hands of moneylenders or outside suppliers
of capital. With Peshawar valley security and stability the
priority, this last measure permitted the displacing of a
disfavoured khan, then the eventual restoration of the property
to a relative in a manner that kept the estate in an important
lineage.
Through the rest of the nineteenth century legal mechanisms
allowed the Peshawar government to withstand the pressures of
social or market forces when politically expedient. If the
'attitude of the colonial state towards a hypothetical capitalist
transformation was notoriously a m b i g u o u ~ ' ,Pakhtun
~~ clan
control over land ownership and official patronage of elite
landowners negated the market mechanism in Peshawar more
than in other Punjab or imperial districts. Because of the tight
control of land, the growing Punjab debt foreclosure 'problem'
that led to land being transferred to non-agrarian mortgage and
debt holders was a minor factor in the nineteenth century
Peshawar valley and insignificant within the Yusufzai sub-
division.
Within this context of avoiding obvious politically sensitive
moves, a pragmatic judicial regime developed. Punjab
administrators demanded that Peshawar District authorities
increase convictions and reduce perceived high crime rates. One
tool approved for the trans-Indus districts was a second legal
code to deal with 'tribal' and 'border' crimes not properly
covered by the Indian Penal Code. The Punjab Frontier Crime
184 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Regulations, first instituted in 1872, allowed cases without

enough evidence for an English judge to convict to be assigned
to a locally selected panel of elders, an official jirga, for
consideration. On a judgement of culpability, British officials
then decided the punishment. This appropriation of the key
village political idiom, the jirga council, was intended to
increase convictions in cases regarding honour, enmity, land,
and women where clan testimony could not be sorted out by
English judges.
The growth of the colonial legal system in Peshawar courts
complemented an effort to convert military dominance into a
socio-cultural legitimacy that, at the very least, might reduce
security expenses. Acts of political and religious 'disaffection'
and colonially induced social unrest were now labelled as
violations of the Indian Penal Code or the Frontier Crime
Regulations. Cattle lifting or poisoning and haystack burning
remained characterized as traditional crimes related to feuds
and old enmities. If such incidents occurred on the estates of the
Mandanr khans, officials never regarded them as signs of
political resistance, social protest, or opposition to elite
Pakhtuns. The ability of Punjab officials to deploy legal codes,
define crimes, and produce a 'prose of counter insurgency',
blurred any realization that acts of violence and property damage
in the Peshawar District resembled other types of British-Indian
'dacoities' that 'often occupied the ill-defined borderland
between individual, localized crime and collective defiance of
state authority' .6'
Rigorous codes of etiquette accompanied the emblems and
ceremonies of imperialism. In the Peshawar valley, the 1 January
1877 celebration of Victoria's proclamation as Empress of India
marked the symbolic integration of the district into a global
empire. Officials released prisoners and troops p'araded. At an
evening 'Divisional Durbar', civil officers, 'about 100 khans
and native gentlemen (Durbaris)', and fifteen hundred Hindu
and Muslim 'Larnbardars and other influential persons' heard
speeches and witnessed the distribution of commemorative
certificates. Colonial hierarchies ranked district and divisional
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 185

notables strictly by number in lists ordering ceremonial

precedence during courtly rituals of submission and reward.
'Khawja Mohammad Khan-Khan Kumalzai of Hoti' ranked
number ten among the twenty-seven certificate recipients.
That evening the colonial infrastructure literally glowed. Oil
lamps illuminated government buildings in Peshawar city, the
cantonment, and all 'the Thanas and Tahsils as well as the
Nowshera bridge of boats and the police outposts and other
civil buildings' in the district. This form of regal display was
remimiscent of Mughal era celebrations. The fireworks, rockets,
and 'bombs' launched in Peshawar were copied in at least one
Yusufzai sub-division outpost that now challenged the authority
of old khans and clan leaders. A 'special display of fireworks'
was launched from the police thana in Rustam village in the
Sudhum valley, Ajab Khan's hereditary t a ~ p a Ajab
. ~ ~ Khan rated
number six on the list of certificate recipients.
In 1877, only months after he attended the Imperial
Assemblage in Peshawar, officials charged Ajab Khan with
disrupting the Buner border over an inheritance dispute. Rumour
had it that he was causing unrest in order to act in his role as
mediator with the Buner clans and thus increase his prestige with
the British. Blamed for organizing a July 1877 attack on 'British
villages' that caused several deaths, Ajab Khan was imprisoned.
The authorities debated whether to treat his deeds as a political
matter, often penalized with a period of exile, or as a criminal
offence decided under statutes of the Indian Penal Code.63 In
1878, charged and convicted as a criminal offender, after decades
of imperial service, Ajab Khan was executed by hanging.
British initiatives to establish authority and refine a system
of law on the 'frontier' also involved less coercive measures,
including those intended for degrees of social 'reform'. The
earliest administrators and settlement officers visualized the
creation of a peaceful, industrious, civilized peasantry that above
all would display loyalty to the empire in gratitude for
maintaining law, order, and agrarian prosperity. However
pragmatic or ineffective some local policies became, the ideal
of a progressive mission at least partially influenced the Punjab
administration as it reviewed and adjusted earlier policies.
186 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

The Frontier Crimes Regulations, written to help control local

society, were revised in a changing colonial intellectual
environment. From the 1870s, a new generation of careerists
chosen by competitive examination entered the administrative
ranks eager to apply the latest principles and trends of western
thought to colonial policy. A general western 'historicist reaction
against classical political economy and analytic juri~prudence'~"
spurred a new view that progressive stages of social evolution
structured human organization. It was thought that proper
understanding of this process, including as found in British-
Indian institutions such as the village or tribe, would explain
not only European history but how to accelerate the development
of 'backward' colonial societies.
Settlement officers now wrote reports coloured by 'the
historicists' great organizing idea',6s that the evolution of
societies depended on the extent to which traditions of collective
land use 'evolved' towards recognition of individual rights in
land and property. Histories now recorded evidence of early
land tenures and apparent changes induced by colonial revenue,
legal, and market policies.66 In nineteenth-century British India,
this sense of inevitable development allowed officials to
recognize a process of change, yet not feel obligated to press
indigenous institutions to alter faster than the process of
historical ev~lution.~'
This mixed sensibility shaped discussions about law and order
in the valley. Incidents of killing and other violence, including
conflicts involving 'independent' clans, had not declined and by
the mid- 1880s Punjab administrators debated a third revision of
the original Punjab Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1872."
Accepting that full district accountability to colonial courts and
the Indian Penal Code would have to be delayed, the Frontier
regulations had originally codified various ad hoc regional
policies taken from precedent and current practice. Different
sections regulated 'Councils of Elders', the fining or blockading
(including seizures) of clans considered hostile or uncooperative,
the construction or removal of border villages, the taking of
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 187

security bonds for peaceful behaviour from individuals or

families involved in feuds or disputes, and the exile from the
district of noted troublemakers.
But adaptations of the jirga institution or barampta seizure
did not reduce the number of incidents or build a common
acceptance of norms inscribed in legal codes. Tension developed
between various perspectives on how to achieve 'reform'. When
the inconsistency between high 'murder' totals and low
conviction rates led one Peshawar official to suggest ending the
appeals process in Peshawar cases, the progressive voice
triumphed. Punjab officials saw the step as 'retrograde',
defeating 'the object.. .to gradually train and win over popular
sentiment to the side of civilized administration.. .' Far superior
to beliefs derived from 'primitive social conditions' was 'a
regular system founded on the application of scientifically
framed laws'. Such a system, even imperfectly implemented,
served as 'an instrument of popular e d ~ c a t i o n 'Appeals
.~~ would
not be eliminated. Until indigenous thinking changed, the use of
appointed jirgas to increase conviction rates would continue.
Debate on revisions focused on finer details. Elaboration of
the official jirga process included listing the punishments that
could be awarded by British officials after a jirga finding of
guilt. Sentences included fines, imprisonment, or 'transportation'
for up to seven years. Because of political concerns and the
lower standards of evidence only a maximum of seven years
imprisonment could be awarded for a jirga finding of murder.
An analysis of the murder rate noted that judgements in the
immediate post-1849 period had been quicker and more
effective. Then, one man held both police and magisterial duties.
More flexible standards of evidence and testimony had existed
with no appeal process. The imposition of the 1861 Indian Penal
Code and 1872 Punjab Frontier Regulations did not have the
intended effect. 'With the greater elaboration of the judicial
machinery the number of murders actually increased.' In 1886,
the Peshawar crime rate remained 'appalling'. The decade
1875-84 recorded six hundred and seventy-six murders and one
hundred and nine culpable homicides. Regular courts obtained
188 SE'ITLING THE FRONTIER

only one hundred and sixty-seven convictions. One hundred

and seventy-eight cases handed to jirgas resulted in mere fines.
One official lamented that 'no more than 80 of the offenders
have been hanged'.70 With these statistics came an admission
by the Peshawar Deputy Commissioner that only one of six
'murderers' was punished and that 'perhaps 2000 murderers'
lived free in the district.
Such numbers indicated that attempts to remold Peshawar
valley society and judicially subordinate the practice of
Pakhtunwali flagged as colonial courts and codes struggled with
limited resources and little acceptance of their legitimacy. With
local police, as across British-India, 'entangled in the networks
of local level rural powers'71 and with colonial priorities directed
towards maintaining local hierarchies, British standards of
justice in the Peshawar valley remained contested, illusive, and
neglected in both theory and practice.

NOTES

1. Peshawar Archives, Deputy Commissioner Office Records, Bundle

No. 14, File Serial No. 27 1, Hugh James, 'Report on the state of education
in the District', dated 1 October 1852, p. 25.
2. File Serial No. 27 1, p. 26.
3. File Serial No. 271, p. 3 1. For 1852 Peshawar District Education figures
see Appendix 8.
4. File Serial No. 271, p. 29.
5. See Peshawar related sections of Henry Martyn Clark, Robert Clark of
the Panjab (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1907) and Robert Clark, The
Missions of the Church Missionary Society and the Church of England
Zenana Missionary Society in the Punjab and Sindh (Church Missionary
Society, London, 1904).
6. D. A. Washbrook, 'Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India',
Modern Asian Studies, 15, 3 (198 l), pp. 649-72 1, p. 652.
7. Social codes, such as the Laws of Manu, could be translated and valorized
by British officials themselves.
8. Washbrook, 'Law, State and Agrarian Society,' p. 655.
9. Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 87.
10. File S. No. 271, p. 157. Letter No. 400, dated 23 April 1855, from
Edwardes to James, p. 7.
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 189

11. Peshawar Archives, Deputy Commissioner Records, Bundle No. 14, File
S. No. 269. Circular No. 122, dated 30 May 1849, from Christian, Sec. to
the Board of Administration, Lahore to D.C. Peshawar, pp. 3-5.
12. File S. No. 269, p. 5.
13. File S. No. 271, p. 275, Letter No. 4222 dated 29 December 1857, from
Financial Commissioner, Punjab to Commissioner Cis-Sutlej States.
14. File S. No. 269, 'Return showing Progress of Revised Settlement of
District (Peshawar)', p. 4.
15. Peshawar Archives, Deputy Commissioner Records, Bundle No. 14, File
S. No. 271, p. 465, letter dated 7 January 1868, from Waterfield, D. C.
Peshawar to Revenue Commissioner, Punjab.
16. 'Memoirs of Sir Olaf Caroe', India Office Records, Mss. Eur. C. 27315,
transcript of BBC recording, pp. 199-200.
17. Details in E. G. Hastings, Report of the Regular Settlement of the
Peshawar District (Central Jail Press, Lahore, 1878). India Office
Records, Vl2713 141598, pp. 141-44.
18. 1878 Settlement Report, p. 145.
19. Tom G. Kessinger, Vilyatpur 1848-1968 (University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1974), see pp. 78-83. Kessinger's sense of the 'Immediate
Effects of British Rule' raises comparative questions for the Peshawar
District, though, again, I perceive not simply change, but the introduction
of new focuses for, and stresses upon, contingent practices.
20. The Regular Settlement found that few of 1400 village mosque
exemptions (inams or muafis) covering 7047 acres had even been subject
to inquiry. All were continued, subject to government approval, Peshawar
Gazetteer, 1897-98, p. 338.
21. See Kessinger, Vilyatpur, p. 79. Evidence from the early Yusufzai area
settlements indicated that gathering revenue through village
representatives ('collective responsibility') was as much a pragmatic
recognition of political reality as any sociologically based strategy.
22. 1878 Settlement Report, p. 260.
23. 1878 Settlement Report, p. 26 1.
24. 1878 Settlement Report, p. 262.
25. 1878 Settlement Report, p. 263.
26. 1878 Settlement Report, p. 263.
27. Terms used in 1878 Settlement Report, p. 264: Pagri wesh, shares per
pagri or turban. Parurtai wesh or 'sheet distribution', connoting a woman's
head covering. (Hastings' definition).
28. 1878 Settlement Report, p. 265.
29. 1878 Settlement Report, p. 265.
30. This right of self-definition, the symbolic nature of Islam, and a local
refusal to respect the colonial accumulation of knowledge combined in a
1929 reaction against officers revising the 1899 Code. Rural Muslims 'in
all tahsils refused to make any statement regarding their customs, stating
190 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

practically unanimously that they would in future be bound by Muslim

Law and not by custom.' Acheson, Customary Law...in the Peshawar
District, 1934 edition, preface, p. 1.
Gopal Das, Tarikh-i Peshawar (Globe Publishers, Lahore, n. d., c. 1878).
J. G. Lorimer, Customary Law of the Main Tribes in the Peshawar
District, 1899. Revised by J. G. Acheson and reprinted by NWFP
Government, 1934.
Kessinger, Vilyatpur, 1974, p. 82.
See comments of Henry Maine in Kessinger, Vilyatpur, p. 82.
Gilmartin, Empire and Islam, 1988, p. 16.
Gilmartin, Empire and Islam, 1988, p. 17.
Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, vol. 1, p. 163.
See Bibliography for selected titles.
Notes on Afghanistan and Baluchistan (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London,
1880-1, reprint, 2 vols., Nisa Traders, Quetta, 1982). Noted in 1982
edition as first published in 1878.
Peshawar Archives, Peshawar Division Commissioner Office Records,
Bundle No. 53, File S. No. 1313, 'Measures adapted to punish the Ranezai
people', letter dated 18 May 1852, from Peshawar Commissioner
Mackeson to Punjab Government, p. 1.
File S. No. 1313, p. 5.
Peshawar Commissioner Records, Bundle No. 53, File S. No. 1310, Letter
No. 229 dated 15 December 1849, p. I.
The Utman Khel villages included Kui, Barmoul, Pipal, Mian Khan,
Sangao, and Kharkai.
Fredrik Barth, 'System of Social Stratification in Swat', in E. Leach, ed.,
Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon, and North-West Pakistan
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1962), p. 114.
Peshawar Commissioner Records, Bundle 53, File S. No. 1310, letter
dated 15 December 1873, p. 9 detailed the tolls and travel times.
Peshawar Commissioner Records, Bundle 53, File S. No. 1310, 'Memo
by Lt. Shortt' and attached 'List of offenses.. .' detailed the cases, undated,
but last offence recorded on 10 December 1862, while Shortt's final term
as Peshawar Deputy Commissioner ended 21 November 1862.
'Memo by Lt. Shortt', p. 5.
'Memo by Lt. Shortt', p. 8.
Caroe, The Pathans, p. 364.
Estimates from Caroe, The Pathans, p. 366 and Raverty, Notes on
Afghanistan, vol. I , p. 163.
'For Ambela services, 1863' Ajab Khan received the 'Village of Chargulli
and other lands his property' worth Rs 1105 in jagir, in addition to 600
rupees already awarded for 1857 service. Noted in 1878 Settlement
Report, appendix 'Abstract of Jagirs..', p. cxl.
 COLONIZING INSTITUTIONS 191

52. See Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, vol. I, pp. 251-3 footnotes.

53. Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, see extended footnotes, vol. 1, pp. 251-253.
54. Caroe, The Pathans, pp. 363-64.
55. Peshawar Commissioner Records, Bundle 53, File S. No. 1310, undated
draft letter, by Peshawar Commissioner Becher written in early 1865, p. 4.
Quotes were Becher's understanding of James' intentions.
56. The previous discussion was derived from Becher's draft letter; pp. 4-1 1.
57. Peshawar Commissioner Records, Bundle 53, File S. No. 1310, letter
dated 14 February 1866. From Ommanney, Assistant Commissioner to
Macnabb, Peshawar Deputy Commissioner, p. 1.
58. Ommanney letter, 14 February 1866, pp. 3-4.
59. Ommanney letter, 14 February 1866, p. 6.
60. Washbrook, 'Law, State and Society', 1981, p. 676.
61. David Arnold, 'Crime and Crime Control in Madras 1857-1947', Anand
Yang, ed., Crime artd Criminality in British India (University of Arizona
Press, Tucson, 1985), p. 71.
62. The day's events were described in Peshawar Commissioner Records,
Bundle No. 14, File No. 523, Letter No. 13, pp. 1-3, with an attached list
of Darbar certificate recipients, dated 19 January 1877.
63. Peshawar Deputy Commissioner Records, Bundle No. 52, File
S. No. 1462, Letter No. 195, dated 18 October 1877 and others in File
No. 12A, 1877 'Prosecution of Ajab Khan'.
64. Clive Dewey, The Settlement Literature of the Greater Purljab (Manohar,
Delhi, 1991), p. 26.
65. Dewey, Settlement Literature, 1991, p. 26. Henry Maine framed relevant
questions in works such as Village Cornrnunities in the East and West
(John Murray, London, 187 1).
66. The Gazetteer of the Barlnu District 1883-84 included a 19-page appendix
about 'vesh' written by the district Settlement Officer, S.S. Thornburn.
67. Dewey, Settlement Literature, 1991, p. 27.
68. The Punjab Frontier Regulation (No. 1 of 1872), The Punjab Frontier
Regulation Amendment Regulation (No. 1V of 1873), The Punjab Frontier
Regulation, (No. 11 of 1876), The Frontier Crimes Regulation, 1887.
69. Peshawar Commissioner Records, Bundle No. 78, File S. No. 2268, Letter
No. 176, dated 15 February 1886, p. 6. From W. Young, Secretary to
Punjab Govt., to R. Nisbet, Peshawar Division Commissioner.
70. Letter No. 176, dated 15 February 1886, p. 2.
71. Washbrook, 'Law, State and Society', 1981, p. 687.
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY

Peshawar society in the last quarter of the nineteenth century

displayed aspects of a larger colonial Punjab and British-Indian
canvas. On a social and economic level new systems of
development and knowledge, of 'colonial empiricism', reordered
agrarian spaces and crop production.' Local elite political
assertiveness and law court-centred rivalries marked the rising
ambitions of a class of great khans who would later oppose
post- 1918 nationalist agitation and be prominent in post- 1947
regional political competition and debates over privilege, land
reform, and inequality. But any 'Cambridge school' analysis
emphasizing the importance of 'big khan' factional competition
over the spoils of colonial and post-colonial systems gave little
importance to the role of other fragmented social forces being
transformed by the effects of colonial state ~apitalism.~ The
great khans monopolized the fruits of new irrigation and market
connections. But the rise of new populations of tenants and
agricultural labourers, often migrants from neighbouring
territories, alongside socio-cultural continuities observed in less
commercially oriented Pakhtun villages revealed both the
multiple 'horizontal' social forces subject to elite factional
domination and the competitive claims to such a ~ t h o r i t y These
.~
changing social relations to the land and livelihood were the
cause of much of the twentieth-century agrarian unrest that
characterized a later uniquely 'Pakhtun' nationalist political
militan~y.~
From the 1870s to 1900 a literal second generation of British-
Pakhtun relations produced a contact zone history not simply of
conquest and domination but of 'interactive, improvisational
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 193

dimensions' comprised 'copresence, interaction, interlocking

understandings and practices, often within radically
asymmetrical relations of p o ~ e r ' .Long
~ familiar aspects of
imperial-local relations were transformed and accentuated by a
European colonialism now operating on a global scale of
perspective and technology. Yet as transportation, trade, and
ruling ideologies integrated the trans-Indus region into larger
Punjab networks, political concerns denied to the western
districts participation in early phases of political devolution and
in the full development of public spheres in the press and mass
organizations. Still other political concerns made revised land
settlement procedures an exercise in compromise and
concession.
As agrarian transformation in the core Peshawar valley dry
tracts took place through previously established relations of
unequal power and s t a t ~ s fringe
,~ valley villagers and clans of
the 'independent territory' accepted or contested imperial
obligations, often selectively participating in a new colonial
economy. Yet, apart from these direct political and economic
agendas colonial interest in village society, including initiatives
to improve local conditions, remained limited.
In the 1870s the British political debate on the pros and cons
of imperial conservatism versus aggressiveness, especially in
regard to an expanding Russian empire in Central Asia, shifted
to a revised 'Forward Policy' on Afghanistan. Some British
politicians hoped to check Russian advances by exerting greater
influence on the Afghan Amir, including through the installation
of a British mission in Kabul and the appointment of an envoy.
Many administrators and soldiers in Britain and in British India
advocated the establishment of a 'scientific frontier' for the
Indian empire sited along a line of bases from Kandahar to
Kabul. Some openly called for the integration of Afghanistan
into the empire as the next logical step in the British imperial
advance.
On 21 September 1878 the British attempted to force a
diplomatic mission on the Afghans to counter a series of Russian
diplomatic initiatives. A delegation, which included the
194 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Peshawar Deputy Commissioner as second in command, was

turned back at the foot of the Khyber Pass. Having suffered an
'insult' to imperial prestige the British-Indian viceroy launched
an invasion of Afghanistan in late November. Events replicated
a sequence of conquest, disaster, and final withdrawal that
showed little had been learned from the lessons of the 1839-42
period.' The war lasted until the final British withdrawal from
Kandahar in April 1881 and signalled an accelerated
transformation of the Peshawar valley.
Many in the valley prospered from the war effort. Within two
weeks of the 21 September rejection of the British mission the
British press detailed the military arrangements and strategies
for the anticipated war. Others raised political, military, and
moral objections to an invasion. Outspoken in opposition was
John Lawrence of the original Punjab Board of Control and
Governor-General of India in the 1 8 6 0 ~ The . ~ delay of the
invasion until 21 November was occasioned by logistics rather
than politics. Troops, provisions, transport animals, and
munitions had to be assembled for three columns leaving from
Quetta, the Kurram valley, and Peshawar, involving perhaps
thirty thousand men and six thousand camel^.^ Grain dealers
and speculators, livestock suppliers, and Khattak transporters
busied themselves. One paper reported that in the south the
Khan of Khelat supplied twenty thousand maunds (each eighty
pounds) of wheat to the Quetta military at market prices, offering
all the camels in his territory for the effort. The same report
said that Peshawar required stores and transport for twenty
thousand men.I0
Many Peshawar valley residents in military service served in
Afghanistan, some as low level officers of 'native' troops. From
1873 the Punjab government encouraged ' . . .the gradual
introduction of young men of family and of war like races into
the Native Army with direct commissions'. Only those '...duly
qualified by rank, education, character and physique' were to be
inducted." Others who served in Afghanistan had risen through
infantry regiments or Guides units to retire at non-commissioned
ranks of ressaldar, subedar major, or jamadar. Ressaldar
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 195

Jehangir, son of Shahzada Kamgar of Jehangirabad village,

Mardan tahsil fought in 1863 at Ambela and in raids in 1870 on
Utman Khel villages. Subedar Amir Khan, son of Ibrahim Khan
of Mardan, previously served in 1857 and in the Bhutan
campaign of 1865-6. Jamadar Zainur Shah of Chargulli village
would later serve in the Burma campaign of 1886-7.12
The military culture that developed around the small
cantonment at Mardan had a more personal scale than the
massive base and thousands of troops stationed in Peshawar. In
Peshawar military and civil officials struggled to insulate the
one thousand or more British troops from locals, especially in
1880 from the ninety-two registered prostitutes in the bazaars of
the cantonment, the two hundred and eighteen recorded
prostitutes in the old city, others characterized as 'bazaar' or
'coolie' women, and at least twenty-two men, all of whom
offered sexual services in an urban, cantonment political
economy in sharp contrast with British and Pakhtun norms of
propriety. l 3
The families of many Pakhtun soldiers lived in Hoti village
across the Kalpani 1zullah from the Mardan cantonment. A verse
from Hoti written during the First World War captured the
ambivalence of a hybrid, colonial military life vulnerable to
sudden deployments anywhere in the empire. The later context
might have been changed, with the difference of a word, to a
lament over other wars, including the second Anglo-Afghan
war campaigns in Afghanistan:

de gham bugle pulz key ghalegi wa platooni lari ronegi

jana ke jaree alokan basrah te zena tseI4

The sad notes of the bugle can be heard and a platoon goes far
The young women cry, the young men go to Basra.

After the second Anglo-Afghan war the government erected

a large memorial arch in typical Victorian style in a park in the
Mardan cantonment. It listed the names of seventy-seven Guides
troops based in Mardan who died in September 1879 in Kabul
196 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

when the British mission, installed by force and headed by

Cavagnari, the deputy commissioner turned envoy, was killed
to a man. No imperial monument was dedicated to the nine
hundred and seventy-one British and 'Indian' soldiers and three
hundred and thirty-one 'camp-followers' killed in a battle near
Kandahar in July 1880.15 Frederick Roberts, a soldier who had
been in Peshawar in 1857 and Ambela in 1863, eventually
salvaged the situation for the British. He installed a puppet
Afghan Amir in Kabul and withdrew the colonial armies from
Afghanistan. The expense, inconclusive results, and adverse
home opinions ended the Forward Policy. The political mess
resulted in the replacement of the British-Indian viceroy and the
British prime minister. Roberts became an imperial icon and in
the 1890s led colonial armies in South Africa.
Peshawar valley Pakhtuns, who had joined imperial armies
for centuries, became peripheral figures in a late nineteenth
century colonial strategy of identifying, creating, and recruiting
indigenous 'martial races'. Sikh soldiers, categorized since 1857
by colonial recruiters and ideologues as martial, loyal 'Singhs',
personified the British cultural sense of a 'biological
determinism' that decreed only certain eastern populations were
physically or morally able to serve as warriors.I6 Sikhs served
in the ill-fated Guides contingent at Kabul, while sketches of
Gurkha units marching into Afghanistan commonly illustrated
the London popular press. The army enrolled Sikhs, Gurkhas,
Punjabi Muslims, and carefully screened 'Pathans' in 'class'
companies and regiments organized by caste, religion, or 'tribe'.
Printed military rolls often recorded Peshawar valley residents
under the column of 'caste' as 'Pathan Eusafzai'.
Though by the 1890s officials dispatched military recruiting
parties into the independent areas surrounding the Peshawar
district," family and clan networks within the settled tahsils
provided the most reliable supply of new Pakhtun soldiers. One
'probably not exhaustive' late nineteenth century survey of the
Yusufzai sub-division counted 1616 residents from 128 villages
on the military payroll, with 232 retired military personnel
receiving pensions. There was 'scarcely a family in the northern
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 197

and eastern portions of the Sub-division which has not one or

more of its members in the Native army, so that the earnings of
these men in cash are more than sufficient to pay off the whole
revenue of the household'. Annual pay, averaging about Rs 200,
and pension earnings totalled Rs 366420.18
In addition to military employment, liberal revenue policy
helped increase Pakhtun sympathies with the empire. In 1870
during the Regular Settlement authorities instituted a policy of
'new favourable assessments' for proprietors of villages 'near
the border' and 'hitherto enjoyed free'. Pakhtun shareholders
obtained low revenue assessments as fringe villages were
formally encompassed in the land settlement process. Twenty-
two villages in the Mardan tahsil received Rs 5380 in 'revenue
excused', while seventeen villages in the Utman Bolak taltsil
had Rs 5055 remitted.I9 In the reconfigured talzsils noted in the
1893-6 second Regular Settlement, 'frontier remissions' for 'a
portion of the total assessment' were listed for thirty-eight
villages in Mardan tahsil and sixteen villages in Swabi. The
remissions rewarded peaceful villagers, nominally on guard
against independent-area raiders, while cancelling many of the
difficult-to-collect dues responsible for much colonial-village
conflict. This compromise of revenue and state authority
consciously attempted to minimize differences between 'British*
villages and those in adjacent, non-encapsulated tracts. The
'remissions' in effect before the second settlement totalled
Rs 6452 in the Mardan tahsil and Rs 5255 in the Swabi talzsil,
over a third of the Rs 32125 given in district-wide frontier
redu~tions.~~
The second Anglo-Afghan war of 1879-81 brought prosperity
to some and misery to others. Contractors supplying the colonial
armies did well. Ishar and Sarup Singh, liquor dealers and
merchants in the Nowshera Cantonment, obtained a licence to
retail spirits and stores in army camps from the Khyber Pass to
Kabul. Selling wine and brandy to officers and opium and charas
to non-British troops, the brothers were considered reputable
merchants who never sold alcohol to 'unauthorized buyers', that
is, common British soldier^.^'
198 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

The problem of supply affected Peshawar valley markets as

military purchasing exhausted stocks and drove up prices. Grain,
usually plentiful for independent villages or urban residents,
went to the army commissariat. The single road connecting
Peshawar to Attock and the Punjab could not carry supplies of
grain sufficient to ease shortages. The lingering dearth caused
by a north-west Indian famine also disrupted Punjab food
supplies. Proprietors, grain dealers and speculators prospered,
while others, such as Yusufzai sub-division tenants who paid
in-kind (batai) crop percentages as rent, gained nothing from
the higher prices.
Military-related employment, ongoing canal construction
work, and the building of a railway line into the valley led to a
labour shortage. Wages rose as did migration into the valley
from surrounding regions, including from independent clan areas
and Afghanistan. Agricultural wage labourers, only a few
thousand in the valley, who had earned Rs 5 per month in
1877-8, by mid-1 879 earned Rs 7. The earnings of horse keepers
or syces, originally Rs 5 to Rs 518 annas, jumped to Rs 718
annas by mid-1879. A skilled tradesman, a 'common mason,
carpenter, or blacksmith! earning in the Rs 15-17 range per
month in 1877-8 saw wages rise to Rs 2614 annas by late 1880.22
Though few valley residents outside Peshawar town were
solely dependant on markets for subsistence supplies, the
doubling and tripling of grain prices in the valley certainly had
severe implications for the poorest and those most tied to bazaar
purchases. Wheat prices that had averaged 25,96 seers of weight
per rupee in 1877 (19.8 1 seers per rupee in Delhi) soared to a
mere 6.98 seers per rupee in 1880 (17.50 seers in Delhi).13 The
war inflation peaked in Peshawar in late September, early
October 1879, when one rupee bought only 5.62 seers of wheat
in the market.24 Subsistence statistics drawn from the Famine
Report of 1879 indicated that at typical consumption rates the
wages of an agricultural labourer during this period purchased
just enough grain for personal survival. Only a skilled tradesman
earned enough to support the model family of five.
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 199

The various effects of the war, including crops diverted to

military use, probably contributed to 'the famine and distress in
the hills' mentioned as a push factor for migration into the
valley in 1881.25 Only in May 1882 did Peshawar and Delhi
wheat prices equalize at slightly over 17 seers per rupee. It was
in 1882 that the Punjab railway system passing through
Khairabad finally reached Peshawar.
The dynamics generated by the increased integration of the
Peshawar valley into a greater Punjab, colonial, and international
context after 1882 were often shaped and directed by established
socio-political conditions. And by the mid- 1870s the clear
dichotomy that had existed between colonizer and colonized,
between British rulers and 'native' society now became blurred
at times, in institutions and individuals of trans-cultural, 'British-
Indian' ambiguity and synthesis.
Peshawar valley landowners and elite increasingly ensured
family futures by enrolling sons in English-medium schools
teaching the skills needed in imperial bureaucracies. From 1855
the Edwardes Collegiate (Mission) School in Peshawar run by
the Christian Church Missionary Society prepared students for
the Calcutta and Punjab Universities. One later report about the
hostel for the Edwardes Church Mission High School mentioned
that occupants 'are for the most part sons of Afghan gentlemen
residing in Y ~ s a f z a i ' . ~ ~
One young Pakhtun who had received a good education by
the time of the Regular Settlement was Khwaja Muhammad,
who in 1872 at age twenty succeeded to the Hoti khanship.
Testimonials from Peshawar officials in the 1870s acknowledged
his talents. He reduced crime in his village, gathered information
from Swat, and proved 'useful in deciding cases under the
Frontier rule^'.^' He gave 'very great assistance' during the
Regular Settlement period, learning the entire revenue system
and procedure^.^^ Having mastered the revenue process and 'the
details of it more thoroughly than almost any of our leading
men', he was also considered 'one of the most go-ahead
improvers of property in the D i ~ t r i c t ' .His
~ ~ secular pursuits and
sense of place in the colonial hierarchy led to one observer's
perception of his relative social distinction:
200 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

He is one of the very few among our Khans who are not bigoted
and this freedom from superstitious bigotry, combined with a
superior education, rather isolates him among his neighbours.
Further he does not attempt that lavish hospitality which, while it
makes Khans popular so often, ruins them.30

A Mardan clan leader, Shad Muhammad Khan, exhibited

quite a different aspect of the privileged and protected status of
local elite. An extravagant lifestyle turned personal debts to
moneylenders of Rs 370 in 1870 into Rs 20000 of debt by 1877.
His retainers so harassed tenants in his villages for grain and
money that they began to migrate to lands under other khans.
The k h a n requested help from the Mardan Assistant
Commissioner, who agreed to manage his property. The khan
was put on an allowance and five villages under his control
were temporarily auctioned to revenue farmers. Though the debt
was reduced to Rs 5278 by 1882 his continuing financial
problems finally led in that year to the khan's property being
placed under the management of the Court of ward^.^'
The Assistant Commissioner in Mardan in 1877 embodied
another dimension of the mixed cultural terrain emerging in the
mature British era. Robert Warburton was the son of a British
artillery officer who in Kabul during the first Anglo-Afghan
war married a niece of the deposed Afghan ruler Dost
Muhammad. The family had survived the war tragedies and the
son became an effective, if fire, British officer at ease in two
cultures, fluent in Persian and Pakhtu. Warburton's presence in
Mardan contributed to the insecurities of Pakhtun elite as he
bypassed settled district intermediaries such as Ajab Khan and
communicated directly with independent area clans. Evidence
gathered by Warburton, including testimony from Ajab Khan's
retainers, helped to convict Ajab Khan. The Assistant
Commissioner's position often served as a stepping stone for
talented British officers who might become Deputy
Commissioner, then perhaps Division Commissioner and even a
member of the Punjab provincial government. I n 1879
Warburton became Political Officer for the Khyber Pass region.
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 20 1

A man of rare ability, he finished his career in the Khyber

position, becoming something of a celebrity of the British
'frontier' experience. But in his memoirs he never recorded
whether this career path reflected personal intention or the closed
doors of a racist imperial bureaucracy.
In 1883 a set of correspondence captured the ambiguities of
the colonial experience, revealing that local personages could
exploit the contradictions between colonial moral ideology and
the hegemonic systems designed to ensure control. The court
system proved to be an arena in which to pursue old rivalries
and to exploit inequitable power relations. Colonial attitudes
viewing the British as inherently superior to 'natives' were
challenged as elite class nobles demanded that symbolic tokens
of privilege be recognized as meaningful signifiers of status.
A petition dated 26 March 1883 was sent to the Punjab
Lieutenant Governor. Khwaja Muhammad, Khan of Hoti,
complained that he had been insulted in open court by the
Peshawar Division Civil and Sessions Judge. His petition quoted
the offensive remarks:

The principal witness in this case, he may be called the prosecutor,

is Khwajah Muhammed Khan, the Khan of Hoti in Usafzai. He is
an educated Afghan. With his education he has unfortunately lost
all the good and retained all the bad qualities of his race. He is
cowardly and meanspirited, treacherous, with the cunning and
chicanery of a low hanger-on about our court^.'^

Over the next three months letters passed between district,

division, and provincial courts and political authorities. The
letters offered an insight into the institutional environment
structuring land relations and colonial civil and political
authority. The case in question involved a charge 'punishable
with death' filed by Khwaja Muhammad against his maternal
uncle, Ghazzan Khan of Hoti. The Sessions Judge defended his
statement as reflecting a necessary judgement of character
needed to weigh evidence confined to opposed testimony. The
judge noted that in 1878 Muhammad Khan had filed a charge of
202 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

attempted murder against Ghazzan Khan for allegedly firing at

him near Peshawar, a charge denied and rebutted by Ghazzan
Khan as false and an attempt to use the courts to resolve a
personal enmity.33In his testimony Ghazzan Khan characterized
Khwaja Muhammad as an old enemy who had deprived him of
his lands through manipulation of the legal system.34
Officials submitted letters that now described Khwaja
Muhammad as a much disliked khan, a 'land grabber' who
'spares nobody'.35 If he claimed to be the largest landholder in
the district, he was also the 'greatest litigant' who had used the
land settlement process for 'acquiring a large amount of property
by litigation. It is said he never lost a case in the lower courts,
and that his cases were numerous and his tactics not altogether
creditable.. .'
Khwaja Muhammad had been fined Rs 1000 in 1871 for
'assaulting and resisting the Police in the search for stolen
property' hidden by his retainers. In 1877 he had ordered the
beating of Behram Khan of Hoti, a brother-in-law and rival,
then had used his influence with the Deputy Commissioner to
secure the release of thirteen men convicted of the assault. One
comment recorded on an 1877 case file in a dispute over twenty-
one acres of land between Khwaja Muhammad and Sher
Muhammad Khan read, 'The tendency has been to give the
khan all his own way in cases of this sort.'
Beyond an unrelenting pursuit of his interests, officials
charged Khwaja Muhammad with manipulating and corrupting
the revenue and court system. Before the resolution of a five-
year process of judgements and appeals over Sher Muhammad's
land, decided in Sher Muhammad's favour, one source alleged
that Khwaja Muhammad had acted 'in collusion' with his
opponent's agent and 'the Registry Office official at Mardan' to
manipulate the agent's power of attorney and win an appeal. In
his remarks on the petition, the Sessions Judge noted that two
cases involving Kliwaja Muhammad currently were pending
before his court, and 'I find that the patwari furnished the
plaintiffs with incorrect copies of the settlement record and the
Naib Tahsildar furnished an incorrect report and plan of the
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 203

land both favouring Khwaja Muhammad's interests in the cases

and it is natural to suppose at his i n ~ t i g a t i o n ' . ~ ~
Warburton had transferred from Mardan in 1879. But he was
drawn into the ongoing correspondence' as Khwaja Muhammad
filed another petition, this time making claims for the villages
of Shad Muhammad Khan of Mardan, formerly auctioned to
revenue farmers in 1877 and 1879. Warburton detailed how
Khwaja Muhammad and partners had originally won the 1877
bidding, but then withdrawn from the process a few days later.
In his letter summarizing past events, Warburton wrote of being
unable to find the original document submitted by Khwaja
Muhammad. He assumed that it had been 'taken out of the file
and destroyed' after he left Mardan. Other documents had
existed on the leases (ijaras), their rates and revenues, but 'in
spite of repeated efforts I have been unable to obtain them from
the district' .37
In the 1883 correspondence, the issues of using or abusing
the legal system framed an extraordinary personal attack on
Khwaja Muhammad's 'character'. This attack showed as much
concern about colonial concepts of hierarchy, class, and race as
concern about the integrity of the legal system. Warburton
limited his character judgement simply to 'there is no man to
whom greater favour has been shown than to Khwaja Mohamed,
and the result has been nil'.38 Jenkins was of the opinion that
Khwaja Muhammad manipulated not only the law but also the
legitimating ideals of the empire:

He is also a perfect comedian and knows well how to talk to the

white gentlemen about reform, progress, and all the rest of it. He
has a splendid collection of certificates and testimonials and this is,
so you will probably find, the most useful part of his stock in
trade,. . 3 9

Johnstone repeated every bit of local gossip he had acquired.

Khwaja Muhammad, the son of Sirbuland Khan, was son 'by a
wife who was a dancing girl of the Peshawar City'. If Khwaja
Muhammad claimed the Sessions Judge's comments had
204 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

damaged his 'influence' over his 'tribe' and tenants, the rebuttal
said that Khwaja Muhammad was so disliked that he 'had to get
the Hindus of his own village bound over to keep the peace. I
never heard of an Afghan Chief who feared his Hindus and
could not manage them'.40
The Peshawar civil and judicial authorities perceived Khwaja
Muhammad as a khan who was simply not subservient enough
in his assigned role as a dependant. He did not seem to recognize
that his personal inam and other financial and political benefits
had been bestowed in return for kindness to tenants and not
being too litigious in the courts. Instead, Khwaja Muhammad
found the legal system to be an effective avenue to pursue
lineage factional politics and 'intrigues', and to gain an edge in
competition for the highest measure of status, land. Admonished
by local officials, in his petition he quoted from provincial
statutes:

In the law passed by Government in 1874-75 under 33 Vic. Cap. 3

in regard to maintaining the respectability of the Khans of the
Frontier, which is referred to at pages 11 and 12 of the General
Administration Report of the Punjab for 1874-75, it is clearly stated
that the authority and dignity of the Khans of the frontier should be
rn~iintained.~'

Shad Muhammad Khan, the head of the Mardan faction of

the Hoti family that had split away two generations earlier,
became a perennial target of Khwaja Muhammad. In his petition
to the Punjab Lieutenant Governor Khwaja Muhammad did not
hesitate to term himself as not only the largest 'landed
proprietor' in the district but also the 'heir to the Mardan
estates'. Additionally Khwaja Muhammad had filed his case
over Shad Muhammad's villages to pre-empt another rival for
the village leases, Ibrahim Khan of Mardan. For service in the
recent Afghan war Khan Bahadur Ibrahim Khan had been
rewarded with an assignment of land revenue worth Rs. 1800.
Now Assistant District Superintendent of Police, Ibrahim Khan
was the son of a 'respectable yeoman' and exemplified the social
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 205

mobility of talented and ambitious Pakhtuns attempting to

translate imperial service into landed proprietor status.
This elite Pakhtun scramble for land and honours thrived in a
colonial system that favoured a core group of entrenched,
increasingly aristocratic lineages. The ironies of a 'native'
manipulating the British system to his own advantage or of a
trilingual Assistant Commissioner being more than a match for
clan politics were subtleties that little disguised the solidifying
relations of economic and political inequity shaping the
remainder of nineteenth-century Peshawar valley social history.
Shad Muhammad, apparently mentally impaired, lost control of
his holdings to the Court of Wards in 1882. By the 1890s'
Ibrahim Khan had a jagir of a dozen villages worth Rs 2539
annually. Khwaja Muhammad Khan survived the criticisms of
lower level British administrators with tactics such as his direct
appeal to provincial leaders more concerned with a broader
perspective. He continued to fulfil a fundamental role ensuring
a stable, loyal clan leadership. Neither his inam nor other
privileges were challenged, though no record was found either
of any compliance with the original petition's request 'that the
sessions Judge may be compelled to withdraw in toto those
defamatory remarks regarding my character'. Khwaja
Muhammad had to wait until his participation in the 1895 Chitral
military campaign, before finally receiving the title of Khan
Bahad~r.~~
The legal system that offered a new field for elite competition
also fulfilled the task of preserving social order and hierarchies.
The ability of Khwaja Muhammad to have his Hindu dependants
'bound over' for good behaviour was apparently gained through
the use of the Frontier Crimes Regulation Section 40 allowing
the courts to 'take security' from potential offenders as a
guarantee to preserve the peace. Financial bonds could be
demanded from those merely suspected of being potential
la~breakers.~' Quite possibly the court orders against Khwaja
Muhammad's Hindu dependants were intended to repress
protests, perhaps against the collection of excessive fees or
legally abolished 'traditional dues'. Khwaja Muhammad had a
206 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

reputation for using his mastery of colonial legal and revenue

codes 'to exact the uttermost farthing of his rights, from a
tenantry who have been unable to oppose either his knowledge
or his interests'. In 1877 even the visiting Lieutenant Governor
of the Punjab told Warburton of hearing that Khwaja
Muhammad was 'the most exacting landlord in Yu~ufzai'."~
Pejorative stereotypes of Hindu shopkeepers and grain merchants
as ruinous moneylenders obviated colonial concerns about the
abuse of non-Muslim village servants.
Even when the judiciary decided in favour of tenants and
dependants against the interests of a Peshawar valley khan,
'political' considerations often overruled the court order. Khans
learned to appeal unfavourable judgements up the levels of
district, divisional, and provincial executive authority. In 1880
the Punjab chief court ruled that Khwaja Muhammad could no
longer collect previously payable haqq tora dues. Khwaja
Muhammad spent the better part of the next two years soliciting
and obtaining reports from Peshawar civil commissioners who
agreed with his contention that the loss of the dues would affect
his 'influence' over his 'tribe'. In 1882 government orders
restored his right to collect the fees.45
Colonial endeavours to reinforce moral legitimacy included
attempts to win over the indigenous population to the imperial
criminal justice system's normative codes of personal behaviour.
Belief in a system of authority based on equity in law was to
replace lineage loyalties. But the attempts failed to achieve any
decisive degree of local acceptaince or compliance with state
authority and ideology. In Peshawar, especially in areas such as
the Yusufzai sub-division, a history of direct power relations
and official patron-client ties thwarted any new system based
on naturalized, hegemonic social treatises and controls.'"
Evidence of this showed in the failure to reduce violent social
'crime' and the refusal of elite kharzs to follow the colonizers'
rules of the game.
In colonial Peshawar, as in British India and in the post-
colonial society described by Fida Muhammad, the judicial
system was not an autonomous arbiter. In the Peshawar courts
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 207

'equality before the law.. .is neither a description of reality nor

an ideal but rather an institutional ideology-an ideology that
functions as the major rationalization for class d~mination'.~'
The legitimacy of such a system remained constantly in question.
By the late nineteenth century circumstances forced Peshawar
officials to consider increasing fines and doubling the maximum
prison term allowed under Sections 13 and 14 of the Frontier
Crimes Regulations. These cases involved the worst crimes
tried by appointed jirgas. But valley residents increasingly
deprecated the process. After a conviction for homicide and a
top sentence of seven years, typically served in an Andaman
Islands prison, a prisoner leaving one court said to friends, 'It is
all right. My enemy dead. Seven years imprisonment and so
much fine.'48
The reality for the British judicial system was that Pakhtun
and non-Pakhtun recognition of political domination and
economic exploitation did not lead to any widespread social or
ideological 'acceptance' of 'the institutions and values that cause
their s ~ b o r d i n a t i o n ' .Multiple,
~~ if asymmetrically empowered,
centres of social and political influence required the imperial
system continually to negotiate and debate the terms of its
domination.
Particular results of this politicized context of revenue, land,
and judicial structures and relationships emerged in the late
1880s. Increasingly, decisions and strategies were based on new
economic dynamics that represented a larger colonial and global
process of integration into a market economy.
Richard Fox described the conflict between a conservative
colonial Punjab philosophy of 'underdevelopment', collecting a
maximum of land revenue 'with the minimum transformation in
agrarian production and labour systems', and a second approach
advocating an aggressive development strategy based on agrarian
investment and market p a r t i c i p a t i ~ n .Larger
~~ economic and
political considerations led to massive late nineteenth and early
twentieth century projects of irrigation-canal building and canal-
colony settlement in central and western Punjab districts, with
'revolutionary' implications for production and labour systems.
208 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

But such considerations did not weigh significantly in earlier

canal-building projects, including one in the Peshawar District.
By 1885 a 'development' approach to subcontinental
resources encouraged capital-intensive investments, especially
in railroads and Punjab canal systems, able to contribute to
international commerce and export earnings. But the
interpretation of British-Indian capital investment, especially as
related to Punjab canal development and agrarian transformation,
was inconsistent with a simple world systems or dependency
interpretation of peripheral subordination to a financial centre.
Fox mentioned the 'historically concrete social forces that
directed, impeded or facilitated' the penetration of capital into
'particular third-world societies'. Such forces included the
dependant population's relations to production, in the Punjab
case 'peasants under tributary political economies', and related
awareness and agency. Another social dynamic deflecting the
direct impact of larger market forces was the colonial process
itself, the colonial state's 'own autonomy and its own
imperatives of solvency, military security, and cheap
governance'." As state capitalism embraced British India,
regional differences in production, labour involvement, and
imperial policy produced contingent realities of local reaction
and accommodation, including in the Peshawar valley.
The first British plans to irrigate the dry maira country east
of Hashtnagar dated to Henry Lawrence, first head of the Punjab
Board of Administration. He valued a canal as a political asset
in tribal relations. A September 1871 budget proposed a twenty-
five mile canal stretching east from the Swat river to the Kalpani
drainage near Mardan. A twelve-mile wide region of low rainfall
would be irrigated by branch channels sloping southward
towards the Kabul river. Planners noticed remnants of centuries-
old irrigation works in the proposed development area.
Revised plans and budgets were submitted in 1874 and
approved in 1876. Revenue officials, noting the 'present
sparseness of population' in the tract, thought it would take
fifteen years after the canal opened to develop the system fully.
Builders incurred large unanticipated expenses in constructing
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 209

culverts, aqueducts, and waterways across the southern-flowing

gullies and creek beds of the area's drainage system. By 1885
the completed canal contained nine main distribution branches
at a total cost of Rs 3725000.
Officials considered the expensive project still worthwhile,
especially as an incentive 'inducing the border tribes to settle
down to agricultural pursuits'. The canal was not considered a
'productive public work', but an ordinary project classified in
1881 as a 'Famine Relief Protective Public Work'.
In terms of spurring agricultural production and revenue the
canal succeeded. So 'rapid was the growth that in the third year
after opening the canal the irrigated area amounted to over 96000
acres and in the fourth year to over 100000' (combined summer
and winter areas).52 It was so successful that the Settlement
Officer revising the Regular Settlement insisted upon a further
fourteen-mile extension of the canal. The extension crossed the
Kalpani stream to end at the Makam drainage near Shahbazgarhi
and irrigated another 23461 acres (again combining annual
summer and winter acreage).
The Swat canal meant that baratti land, at best good for a
single yearly crop, now could be double cropped (do fasli).
With the railroad, a valley able to produce a slight surplus,
mostly grown for or by 'independent area' residents within the
settled district to take to their homes, now produced cash crops
for extra-provincial export.
Change induced by the events and innovations of the 1880s
attracted comment in the 1891 Census Report. Administrators
partially credited district population growth, from 450099 in
1855, to 523152 in 1868, to 592674 in 1881, and 703768 in
1891, to 'greater care' in the counting process, especially of
females. District-wide gains were attributed to the money and
work generated by the Afghan war, the railroad, 'greater peace
and security', and the Swat River Canal. The canal seemed
responsible for the 'greater part' of the gains in the Hashtnagar
and Mardan tahsils. In addition, a large increase i n well
construction added to the irrigated acreage in the non-canal areas
of the Yusufzai region.
210 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Census figures from 1891 confirmed the lure of the Peshawar

valley. Some 96618 of 703768 residents were born outside the
Peshawar District, while only 12042 district-born individuals
lived in other Punjab districts. Males migrated for work,
especially agrarian labour. The 96618 immigrants included
65355 males and only 31263 females. North-Indian born
immigrants to the Peshawar District were concentrated in the
military, urban, and cantonment areas. A total of 18135 'Afghan
natives' in the district included mainly single male winter season
labourers and seasonal Mohmand 'carriers', the transient herders
and traders called Kochis. Only the Mohmands travelled with
their families. One estimate counted a 'preponderance' of 5000
males among Afghan immigrants from territories claimed by
the Afghan ~ r n i r . ~ ~
With a supply of inexpensive labour 'the key to the growth
of commodity production' in this era, 'the movements of Indian
labour in the nineteenth century that resulted became not merely
an effect, but an accurate index, of the development of capitalist
relations of prod~ction'.'~Afghans steadily moved from non-
British regions to the new canal tracts. Seasonal agricultural
work attracted pastoralists who might, or might not, continue to
haul trade goods east and west during migrations between low
winter pastures around the Indus and high summer pastures in
the Afghan mountains. Surplus labour in independent hill areas,
historically a consequence of water limitations, non-arable
terrain, and generational divisions of land shares, now had an
alternative to military service or other settled area work.
The Swat Canal lands attracted Mohmands and Bajauris. But
the total of other 'independent territory' migrants to canal lands
was less than anticipated. Still, in the district 'immigrants from
independent territory constitute one third of the total immigration
and with the Afghan more than half'. This meant that half the
96618 immigrants, say at least 48309, were independent Afghans
or under the Afghan amir's rule. Subtracting the 18 135 'state'
Afghans, perhaps 30 174 independent area residents worked or
lived in the valley. This included perhaps 8000 more men than
women and many seasonal, winter labourers.
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 21 1

The reluctance of many independent territory residents to

head straight to the Swat Canal fields indicated that other district
employment, including established canal land work in other
tahsils, proved equally or more attractive than terms of
employment or tenancy on the new canal lands. The irrigated
maira tracts, long part of Mandanr clan holdings, offered the
vast majority of outsiders work only as tenants or labourers. As
in other areas coming under commodity production few
occupancy tenancies were awarded.55Tenants typically paid half
the produce as rent.
Not only did many independent area Afghans work as
seasonal labourers, but also many working as 'cultivators' on
Swat Canal fields would 'leave their families at home and only
temporarily visit their canal hamlets'. Between 1881 and 1891,
the new tillers on the Swat Canal lands drove the 36 per cent
population increase in the Mardan talzsil. New wells contributed
to a 22 per cent population increase in the Swabi talzsil. The
potential for continued growth showed in the 1891 variance in
population density between the old irrigated areas around
Peshawar, 700 per cultivated square mile, against still only 250
'in the northern and central portions of the district'.
A pattern developed in the Yusufzai sub-division of growing
maize, 'the staple winter food', in the summer on irrigated lands,
with jowar for fodder and other lesser crops planted on bararzi
and marginal lands. The autumn sowing for spring rabi harvests
included barley for local consumption in rotation after maize on
well and canal lands, plus wheat, often for 'export', often grown
on Swabi bararli lands. Punitive revenue charges discouraged
rice cultivation, a practice seen as water-intensive and risking
waterlogging.
Officials combined three Mardan plains revenue 'assessment
circles' into one 'Maira circle' with 46205 acres of canal
irrigation." The circle basically comprised the seventy new and
established villages watered by the Swat Canal. The 1895
Assessment Report counted 133 villages in Mardan tahsil and
101 in Swabi. The subdivision of large 'unwieldy villages' in
Lundkhwar and the transfer of villages between revenue circles
212 SElTLING THE FRONTIER

and tahsils now made direct statistical comparisons between

censuses and assessment reports increasingly difficult.
The social consequences of the new irrigation system related
to local agrarian and political relationships solidified in the
generation before 1885. Those previously able to understand and
actively participate in colonial revenue, judicial, and political
systems, and read canal proposals, gained the most. The system
introduced new land surveys and records. 'The maira at
Settlement had been recorded as the property of the khans or as
village common land, and after the canal was opened it became
necessary to more accurately determine the rights of individual
share^.'^' Colonial officials persuaded Pakhtun shareholders in
the new canal lands to end the practice of dividing shares among
different blocks of land and accept single sections of squarely
surveyed fields. Such fixing of shares in the Hashtnagar and
Mardan tahsils ended centuries of clan land use patterns, drew
shareholders into standard administrative formats, and apparently
'checked the spoliation of the weaker sharers which had bCen in
active progress'.58 The defining metaphor for the new regime of
restructured agrarian spaces and relationships became the common
survey base line laid down for the district from January 1893,
during the revision of the Regular Settlement. A common grid of
squares oriented to the cardinal directions now subsumed
individual field and village maps.
Yusufzai sub-division khans whose families had asserted a
dominant influence in their tappas continued to control many
villages and much acreage. In the non-canal irrigated Sudhum
valley the descendants of Mir Baba were proprietors of eleven
villages in revenue 'estates' covering 133 15 acres or 43 per
cent of the Koh Daman Sadum Assessment Circle.59The elite
also prevailed in the newly irrigated lands of the Mardan Maira
circle. Sher Ali of Hoti controlled 2000 acres of canal land.
Shad Muhammad Khan of Mardan held two newly irrigated
villages and 3,305 watered acres. Muhabbat Khan of Toru found
six of his eleven villages, about 6000 acres, serviced by the new
canal. Khwaja Muhammad Khan of Hoti controlled ten villages
and 11532 acres within the Swat Canal zone.
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 213

The 1895 Assessment Report detailed the relationship

between Yusufzai sub-division irrigation, proprietary ownership,
and social organization. Rain-fed revenue circles remained
cultivated mainly by smallholding 'owners', with few tenants.
Circles with large individual holdings were mainly tilled by
rent-paying tenants. The Mardan Maira circle had the highest
level of land concentration and of tenant tillage with 49.8 per
cent of the land under tenant c u l t i ~ a t i o n .In~ ~this circle the
population had increased 72 per cent, wells 64.7 per cent, and
total irrigation 1038.4 per cent since the Regular Settlement.
Here the transformation of khan into landlord occurred to the
extent that revenue farmers now engaged to lease parcels of
land from the khans (including 20087 of the 23751 acres under
tenancy), manage the estates, pay the land revenue, and remit
cash rent to the khans.61
Statistics of agrarian labour, debt, and land sales told of the
extent of both the entrenched elite Pakhtun interests and the
larger market penetration into the valley. In 1901 the number of
Peshawar District agricultural labourers, 5542 males and 708
females, was double the total of 2854 labourers recorded in the
1879 Famine report. Cash loans at 1-3 per cent a month interest
from shopkeepers did not initially result in excessive mortgages
or forced land sales in the Yusufzai sub-division, though officials
in the Peshawar and Hashtnagar talzsils worried about land sales,
especially to non-agriculturists. Records kept from 1885 showed
land sales of only 4.3 per cent of the fields of the Yusufzai sub-
division. Only in 1922, after speculative investments accelerated
on newly irrigated Upper Swat Canal lands, did officials enact
in the Peshawar District the 1900 Punjab Land Alienation Act
restricting land sales to non-agriculturists.
Reports traced the growing importance of outside markets to
Peshawar valley agriculture. Rail imports and exports from
district stations for the period 1 January 1891 to 30 June 1895
indicated that despite the importation of an extra 139000 nzaunds
of wheat, other grains, and flour to support the 1895 Chitral
military expedition, '...even so there is a large balance of
179911 maunds in favour of exports over imports' of district-
214 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

produced wheat, other grains, sugar, and tobacco. Adding the

139000 maunds subtracted due to the one-time, military-related
importation, back to the net 112658 maunds figure of wheat and
'other grains' surplus, a total export potential existed for the
period of 251658 maunds of wheat, other grains, and flour
surplus. At 80 pounds a maund, this was about 10066 tons of
surplus over the fox-and-a-half years or 2236 tons of surplus
grains a year.'j2 A metalled road from Mardan to Nowshera
facilitated the use of carts to carry produce to the Nowshera
railway station.
The Swabi tahsil experienced a boom in tobacco cultivation.
Requiring intensive cultivation and processing, tobacco thrived
in the local soil and climate. Acreage devoted to tobacco
increased from 1754 in Swabi and 266 in Mardan in 1891 to a
total of 7394 acres in 1895. Owners 'as a rule' hired a gardener
who often 'keeps a boy to weed and water' the plants. The
owner paid expenses, including for manure, and the gardener
received a third of the crop. With the railroad much of the
tobacco was exported, 'even to distant Calcutta'. Estimating a
yield of 40 maunds an acre, a recent three-year average of 3476
acres of tobacco in Swabi, and 139040 maunds of production
worth Rs 3 per maund, the assessment officer calculated that a
gross income of Rs 41 7 120 (after deducting gardener's shares
of 139040 and Rs 28 per acre expenses) left proprietor profits
of Rs 180752. He noted that the entire revenue assessment of
Swabi was only Rs 120079. In the mentioned 1891-95 period of
rail exports, a net of 48475 maunds of tobacco were exported
from the district, including 28901 from Nowshera station and
13795 from Jehangira station.63
As in other districts the rise in crop prices after the original
Peshawar Settlement, approximately 53 per cent over the twenty-
year period between assessments, meant that fixed cash-revenue
demands consumed a smaller annual percentage of average crop
yields. Some sources said that prices had moderated after the
second Anglo-Afghan war, but wages had remained high. Dane,
the Assessment and Settlement Officer in the 1893-96 period,
adamantly insisted upon enhancing the Yusufzai sub-division to
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 215

the level of the revenue rates imposed on the rest of the

Peshawar and other Punjab districts, even to the ideal 'half net
assets' demand. He felt previous revenue work had been inexact,
with Hastings intentionally setting low charges, many at 10 per
cent below official rates.
Dane's assessment report constantly noted the prosperity of
the Yusufzai sub-division and recommended that even if rates
were not raised to the exact half net assets value, they could be
radically increased with little burden on the proprietors. He
asserted that the present Mardan assessment of Rs 85217 was
considerably less than the theoretical half assets demand of
Rs 283303. In Swabi the current Rs 120859 ought to be
Rs 369733. But even Dane compromised with a subsequent
recommendation to make only a 'full collection' of the old rates
plus another 20 per cent to compensate for price rises. The
Punjab Financial Commissioner, not accepting the
characterization of Peshawar as now just another Punjab district,
suggested modifications and a lesser demand.
The Peshawar Division Commissioner, long in Peshawar,
responded that 'we have to bear in mind that we are dealing
with a frontier population which in the tract now under treatment
has been accustomed to great leniency in the matter of their
land revenue assessments'. A comment that possible half assets
rates tables had been assembled by 'a possibly too sanguine
observer'," was an indication of the polite bureaucratic
competition between political and revenue perspectives.
The Peshawar Commissioner proposed lowering Dane's
Mardan recommendation from Rs 164384 to Rs 152383 and in
Swabi from Rs 199320 to Rs 188297, only about 52 per cent of
Dane's theoretical half assets demand. The Punjab government
approved the lower rates.
Frontier remissions, personal itlams and revenue reductions,
jagirs, low rates set on the newly opened Swat Canal areas,
military employment and pensions, and a low revenue demand
rewarded the cooperation of Pakhtun khans and shareholders in
the Yusufzai sub-division. Unlike other areas in the Punjab or
even in the Peshawar valley, new irrigation opportunities in the
2 16 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Yusufzai sub-division initiated agrarian reaction to wider market

forces without immediate challenges from outsiders to
established patterns of land control. Smallholders with well
irrigation, especially Swabi tobacco-growers, became petty
commodity producers. But in the core area of new irrigation,
the Maira circle of the Mardan tahsil, an economy comprised
landlords, managing intermediaries, and growing numbers of
tenants-at-will replicated the region's heritage of imperially
supported social hierarchies at the expense of what remained of
small shareholder proprietorship and affiliated, often only
nominally dependent, hamsayas and fakirs.
The core irrigated village circles within the Yusufzai sub-
division created a growing socio-economic gap between not
only neighbouring independent areas and the settled district, but
between irrigated and non-irrigated areas within the sub-division.
Cultural and demographic innovations followed as large numbers
of Mohmand Pakhtuns migrated from independent and settled
district villages to become Charsadda and Mardan tenants. The
elite treated these migrants as low status producers of less
concern than traditional dependants. The 1901 Census counted
47032 Mohmands in the settled district, with 19206 in the
Charsadda tahsil, 9803 in Mardan, and only 74 in Swabi.
The irrigation process itself also had a negative influence on
the quality of life in the Peshawar valley. Malaria became a
serious health problem as the Swat River Canal and other valley
irrigation projects increased the amount of moisture standing in
fields, ditches, and waterways . In the five years 1877-81 annual
deaths in the district from 'fever' averaged 6944 (about 1.1 per
cent of pop.). In the six years 1885-90 annual deaths averaged
7958. In the ten years 1891-1900 deaths averaged 13394 (about
1.78 per cent of pop.), including 21437 in 1892 alone. Malaria
seemed to be a wetlands disease of swampy soil and humid
seasons, especially during the autumn in the Yusufzai sub-
division. Observers recognized that irrigation contributed to the
incidence of malaria. 'The best recruits are therefore generally
to be found in the non-irrigated areas where the land is poorer
and the evidence of malaria is less, i. e. under the hills to the
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 2 17

North-east of the Mardan and Swabi Tahsils. Yusufzais are

enrolled for all arms of the services.''j5

David Ludden, 'India's Development Regime', in Colonialism and

Culture, N. Dirks, ed. (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1992).
See J. Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal, eds., Locality, Province
and Natiorl (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973).
David Hardiman, 'The Indian Faction', Subaltern Studies I (Oxford
University Press, Delhi, 1981). Hardiman argues against the permanence
of factional ties across diverse lines of social class and interests.
Rittenberg, Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Pakhtuns, 1988 notes social
tensions from the 1920s, accelerated by the Depression. See also Jansson,
India, Pakistan or Paklttunisran?, 1981 for a sense of the evolution of
Peshawar valley anti-colonial politics from the Khilafat movement, c.
1920, from local social reform movements, and from ties to the Indian
National Congress Party.
Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 1992, p. 7.
See Imran Ali, The Punjab under Imperialism, 1885-1947 (Oxford
University Press, Delhi, 1989), for a broad argument about existing
hierarchies being projected on to new social spheres developed in irrigated
'canal colonies'.
See Dupree, Afghanistan, 1994, Chapter 17, 'The Age of European
Imperialism'.
See articles in the Illustrated Lortdon News, 5 October 1878.
Illustrated London News, 19 October 1878.
Illustrated London News, 2 November 1878.
Peshawar Commissioner Office Records, Bundle No. 7, File S. No. 259,
Letter No. 37-1963, dated 15 May 1873, p. 1. From Thornton, Sec. to
Govt., to Punjab Commissioners.
Peshawar Deputy Commissioner Records, Bundle No. 8, File S. No. 165,
pp. 22, 27, 72. Each listed in personal 'Roll of a retired native officer
entitled to be present in durbars', recorded in 1898.
Peshawar C. 0. Records, Bundle No. 1 1 , File S. No. 424, Letter No. 427,
dated 30 November 1880. From Civil Surgeon, Peshawar, to Peshawar
Deputy Commissioner. Letter No. 55 in the same file noted hospital
admission totals for venereal disease by British troops in Peshawar along
with average annual troop strengths. For the period 1876-1879 admission
percentages in these years were as high as 11.82%, 17.9196, 22.06%, and
12.16%, though British soldiers were kept out of the city.
218 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

A verse about the dispatch of Mardan troops to Basra, Iraq in World War I
repeated by a Hoti village woman of the period to her granddaughter, as
remembered by the granddaughter in 1996.
Dupree, Afghanistan, 1994, p. 410.
Fox, Lions of the Punjab, 1985, p. 143.
Peshawar C. 0 . Records, Bundle No. 6, File S. No. 220, contains 1898
correspondence about sending recruiting parties to Adam Khel Afridi
country in the Kohat region, and to the Mohmand and Buner areas. The
latter efforts, pursued by recruit-hungry regiments, were debated by
political officers as being too soon after the 1897 troubles.
Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, pp. 300-01. For Yusufzai 'Pay and
Pensions' see Appendix 9.
Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 343.
Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, pp. 390-92.
From printed pamphlet titled Copies of Testimonials of Ishar Singh &
Sarup Singh, Contractors & General Merchants. Wine, Opium, Charus,
& c., Peshawar District (Commercial Press, Peshawar, c. 1900).
From Prices and Wages in India (Statistical Branch of the Department of
Finance and Commerce, Calcutta, 1885), Part 11, Wages of Skilled and
Unskilled Labour ( 1873- 1884), Peshawar District Average Monthly
Wages.
One seer was equal to a little more than two pounds, 40 seer was one
maund or about 80 pounds. The non-standard weights and measures in
the district included a general grain measure by unit of weight. The
'Peshawar ser' was equal to the weight of Rs 104 of British coinage, the
'Government ser' to Rs 80. In the Razzar and Utman-nama tappas of the
Yusufzai sub-division a unit of capacity, the odi or ogi was used, see
Peshawar Gazetteer, 1897-98, pp. 242-44. Fox, Lions of the Punjab, 1985,
p. 36 listed the maund at 82.28 Ibs. The krrru distance of sixty-six inches
mentioned in the Regular Settlement was called the karam in the 1897-98
Gazetteer.
Grain prices from Prices of Food-Grains and Salt throughout India,
1861-1883 (Statistical Branch of Department of Finance and Commerce,
Calcutta. 1884).
Quote from Census Report c?f 1891, in Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 94.
Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 116. By the 1890% Muslims objecting
to the missionary aspect of the first schools had a choice of three other
Peshawar English-medium schools for university preparation.
In letter from Officiating Peshawar Deputy Commissioner Beckett, dated
31 January 1875, reprinted in History of the Hoti Family, p. 32.
In a letter from E. G. Hastings, Settlement Officer, dated 30 April 187%
reprinted in Hoti family history, p. 32.
In a letter from D. C. Macnabb, Peshawar Commissioner, dated 22 March
1874, reprinted in Hoti history. pp. 31-2.
 ANGLO-PAKHTUN SOCIETY 219

30. In a letter from H. Robinson, Peshawar Commissioner, dated 18 February

1882, reprinted in Hoti history, p. 34.
31. Information from Peshawar Commissioner Office Records, Bundle 73,
File S. No. 2038, Letter No. 331, undated, c. 1883-4.
32. Peshawar C. 0. Records, Bundle 73, File S. No. 2037, 'Petition of Khwaja
Muhamed Khan of Hoti regarding certain remarks made by the Sessions
Judge, concerning him.' Printed petition, dated 26 March 1883.
33. P. C. 0 . Records, Bundle 73, File S. No. 2037, Letter No. 175, dated 30
June 1883. J. Johnstone, Sessions Judge to Chief Court, Punjab.
34. P. C. 0. Records, Bundle 73, File S. No. 2037, Letter No. 2079, dated 18
July 1883. Registrar, Chief Court, Punjab, to Government, Punjab.
35. P. C. 0. Records, Bundle 73, File S. No. 2037, Letter dated 5 June 1883.
Jenkins, Guides Commander to Sessions Judge.
36. Comments from Johnstone's Letter No. 175, pp. 1-11.
37. P. C. 0. Records, Bundle 73, File No. 2038, Letter No. 331, pp. 3-6.
38. Letter No. 331, p. 8.
39. From a letter dated 5 June 1883, Jenkins to Johnstone.
40. Johnstone Letter No. 175, pp. 3 and 9.
41. 'Petition of Khwaja Muhamed Khan of Hoti.', p. 4.
42. Honourific titles listed in 'Punjab Government Circular No. 21', c. 1900,
detailing those admitted to Provincial and Divisional Darbars: Raja,
Nawab, Shams-ul-ulama, Mahamahopadhyana, Sardar Bahadur, Rai
Bahadur, Khan Bahadur, Diwarl Bahadur, Sardar Sahib, Rai Sahib, Khan
Sahib, Diwan Sahib. From Peshawar D. C. Records, Bundle No. 8, File
S. No. 166.
43. Sections 39 through 46 of the F. C. R. 1887 code dealt with 'Security for
Good Behavior'. See attached text of Section 40, in Appendix 15. As
revised in the late twentieth century, Section 40 was still a notorious and
widely debated 'tribal area' legal instrument.
44. Peshawar C. 0 . Records, Bundle No. 73, File S. No. 2037, Letter No. 18,
dated 1 1 January 1884, pp. 9 and 12. Warburton to Peshawar
Commissioner.
45. Noted in Khwaja Muhammad's petition to the Punjab Lt. Governor, p. 3.
46. See Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 197 1, for his sense of hegemonic control
as being evolved from complex power relationships reflected in cultural
and political discourses.
47. Fida Muhammad, The Hegemonic Role of the Criminal Justice System in
Pakistan, unpublished PhD dissertation (sociology), University of Oregon,
1994, introduction, reprinted Frontier Post, 29 April 1996, p. 2.
48. Revision debate in documents in Peshawar C. 0. Records, Bundle No.
77, File S. No. 2254A. 1894 quote from Major Deane in File 2254A,
Letter No. 277, p. I .
49. See Fida Muhammad, ibid.
220 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

50. Fox, Lions of the Punjab, 1985, Chapter 2. From 1885 through the 1920s
nine major canal colonies were settled in the three doab regions between
the Jhelum and the Sutlej rivers. See statistics in Imran Ali, The Punjab
Under Imperialism, 1989, p. 9.
51. See Fox, Lions of the Punjab, 1985, pp. 24-5.
52. Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 353. Information on Swat River Canal
from pp. 348-53.
53. 1891 Census population and migration statistics in Peshawar Gazetteer
1897-98, pp. 92-95.
54. Bates and Carter, 'Tribal Migration', 1994, p. 208.
55. See Bates and Carter, 'Tribal Migration', 1994, pp. 209-18.
56. L. W. Dane, Assessment Report of the Yusufzai Sub-division in the
Peshawar District 1895, Punjab Revenue and Agricultural Proceedings,
Revenue January to April 1896. IOL PR Feb. 1896, 7-12 Pl4926, p. 76.
See Map 5, 'Assessment Circles'.
57. Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 301.
58. Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 301. See Map 6, 'Peshawar District
Survey Map'.
59. 1895 Dane Assessment Report, p. 37.
60. By 1895 Yusufzai sub-division cultivated land was 28.6 per cent
compared to 78 per cent in Charsadda. Cultivated areas per holding
averaged 27.6 acres in Mardan against 10.7 acres in Swabi. See 1895
Dane Report, pp. 37 and 54.
61. 1895 Dane Report, pp. 77 and 47. For agrarian and tenancy data see
Appendices 10 and 1 1 .
62. See Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, pp. 236-7.
63. 1895 Dane Report, pp. 54-55.
64. Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 307.
65. Quote from Peshawar Gazetteer 1931, vol. A, pp. 276-7.
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE,
THE 'FANATIC', AND THE
SUBALTERN

For a century after the events occurred, differing historical

perspectives have scrutinized the late nineteenth century non-
western and South Asian contact with European imperialism
and the British empire.' The nature of indigenous resistance to
foreign domination has been continuously analysed. Colonial
narratives dismissed various suppressed uprisings as the triumph
of order over anarchy. Nationalist chronologies, on the other
hand, appropriated disparate revolts as events anticipating the
day the people would come into their own. Political economists
and radical historians traced conflict to changing structures of
class, caste, and economy. Post-independence, state oriented
scholars wrote modernizing teleologies in which resistance
developed as consolidating governments confronted and
absorbed traditional societies and cultures. More recently,
'subaltern' and post-colonial narratives interpreted col~nialera
unrest as continuing conflict between domineering western
knowledge-power and communitarian consciousness and agency.
Post-1947 historical scholarship on anti-colonial politics and
resistance further refined analysis of emerging nationalism,
especially in relation to Islamic identities.* Here, in considering
the social context of one late nineteenth century moment of
indigenous revolt, colonial history and religiously influenced
social mobilization remain best understood by drawing upon
methods under-utilized in studies focused on the state. Close
attention to details of Peshawar valley village social, economic,
222 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

and political relations reveals the heterogeneous nature of both

colonial and 'native' responses to the violence of 1897. The use
of 'subaltern studies' approaches, including reading colonial
documents 'against the grain' of official discourse, has helped
to recover details of a 'history from below'. But this leads to
questions about the viability of particular subaltern studies
concepts such as generalized 'peasant communal consciousness'
or the existence of truly autonomous domains separating
subaltern and elite politics and power relation^.^
The revolt of 1897 involved the popular mobilization in, and
official repression of, several Pakhtun villages on the border
between the settled, government-controlled Peshawar district and
the lower Swat valley just to the north, scene of the initial
uprising. The uprising of 1897 did not reflect simple 'tribal
fanaticism' or proto-national consciousness. Nor was it merely
a product of either economic structural transformation or pure
'subaltern' agency. This challenges imperial, national, and
academic historical theories that have compared and contrasted
1897 fanaticism with holy war, imperialism with patriotism,
and religious millenarianism with secular progress. Rather than
seeking to hypothesize some apparent, yet elusive, common anti-
colonial 'consciousness', this study demonstrates the extent to
which participants in the events of 1897, though acting as
individuals in particular decisions, remained integral parts of
complex networks of power and local culture. Lineage relations,
religious beliefs, economic and social status, and links to
colonial authority all influenced the nature of individual and
clan mobilization at the outbreak of resistance and the degree of
accommodation and compromise that quickly followed during
the supression of the revolt.
In the late nineteenth century the several hundred villages of the
Peshawar valley experienced a period of settled district agrarian
expansion and local Pakhtun elite consolidated their authority and
control of resources. Despite a growing colonial presence centred in
Peshawar city and the influence of revenue and judicial regimes,
regional Pakhtun clans continued to pursue many indigenous pmctices
and initiatives. Village social life continued to be heavily dominated
by a patriarchal set of gender and lineage relations.
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 223

The social hierarchies and political stability developing in

central canal-irrigated lands remained less evident around the
periphery of the 'settled' Peshawar valley. In 'border' villages
old concerns about imperial expansion and maintaining a
competitive local power balance resurfaced during the 1897-8
period of extended political instability.
The late nineteenth century British-Indian imperial activism
expanded degrees of control over surrounding territories. In 1886
a boundary commission resolved with the Russians a northern
border for the Afghan buffer state. In 1893 a British-Afghan
agreement formalized the Durand Line, dividing spheres of
influence between the Afghan amir and British India. By 1895
a familiar imperial sequence of regional observation, influence,
interference, and occupation repeated itself in the Chitral valley
north of the Yusufzai clan areas of the Peshawar and Swat
valleys. The colonial government involved itself in Chitral
politics and military force was used to control and direct local
authority.
Using concerns about Russian influence and British prestige
as a pretext, the colonial occupation of Chitral required the
construction of a road through the Malakand Pass just north of
the Peshawar valley. The road traversed lower Swat and
Chakdara village, then cut west and north across the Yusufzai
territory of Dir. Yusufzai clans opposing the advance over the
Malakand Pass were defeated. The British established posts at
the top of the Malakand Pass and at a bridge over the Swat river
at Chakdara. In an age of worldwide European imperial
expansion and conquest, especially against diverse Islamic
communities, after decades of incremental British advances
along the entire Afghan border region, colonizers viewed the
opening cf a road across lower Swat as an inevitable event. The
newly covered territories were indirectly controlled through local
leaders and administered as the Agency of Dir, Swat, and
Chitral, or simply the Malakand Agency.
A n imperial narrative justified this latest phase of expansion
with a rationale that for many remained fully legitimate well
into the post-colonial period. With regard to the late nineteenth
224 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

century British treaties and advances along the Afghan border it

was said:

...all this was regarded as a deliberate menace to a long cherished

independence. A menace indeed it was, but not deliberate. Every
move had been forced upon authority either by tribal depredations
or by the need to oppose disruptive influences.. .4

This British narrative of benign, justifiable expansion

suggested the establishment and acceptance, if grudging and
slow, of a final, hegemonic authority. This common imperial
view asserted a monopoly on moral and political legitimacy.
In 1897 long-simmering Pakhtun concerns erupted into
violence. The struggle was characterized in terms of archaic
tribal opposition to the expanded colonial border and to a
civilizing, progressive state. Colonial discourse ignored Islamic
moral arguments, clan custom, and regional political motivations
while laying all the blame on barbarism and a disruptive
'fanaticism' generated by a handful of outside, illegitimate
religious figures.
Colonial state and post-colonial scholarly analysis
concentrated on the 'fanatical' or 'millenarian' aspects of the
1897 Pakhtun revolts that soon spread along the British-Indian
frontier. Once again British claims to an exclusive authority,
'encompassing both power, in the sense of the ability.. .to coerce
and effect change, and moral influence, in the sense of providing
the ultimate source for norms.. . 's resulted in particular
conclusions. Instances of nuanced, differentiated individual and
clan involvement in events remained little understood or
recalled. An over-developed perception of the role of legitimate
Islamic cultural and moral appeals in regional resistance reduced
any actuality of an evolving, complex history of clan, imperial,
and religious relations to a moment of spontaneous, universal,
and temporary revolt.
Contemporary colonial reports supported later scholarly
theories of regional millenarianism and the moral discourses
dividing Islam and the imperial state.6 But such colonial
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 225

documents, including files about settled district villagers charged

with participating in the fighting, confirmed an argument for a
specific rather than dominant role for religion in the anti-imperial
struggle. Islamic identity would be emphasized by both the
colonizers and their opponents to serve discrete goals, including
obscuring the complex interpenetration of colonial systems with
village systems of authority and power. In addition, colonial
files, while exhibiting what Freitag called the British 'conflation
of power and authority', also indirectly suggested the inadequacy
of any 'subaltern' or post-colonial analysis viewing the events
as simply a unified or 'national' revolt of the dominated against
the imperial state.
Colonial histories of the events of 1897 were collections of
rumours. In May 1897 imperial troops marched through the
Malakand Agency to relieve units stationed in Chitral. Sometime
'. . .during the march.. .rumors began to reach the Political Agent
that persistent efforts were being made by mullas to arouse
fanatical excitement in Swat, Bajaur, and Dir.' As in previous
areas occupied by the British, local figures had been retained in
authority, awarded allowances, and delegated the responsibility
of maintaining the peace. As in previous eras, anti-imperial
political sentiments received no overt local elite encouragement
while imperial patronage consolidated select elite ambitions.
Whether the May rumours were accurate or not, the Yusufzai
ruler of Dir, now tied to British approval and support, used the
rumours successfully to attack enemies, including a local
religious figure, the 'Palam mulla', and other 'clans on the right
bank of the Swat river'.
Around 18 J u l y rumours reached the Malakand Political
Agent of a 'fakir*, a religious ascetic, who claimed miraculous
powers and asserted that 'with the aid of hosts of angels' he
would lead a jihad and defeat the British. On 26 July the fakir,
named Saidullah, began marching towards Malakand from
Landakai village in the Swat valley. With him went only 'a few
small boys with flags in their hands'.' After six miles he reached
Thana, the village of the khan lineage (khel) of the Baizai branch
of the Akozai clan of the Yusufzai. By then four hundred men
226 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

had joined him. Along the road leading towards Malakand and
the side road to Chakdara the procession passed other villages
and hundreds more joined. That evening both the Malakand and
Chakdara imperial encampments suffered assaults from
thousands of Yusufzai from numerous clans and villages.
The fortified camps survived despite many casualties. A
30 July telegram sent by the Political Agent at Malakand
reported, 'The Fakir who led the business has withdrawn to
Jandalia wounded; his companion and supporter shot dead.'*
The young 'companion' had been proclaimed as the heir to the
Mughal throne. Despite this, until a relief column from the plains
arrived on 2 August 'fanatical attacks by relays of tribesmen'
continued on both Malakand and Chakdara. After 2 August
British military columns would traverse the Swat and Buner
areas and eventually end the local uprising. By then, a series of
new border revolts to the south involving the Mohmands,
Afridis, and others meant that troops and political agents would
be kept busy into the next year.
The direct results of the 1897-98 clan uprisings along the
frontier, costing thousands of casualties and millions of pounds,
included an end to the latest period of colonial 'Forward Policy'
and the 1901 decision to separate a new North-West Frontier
Province from the Punjab. The new viceroy, Curzon, would
later boast that during his term in office he spent almost nothing
on frontier expeditions. Yet these political responses did not
follow politically grounded understanding of the violence.
British discourse from 1897, including political agent reports
filed from August 1897, matched the objective of a colonial
journalist 'to deny his enemy any claim to moral status by
establishing the premise that he is fanatical . . . ' 9 Churchill's
writings on the period fully elaborated a western moral certainty
that the benefits of colonialism remained transparently
unassailable. Indigenous opposition came from the irrational or
self-serving response of opponents of modernity and civilization.
'Were (the tribes) amenable to logical reasoning, the
improvement in their condition and the strength of their
adversaries would have convinced them of the folly of an
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 227

outbreak. But in a land of fanatics common sense does not

exist.' lo Extending David Edward's comment that "'Fanaticism"
serves as the central trope of Churchill's polemic.. .' , fanaticism
served as the key trope of colonial frontier discourse.
One problem in later analysis of this trope was the sense of
an underlying truth behind the extreme imagery. 'Fanaticism
may be a biased term, but it still describes something real that
must be deciphered if we are to understand the nature of
religious authority and the reasons why the normally insular
border tribes chose to follow religious leaders into battle.'" But
neither charisma nor millenarianism satisfactorily explains
'something real' about the complex interaction of clans, religion,
and the state.
Miracles factored into the rhetoric of Saidullah, as they did
in Churchill's critique of Pakhtun society. And observers noted
the role of religious leadership in other revolts along the
borderland in 1897, especially in the Mohmand country. Yet
colonial representations of a spontaneous, universal movement
inspired by miraculous religious visions, inevitably to be
defeated after an impractical emotional outburst, need not be so
closely replicated in analysing either the content or the character
of the Malakand conflict.
History slanted in the nineteenth century to present a contrast
between a rational colonial administration and an anarchic
society continued loosely to shape later studies. If 'Swat was
notorious as a den of sedition and crime', this appeared mainly
in British colonial sources. When the Swat clan leaders (khans)
and a privileged elite communicated with the British during the
1897 revolt, was it due to 'fearing political anarchy and the
uncontrollable and unpredictable religious fanaticism of the
"mullahs"'? Or was it because they feared political displacement
by victorious religious leaders or alternatively punishment, even
dismissal, by post-revolt British political agents?
Over seventy-five years later a modernization narrative
continued to shape analysis, postulating that:
228 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

The 'jihads' in the colonial encounters of the nineteenth century

were a last grand and futile gesture of the 'traditionalist' forces of
Islam tilting against the most powerful nations on earth. The
inevitability of the outcome merely underlines the conceptualization
of the rationale contained in the 'jihad' by its participants: the
struggle is more important than victory; the principle more
important than the objective.12

Yet it may be argued that the Pakhtun struggle in 1897

conceptualized a rationale of victory over colonialism, one
finally achieved in 1947 within Churchill's lifetime. As well,
later history demonstrated that pursuing the objective of a return
to a pre-imperial, even 'traditionalist' context was not inevitably
futile, if one considers the politics of 1990s post-Soviet
Afghanistan, mid-1990s Chechnya, or even the Malakand
Agency in the 1995-96 period.
Did the perception of the 1897 Yusufzai uprising in Swat as
a millenarian reaction, 'loosely' defined as 'a spontaneous,
universal and historically short-lived, native reaction to
economic or political stimulus, expressed through the presence
of foreign troops and administrators','~implydevalue tactics
learned through centuries of pastoral and agrarian resistance
against imperial intrusions? Such resistance often included the
temporary local use of religious imagery and symbols to
highlight sharp differences between opponents in moments of
extreme political conflict.
Khans opposed to the British in 1895, well aware of the
repression of previous challengers, could not directly provide
leadership in 1897. For many kharts neutrality was the public
stance. Three days after the uprising began, the Malakand
political agent observed, 'Inayat Khan of Thana with a few levy
sowars (was the) only man loyal to us. He has taken refuge in
Chakdarra.'I4 But the ideology of jihad readily translated any
elite and popular socio-political and religious-moral concerns
into action. All khans would instantly reassert the previous status
quo if the British were displaced, or could count on being
supported by the victorious British if they attributed discontent
solely to religious agitation.
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 229

How should historical process be interpreted? Was the

expression of resentment building since 1895 'spontaneous'
revolt, after months of rumours of imminent jihad? In the
Yusufzai country only Saidullah's involvement seemed 'short-
lived'. Colonial armies spent weeks campaigning in the Yusufzai
valleys and months in warfare against Mohmands and Afridis.
Typical peace agreements were reached with regional clan
councils (jirgas). Clans agreed to stop fighting and in return the
British, confiscating some arms and levying fines, agreed to
stop burning villages and to depart from occupied valleys. The
colonial ability to define offences and administer often token
punishments symbolically reasserted government authority. Yet
documents preserving the process of judgement showed that,
despite widespread unrest, there was far from 'universal'
individual and clan involvement in the 1897-98 uprising.
Legal records on the settled villages of the northern Peshawar
valley provided another perspective on the nature of village
social relations, the fragility of imperial authority, and the
negotiable terrain of colonial-clan relations. Evidence suggested
the inherent weakness of an early subaltern studies theory that
'all of subaltern protest can be written from two diametrically
opposed points of view: the rebel's and the darogah's'.15
Complex indigenous initiatives and strategies and different
imperial reactions, locally and in Lahore, contradicted any sense
of absolute imperial-tribal alienation and marked 'the inadequacy
of this (early subaltern studies) bipolar division of social life'.16
Did the revolt represent a general, contingent 'subaltern'
reaction against colonial dominance? If so, evidence linking
local post-revolt initiatives and reactions to specific socio-
economic contexts and power relations suggested the limits of
any (late subaltern studies) claim of uniform peasant or
community 'consciousness' or that 'when a community acts
collectively the fundamental political characteristics are the same
everywhere' . I 7 Regardless, the history of 1897 dispelled imperial
presumptions that colonial systems and authority had finally
'settled' the Peshawar District.
230 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Despite decades of rhetoric of pacification and tranquillity,

local authorities had few illusions about the extent of their writ
in settled district villages along the northern border with Swat.
On 27 July within hours of the initial uprising, the Assistant
Commissioner of the Mardan tahsil of the eastern Peshawar
valley sent warnings to village maliks 'against joining the
fanatical gathering', especially maliks appointed as revenue
agents (lambardars) in the Sadhum valley and in 'Baizai' sub-
district (tappa) Utman Khel villages. On 28 July the Malakand
political agent logged rumours of possible participation by
residents of other valley villages, including from Hashtnagar,
Nowshera, and Kui Barmoul. On 29 July the Peshawar
Commissioner warned 'lambardars and village chaukidars
throughout the district' to report, on the pain of severe
punishment, 'any man going across the border' from their
villages.'*
If actual colonial control proved vulnerable, especially in the
villages around the northern periphery of the settled district, the
surveillance apparatus of the imperial regime recorded the extent
of local involvement in the 'jihad'. On 27 July Muhammad
Yusuf, the touring deputy inspector of police and thanadar of
the Katlang police post, visited the three northern 'Swati'
Yusufzai villages of Matta, Shamozai, and Babozai followed by
the neighbouring Utman Khel villages of Sangao, Mian Khan,
Pipal, and Kui. In Matta he heard rumours that something had
happened at Malakand. He decided to visit the other villages,
before returning late in the day back through the Yusufzai
villages to Katlang. He found Mian Khan 'almost empty', with
no lambardars present. 'In Pipal and Kui the people were few.'
Returning to Katlang, he observed 'there were very few persons
in Babozai'. He continued on, concerned about the security of
the police thana itself, reaching Katlang village at three o'clock
in the morning.
On the afternoon of the 28th officials dispatched Muhammad
Yusuf on tour again. He delivered or sent government messages
to lambardars in Babozai, Kui Barmoul, and Lundkhwar
summoning them to the Assistant Commissioner in Mardan.
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 23 1

Muhammad Yusuf spent that night in Pipal. 'There was no one

in Pipal that night. The hujra was empty. The lambardars had
both gone to Mardan, and a few old men and women and
children had been left behind.'19
Over the next few days the inspector of police, Shahzada
Shweb, came from Mardan to survey the area. Village
lambardars received orders to assist in listing all villagers who
had gone to Malakand and made 'common cause with the
enemy'. Initial village responses to the police inspector,
including from lambardars, revealed the divisions between state,
clan, and individual interests. On 30 July in Mian Khan the
inspector found no lambardars present and few men in the
village. 'The people present said most of the men had gone up
to the hills to get grass and wood.' Villagers in Sangao, including
Ghazan, a lambardar, asserted that the men had gone wood and
grass collecting 'and that none of them had gone to the fighting'.
It was decided to make an example of Mian Khan village.
Dispatched on 1 August to Mian Khan, the inspector chose
names from lists of missing men assembled by Muhammad
Yusuf (twenty-five names) and by village lambardars (thirty-
one names). But villagers defied the inspector's attempt
immediately to arrest six suspects and take them into custody.
Most of the men named remained missing from the village, but
six men had approached the inspector. Most stated they had not
gone to Malakand. One claimed he had gone to Shamozai to
collect a debt. Another said he had gone to Buner to buy a cow.
When the inspector held the men, then handcuffed them, 'the
villagers made a great uproar, and made as if to release them'.
The lambardars, ordered to calm the crowd, said they were
unable to do so. In the morning, as the inspector attempted to
leave Mian Khan with his prisoners, the village lambardars
approached the inspector to release the men 'on security'. 'As
there was every likelihood of a breach of the peace.. .,' the men
were released 'on bail' while the inspector visited other villages.
Finally, the deputy inspector Muhammad Yusuf collected the
six from Mian Khan along with other suspects. On 4 August the
inspector reached Mardan with eighteen prisoners.20
232 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

While fighting continued the government initially desired to

identify and punish individuals held responsible for attacking
the Malakand posts. Outright denial and avoidance of
responsibility by village leaders and individuals marked an
apparent indigenous solidarity against state authority. But as the
fighting ended and as interviews, interrogations, and inquiries
accumulated into late 1897, it became clear that not all clans or
villages along the northern border had joined the violence. Nor
did colonial officials seem to care to implicate fully those
individuals whose village or clan memberships made extended
investigations impolitic or inconvenient to larger colonial
purposes.
Such evidence raised one 'dilemma' of attempting to
understand a colonial state-subaltern tribal conflict. 'The
question of (imperial) complicity, hierarchy, and surveillance
within subaltern communities and subaltern cultures is a thorny
one indeed.' There would be no 'pure and transparent' subaltern
identities maintained after the Malakand attacks, though
arguably there had been for a time a familiar, historically
constructed, 'occasional, partial, contingent achievement of a
measure of unity, collaboration, even ~olidarity'.~'
Clearly evident to all, Baizai tappa Utman Khel villagers and
'Swati' Yusufzai villagers had gone to fight in Malakand. The
wounding or death of particular individuals was common
knowledge. But also i n the Khattak Pakhtun villages of
Lundkhwar and Mian Isa, when on 31 July the police inspector
'enquired from the Hindus of the villages', he received cautious
responses 'that undoubtedly many men had gone, but they could
not say Yet no Khattak villagers would be listed in the
final table of fifty-eight men accused of fighting the British.
By November 1897 a clear pattern emerged to limit any
charges and punishments in the Mardan tahsil or Yusufzai sub-
division to the Baizai area villages. Statements now suggested
that early reports 'regarding the complicity of British subjects
in the rising led by the Sartor Fakir were necessarily not
altogether accurate, and I am glad to be able to report that the
inhabitants of the Hashtnagar and Mardan Tahsils were not so
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 233

generally implicated as was the first impression'. Though, with

the early reports at least partially accurate and with inhabitants
implicated perhaps only to a lesser degree, yet no Pakhtun
village shareholders from outside the nine Utman Khel and
'Swati' villages faced charges. Instead, only the Baizai residents
faced punishment for disregarding warnings and for travelling
'...a considerable distant, some 15 to 20 miles beyond the
border.. .' to join the fighting.
The Utman Khel earned particular condemnation for their
long, distinctly non-millenarian history of anti-colonial
resistance. 'There is no excuse whatever for their conduct, and
there is no doubt that the bulk of the Utman Khel left their
homes en masse to range themselves with our enemies. These
men or their fathers fought against us in the Ambeyla Campaign;
they rose in the course of the settlement operations of 1870-
1873; and they have ever been a turbulent set.. . ' 2 3
During the fighting, police officials visiting noticeably
deserted villages literally began to do a head count @artal),
perhaps using village land or revenue records, to list the absent.
In August 1897 officials called the Yusufzai village lambardars
to Mardan to account for the missing men. The lambardars of
Babozai made excuses for five absent villagers. 'Mir Afzal had
gone to fetch grass; Kebat to fetch wood; Hazrat Nur is an old
man and had remained outside his village; Rahmat Gul had
come to Mardan.' The Babozai lalnbardars, Pakhtun maliks,
did implicate Mazrupai, his son Painda Gul, Khani, and Khani's
son Ghundai. Any ideas of subaltern solidarity dissolved with
the statement that, 'Both Khane and Mazrube are lolzars' (low
status blacksmiths). The five Babozai villagers, all non-
shareholders, who were among the final fifty-eight charged,
included Hazrat Nur, listed by 'caste' as a weaver; Ghundai,
recorded as a lohar; Mazrupai, a carpenter; Khani, a lolzar; and
Painda Gul, a carpenter.24
The only four men implicated by lambardars from Shamozai
included three weavers and a Shilmani Afghan well-digger.
Matta village counted eleven men missing during the partal.
These included two 'Swati' Pakhtuns and a village washerman
234 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

(dhobi) who admitted having gone to Malakand. But a Matta

leather worker (chamar) said he had travelled to Peshawar to
sell skins. Three other Matta villagers stated they had been
purchasing tobacco in Sheik Jana village. Two others asserted
they were buying a cow in Paladheri village. A final two claimed
to be in transit to the t h a n a d ~ r . ~ ~
The Utman Khel lambardar reports were equally distorted.
Thirty-two men, all Utman Khel except one 'Swati mulla', made
the list for leaving Mian Khan. But Pipal village sources named
only one man, a wounded Utman Khel. The Pipal lambardars
simply stated that no one else went to Malakand.26 The
lambardars of Sangao, Kui Barmoul, and Ghazi Baba villages
did not even come into Mardan in August to make statements.
Instead, three similar petitions dated 21 September arrived at
the Mardan assistant commissioner's office. Each denied any
involvement. The Sangao lambardars, 'Shahdad, Nur Gul and
.
Gazan' wrote:

We beg to state that no inhabitant of our village went to

Malakand to join the 'jehad'. We would have informed you had
any of them gone there, and he would have come back wounded!
Besides this there exists enmity between us and the Bonerwals and
we feared that the Bonerwals would plunder our villages on finding
them empty, therefore we have been present in our village and kept
a watch there. We are quite innocent and none of us has gone to
Malakand to join the 'Ghaza'; now it rests with you whether you
impose a fine on us or not.

The Kui Barmoul lambardars said all 'zamindars' had been

required to remain in the village because of ongoing revenue
collections. Their petition ended, 'We are not guilty, but it rests
with you whether you realize fine from us or not.' The Ghazi
Baba village petition ended, 'As I and my villagers are innocent,
therefore we pray that our fine be remitted.'27
Statements taken from northern village government revenue
employees (patwaris), Hindu and Muslim, long serving and
recently appointed, denied any knowledge of local involvement.
'Devi Dial', Lundkhwar patwari since 1887, said, 'I made no
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 235

mention of any fighting in my diary ...I have not heard till to-
day that anyone went from Lund Khwar or not.' Bahadur Khan,
Kharki village patwari for twenty-six years, said of the fighting,
'I made no mention of it in my roznamcha ...I was sitting in my
Patwar Khana and know nothing. No one tells me anything.. .'
Saifulla, Kui Barmoul village patwari, stated he had no
knowledge of men going to Malakand and had only been patwari
for four months.
Safiulla, patwari of Lundkhwar Paian, a Khattak village,
admitted, 'Many people went. I don't know the names.. .' Firoz
Khan, patwari of Sarote and Tazagaraon, other Khattak villages,
and Ghazi Baba, a village of 'Sheiks', noted he was in
Tazagaraon when the fighting began, '...some 'Sherannis' who
had come from Swat went to fight. After that lots went. They
said they were going to Lund Khwar ...' Muhammad Usman,
patwari of Pipal, Mian Khan, and Sangao villages, said, 'Lots
of people went from Mian Khan, many armed, and boys with
them.. .I went to Sangao on the 27th. People had gone from
there. They said they had gone to tanzasha ...the Mian Khan
Lambardars Mashal and Dowlat went.. . ' 2 8
Statements from the wounded and the accused denied any
culpability. Zard Ali of Pipal, shot in the neck, said under initial
questioning, 'I went to Boner, and on my way back at night
some one fired at one and hit me in the neck.' Zohrab of Mian
Khan testified, 'I have not been wounded by a bullet. I have had
a boil on my leg, and this is the mark of it.' Hazrat Nur, weaver,
as well as Babozai chaukidar, explained, 'The mark on my foot
was caused by my falling down hill and striking my foot against
a stone.' Such explanations were not consistent with the British
medical officer's clinical descriptions of possible and certain
bullet injuries.29
Statements from the accused, most apparently recorded when
they were in custody in the Mardan jail, offered insights into
village internal organization, feuds, and class relations. Whether
truth or dissimulation, they were credible stories derived from a
social landscape familiar not only to Pakhtuns, but to colonial
officials as well. If 'Most narrators seek to confer coherence to
236 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

their stories by adhering to a (relatively) consistent principle or

"mode" of selection: the sphere of politics; the life of the
community; and personal experience^',^^ those accused in 1897
grounded stories of their activities and the motives of others in
the common details and relations of village life.
Kach Kol, 'age 40 years', a Pakhtun tiller and holder of a
share in village lands (zamindar) in Mian Khan, said that during
the partal he had been searching the plains (maira) for a lost
animal. 'An ass of Mashal, Malak, trespassed into my field and
I killed it, and this is the reason why he has given evidence
against me. Khanai, barber, and Gudrat, blacksmith, are my
witnesses.'
Pasand, 'age 50 years', a 'Pathan' and 'zamindar' of Mian
Khan, said he had left only to accompany his cousin for a short
distance into the hills, the cousin being havildar returning from
leave to a post beyond Chakdara. Pasand complained of being
implicated because, 'The Lambardars are our enemies. We
petitioned against them to the Tahsildar that they had realized
more on account of land revenue than what was actually due.
Sadulla is my witness as well as Fazal Khan and Sin Khan of
Pipal, who saw us both going together.'
Mir Afzal, a forty-year-old Mian Khan shareholder, said,

...I was present at the partal made by the Deputy Inspector and I
was ploughing my field when the inspector of Police arrived. I was
called from the hujra and arrested. Several zamindars and among
them my brother Suhbat stated to the Tahsildar that the Lambardars
had realized from them more on account of land revenue than what
was actually due and they had to deny this on oath. La1 Gul, Wali,
Hamaisha Malak of Pipal are my witnesses. They will give evidence
that I did not leave the village."

Other Mian Khan zamindars, Khan Kudrat Shah, 'age 75

years', Naushirin, age 40, and Mir Alam, age 55, claimed they
were listed because they had resisted previous excessive land
revenue claims. Ghulam Mohi-ud-din of Mian Khan insisted
that he had been in Buner, being charged only because the
lambardar 'Mashal Malak sold a buffalo to me and I could not
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 237

pay the price'. Mansaf of Mian Khan said he had left for Sangao
'to purchase an ox there for my plough.. .I purchased an ox for
Rs 18 at Sangao from one Randula. My own Malak has not
given evidence against me.. .'32
On 13 August Zard Ali of Pipal gave his third, most elaborate
explanation for his movements and wound. His narrative
illustrated the potential mobility of Peshawar valley residents
pursuing a livelihood. He said he reached Mardan on 27 July
after buying 'Rs 8 worth of cotton in Peshawar'. After a night
on the road, he spent the next night in Pipal. He arrived in
Tursak village in the Buner valley on the 29th. 'I was praying at
Khaftan in the mosque, and on someone's marriage a gun went
off. I was hit in the neck.' He returned to Pipal on the 31st
having disposed of the cotton in small parcels for a total of ten
rupees. 'I don't know why the Larnbardars say I went to fight.'
Rahmatulla of Matta, the son of a ntulla, protested he was in
Peshawar on the day of the partal. '. . .I went to get medicine,
and I also bought a book. I don't know who I bought it from,
nor what bazaar the shop is in. I have never been to Peshawar
before, nor have I ever bought medicines before. 1 stayed six
nights in Peshawar in a market.. .Because I am alone and poor I
have no witnesses except God.'33
The accused village craftsmen and labourers had other
seemingly credible stories. Samo Din, 'aged 55 or more, weaver
and zamindar of Shamozai', stated, 'I am Aziz's brother. I don't
know where he is now. I didn't go after him to Malakand.
When the partal took place I was in my melon garden, outside
the village. I have had a case with Zaman Shah about a field,
and this is the reason they accused me of going to Malakand. I
have witnesses ...' Jalal Din, 'son of Samo Din (accused),
Julaha, aged 22, zanrindar of Shamozai', said that, '...I did not
either go to fight or look after Aziz. The Maliks are my enemies
about a land case. I went to take bread to my father in his field
at evening, when the Tlrartadar made his partal.. .'M
The itinerant lives of many village servants and labourers left
them without established patrons and made them vulnerable to
these kind of charges. Fazal Ahmad, dhobi of Matta, denied he
238 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

had gone to fight. 'My wife has been living at Sarki for a year. I
have got another wife who is living at Ismaila. Shamozai is my
birthplace, but I lived at Matta before I came to Sarki two or
three months ago. I lived at Matta for 14 or 15 years, but I have
left the village because I cannot find work there. I have been
continuously living at Sarki for the last two or three months. I
don't know why the Lambardars have given evidence against
me.' Hayat Gul, a 'Dehkan' of a Lundkhwar lambardar, was
investigated, though he reportedly had earlier departed
Lundkhwar after the harvest of the rabi crop. He testified that
he had 'left Hakim's service and went to Machal. I went
nowhere else ...I have relations in Machal; that's why I went
there. I don't know why people said I went to fight.' Hayat Gul
did not become one of the fifty-eight accused.
Kutab, 'son of Siraj Din, Baghban of Kasmai', from Patai, a
banda settlement of Jalala village, worked as an agricultural
labourer. He testified that ten to twelve days before the fighting
he had gone to Malakand, where he used to sell grass, in search
of work. He said he was accidentally caught in the fighting and
wounded. Afterwards, Kutab had taken refuge in Palli village in
independent territory until his brother was pressured to bring
him into custody. His brother, La1 Din, a 'zamindar' of Patai
village, testified that Kutab:

...has no fixed abode and is always wandering in search of

work. I went to Boner to visit the shrine of Pir Baba and thence I
came to Kasime, and there I heard that my brother had been
wounded at Malakand, and that he had been suspected of having
joined the Ghazis, and my wife and children had been placed in
custody on account of this suspicion.. .'-'

With this pattern of accusation, perhaps it was no surprise

that the only men implicated in the greater Mardan tahsil south
of the Baizai area were nine non-Yusufzai Mohmand tenants
and labourers of landlord Ibrahim Khan of Mardan and two
other landless Pakhtuns working in the Sadhum area. The nine
Mohmands tilled village lands newly watered by the Swat river
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 239

canal. On hearing of the fighting Ibrahim Khan sent his

supervisor (nazir) to check his villages for absentees. In his
statement the nazir, Khan Mir, said, 'I asked the boys and others
where they were ...The boys and others said they had gone to
Malakand.' One accused, Arsula, was a Mohmand from Bajaur
working as a labourer in Bahlola village. Of the eight accused
Mohmands working in Ahmadabad village, four were of sayyid
lineages. Five Mohmands charged asserted they had gone to
Bariband, a banda of Tangi village in the nearby Charsadda
tahsil, to plough lands moistened by recent rain. Another claimed
he had made a trip to Tangi, while two men maintained they
had never left Ahmadabad and did not understand the reason for
their arrest. The accused from the Sadhum area were two
landless brothers living in Naodeh village in the Rustam thana.
The brothers had originally come from the independent Chamla
valley north-east of the Peshawar District. Both were implicated
by lambardars and the one who returned after days of absence
was arrested.36
The fifty-eight men ultimately listed in a table as '...known
to have joined in the recent fighting against the British ...'
included thirty-two men from Mian Khan, all Utman Khel except
for one 'Swati Mulla'. There was one Utman Khel from Pipal,
the wounded Zard Ali. The remaining twenty-five accused lived
in three 'Swati' Yusufzai villages (twelve men), Kharki village
(two men), Patai Banda (one man), Bahlola (one man),
Ahmadabad (eight men), and Naodeh (one man). The last
twenty-five accused included one 'Afghan Shilmani' and an
Utman Khel. The rest were dependent fakirs, the landless, and
labourers.
Essentially, the only settled district Pakhtun village
shareholders charged, and even initially jailed, for joining the
Malakand conflict were selected Utman Khel from Mian Khan
village. Apparently singled out by officials, the village served
as an example for others. Testimony suggested that some of
those actually charged might have been victimized because of
internal village factionalism, including disputes over revenue
and land. The transparent tactic of village lanlbardars and clan
240 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

leaders (maliks)turning in low status village servants for charge

and arrest indicated the enduring nature of Pakhtun dominance
over non-Pakhtun dependants within a set pattern of
asymmetrical village power relations. The colonial strategy not
to contest this selective process, plus the decision simply to
ignore any possible involvement by other settled district Khattak
or Mandanr Pakhtun villagers, indicated the interplay of other
colonial political agendas and accommodations and their effect
upon a nominally impartial judicial process.
The apparent and complex class, clan, and political
solidarities and divisions revealed in the reports of 1897-98
challenged any premise that the anti-imperial feelings that found
expression at Malakand and Chakdara represented a timeless,
transcendent 'subaltern' unity or consciousness. Ambiguities and
contradictions occurred within individuals, families, and clans
over the interpretation of such events and the response to be
made. Such regional Pakhtun anti-imperial sentiments, if
historically enduring, were highly contingent and never able to
displace the military technology and material might of late
nineteenth century British imperialism.
Colonial archives produced a material context for
investigators. Official statistics from the 1891 census profiled
the nine villages 'suspected of complicity'. A general outline of
social relations emerged from tables that divided the 9779
residents of the villages in to 'agricultural' and 'non-agricultural'
populations and specified the numbers of persons (shareholders
and tenants) paying land revenue. Revenue statistics revealed
different histories of local and imperial relations. Tables showed
community 'frontier remissions' for the Utman Khel villages as
opposed to individual ma$ and inam exemptions in the Yusufzai
villages (suggesting a separation between the obligations of
Yusufzai village shareholders and their revenue-paying
dependants). The differences between villages and between
Pakhtun clans were a reminder that the complex social landscape
of the 'Yusufzai sub-division' was not exclusively 'Mandanr
Yusufzai' ."
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 241

Ghazi Baba was the smallest of the nine villages with thirty-
nine houses and 241 people. It was the only village settled
mainly by 'Sheikhs' or religious lineages. Ghazi Baba's non-
agricultural community consisted of sixteen men and fifteen
women. The 210 agriculturists (119 men, 91 women) were
nominally responsible for Rs 110 in revenue, but with Rs 32
remitted in 'mafi' exemptions there was an actual payment of
Rs 78. Forty-one persons, male agricultural shareholders or
tenants, paid this amount.
The three Yusufzai villages were larger. Matta, with 1023
residents, had 7 10 tillers and 3 13 others. Shamozai's population
of 991 was divided into 698 agriculturists and 293 others.
Babozai's 1737 residents included 1349 tillers and 388 non-
agriculturists. In Matta, with 215 houses, 194 persons were
responsible for Rs 499 of revenue, with only another Re 1
exempted as a mafi grant. In Shamozai, with 195 houses, an
unknown number of agriculturists received Rs 22 mafi and paid
Rs. 578 revenue (a nominal total demand of Rs 600). In Babozai,
with 353 houses, 415 persons variously accounted for Rs 1200
in revenue, including those receiving Rs 125 in total mafi awards
and Rs 250 in inam grants, and those paying Rs 825 in remaining
demand.
The five Utman Khel villages totalled 5787 persons, including
2333 male agriculturists and about 1458 revenue payers. Sangao
had 157 tillers paying revenue; Mian Khan 254; Pipal 200;
'Kui' 447; while Kharki, with 1678 persons slightly smaller
than Kui Barmoul with 18 1 1 residents, had 383 revenue payers.
It was difficult to judge the accuracy of quantified change in
regional village demography between the censuses conducted in
1868 and 1891. Did the often large population increases
evidence actual village growth, perhaps aided by the settlement
of regional pastoralists? Did the more moderate growth in the
number of houses in some villages indicate that 1868 human
counts were often unreliable? Some degree of inaccuracy was
certain. Were 'villages' in 1891 being defined as larger 'estates'
that incorporated outlying households and bandas? In the final
analysis, some degree of growth in the late nineteenth century
seemed clear.
242 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

Within a generation censuses showed the local village

population rising 61 per cent from 6079 to 9779. What did this
signify for pressure on land and water resources, political
stability, and social hierarchy? It was a young population. The
nine-village total of 9779 in 1891 included approximately 3907
agricultural males. With 41.66 per cent of the district male
population under 15 years old, Mian Khan, with 356 agricultural
males, had perhaps 208 tillers 15 years or older, thirty-two of
whom were accused of going to Malakand. Again, did more go
from Mian Khan? If so, why were only some implicated? In
1891, there were approximately 2280 agricultural males in the
nine villages aged 15 years or older. Of these perhaps thirty-
four Pakhtun shareholders were charged with going to Malakand.
If the Mian Khan numbers were accurate and representative,
something impossible to prove or disprove, and 15 per cent of
those over age 15 participated, then 342 men could be
extrapolated as going to Malakand. Of 1222 'non-agricultural'
males in the nine villages, perhaps 7 13 were 15 years or older,
of whom thirteen were charged, still less than 2 per cent of the
total group. The remaining eleven charged were agricultural
labourers and tenants, of whom at least ten were Pakhtuns
originally from outside the Yusufzai sub-division. The small
number arrested and the credibility of the accusations made
impossible any speculation about the 'jihad' being
proportionately more appealing to poor, landless, and tenant
populations than to Pakhtun shareholders.
The colonial process of investigation and punishment exposed
the dynamic inter-relationships between indigenous unity, state
pressure, and clan and class interests. From the state perspective
village 'lambardars' failed to perform their obligations as
imperial agents. Only in Mian Khan and Naodeh did lambardars
cooperate by providing information. Yet in describing the police
inspector's visit to Mian Khan the Mardan Assistant
Commissioner commented, 'The conduct of the headmen of
Mian Khan at this stage requires heavy punishment. They did
all they could to prevent certain men being arrested...'
Describing the 'Baizai ilaka' in general, he said:
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 243

In no case either can the heads of these communities be

considered to have offered the authorities any assistance. Certainly
from fear of the consequences the Lambardars of Mian Khan gave
evidence against many of their men as having gone to fight, but
their evidence is virtually useless for conviction of any of these
men. The lambardars of Kui and Sangao state that none of their
villagers went to fight, but they cannot explain how their villages,
when examined, bore an almost empty appearance.

The blanket denials failed to satisfy the government, which

knew 'it is a matter of common report in this part that whole
bands of these men went to the Malakand and other parts to
fight'. Pressure extracted names from village 'headmen', but, as
in Babozai village, '...none of these men are Pathans,. . .and.. . I
strongly suspect the Lainbardars of having given us the names
of some perfectly harmless individuals in order to save their
own clansmen. The same thing occurs in Shamozai and Matta ...'
The Assistant Commissioner summarized:

In conclusion, it may be noted that in no single case was any

report given by any Lantbardar as to the absence, death or being
wounded of any man found to have joined in the fighting against
us, with the two exceptions noted in the former letter; in all cases
was it necessary to drag the statements from the Lantbardars as to
complicity or otherwise, and I consider the headmen have absolutely
failed in their duty.38

Resistance existed to varying degrees. Many villagers from

the more involved, and few from the less involved, lineages and
clans went to Malakand, but many apparently went to observe
rather than to fight. Most returned to their villages around
2 August less because of the collapse of spontaneous
'fanaticism' than as a consequence of high casualties and the
arrival of overwhelming colonial army reinforcements from the
Punjab. Perhaps only fanatics would have continued to fight so
far from home after losing the advantages of surprise, superior
numbers. and free movement.
244 SEITLING THE FRONTIER

The resistance of villagers and lambardars to excessive

arrests in Mian Khan probably deterred similar attempts in other
villages. Nevertheless, pressure that included standing threats of
arrest or the loss of position and subsidies inevitably led village
elite to make scapegoats of particular men, those at the bottom
of the social ladder and, perhaps, others involved in feuds or
factional enmity.
Responses from the accused included counter-allegations that
some village .maliks, empowered by imperial officials to act as
larnbardar, revenue collectors and 'headmen', used this
privileged status to extort higher dues and to penalize fellow
Pakhtuns who protested to authorities, in efforts to maintain
internal clan power relations. Many statements of the accused
were recorded in similar, almost formulaic patterns elaborating
movements, denying culpability, and naming supporting
witnesses. Interrogations were recorded in the vernacular, then
translated. Often, on certain days numerous statements were
taken in the Mardan jail. The effect may have been that the
diverse narratives of the accused were reduced to an officially
useful format of biography, explanation of whereabouts, and,
uniformly, no admission of guilt.
The actions of suspects and the archive of statements
illustrated classic examples of 'weapons of the weak'.39 The
accused employed tactics of avoidance, non-communication,
denial, and alternative stories, making no direct challenge to
investigators or the powerful. With the exception of a unique
situation involving the police inspector, the deputy inspector,
and the three Mian Khan lambardars, disavowal of Pakhtun
involvement was the rule. Many of the accused from Mian Khan
at first simply remained in the hills away from the village. As of
15 August 1897 only twenty-nine of the accused were in
Injured villagers, including the wounded weaver Aziz
from Shamozai, often recuperated away from police, in the
Buner valley and other independent areas. The history of
colonial awards of collective punishment in previous conflicts
helped to explain personal denials as well as the three pre-
emptive petitions from the Utman Khel villages, already
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 245

anticipating a collective punishment of fining. For the most

vulnerable, including the young Mohmand tenants of the big
landlord Ibrahim Khan, uniform narratives of trips to Bariband
and protestations of innocence might have reflected individual
naivete, truth, or a credible excuse difficult to d i ~ p r o v e . ~ '
The Mohmand tenants and labourers, as compared to several
Utman Khel shareholders of Mian Khan, did not apportion blame
for their fate. Many of their answers seemed intended to ensure
that their statements did not jeopardize even the low status they
held in the settled district. Perhaps in response to direct
questions, most denied having enemies. Seventeen-year-old
Saidin Shah, Mohmand sayyid and tenant of Ahmadabad village,
said, 'Neither the Khan Bahadur nor any of his servants is our
enemy.' 'Hyat Muhammad', another Mohmand sayyid and
Ahmadabad tenant said, 'Ibrahim Khan called me to Mardan
and I was arrested. I do not know why. The Khan is not my
enemy nor his Nazir. The Malak of the village also is not my
enemy.'42
The intimidating imperial potential to investigate, arrest,
charge, convict, imprison, and hang suspects was fully exploited
in the weeks immediately after the Malakand attacks. But a
major uprising of Mohmands on the Hashtnagar border, followed
by an autumn and winter 1897-98 campaign against the Khyber
Pass Afridis, reduced in proportion initial impressions of the
Malakand trouble and deterred any unsettling degrees of
retribution against now calm villages.
In the end, political considerations and the colonizer's own
rules restricted penalties against the accused from the Baizai
region. The ongoing regional fighting made political tranquillity
and economic stability in the settled district a priority over
further arrests or coercive solutions. The fate of those arrested
once again reflected the 'frontier' district's liminal judicial
environment, operating between a formal regime of criminal
codes, police institutions, and exclusive authority and an ad hoc
system of borderland expeditions, blockades, Frontier Crime
Regulations, and contested hegemony. Co-opted, collaborating
witnesses, 'approvers' were not used. Such witnesses were not
246 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

considered credible or usable, suggesting again, as across British

India, 'the inability of the Raj to make use of testimony from
supposedly disinterested witnesses and victims'.43 After much
effort and the production of many files, finally '. . .in no instance,
not even in the case of men who bore marks of bullet wounds,
was any sufficient judicial evidence forthcoming even a prima
facie case under Section 121, Indian Penal Code, against any
individual' .44
The focus then shifted to 'the complicity of village
communities' that might be chargeable under the Frontier
Crimes Regulations. In autumn 1897 the nine Baizai villages
were '...found guilty of having colluded with and screened
members of their respective communities who had gone to fight
against us, and of having combined together to suppress
evidence against those individual members'.45 The Peshawar
Deputy Commissioner recommended certain punishments. First,
under Section 24, F. C. R., fines equalling a year's revenue
payments, a total of Rs 55 18, were to be paid by 'the agricultural
portion of the communities only, for there is no doubt that they
were the persons who chiefly went to the enemy'. A second
proposed punishment, under Section 27, F. C. R.,46was a three-
year suspension 'of rnafis and inams' to individuals, costing
Rs 664, and the permanent cancellation of frontier remissions
of assigned revenue payments for the five Utman Khel village^.^'
In February 1898 the Punjab government responded to the
proposals. Frontier remissions against Peshawar valley 'Doaba'
villages involved in the Mohmand unrest had been suspended
for only three years or, in one case, five years. The Punjab
Lieutenant-Governor was of the opinion that a permanent end
to the Utman Khel remissions meant, 'there would be some
inequality in dealing more severely with the Baizai villages'. A
three-year suspension was r e c ~ m m e n d e d . ~ ~
It was quite likely that hundreds of residents of the villages
of the northern Peshawar District participated in or were present
at the July-August 1897 Malakand 'jihad'. In the secular colonial
process designed to define and judge 'criminality' rather than
political or religious motivations, discussion of Islam and the
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 247

role of Islamic leaders revolved around early, short dismissals

of fanaticism. As well, 1897 documents contained no references
to any participation by the small surviving community of Islamic
activists descended from early nineteenth century leaders,
labelled by the British 'Hindustani fanatics', who now lived in
hill country villages between the Indus river and the Malakand
Pass.
The narratives of the accused, whether read as plausible
claims of innocence or fabricated evasions, did not contain
references to or discussions of Saidullah, his message, or local
perceptions of the influence of these factors in triggering or
sustaining events commonly associated with jihad or 'Ghaza'.
As recorded, translated, and condensed by authorities trying to
account for acts of treason and revolt against the Empress, the
statements of the accused may have been cleansed of religious
content.
But the internal colonial letters, reports, and orders of local
authorities directly concerned with managing current and future
village relations also did not refer to religious figures within the
settled district villages or the role of village mosques, nor plan
any strategy to counter the potential influence of Islamic
activism or theology in generating future unrest. Did this
represent a genuine sense that religion played only a nominal
role in the sustained resistance? Was it a denial of any legitimate
place for Islam in colonial perspectives? Saidullah, the 'Sartor
mulla' (black-headed or bare-headed), was not discussed or
analysed as representing any Sufi or non-orthodox Islamic
perspective or having any potential following. Was his name or
message left unmentioned in police interrogations because of
clan perspectives, colonial editing, or the convenient condensing
of harried policemen and magistrates? In the end the earlier
colonial emphasis on fanatical Islam seemed, in part, an
expedient use of a familiar device to define the stark contrast
between modern, rational, legitimate authority and archaic,
illegitimate opposition.
Villages, calm on 27 July during the deputy inspector's
morning visits, received news of the previous day's fighting
248 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

against the British at the Malakand posts. Groups of men,

leaving empty hujras behind, responded in an old pattern of
unification against imperial intrusions. In hindsight, in written
reports implicitly justifying why he had not anticipated or had
intelligence of impending events, the Malakand political agent
repeated rumours of promised miracles and discussed the
irrational beliefs that by definition could neither be understood
nor anticipated. In a modem era of railroads, irrigation canals,
telegraphs, and advanced institutions of security and order,
imperial perspectives denied the legitimacy of any non-fanatical
Pakhtun political motivation or any mobilization, if only through
rumours, that reacted to the initiatives of the imperial state and
the occupation of the Malakand Pass.
Regional Yusufzai villagers, historically accustomed never to
expect unconditional anti-imperial leadership from clan leaders
as diverse as Ibrahim Khan of Mardan or the lambardars of
Mian Khan, responded as individuals and lineages to culturally
familiar idioms of warfare. Their reactions displayed attitudes
that no more reified religious imagery and symbolism, or
produced miraculous or even sustained 'peasant-communal'
consciousness, than did attitudes present in any other aspect of
Pakhtun life. Perhaps a realization that religion complemented
rather than dominated all aspects of Pakhtun life might restore
proportion to notions of fanatical Pakhtuns and 'others' that
simplistically, but often purposefully, interpreted cultural
elements, here religion, as phenomena i n opposition to
authoritative perspectives.
In March and April 1898 officials tied up the final loose ends
of the Malakand uprising. The independent area clans had
reached agreements. In February, an assistant or naib tahsildar,
dispatched to the nine Baizai villages to collect the fines,
'aggregating Rs 55 18', gathered the whole amount 'in less than
a week. The case against the village communities of Baizai may
now be regarded as closed.'49
Yet by March no individual punishments had been meted
out. There was a lack of evidence and even 'in the event of a
conviction by jirga the only sentence which could be inflicted
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 249

is a fine'. Still, there were six wounded men who had

'notoriously taken part' and were now in custody, including
three surrendered by the Buner jirga in January 189K50Peshawar
officials decided, whether there was evidence or not, that the
men, 'who if they got their desserts would be hanged', should
be imprisoned for fourteen years under 'Regulation I11 of
18 18' .51 Appropriate correspondence was forwarded to the
Government of India about Zard Ali, Utman Khel of Pipal;
Zohrab, Utman Khel of Mian Khan; Mazrupai, tarkhan of
Babozai; Khani, lohar of Babozai ; Nazrai, 'Mamandzai' of
Kharki; and Kutab, baghban of Patai Banda. In a restraining
response the Punjab Lieutenant-Governor accepted the idea of
some imprisonment in the Montgomery district jail, but did 'not,
however, recommend that any period of detention be specified
in the warrants'.52

NOTES

1. Among others, see Michael Adas, ed., Islamic & European Expansion,
the Forging of a Global Order (Temple University Press, Philadelphia,
1993).
2. See Ayesha Jalal, including The Sole Spokesmart, Jinnah, the Muslim
League and the Dernand for Pakistan (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1985).
3. The utility of subaltern studies approaches for contemporary scholars is
discussed in Florencia Mallon, 'The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern
Studies: Perspectives from Latin American History', American Historical
Review 99, 5 (Dec 1994), pp. 1491-1515; Gyan Prakash, 'Subaltern
Studies as Postcolonial Criticism', AHR 99, 5 (Dec 1994), pp. 1575-90;
and Frederick Cooper, 'Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial
African History,' AHR 99, 5 (Dec 1994), pp. 15 16-45.
4. Olaf Caroe, The Patltans (1958), (Oxford University Press, Karachi,
1992), p. 387.
5. Sandria Freitag, 'Collective Crime and Authority in North India', in Crime
and Criminality in British India, ed, by Anand Yang (University of
Arizona Press, Tucson, 1985), p. 141.
6. See Akbar Ahmed, Millennium arid Charisma among Pathans: a critical
essay in social anthropology, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1976),
chapter 7, and David Edwards, Heroes of the Age, Moral Fault Lines on
250 SETTLING THE FRONTIER

the Afghan Frontier (University of California Press, Berkeley 1996)

chapter 5.
7. Quotes from 'note by Major Deane', reprinted in Peshawar Gazetteer
1897-98, p. 275.
8. Peshawar C. 0 . Records, Bundle 57, File S. No. 1456. Telegram No. 322,
dated 30 July 1897, from P. A. Malakand to Punjab Government.
9. Edwards, Heroes of the Age, p. 181.
10. W. Churchill quoted in Edwards, Heroes of the Age, p. 181.
1 1. Edwards, Heroes of the Age, pp. 181-82.
12. The quotes in the preceding two paragraphs are from Akbar Ahmed,
Millennium and Charisma, 1976, pp. 95, 109, 93.
13. Ahmed, Millennium and Charisma, 1976, p. 105.
14. Telegram No. 318, dated 29 July 1897, from P. A. to Punjab Govt., From
printed 'Malakand Series' of July-August records. See f. n. 4.
15. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial
India (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1983), p. 108.
16. A critique of subaltern studies sociology and Guha's formulation of 'an
alternative national allegory' is in David Ludden, 'Subalterns and Others
in the Agrarian History of South Asia', unpublished paper, 1994.
17. Subaltern studies formulations of collective or communal 'peasant'
consciousness are found in Guha, Elementary Aspects and Partha
Chatterjee, 'Agrarian Relations and Communalism in Bengal, 1926-35',
Subaltern Studies I (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1982). quote from
p. 35. This critique derives from Sumit Sarkar's essay 'The Decline of
the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies' in Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social
History (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1998), p. 82-108.
18. From Telegrams No. 255, dated 30 July and No. 195, dated 29 July 1897
in 'Malakand Series' of documents in P. C. 0 . Records, Bundle 57, File
No. 1456.
19. Quotes and narrative from P. C. 0 . Records, Bundle 57, File No. 1456,
documents collected under heading 'Foreign Department, Frontier',
February 1898, Nos. 163-244, 'Malakand Expedition. Punishment of
Baezai Villages for Complicity in the Fighting on the Malakand'
(hereafter Malakand Reports) p. 14, Letter No. 170, 'Statement of
Muhammad Yusaf Deputy Inspector of Police of Katlang', dated 8 August
1897.
20. Malakand Reports, pp. 12-13, No. 169, including Police Inspector's report
dated 8 August 1897.
21. Florencia E. Mallon, 'The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies',
American Historical Review, vol. 99, 5 December 1994, pp. 1491-1515,
p. 1511.
22. Malakand Reports, p. 12, No. 169.
23. Malakand Reports, p. 1, No. 163. W. R. H. Merk, Peshawar commissioner
report dated 13 November 1897.
 INTERPRETING RESISTANCE, THE 'FANATIC', AND THE SUBALTERN 25 1

Malakand Reports, p. 15, No. 171, 'Statement of Lambardars of Babozai,'

dated 8 August 1897, Mardan.
Malakand Reports, p. 15, No. 172, dated 8 August 1897.
Malakand Reports, p. 16, Nos. 174 (Mian Kh$n lambardars), dated
10 August 1897 and 175 (Pipal lambardars), undated.
Malakand Reports, p. 17, translations of Nos. 177 (Sangao petition), 178
(Kui Barmoul petition), 179 (Ghazi Baba petition).
Malakand Reports, pp. 18-19, excerpts from pahvari statements, Nos. 183,
185, 186, undated, 191- 193 dated 16 September 1897.
Malakand Reports, p. 20, quotes from Nos. 195, 197, and 199, undated,
respectively, medical opinions of these injuries in Nos. 196, dated
7 August 198, 200, undated.
Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and other stories, Form
and Meaning in Oral History (SUNY Press, Albany, 1991), p. 21.
Malakand Reports, p. 21, Nos. 205 (Kach Kol statement), 206 (Pasand
statement), and 207 (Mir Afzal statement), all dated 13 August 1897.
Statements taken by Rahim Bakhsh, Magistrate 1st Class.
Malakand Reports, p. 22, information from personal statements Nos. 208,
209, 212, 21 1, and 210 respectively, all dated 13 August 1897.
Malakand Reports, p. 23, Zard Ali statement (unnumbered) and No. 215
(Rahmatulla statement), both dated 13 August 1897.
Malakand Reports, p. 24, Nos. 219 and 221, dated 13 August 1897,
statements taken by C. P. Down, Magistrate 1st Class (also Assistant
Commissioner).
Malakand Reports, pp. 18,24, 25, statements No. 222, dated 13 September
1897 (Fazal Ahmad), No. 223, dated 14 September (Hayat Gul), No. 224,
dated 22 August (Kutab), No. 181 (Lal Din), dated 22 August 1897.
Malakand Reports, Nos. 225-238, dated 13 August 1897.
1891 census statistics of the nine villages summarized in 'Abstract of
Villages ...' in Malakand Reports, pp. 6-1 1, No. 168, dated 28 October
1897. 1891 age distribution statistics from Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98,
p. 97.
Assistant Commissioner C. P. Down quotations from Malakand Reports,
pp. 3-4, No. 165, dated 27 September 1897.
James Scott, Weaporls of the Weak (Yale University Press, New Haven,
1985).
Malakand Reports, p. 32, No. 241, dated 17 August 1897.
Saidin Shah, aged 17; Syad Muhammad, 26; Arsula, 32; Raze Khan, 25;
Miran Shah, 30; Syad Nazir, 28: Hyat Muhammad, 27; Mawaz, 19; Shah
Munir, 19. Spellings from reports.
Malakand Reports, pp. 25-26, Nos. 227 and 233, both dated 13 August
1897.
Freitag, 'Collective Crime', 1985, p. 150.
252 SETILING THE FRONTIER

Section 121. 'Waging, or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of

war, against the Government of India.' Indian Penal Code, 1860, p. 31,
1996 edition.
Quotations from Malakand Reports, pp. 4-5, No. 167, Peshawar Deputy
Commissioner C. Bunbury order, dated 28 October 1897.
F. C. R. 1887, Section 24, 'Fines on communities accessory to crime'.
Section 27, 'Forfeiture of remissions and grants cf revenue by
communities accessory to crime.' For 'Baizai' village statistics see
Appendices 12 and 13.
Details in Malakand Records, pp. 6- 11, No. 168, dated 28 October 1897.
Ghazi Baba, a village of religious lineages was held 'guilty in the same
way' as Sangao and Kui Barmoul, 'but to a lesser degree'. The fine
remained but the general three-year maji suspension was shortened to
one year.
Malakand Reports, (unnumbered p. 34), No. 243, dated 9 February 1898,
from L. W. Dane, Secretary to Government, Punjab to Merk, Peshawar
Commissioner.
Malakand Reports, no p. no., Letter No. 43, dated 12 February 1898.
Malakand Reports, Foreign Department, Frontier, April 1898, No. 659,
dated 22 March 1898, from Peshawar D. C. Younghusband.
Malakand Reports, Foreign Department, Frontier, April 1898, No. 658,
dated 7 April 1898, from Peshawar Commissioner to Govt. of Punjab.
Malakand Reports, Foreign Department, Frontier, April 1898, No. 661,
dated 25 April 1898, from Peshawar Commissioner to Govt. of India.
 CONCLUSION: SETTLEMENT AS
METAPHOR

The idea of reducing to order the Pakhtun clans of an apparently

anarchic, unproductive transit district exercised the minds of
imperial rulers and states for centuries. From the time of the
Mughal Babur in the early sixteenth-century, goals of regional
subordination, generally through military conquest, evolved into
complex clan-empire relations blending coercion, accommo-
dation, alliance, and-divide-and-rule diplomacy. Mughal
emperors and governors, Afghans, Sikhs, and the British pursued
similar strategies to co-opt local allies and institutions, expand
revenue and grain surpluses, and impose imperial standards of
political hierarchy and social order.
But the imagery of a 'frontier' needing civilizing, a 'shatter
zone' of relative insignificance between imperial domains, was
an imperial creation derived from power dynamics and political
competition. From Abu-1 Fazl to Churchill the settlement of a
troubled frontier served as a convenient metaphor justifying
imperial dominion. Generations of regional Islamic scholarship
and debate, elite and common Pakhtun literary production, and
well ordered lineage-based social relations belied such claims,
If high degrees of imperial economic settlement and control
were gradually achived, this study has explored the limits of
other imperial efforts to introduce socio-political settlement and
transformation into the area's diverse local religious, lineage,
and personal perspectives.
In the sense that Pakhtun clans themselves conquered,
divided, and settled the valleys around Peshawar, they were
also imperialists. From around 1500 various Pakhtun clans and
confederacies continuously held and managed the territory.
Lineage dynamics were transformed as Pakhtuns settled to an
254 CONCLUSION

agrarian life. In much of the region Pakhtuns became a land-

controlling elite holding sway over former tillers and non-
agriculturists. Excess land was tilled by subordinate hamsayas
and fakirs, slaves, debt labourers, and, in time, rent-paying
tenants. Dependant village artisans, service providers, and
labourers survived through a variety of patron-client inter-
relationships that provided plots of land, payments in kind,
advances, and the provision of a minimal subsistence.
Over centuries Pakhtuns living near imperial routes and towns
were drawn into imperial socio-political hierarchies. A few
became integrated, others faced challenges to personal status
from successful non-Pakhtun revenue payers and Pakhtuns able
to mobilize non-clan sources of wealth and influence. Other
clans in distant, highland valleys retained degrees of autonomy
from imperial dominion.
As state control of agrarian resources expanded from the
irrigated fields around Peshawar town the exclusive authority of
Pakhtun social norms was now confronted by differing modes
of patronage and hierarchy. By the late nineteenth century even
the most historically autonomous Peshawar valley clans,
including those of the Yusufzai sub-division, were politically
and economically tied to a continental and global imperial
system.
British colonial statistics, if highly problematic, tracked this
nineteenth-century agrarian expansion. Cultivation, increasingly
oriented to market demands, grew from 643540 acres in 1855 to
886324 in 1900-01. The number of villages, 'Mouzahs or
townships', increased in this period from 622 (618 of them less
than 1000 persons) to 806, including 216 in the Yusufzai tahsils.
By 1896 71 square miles of the Mardan tahsil's 410 cultivated
square miles were irrigated by government canals, plus another
17 square miles by wells. Swabi tahsil ended the century with
no government canal irrigation, but by then had developed
32 square miles of well irrigation. Between 1868 and 1891 the
Yusufzai sub-division population grew 46.9 per cent, from
166465 to 244564 persons.
 CONCLUSION 255

It remained a heavily rural society of mixed agrarian and

pastoral livelihoods, with limited resources devoted to education
or health. In 1900-01 the district contained an estimated 94479
'kine' (cattle, buffalo, oxen), 21 1331 sheep and goats, and 5240
camels. Statistics of village populations, rural males and females,
and literacy rates (3.6 per cent for the district) allowed
calculations that only about 7525 rural males (2.43 per cent)
and 463 (0.17 per cent) rural females, less than one per village
could read or write.
The census figures of 1901 presented an outline of the social
composition of the district and the Yusufzai sub-division after
centuries of Pakhtun settlement and fifty years of British
domination. This colonial knowledge of the Peshawar District
was built on the social categories of Punjab 'Races Castes and
Tribes' formally detailed in work done for the 1881 census. The
Peshawar District tables listed a mix of north Indian, Punjab,
and Pakhtun social identities in an effort made to define
precisely individuals whose histories of migration, employment,
and social mobility made easy categorization impossible. One
listing of 'Muhammadans' under the category of 'Brahman'
indicated that other census numbers might reflect hereditary
status as much as current reality.
The census fixed a series of colonially acknowledged social
identities, hinted at migration, and recorded the growth of a
capitalist merchant class. The Mandanr clans were subsumed
under the 'Yusafzai' name. The fact of thousands of Mohmands
settled in the Charsadda and Mardan tahsils and only a few
dozen in Swabi suggested the specific pull of newly irrigated
lands, if only for tenancies and labour. The growth of demand
for cash revenues and of market cropping revealed itself in the
growing numbers of intermediary brokers, shopkeepers, rural
financiers, and traders. In the twenty years between 188 1- 1901
over 2000 Sikh 'Khatris' and over 4000 'Arora' traders,
including almost 3000 Sikhs were added to the district. Within
these and other statistics could be observed early evidence of
the market-based economic changes that would lead to increased
256 CONCLUSION

debt, land transfers, and twentieth-century challenges to the

status quo.
The 1901 census presented an impression that all agrarian
identities reduced to a single occupation. Ibbetson's volume
from 1881 census work1 defining occupation castes also tended
to suggest a provincial homogeneity of professions rather than
the historically diverse nature of roles in specific locales such
as the Peshawar District. The 1901 census numbers were broad
indicators of Peshawar District demography even as they raised
questions. Several thousand agrarian workers (baghbans) were
listed in Mardan tahsil, but none in Swabi. Several thousand
tillers (maliars) were listed in Swabi tahsil, but none in Mardan
tahsil. The baghban category had apparently been split after
1881. In 1901 both categories of these non-Pakhtun Muslim
'garden' agriculturists had members enumerated in other tahsils.
Did this indicate a difference between canal and well irrigation,
a difference in language communities (Pakhtu, Urdu, Hindko?)
or between Pakhtun and 'Punjab' vocabularies? Again, leather
workers were listed under mochi in Mardan tahsil and chamar
in Swabi tahsil, yet other tahsils had numbers under both
categories.
A numerically steady population of weavers (julahas) showed
no sudden demise of local production of silk and cotton fabric
for regional markets nor did it hint at possible income declines
perceived as early as 188 1. 'From the introduction of foreign
cotton and cloth goods also, the trade of the weaver class has
suffered, and that of the blacksmith for a similar rea~on.'~Any
census category, julaha or other village crafts and trades,
obscured the reality of mixed employment. The sons of
hereditary weavers, and other artisans might be part-time or
full-time tenants or agrarian labourers. As mentioned, many
'village servants' also tilled small plots awarded for service.
In exploring such complex social realities, this study utilized
and critiqued social science debate and social modelling of
Pakhtun society to inform an historical understanding of the
apparent generational continuity of aspects of Pakhtun behaviour
that include lineage competition, Pakhtunwali concepts of
 CONCLUSION 257

honour and gender roles, and elements of clan-empire contact.

Historical detail and perspective were used to argue that such
'continuity', including inequities, was the continuously
re-created product of a process of competition between
differential centres of political power, control of economic
assets, and claims to social prestige.
Social, political, and cultural competition and synthesis in
the Peshawar valley zone of contact occurred in relations other
than those between Pakhtun 'tribes' and successive imperial
'states'. If Islamic interpretation, prescription, and proscription
were integral elements of regional culture, the continuing ulema
and Sufi Islamic criticism of Pakhtun society highlighted
differences between more orthodox religious visions and local
spiritual practice. The role of Islamic inspiration and leadership,
especially in directly anti-imperial conflict and confrontation,
always had a historically specific involvement outlining ongoing,
but finite levels of Islamic influence.
Clan identities and interests coincided and conflicted with
particular Islamic personalities and decisions. A common ground
of Islamic idioms and heritage did not imply the existence of
social or even linguistic commonalties with other Islamic
movements and partisans. The ambiguity inherent in Pakhtun
Islamic practice was revealed during a cease-fire to remove
casualties in the 1863 Ambela conflict. One British officer
recorded, 'It was observed that both the wounded and dead
bodies of the Hindustanis on this and subsequent occasions were
left by their allies,. . .' 3
Religious injunction always continued to be subject to local
practice. At the end of the twentieth century the tomb of Akhund
Darweza on the southern fringe of Peshawar city symbolized
the assimilation of a saint into local culture, a synthesis of
popular and orthodox belief. The site attracted women who
viewed the grave from a high vantage point outside. Young
girls inside the tomb premises caressed and kissed rounded
stones left on a ledge adjacent to the grave. Each visitor invoked
the saint's blessings in prayers for fertility, health, beauty,
prosperity, and good results in examinations.
258 CONCLUSION

By the mid-nineteenth century a substantial, colonial

bureaucratic presence had institutionalized local social
hierarchies and used revenue and law codes to control and
selectively transform Pakhtun society. But in the late nineteenth
century political domination and economic integration into
imperial systems did not guarantee political stability or a
hegemonic acceptance of imperial socio-cultural norms.
Successes reflected as much accommodation and negotiation as
any imperial dictation. A constantly compromised system of
colonial law and order struggled to impose its own definitions
of criminal behaviour on locally legitimate standards of conduct.
Quarterly reports of cases under the Frontier Crimes Regulations
continued to document attempts to settle disputes between
independent and settled area residents. By mid- 1899, Pakhtun
clans paying lip service to F. C. R. rules and punishments,
including an increased reliance on fines, resisted authority in a
quiet strategy of non-compliance. The second quarter report
noted:

The opening balance of unrealized fines was Rupees 29995-2-6.

Fresh fines to the extent of Rs 3,9951- were imposed during the
quarter, and Rs 8441- were only realized. Rs 2201- have been struck
off as absolutely irrecoverable, leaving an outstanding balance of
Rs 32926-2-6 which is very large. The Deputy Commissioner was
called upon for an explanation in regard to the large balance of
fines unrealized at the end of the previous quarter, but no
improvement seems to have taken place in this respect. More
stringent measures appear to be necessary to ensure ~ a y m e n t . ~

Lines drawn in the Commissioner's red ink crossed out the

last sentence of this paragraph.
The settled district context established by 1900 was marked
by increasing social hierarchy, economic differentiation, and
colonial technological dominance. An imperial over-reliance
upon local elite and an unwillingness to give meaningful content
to colonial structures of representation and opportunity
guaranteed a build-up of social tension. In the post- 1918 period
this tension found expression during the well documented
 CONCLUSION 259

political activism of second-tier khans, Pakhtun shareholders,

oppressed tenants, and a slowly developing segment of educated,
urban nationalists.' In the 1926 Assessment Report for the
Mardan tahsil the author hinted at colonial complicity in
exploitive practices originally planned for abolition by the
confident settlement officers of the 1850s:

I have ignored a lot of curious payments which are usual in this

Tahsil, especially on the estates of the big khans, e.g.-
i) juganah-a payment of Rs. 4 per plough recovered annually;
ii) tukri-a payment of 20 seers of wheat per plough set aside for
the khan before the common heap is divided.
These with contributions exacted as pay for the khan's nazir and
seignorial dues recovered on marriages, etc., amount to a
considerable income, but as they are not universal, I have preferred
to exclude them from the account alt~gether.~

After the First World War the Peshawar valley socio-

economic situation determined local responses to the political
efforts of the Congress and Muslim League parties. As growing
economic differentiation spread discontent, elite lineage
factionalism began to separate the khans most closely tied to
the British from junior kin, still often substantial landowners,
who had been frozen out of any role in a region denied political
liberalization. At this point, as '. . .political ideologies interacted
with the patterns of elite competition and class conflict','
alienated second-tier klzaizs allied themselves with the Pakhtun
nationalist party of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The Khudai
Khidmatgar (Servant of God) or Red Shirt movement of Ghaffar
Khan demanded independence from the British and joined forces
with the Congress during the 1930 civil disobedience campaign.
Ghaffar Khan's programme calling for reform and social justice
mobilized the discontented. By the time the Muslim League
turned to enrolling members in the NWFP, as late as 1936-7,
only the opponents of the Khudai Khidntatgars, the senior,
British-allied khans, responded f a v o ~ r a b l y . ~
Only after the late 1946 communal violence in British India
did the Muslim League and its Islamic message finally
260 CONCLUSION

challenge, then displace the Frontier Congress as the dominant

political party in the NWFP. After 1947 the Muslim League
leadership in the NWFP used the Pakhtun nationalist demands
for autonomy, even for some kind of Pakhtunistan, as a pretext
to declare the party disloyal to the new state. It was suppressed
and its leaders jailed.9 The government retained colonial era
laws, including the Frontier Crimes Regulations, to support state
authority. Precedents were set for future state intervention in
processes of political representation. Land and social reforms in
the name of social equity and the Islamic state were selective,
incomplete, and had no effect on fundamental hierarchies of
authority, privilege, and wealth. In the 1960s, just before the
martial law land reforms '. . .a man like the Nawab of Hoti could
own as much as 50000 acres of top quality land in the Basin'.
Even after the land reforms, 'By skillfully dividing the shares of
land among all their family members', the landlords were able
to circumvent the new land laws 'almost entirely'.1°
Fifty years after the end of British colonial rule the legacies
of lineage dynamics, imperially created inequities, and structures
of control developed by the colonial state continued to hinder
the full implementation of twentieth-century nationalist ideals.

NOTES

I. Denzil Ibbetson, Panjab Castes (Cosmo Publications, New Delhi, 1981).

For 'Tribe and Castes' data see Appendix 14.
2. Pcshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 220.
3. Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from India, vol. I , 1910 (Nisa Traders,
Quetta, 1979), p. 250.
4, Peshawar C. 0.Records, Bundle No. 77, File S. No. 2237A. draft dated
25 July 1899 of Commissioner's remarks on quarter ending 30 June 1899.
5. See Jansson, India, Pakistan or Pakhtunistan?, 1981 and Rittenberg,
Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Pakhtuns, 1988. This early twentieth
century crisis in the agrarian 'moral economy', in which colonial policies
(fixed rents) and market dynamics (debt and land sales) eliminated tenant
and labour security and denied claims for a minimum subsistence, was
contemporary with similarly caused colonial-agrarian conflicts in Burma
and Vietnam. See Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant, Rebellion
 CONCLUSION 26 1

and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, New Haven,

1976).
6. F. V. Wylie, Assessment Report Mardan Tahsil 1926, I . 0. L., V/27/314/
604-5, p. 33. The marriage or haq tora fees had been disputed by Khwaja
Muhammad Khan.
7. Rittenberg, Ethnicity, Nationalism, arid the Pakhtuns, 1988, p. 7.
8. See Rittenberg, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Pakhtuns, 1988, pp. 6- 1 1.
9. See Jansson, India, Pakistan or Pakhtunistan?, 1981, pp. 230-38.
10. Dichter, The North-West Frontier of West Pakistan, 1967, p. 108.
 APPENDICES
(Tables, commentary, and glossary)

Appendix 1: Tables indicating the extent of sickness and

mortality in selected villages from the Typhus epidemic of
1853

Table 1: Typhus in Akerpoora village

'Table showing the amount of sickness and mortality from Typhus

Fever in the different muhillas in the village of Akerpoora about 9
miles east from Peshawar with a population of about 4500'.

Name of Mullahs Houses Inmates Sick Deaths Recoveries Remaining

Sharkan Ka Kundie 14 100 48 17 26 5
Alie Shah Ka Kundie 3 24 5 4 1
Khoadad Ka Kundie 12 102 36 15 19 2
Haji Ka Kundie 1 6 1 1 1
Turdud(?) Ka Kundie 2 14 6 6 1
Tukue (?) Ka Kundie
Lunjun (?) Ka Kundie 3 23 8 1 7 1
Baghban Ka Kundie 12 103 30 17 19 5
Syud Ka Kundie 2 22 3 1 1 1
Fukeer Shah Ka Kundie 1 15 3 1 2 0
A. Khan Ka Kundie 8 72 22 5 17 1

Total

National Archives and Library, New Delhi, Foreign Department 1853 Political,
Consultation 27 May, Letter No. 300, dated 8 April 1853, From: R. Lyell,
Assistant Surgeon Guide Corps, To: Lt. Col. Mackeson, Commissioner and
Superintendent, Peshawar Division. In file of Typhus epidemic correspondence.
264 APPENDICES

Table 2: Villages affected by typhus

'...list of the affected villages in the Hushtnugur and the Districts on

the north sides of the Swat and Cabool rivers to the west of
Akarpura, ...'
- -- - - - -- - -- -- - - - - --- -

Village Houses Now Sick Recovered Died

Omurzai
Turungzai
Otmanzai
Fazliamud
Khasi kheyl
Chursudda
Prang
Lakhi
Nowsutta
Kheski
Shunaman
Kouni (?)
Geedur
Nussuron
Total 68 38 183

From Letter No. 680, dated 14 April 1853, From: T. Farquhar, Assistant
Surgeon. With correspondence referred to in Table 1.
 APPENDICES

Table 3: Typhus in Toru and local villages

'Toro'

Name of Kundas No. of No. of No. of No. of No. of

Houses Houses Sick Deaths families
now affected entirely
carried off
Ahmood kheyl

Judi kheyl

Buli kheyl

Mooli kheyl

Rowani

Leyt kheyl
Manduri
Mani kheyl
Kumber (?) kheyl
Total 979 104 153* 235 15

* Of the 153 sick and ailing inhabitants of Toru there were 74 men, 49
women, and 30 children. A further division by class and profession will show
that out of 153, 116 belonged to the Zamindar class, of the others there were 4
bearers, 7 oilmen, 7 washermen, and 2 wrights. No records are available for
the 17 remaining patients.

Local Villages Houses Recovered Now Sick Dead

'Bagoo Banda' 14 8 5 12
'Moni kheyl' 20 - 5 16
'Miaro' 400 - 140 220
'Hoti' 800 - 200 160
-

From Letter No. 680, referred to in Table 2, section dated 'Nowshera 16

April', pp. 9, 1 1. With Typhus epidemic correspondence noted in Table 1.
266 APPENDICES

Appendix 2: 1855 Census data

On 1 January 1855 a census of the entire Punjab was conducted by East
India Company officials. The census was claimed to be generally
accurate due to a well thought out methodology and a system of double
checking. One conclusion was that, in comparison to earlier, local level
surveys, '...successive inquiries tend to enhance the known amount of
the population'. 'In the Peshawar District the rate of population per
square mile was calculated in 1851, upon seemingly fair data, at 112; it
is now proved to be at least 193." Administratively, the Punjab had
been divided into Divisions, which then were subdivided into Districts.
The Punjab was calculated to have 28,879 villages with 12,717,821
residents, yielding Rs. 17,010,210. The Peshawar Division was said to
have 1891 villages, 847,695 inhabitants, 7588.5 square miles, and Rs.
95 1,646 in revenue assessment. 'Umritsur', with 122,184 residents, was
seen to be in decline since annexation. Lahore had 94,143 counted,
while Peshawar city, not including military cantonments, recorded
53,294. Peshawar town was '...flourishing both politically and
commercially, and is likely to increase'.
Excerpts from Table 'No. I'
'Statistical Return of Land Revenue, Area and Population in the
Punjab', 'Peshawar District'.
No. of Mouzahs or Townships 622
Area in Sq. British Statute
Mi. of 640 Acres 2324
Area in Acres 14,87,360
Malgozaree or Assessed Land
Cultivated Acres 643,540
Culturable Acres 2 17,387
Minhaie or Unassessed Land
Lakhiraj Acres 94,874
Barren Acres 477,559
Land Revenue Demand, 1854-55 Rs. 688,162
Hindoo, Agricultural, Male 346
Hindoo, Agricultural, Female 228
Hindoo, Non-Agricultural, Male 34,446 (total of 45,99 1=10.21% of pop.
Hindoo, Non-Agricultural, Female 11,545 and 19.6% of non-ag. pop.)
Mahomedan and others not Hindoo, Agricultural Male- 115,471
Mahornedan and others not Hindoo, Agricultural Female- 100,259
Mahomedan and others not Hindoo, Non-Agricultural Male- 104,718
Mahomedan and others not Hindoo, Non-Agricultural Female- 83,086
Total- 450,099
 APPENDICES 267

No. per 640 acre sq. mile-193.67 persons (vs. 35.64 in the adjacent Kohat
district)
No. of acres to each person-3.30 (in Punjab 4.01 acres)*

' Selections from the Records of the Government of India, 'Report on the
Census taken on the 1st January, 1855, of the Population of the Punjab
Territories,' (Govt. of India, Calcutta, 1856). p. 16.
*(From 'Report on the Census', p. 31. My additions in parentheses.)
Excerpts from Table 'No. 11,'
'Statement showing the average rate of population per square mile,
the percentage ...', Peshawar District.

Mouzahs 622
Enclosures 75,643
Houses 91,814
Population 450,099
Per Sq. Mile 193.68
Per Mouzah 723.63
Per Enclosure 5.95
Per House 4.90
Total Area Acres 1487,360
Cultivated Area Acres 643,540
Percentage Cultivated 43.27%
Males 254,98 1
Females 195,118
Percentage Males 56.65%
Agricultural Population 216,304
Non-agricultural Population 233,795
Percentage Agricultural Population 48.05
Acres to each Agriculturist 6.87
Cultivated Acres to each Agriculturist 2.97
('Report on the Census', p. 32.)

Excerpt from Table 'No. 111'

'Classification of Townships and Villages', Peshawar District.

Less than 1000 618

1-5,000 3
50,000+ 1
Total 622 ('Report on the Census', p. 33.)

'The rapid and great alternations of sparseness and density of population in

the Punjab Districts is perhaps remarkable'. Only the 'sub-montane' Punjab,
268 APPENDICES

about one-third, was considered fertile, '...the remainder is a wild tract, with
exceptional strips of cultivation'.

('Report on the Census', p. 17.)

Any analysis of this census information suffered from the

unreliability of the data. The British did not enter every home to count
individuals. How accurate were the maliks and other informants
concerned about tax collectors and other issues? How many females
were not counted? What actual land survey work had been done by
1855? How many villages were simply estimated rather than entered,
counted, and measured? Was an Afghan extended family compound, a
gala, an enclosure, house, or village? How many bandas were counted,
or not counted, as 'villages'? Was it possible to believe that over half
the population was 'non-agriculturist'? What did the term mean? These
problems continued to plague Peshawar administrators asked to make
their understanding of the valley conform to the growing information
requirements of the Punjab Province and the British colonial empire.

Appendix 3: Data of villages of the Yusafzai Division, 1873

The following village statistics for the 'Yusafzai Division' were most
likely derived from the 1868 Punjab Census or perhaps from work
done during the first Regular Settlement of the Peshawar District
conducted over the 1869-74 period. Earlier partial settlements and
assessments had served as temporary measures until the full survey,
revenue, and statistical resources of the Punjab provincial government
were deployed for a formal 'regular' settlement of landholding and
water rights records and revenue liabilities.
Tables, from an 1873 publication, list the main one hundred and
thirty-five villages of the Mandanr or 'Yusafzai' plains. The population
of these villages totalled 146,919. For 1868, for the area, the same
volume (pp. 286-87) measured a total of 192 villages with 152,392
residents (including 5,609 Hindus, 2,485 'Syads,' 8 1,012 'Yusafzais',
2,848 Khattaks, 50,081 'miscellaneous tribes', 8,020 Gujars, 1,908
Kashmiris, and others). 'The Mandan clan is reckoned at about 40,000
souls.' The breakdown of the 135 villages by size follows:
 APPENDICES

Population No. of villages

0-100 1
100-250 8
250-500 38
500- 1000 34
1000- 1500 21
1500-2000 14
2000-2500 9 (20,225 total pop.)
2500-3000 3 (7,808 total)
3000-3500 5 (15,953 total)
3500-4000 2 (7,475 total)
4000-4500 1 (4,268)
Selected villages include:
Hoti-with 4268 people, 993 houses, 22 mosques, 58 shops with 27
horses and ponies, 1172 'Oxen and buffaloes', 165 sheep and goats, 2
camels, and 1285 'Others'.
Toru-with 3330 people, 775 houses, 16 mosques, and 65 shops.
Hund-with 1434 people, 368 houses, 7 mosques, 6 shops, 77 horses
and ponies, 453 oxen and buffaloes, and 17 sheep and goats.
'Kui Barmul' (On 1987 map-Khui Barmo1)-with 1266 people, 237
houses, 5 mosques, 12 shops, and 260 oxen and buffaloes.
The chief villages (1987 map spellings) of selected regional tappas
included:
Kamalzai: (Mishranzai branch) Toru, (Kishranzai) Hoti and Mardan
Amazai: (Daulatzai) Rustam, (Ismailzai) Garhi Kapura
Razzar: (Akokhel) Ismaila, (Malikzai) Yar Husain, (Manizai) Kalu
Khan, (Khidarzai) Shewa, (Mamuzai) Nawe Kili
Utmanzai: (Sadozai) Kotah and Topi, (Zalozai) Zaida and Hund,
(Dorazai) Kalabat
Khudu Khel: (Bisatkhel) Chinglai, (Bamkhel) Totallai (tappa outside
British district)
Gadun: (Salar) Gandaf, (Mansur) Baisak (tappa outside British
district, Kakar Pakhtuns)
Lundkhwar (Baizai): Landkhwar, Katlang, Palai, Kharkai (all Khattak
villages)
Khattak: Nowshera, Jahangira
Source: C. M. MacGregor, Central Asia, Part I, Vol. III, North-West
Frontier of British India (Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of
Government Printing, 1873), pp. 288-293.
270 APPENDICES

Appendix 4: Revenue tables from the James Settlement of the

Peshawar District

The following tables list the different totals gathered by James for
'Average Revenues realized by the Dooranees from the Peshawur
district', for six years of Sikh revenues ('Sumbut' (Sikh calendar year)
1893- 1899 equivalent to the period 1836-7 to 1842-3)' for Sikh revenue
'assignments' besides mowajib allowances, and for revenue and tappa
statistics of the early British period in the district. The revenue figures
were ideal demands that never reflected actual amounts received by
imperial collectors. Jagirs to arbabs, mowajibs to khans, rent-free
assignments of land to maliks, shareholders, and religious institutions,
and other displacements of revenue were counted in gross figures
though such quantities of cash or even equivalent values in kind
probably never fully exchanged hands.
General observations include that while the Sikh governors
increased gross demand and duties over time, the totals of
'assignments' in jagirs, etc. more than doubled from Sambat 18931
1836-7 to Sambat 189911842-3. Also, the annual totals of assigned
revenue (Rs. 309'3 17 in 189911842-3) and mowajib allowances
(averaging from Rs. 200000 to 250000) represented close to half of
the theoretical demand. The fact that Sikh governors were chronically
strapped to meet the pay of Sikh troops in Peshawar suggests that
even if additional revenue towards the demand was realized from the
tappas little of it passed up in government channels or reached the
court in Lahore. Governor Avitabile's ability to act as a private bank
for early British agents, then have the funds remitted as personal assets
under British control indicates the inability of imperial controls to
manage the revenue.
The British statistics offered Peshawar valley tappa population totals
apparently gathered from the 1855 census. The annual fall in the gross
revenue demand indicated the ending of miscellaneous fees, but also
the strategic retreat needed to compensate for the effects of a cash
demand and an inaccurate system of crop and soil type valuations.
The number of rent-free 'bukhrahs' or shares recorded in each tappa
in comparison to the shares 'Remaining for assessment' gave a general
sense of the proportion of Pakhtun maliks, shareholders, and religious
figures and institutions able to claim a revenue-free status to the
remaining agrarian population. Rent-free shares totalled 35,796, while
274,352 were liable for revenue. One share was not exactly equivalent
 APPENDICES 27 1

to one tiller. Rent-free holdings included the 'proprietor's' exempt

inam 'and although a comparatively small share of this now remains
to them, it is still absolutely large; in Khuleel it is one-fourth, in
Momund one-sixteenth of the whole'."

*H. R. James, Report on the Settlement of the Peshawar District (Punjab

Government, Lahore, 1865), p. 108.

Durrani revenue

'Average Revenues realized by the Dooranees from the Peshawur

district'.

Details Land revenue Fees Total

Momund
Khuleel
Kusbah
Doaba
Doadzie
Khalsa
Khuttuk
Hushtnuggur
Eusufzae

Total 599,090 86,425 685,5 15

Town Dues
Hindu Tax
Water Mills
Other Taxes
Total 92,000

Grand Total 599,090 86,425 7773 15

Source: James Settlement Report, 1865: 'Part I. Appendix A'

 APPENDICES

Sikh revenue

'Statement showing the Revenues under the Sikh administration of the

Peshawur district'.

Detail Sumbut 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1899

1836-37 1837-38 1838-39 1839-40 1840-4 1 1842-43

Momund
Khuleel
Kusbah
Doabah
Daodzai
Khalsa
Khuttuk
Hushtnuggur
Eusafzae

Total of Land
Revenue

Town duties
Adalat
Mint
Water Mills

Other Taxes

Total 121,400 108,460 100,600 122,800 124,400 171,031

Grand Total 838,866 832,188 804,992 1006,027 1013,276 1 167,975
Source: James Settlement Report, 1865: 'Part I. Appendix B'.
 APPENDICES

Sikh revenue assignments

'Statement showing the Sikh assignments from revenues exclusive of

mowajib' .
~~

Detail 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1899

Momund
Khuleel
Kusbah
Doaba
Daodzie
Khalsa
Khuttuk
'Hushtnuggur
Eusufzaie
Total

Amount of
Revenue
Balance from
land Revenue
Town dues
Adalat
Mint
Water Mills
Other Taxes
Total of
Assignment 142,145 253,260 243,170 322,233 325,925 309,317

Total Revenue 838,866 832,188 804,992 1006,027 1013,276 1 167,975

Balance 696,72 1 578,928 561,822 683,794 687,351 858,658

Source: James Settlement Report, 1865: 'Part I. Appendix C.'

Note: 'I am unable, from local records, to ascertain the exact amount of
mowajib or service jagirs granted annually; but they must have been on an
average from 2 to 2 112 lakhs'.
274 APPENDICES

Revenue assessment of the Peshawar District, 1912-1916 based on

1905-1911 average.

'Tabular Statement of Assessment of the Peshawar District, from 1912

to 19 16 Exclusive of Eusufzie'. (Sumbut calendar)
Tahril Daoodzai Dooaba Khalsa-Khattak Hazoor Peshawur Hashtnaggar

T ~ P P ~ Khalsa Khattak Khuleel Kusbah Momund Hasht

Begrarn

Jam

1905 127,820 146.099 96,988 49,591 111,307 17,911 137,685 147,873

1848-9 Total 835,277

1906 126,832 108.219 94.144 49.482 1 1 1,307 14,919 137,876 139,173

1849-50 Total 78 1,955

1907 107,514 101,332 77.914 36,699 95,236 17.5 12 114,787 121,950

1850-1 Total 672.946

1908 102,324 91,335 73.753 30,805 89,473 18,786 115.1 12 107,895

1851-2 Total 629,484

1909 100,144 80.250 65,872 29,641 89,149 17,846 105,600 107.895

1852-3 Total 596.397

1910 100.144 82.475 67.872 29,641 89.272 18,018 107.700 107,895

1853-4 Total 603.01 1

191 1 100,144 85.550 70.1 72 28,763 89,324 18.01 8 108,920 107,895

1854-5 Total 600,787

 APPENDICES 275

Average 109,274 99,323 78,102 36,517 96,530 17.573 118,240 120,082

Proposed Jama for

5 years 90906 85425 60029 27209 58920 14828 97895 94035

Bukhrahs

in villages 1732 5603 2699 2642 2335 - 1927 5096

(District Total Area= 3 10149 jaribs)

Rent free
Bukhrahs 130 115 498 - 25 1

(District Total Area= 35795 jaribs)

Area
(sq-mi.) 101 93 176 383 102 8 200 347

(Total of 1410 statute miles of @ 640 acres)

Pop. 36641 34252 38074 36592 34241 3470 40005 49890

Total 273 169

* The five tahsils were composed of eight tappas. The Khalsa-Khattak

Tahsil had the
Khalsa and the Khattak Tappas. Tahsil Hazoor Peshawar had Tappas Khuleel, Kusbah
Begram, and Momund.
276 APPENDICES

Appendix 5: Yusufzai assessments and mowajibs

'Showing the assessment of Eusufzye, with the present and proposed
Mowajib of the khans'.

No. Tuppah Gross Present Proposed Proposed in

assessment perpetuity
1 Otrnanzye 34976 3000 3500 2000 *

2 Taroo 15500 5820 6820 3000

3 Mahomedzye 14193 1420 2670 2500

4+5 Hotee
6 Manerzye
7 Sadoon
8 Hind
9 Loondkhor
10 Dowlutzye
11 Ismailzye
12 Nurunjee
Total 127994 19516 20820 11530

* 'reduced from 2670 at death'

'Note - The amount of present Mowajibs is at the rate of about 15 114 per cent
on the entire assessment, that of the proposed Mowajibs, about 15 112 per cent
and that of the proposed hereditary Mowajibs about 9 per cent.'
(signed) Davies

Source: Statement included with James' Letter 'No. 146' in correspondence

forwarded from F. Davies, Secretary to the Government of the Punjab to C.
Beadon, Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department, Fort
William, dated 24 June 1859. All letters copied in mentioned volume, Foreign
Department (Political) 1859 Consultation July 15.
 APPENDICES

Appendix 6: 'Eusofzie Levies' 1857

'Eusofzie Levies'
Horse Troops
~-

Kadir Khan of Toroo

Ameer Khan of Sudoom
Surbulund Khan of Hotee
Meer Aslarn Khan of Murdan
Ameer Khan of Shewa
- Afzul Khan of Gurreekupooru
Khowadad Khan of Ismaila
Mousa Khan of Sheik Jana
Shahdad Khan of Zeedah
Aijub Khan of Chargoilai
Ismail Khan of -(?)
Mulluks Suddar, Goolam of Loondkhor
Nassoorolla Khan of Gurree Ismail
Tudai Khan of Loondkhor
Ibrahim Khan of Zeidah
Mollik Furmd of Gureekapooru
Mullik - of Babo - (?)
Khan Bahadoor of Khanda
Grand Total 155 208*

Source: A letter from Lt. Horne at 'Hotee Murdan' dated 3 June 1857 to
Deputy Commissioner Nicholson in Peshawar listed the initial forces gathered
by local khans to support the British after the 21 May 'Mutiny' of Hindustani
troops at Nowshera and Mardan, the 22 May disarming of East India Company
Native Infantry regiments in Peshawar, and the 25 May chase into Swat of the
opposed troops consolidated at Mardan's cantonment.

(India Office Records, Locdon, Mss. EUR E 21 114B. The handwriting of the
manuscript letter, including numbers, was difficult to decipher, but familiar
names are apparent.)

Adds up to 308
278 APPENDICES

Fear of the eight thousand Hindustani troops stationed in the

Peshawar valley, against two thousand eight hundred Europeans, led
Peshawar authorities to a Sikh-era tactic of recruiting local Afghan
collaborators. In late May 1857, after a local regiment at Mardan and
Nowshera disobeyed orders, 'It was resolved to disarm the native
troops' (in Peshawar) 'early the following morning, and to call in the
aid of the mountaineers, to keep whom in order these very native
troops had been maintained in the valley!' In the end, infantry
regiments were recruited, plus 2324 local 'irregular levies' and another
3343 from 'the Derajat and Kohat' to the south. Exactly 1807 were
recorded as being 'sent to Hindustan for general service'. (Peshawar
Gazetteer 1897-98, pp. 81, 87.)

Appendix 7: 'Mutiny' service awards

Name of Chief.. . Annual ...present allowances Proposed annual

(document spellings) Gagirs, rent-free land, cash) increase
(value in rupees) (value in rupees)
Boorhanodeen Mian of Eusufzai 100 400
Nusseeroola Khan of Otmanzai 16 100
Futtih Khan* 1800 1100
Ajub Khan of Sadoom 600
Khwaedad Khan of Ismaila 1602 1260
Moharned Shah of Ismaila 50 50
Ismail Khan of Killabut 160 150
Khan Bahadoor of Jhundah 30 150
Akbar Shah of Baboozai 10 50
Ibrahim Khan 'A Mullik of Kotila' 100
Shahdad Khan of Zeyda 300 500
Ameer Khan of Hoond lo00
- - - -

Source: 'Statement of Chiefs or Others of the District of Peshawar deserving

of reward for their conduct during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Sanctioned by
Government of India No. 246 c. p. of 6 May 1859'. Names from the Yusufzai
area culled from a district-wide tabular statement.

Burhanuddin Mian, a 'Kakakhail', had been forced to give up the

carrying trade because of his 'notorious intimacy' with the British. He
aided the British in a raid on Narinji village in 1857, serving as an
executioner for the British. 'By associating himself with me on all
occasions, even in the public execution of men of reputed sanctity, he
 APPENDICES 279

showed himself entirely on our side, and has of course procured many
enemies thereby.'
(James' comment in above statement. No numbered pages. Statement
in Peshawar Archives, Commissioner's Office Peshawar, Bundle No.
70, no file number.)
In support of giving Fatteh Khan village Jehangira as a jagir,
Edwardes wrote in the statement, 'It is wise especially on the frontier
to create an aristocracy of our own; and not confine ourselves to
upholding the grant of former rulers.'

* 'Futtih Khan' Khattak of Jehangira guarded the Attock crossing with local
cavalry and was given the title of 'Khan Bahadur' by Governor-General
Dalhousie.

Ajab Khan's older brother received the Amazai mowajib. Ajab 'was
actively engaged in the operations against Naringee'.
When 'Khwaedad Khan' became tappa khan in 1854 Edwardes cut
the local mowajib from Rs 2670 to Rs 1420. It was now recommended
to restore the original amount. Edwardes said, 'the example shows
that these chiefs can be useful when they choose, and that the way to
make them choose it, is to reward them for doing well, and reduce
them for doing nothing. A healthy circulation will thus be kept up'.
When Arsala Khan of Zaida fled to the hills after the second Sikh
war, his sons including Shahdad Khan remained behind to collect the
government revenue and maintain local authority within the family.
Amir Khan of Hund had a resumed jagir partially restored.
280 APPENDICES

Appendix 8: 1852 Education statistics, Peshawar District

Villages Villages Total Population

with schools Without schools
District 154
City of Peshawar
Mohmund 29
Khuleel 39
Hushtnaggur 27
Doabah 40
Daodzai 4
Khalsa 6
Khuttuk 9

Schools Pupils Schools Schools in Schools in

in homes 'temples' Other places
Hindu 23 345 40 325 3
Muslim 345 275 1
Total 368 3096

Schools, Years, Operating Hindu Muslim

Peshawar city
Mohmund
Khuleel
Hushtnaggur
Doabah
Daodzai
Khalsa
Khuttuk
Source: (Peshawar Deputy Commissioner Records, Bundle No. 14, File S.
No. 271, Hugh James, 'Report on the state of education in the District,' dated
Oct. 1, 1852, pp. 44-5.)
 APPENDICES 28 1

'Of the 345 Mohamedan schools-in 120 the formal reading of the
Koran is taught: in 87 Arabic only: in 9 Persian only: and in 129
Arabic and Persian combined'.

From the (Peshawar D. C. Records, Bundle 14, File S. No. 271, 'Report', p. 26.)

Appendix 9: Yusufzai Sub-division 'Pay and Pension.'

Assessment Persons earning Villages with men Total Annual

Circle a) Pay b) Pensions a) In Service b) As Pensioners Earnings
Pay Pension

Tahsil Mardan
Koh Daman Baizai 136 43 18 13 22,908 1800
Koh Daman Sudhum 81 12 13,104
Maira 247 46 22 20 52,584 2 1,636
Total Tahsil 464 89 52 33 88,596 23,436

Tahsil Swabi
Bulaknama 180 16 14 6 28,680 2676
Kinara Darya 104 12 8 2 23,844 6756
Jabba 400 63 16 11 95,148 4104
Maira 458 52 34 22 85,728 5388
Koh Daman Sudhum 10 2064

Total Tahsil 1152 143 76 41 235,464 18,924

Total Sub-division 1616 232 128 74 324,060 42,360

Source: (from Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 301)

282 APPENDICES

Appendix 10: Agrarian and Tenancy statistics

Wells Ploughs Well Acreage*

Mardan Tahsil
1883-4 Gazetteer 1206 6 134 (Reg. Settlemt)
1895 Assessment Report 2032 15,654 10,858 (+77%)
1895 Circles: Baizai 85 4933
Sadum 62 1 1842
Maira 1326 8879

Swabi Tahsil
1883-4 Gazetteer 2841 10,478 (Reg. Settlemt)
1895 Assessment Report 5864 15,516 20,532 (+96%)
1895 Circles: Bolaknama 480 289 1
Kinara Darya 160 782
Jabba 1166 3023
Maira 3936 8267
Sadum 122 553

1895 Yusufzai Sub-div. 7896

Source: (Dane 1895 Report, p. 40)
* From Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 191.
1895 Number of jamabandi holdings Sharers (deducting mortgages)
Mardan 9502 18.474

Swabi 18,719 32,97 1

Source: (Dane Report, p. 40)

1895 Yusufzai Sub-division tenancies, percentage of land cultivated by:

Assessment Circle Owner Rent-free Occupancy Tenants at

tenants tenants will
Mardan Tahsil

Baizai 76.1 1.2 7.2 15.5

Sadum (Rustam)* 44.9 5.3 4.6 45.2*

Maira* 38.2 2.5 9.5 49.8*

 APPENDICES

Swabi Tahsil

Bolaknama 79.9 .9 2.7 16.5

Kinara Darya 55.1 .7 1.3 42.9

Jabba 70.7 .7 4.5 24.1

Maira 69.9 1.2 6.6 22.3

Sadum 53.6 - 7.8 38.6

Total 61.2 1.7 6.8 30.3
* large khan holdings
Source: Dane Reports, p. 43.

Appendix 11: Yusufzai villages and Tahsils by clan organization

'Yusufzai pargana' Number of villages

Kamalzai tappa
Amanzai tappa
Razzar tappa
Utmannama tappa
Baezai tappa
Total 144

Source: (from Peshawar Gazetteer 1883-4,p. 106)

Tahsils by clan organization

Mardan Tahsil

Main tribe Villages Colonies of Mixed Total

other Afghans population villages
Kamalzai 46 Suddozai

Amanzai 36 Utmanzai

Yusafzai Baizai 4 Khattak

Utman Khel ) 43 Misc. 4
Say ad
Awan
 APPENDICES

Swabi Tahsil

Main tribe Villages Colonies of Mixed Total

other Afghans population villages
Razzar 44 Sayad
Saddozai 34 Awan
Utmanzai 11 Khattak ) 9 Misc. 3 101
Gadun

Source: (From Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 128)

Villages by Assessment Circle organization

Mardan Tahsil Swabi Tahsil
Koh Daman Baizai 37 Bulaknarna 16
Koh Daman Sudhum 26 Kinara Darya 10
Maira 70* Jabba 18
Maira 47
Koh Daman Sudhum 10
Total 133 Total 101

Source: Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 303

*A discussion of revenue payment schedules noted '70 villages irrigated by

Swat Canal' in the Mardan tahsil. (Peshawar Gazetteer 1897-98, p. 335)

There was an 1897-98 Yusufzai Sub-division total of 234 villages.

In addition to new villages opened after the 1870s Regular Settlement,
villages or circles on tahsil boundaries were periodically transferred
or split, including the 1872 transfer of sixteen villages in the Bolak
tappa from the Nowshera to the Swabi tahsil. The tahsil name Utman
Bolak created for the Regular Settlement was later changed for a
neutral village name, Swabi, not indicating a particular clan. Direct
comparisons between village totals in different reports have to consider
the specific changes that occurred over particular decades. Still, growth
was apparent. Around 1852, Lumsden had counted 141 villages, of
which '8 or 9 were not assessed owing to their having been founded or
enjoyed by Sayads'. (Dane Report, p. 13).
 APPENDICES 285

Appendix 12: Baizai Village statistics from 1868 and 1891 Censuses

Village Population Houses Mosques Shops Oxen/ Sheep1

Total Agri- Non-Ag. Buffalo Goats
Total cultural Men/
Men/ Women
Women
Matta
1868 575
1891 1023 3721338 1421171
Shamozai
1868 655
1891 991 3771321 1391154
Babozai
1868 1313
1891 1737 6971652 2011187

Ghazi Baba
1891 241 119191 16115
Sangao
1868 327
1891 684 2781265 66175
Mian Khan
1868 343
1891 863 3561352 76179
Pipal
1868 312
1891 741 3051281 85170
Kui Barmoul
1868 1266
1891 1811 697164 1 25412 19
Kharki
1868 965
1891 1678 7061529 2431200

Lundkhwar
1868 3673

Katlang
1868 95 2

Tazagiran
1868 573

Source: Statistics from village tables in MacGregor, Central Asia, 1873 and in
Peshawar Commissioner Records, Bundle 57, File S. No. 1456 ('Malakand
Reports' of 1898), pp. 6- 11.
286 APPENDICES

Appendix 13: 'Baizai' village revenue.

'Statement showing details of revenue, frontier remissions, etc'.

Village Mafi Inam Jagir Frontier Khalsa Total Revenue Lambar-

Remis- Payers dars
sions
Sangao Rs. 3

Mian Khan 4

Pipal 21

Kui 62

Babozai 125

Kharki 6

Ghazi Baba 32

Matta 1

Sharnozai 22
(Totals 276 410 - 1007 3655 5560 2355 52)
Source: Peshawar Commissioner Records, Bundle 57, File S. No. 1456
('Malakand Reports' of 1898), p. 4, No. 166, no date.
 APPENDICES

Appendix 14: 'Tribes and Castes.'

'Pathan District Peshawar Charsadda Nowshera Mardan Swabi

Sub-divisions' (1901) (tahsils)
Yusafzai 106,024 1513

Khattak 56,226 2209

Mohmand 47,032 14,552

Utman Khel 7908 126

Source: Excerpts from tables in Peshawar District Gazetteer 1904, Part B.

'Tribes and Castes'

Peshawar Peshawar Peshawar Mardan Swabi

District District District (1901) (1901)
1881 1891 1901

'Pathan' 276,647 339,069 402,258

Sayad

Shekh

Ulema

Brahman

(Hindu)

(Sikhs)

(M)

Arora

(Hindu)

(Sikh)
288 APPENDICES

Khatri 9578 11,102 12,730

(Hindu) 9212 10,368

(Sikh) 330 2362

Agriculturists

Awan (M) 97,445

Baghban (M) 21,237

Gujar (M) 13,513

Maliar (M)

Service-skill Providers

Charnar 4264

Dhobi 5466

Julaha 15,372

Kumhar 7582

Lohar 652 1

Mirasi 3863

Mochi 3263

Musalli

Nai 5648

Qassab 2636

Tarkhan 12,504

Teli 3250
(M) = 'Muhammadans'
 APPENDICES 289

Appendix 15:

Excerpt from the Punjab Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1887:

Chapter V. 'Preventive and other authority and jurisdiction'.

Subhead. 'Security for Good Behavior'.

Section. '40-Security from families when a blood-feud exists or is

probable'.
'40. When a blood-feud or other cause of quarrel likely to lead to
bloodshed exists, or in the opinion of the Deputy Commissioner is
likely to arise between two families, the Deputy Commissioner may,
on the recommendation of a Council of Elders, or after inquiry as
hereinafter provided, order all or any members of both families or of
either family to execute a bond, with or without sureties, for their
good behaviour during such period not exceeding three years as he
may fix'.
From printed text of Regulation in Peshawar Commissioner's Office
Records, Bundle No. 77, File S. No. 2242.

Appendix 16: Akhund Darweza's genealogical narrative

Akhund Darweza continued his narrative with the story of Talut testing
the obedience of his thirsty army after a desert march on the way to
confront the army of Jalut. Daud was one of only 313 soldiers that
restrained themselves and drank slowly with one hand at the watering
place, while:

those that disagreed and drank with mouths, as much as they drank,
the thirstier they became. Thirst fell on their livers until they drank
so much that their stomachs swelled and almost 70000 died.'

In the confrontation, only Daud would volunteer to fight Jalut.

Talut promised Daud his daughter's hand in marriage and half his
lands if he killed Jalut. In the end, after Daud slew Jalut with a stone
from his sling, Talut gave Daud his daughter, but then reneged on the
promise of land and even attempted to kill Daud. Daud eventually
received both the gift of prophecy and Talut's land, but Akhund
290 APPENDICES

Darweza remarked, 'That is why, up to this day, the integrity of the

Afghan people for keeping promises rarely exist^'.^
This narrative of genealogy and authority continued with the reign
of Mehtar Sulieman and his raising of Talut's sons, Asif and Afghan.
Asif joined the government ministry (wazirat) and was raised to the
rank (mansab) of the nobles (ashrafi. But Sulieman imprisoned Afghan
when 'as a man of power and courage, the signs of power and
fierceness were found in his f ~ r e h e a d ' . ~

That is why, until this point, delicacy and compassion in the hearts of
Afghans is rare. On the other hand, whoever of them acquires
goodwill and delicacy of religion, they come before him with
laughter. They say he has lost his children, tribes (qaba'il), and wife.
They say he has died. The story of these Afghan people, from ancient
custom (rasm, a'in), was that from extreme ignorance and hardness
of heart between each other they did not possess a kingdom.. .They
have arrogance and selfishness (not knowing) how to admit weakness
and submission in the presence of one's own relatives, (or being able
to admit) that one's self is a servant and the other a king
(badshah). . .They (claim) equality.. .each of them small and large
call themselves maliks.. .to themselves each is a malik.. .In addition,
in the Holy Koran Almighty God has called Talut malik. From that
time on all Afghans are called maliks. These Afghan clans were
settled in the Sulieman mountains.. .After the prophecy (of Prophet
Muhammad PBUH). ..Arabs and non-Arabs (ajam) individually arrived
and embraced the faith. But seventy maliks of the Afghan people
amved assembled in a group. After that, the news of the prophecy of
the last of the prophets reached their own tribe^.^

The narrative went on to say that the tribes embraced Islam. In

times of war with unbelievers (kafirs), Afghan women were present
on the battlefield, gathering arrows and giving water to the holy
warriors (ghazis). But then, it was stated, the Prophet declared that the
Afghans would be cast into hell:

When this saying (hadith) of the Prophet reached the ears of the
Afghans all became aggrieved and sorrowful. They turned their
faces to scholars, who wanted the anxious people to be without
enmity to the Prophet until this news ...reached the Prophet. The
Prophet called all of them. He asked the cause of their concern and
 APPENDICES 29 1

considered their situation. The Afghans said, 'For the cause of

religion we cross swords, not for the world. If it is so (going to
hell), what is the necessity for us to cross swords?'
At that moment the Prophet said, 'I haven't addressed you, but
your children after you will become ignorant because of little
wanting to accept a kingdom (badshahi).'
Implementing the religion of Muhammad (PBUH) is not possible
without the government of an Islamic king. As he says, peace be
upon him, 'Kingship (al-malik) and prophecy (al-nabwat) (are)
twins.' Also, as he says, he who recites the couplet (beit):
'Before the wise, sovereignty and prophecy
Are like two signets in one ring'
(The Prophet said:) 'All of your children will seek pastures and
meadows. They will graze animals. Several houses (khana) . .. will
turn away and will scatter to all sides of the world. Scholars and
knowledge will not be among them.'
Therefore gaining the religion of Muhammad, peace be upon
him, without gaining knowledge and obedience to the rule (amir)
of Islam is not possible. In that moment (they) will be suitable for
hell. But then he (the Prophet) offered prayers to Almighty God for
their children to keep them with his blessings steady on the straight
path of Islam.. .That is why, up to this day, Afghans respect elevated
people, everyone that might have read a selection from part of the
Koran, and their words they accept with eyes and heart.
But, from ignorance, they don't know the limit between more
and less education to differentiate a Sunni from an innovator
(mubtada). That is why today among Afghans heresy (bid'at) and
innovations are very prevalent, though they from extreme fondness
of religion and love of the path of assurance (Islam) obey all
scholars and good people until some bad scholars, from human
desires, mislead them to destruction.
And that is why although Afghan people don't know the time (of
praying) and (can't tell) Fateha from Ikhlasbnd don't understand
distinguishing from each other standing in prayer, reading in prayer,
bowing in prayer, and bowing to the ground in prayeP and don't
know the month of Ramazan from other months, still, they won't
give up bowing down before the qibla or one month of fasting.

Akhund Darweza then tied Afghan history to the narrative of the

Islamic conquest of India:
292 APPENDICES

...It is said that in Hind eight persons had been enlightened by

prophecy, not from their people but from people of other surrounding
areas. But the Hindus did not accept any of them, some they killed
and some they drove away. When Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH)
...remembered Hind, his bright mind often thought of great danger
and war with the Hindus. But Jabril, by the order of the Lord of the
Universe, arrived. He stopped him: 'The victory of those countries
(bilad) is in the hand of one of your sultans, Mahmud."

Akhund Darweza told of Mahmud of Ghazni coming to request

help from the Afghans after his defeat in Hindustan:

...As it is Afghan tradition, whoever in a state of weakness enters

into the houses of their maliks and places their cooking pot on their
hearth, then all the tribe will sacrifice their lives and property until they
solve that person's difficulty. Sultan (Mahmud) also followed this
custom. After that, from the Afghan tribes, 14000 horsemen and 14000
footmen became companions and a few women ...That is a tradition for
the Afghans. On a mission with women, of course, they would die
rather than flee and, if the goal is achieved, there they settle. And the
people of that place they drive out. Some they kill, some they make
slaves, and some they make obedient subjects (ra 'iyat).
...with God's favour, victory was achieved. After that, (some)
Afghans stayed in Hind (and) after that Afghans from Kandahar
dispersed. Some stayed in Kandahar, some went to Hind, and some
scattered in other directions.
Now we come to the beginning of Yusufzai genealogy and an
account of their arriving in these places. It is heard from ancestors
of these people that an Afghan from the Kandahar region named
Sherbun8 left two sons, one named Kand, the second Jamand. And
from Kand, also, two sons.. .one named Sheikhi, the second Ghorie9
From Ghori four sons stayed behind. One (was) named Daulatyar.
The people of Mohmand and Daudzai are from his lineage. The
second (son of Ghori) was named Khalil, the third named Ziran,
the fourth named Chamkani.
It is heard from the ancestors (salafl of these people that all four
brothers killed and cooked a sheep and divided the meat between
themselves. But in dividing the soup they forgot Chamkani and,
displeased and upset, Chamkani left the company of his brothers
and settled in the Safed Koh. Until our day, his children haven't
 APPENDICES 293

joined the brothers and have dispersed around the world ...Most
tribes (qaba'il) call these people settled in the Safed Koh mountain
kafirs. Their food and clothing are millet and wool. Most of their
women walk about bareheaded and barefoot, some cloth hung
around their necks. They go to the forests (jangalha) and bring
wood and grass and they graze animals as the Khattak people have
this custom (rawish). Most of these Chamkani people in the Safed
Koh, assuredly all of them, besides most Afghans of the Safed
Koh, have become in these days absolute kafirs since all of them
have chosen obedience to Pir Tarik. Prayer, fasting, and charity
(zakat) have left them and they have taken knowledge and scholars
as enemies. The commands and prohibitions have become hidden.
The divine Koran and hadith of the Prophet they burn and throw
under foot and the scholars and other Muslims they kill with hope
of reward. We take refuge with God from their unbelief. In sum,
they are absolute infidels, so that whenever rulers (hukkam) of
Islam reach hands on them, they kill their men and enslave (barda
kardan) their women and legitimately take their property. It is in
the commentary of Qaduri that Abu Bakr, the Amir of the Muslims,
had done such to the apostates of Mecca and Medina.Io
The people of Zeran have also separated from the brothers. They
spend life amidst the Tajik people of Ningahar so that most, not
knowing, call them Tajiks. But these people of Zeran are religious
and respectable ones that become townsmen and have seen the
government of rulers.
Sheikhi left three sons. One named Mundi, the second Muk ... , I 1
the third Tark. It is heard ...that Sheikhi had a wife named Marjan,
from whose womb are Mundi and Muk. But Marjan had another
sister named Basu, without religion or piety, (who) also came and
sat in the house of Sheikhi, intending marriage ... From extreme
ignorance (jahl) and error (zala'at) the woman was not left alone
...causing the shame of infidelity, those keeping that woman
themselves reaching the level of infidelity. Let us fly to God ....
Afterwards, Sheikhi also made her (Basu) a wife. Tark was born
from her womb. The Tarklani are from his lineage. Also, these
days most of these Tarklani people follow Pir Tarik in following
unlawful ways (haram), until lawful (halal) people with religion
are little found among them.'*
...And Muk had a daughter named Kaki, who he married to his
shepherd named Zeraki. The Kakiani" people are from this lineage.
294 APPENDICES

Because few sons of Muk came from this lineage, they are not
known. However they are also called Kakiani.. .Also, Mundi had
two sons, one Umar, the second Yusuf. It is said that Umar was a
pious man. He went to the towns14 and took a wife descended from
sayyids. His son Mandanr was born. In that place, Umar departed
from this world to the everlasting world. After time, Yusuf went to
the family of his brother to bring them back, but that woman of
nobility refused, saying, 'I won't set foot in your house, because I
have heard that Afghan people force and coerce wives of brothers
into marriage. But I don't want to bring a new mamage on a
previous mamage. As the saying of the Prophet (hadith) has, any
woman on wedding her husband remains constant to the time of
dying ...' Then, (Yusuf) by promise and firm oaths brought that
beloved (aziz) to his home. (He swore), 'Without your consent, no
one will disturb your modesty.' At length Yusuf had five sons. One
was named Uriya, that due to much arrogance and selfishness ('self-
seeing') was called Badi. Until our day it is still a rule (sanad)
among Afghans that whoever has selfish and arrogant ways they
call Badi. Now his children are called Badi Khel. Second (son of
Yusuf) was Isa, third (son) Musa who was father of Elias. Among
Afghans the rule (sanad) on this went that whenever a person is
without mercy and generosity they omit his name from memoirs.
Thus, the khel of Uriya are called by the name of his son or by the
name of his wife. Fourth Mali, fifth Ako.. .I5
It is said from ancient years, that with the Afghans went a rule
opposite to the Shari'at, that whenever sons reached knowledge
and completion (adulthood) the brothers would divide between
themselves the property of the mother and father. They would give
the mother and father few things, only food to survive and the
shroud for their burial. Let us fly to God from their evil and
perverseness! In the Shari'at of Muhammad Mustafa (PBUH), a
judgement Cfatwa) on this was that after a son reaches maturity, his
daily and nightly maintenance is not on the father and mother. Only
if some become blind and lame, otherwise maintenance and food
are gained from work (kasb). And, if a son works on his father's
property and makes a successful effort in trade or agriculture, the
fruits are not his, because the father is the head (ra'is) of property.
Others cannot seize such property without permission. In any case,
nothing of the father's property reaches the son by a claim, but
 APPENDICES 295

only if he has the father's love and compassion. In that moment, no

one has the right to prohibit this.
In that time, the sons of Yusuf were dividing their father's
property between themselves. Their mother said, 'Also separate our
share (hissa).' The other sons were silent. From among them, the
unlucky Badi pointed to his private parts, 'This is your share.' We
seek refuge in God from such words ...His mother prayed, 'Your
descendants will never be more than thirteen.' Until this day, his
descendants did not find their share and did not exceed thirteen
persons. A few of them are among the Chagharzai.16
Elias left behind four sons. First, Natu, then Taji, father of Gadai.
Third was Salar, fourth Mami, husband of Ayesha. Now his khel,
after his wife, is named Ayeshazai. Ako had six sons. Four from one
wife named Gohar. First Khawaji, second Bazid, third Aba, fourth
Shadak. And two sons from another wife named Rani. First Hilam,
second Hatman. Mali left behind four sons. Two from a wife named
Wati, one being Dawlat, the second Chaghar. And two from another
wife, Nuri; one named Aba, the second Isori. Isa (son of Yusuf) had
eleven sons, until one day the Mughal people stole the Mandanr herd
of horses. Isa rode (after them) with nine of his sons behind him, but
because they arrived ahead of the gathering tribe (ulus), all of them
became martyrs (shahid) by the hands of the Mughals. As the Prophet
says, who dies saving his property is martyred. From that group two
sons were left. One Hasan, the second Yaqub. Since the wife of Isa
was pregnant, a son named Aka was born after his death. Mandanr
had four sons, Mamu, Hazar, Rajar, and Mazad.

The narrative then continued, tracing the original clan migrations

from southern Afghanistan to a familiar story of lineage relations and
conflict over land:

The story is that when the Afghan people had divided the land
of Kandahar between them the share of the Tareen people was
lying between the people of Kand and Zamand. The two brothers
were unable to support each other in the good and bad of life.
Within the people of Kand, those of Sheikhi were the nearest to the
Tareen. Their share was along the Arghastan river and that was
near the land of the Tareen, until enmity broke out between the
Sheikhi and Tareen. Finally, the Tareen overcame the Sheikhi. Some
were killed and some displaced. No one from the Zamand and
Ghori reached them in support.. . I 7
296 APPENDICES

NOTES

1. Tazkirat al-Abrar wa al-Ashrar, p. 82. The number of followers exactly

equals and represents the symbolic power of the 313 with the Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH) in AD 624 at the battle of Badr. See a similar use of
the 'ideological drive' associated with the number in Eaton, 1993, p. 75.
2. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 83.
3. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 83.
4. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 83.
5. The first and last surahs of the Koran.
6. Respectively, qiyam, qir'at, ruku, sujud.
7. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 86.
8. 'Kharshbun' in Dorn's translation in History of the Afghans, 1977, second
part, p. 43 and in Caroe, The Pathans, p. 13.
9. In his annotations to the second part of the History of the Afghans, p. 124,
Dorn quotes from another genealogical source, the 'Khulassat Ulansab':
'Gond had two sons: 1. Ghori, whose original name was Ibrahim; but from
being born in Ghoristan, he became known by the name of Ghori. 2.
Khak'hai, who first was called Sheikhi, which in the course of time has
been changed into Khak'hai.' Both Dorn and Caroe list a third son for
Kharshbun, Kasi.
10. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 87.
11. One named Mundi, the second Muk, 'both with the "zam" of "meem"',
that is both names have the pesh (u or o) vowel marker with their first
letter m or 'meem'. In other texts Mundi is known as Mand.
12. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 87.
13. Caroe's 'Gigiani', see The Pathans, 1992, p. 13. See Dorn's
annotations for the second part of his History of the Afghans, 1977,
especially pp. 124-6, for extended lineages of the sons of Mundi,
Tark, and Muk as taken from the Khulassat Ulansab.
14. From shahr, city or town. To this day, Peshawar valley country people
call a city dweller shahri.
15. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 88.
16. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 89.
17. Tazkirat al-Abrar, p. 90. See accompanying genealogy.
 GLOSSARY

Abi Land irrigated by tanks or springs

A wan Non-Pakhtun agriculturist
Arora Hindu or Sikh traders found in Afghanistan and beyond
Baghban Non-Pakhtun tiller of garden, vegetable, fruit plots
Bakhra Share in land
Banda Outlying hamlet tilled by faqirs, occasional Pakhtuns, liable for
service or rent
Barani Rain-dependent land
Orbushe Barley
Chahi Land irrigated by wells or Persian wheels (jhalars)
Chaj Winnowing implement
Chamar Leather worker
Charikar Tiller working off debt, providing no inputs, receiving percentage
1/16 to 114
Dafrari Pakhtun shareholder
Dekhan Name used in Yusufzai sub-division for charikar
Dhanvai Grain weighman
Dhobi Washerman
Faqir Non-shareholding tiller liable for service, hereditary cultivator,
tenant (fakir)
Gujar Non-Pakhtun herder and tiller
Hamsaya Non-shareholding tiller liable for service, hereditary cultivator,
tenant
Haq tora Marriage fees paid to khan by non-shareholding dependants
Ijaradar Revenue contractor, farmer
Inam Exemption of shareholder personal land from revenue payment
Jagir Revenue exempt land awarded for service
Julaha Weaver
Kakha Crop watchman (muhafiz fasl)
Kama Cattle feeder (pali)
Khatri Hindu or Sikh shopkeeper, grain merchant, lender
Kishran Juniors
Kumhar Potter and brick kiln operator
Lohar Blacksmith
Maira Unirrigated, often uncultivated areas away from villages, 'waste'
to the British
 GLOSSARY

Makai Corn
Mala Wooden drag for field levelling
Maliar Non-Pakhtun tiller of garden, vegetable, fruit plots
Mazdur Crop weeder, cutter
Mirasi Musician, singer (Dum)
Mishran Elders
Mochi Leather worker
Musalli Grave digger, sweeper (Shahi khel)
Nadaf Cotton cleaner, dresser
Nahri Canal irrigated land (Shah nahri, government canal-irrigated land)
Nai Barber, village messenger, intermediary
Qassab Butcher
Sailab Land irrigated by seasonal flooding
Shpun Shepherd
Tarkhan Carpenter, trade often combined with lohar skills
Teli Oil presser
Qulba Plough (kulba)
Ghanum Wheat
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 INDEX

Attock, 2, 79, 90, 98, 118

Aurangzeb (Mughal Emperor) (Penal
Abdul Ghaffur, Akhund of Swat, 179 Code) 20, 4 1, 42, 74
Abdur Rahman (Rahman Baba), 52-6 Avitabile, Sikh governor, 105, 163
Abu-l Fazl, 26
Adas, Michael, 94, 100
Afghanistan, 163, 193, 196, 210
Afridis, 229, 245 Babur (Mughal emperor), xiv, 9, 74
Afzal Khan, Khattak, 40, 48, 63 Babuzai (Babozai) village, 122, 143,
Agra, 73 173, 230
Agricultural tribes, xx, 133, 154 Badakhshan, 39
Agriculture, 53, 60, 81, 108, 122, Bahadur Shah, 64, 73
2 11, market 213-4, expansion 254 Bahawalpur, 105
Ahmad Shah Abdali, 76 Baizai, 14, 67, 175, 225, 242, 230,
Ahmed Khan of Hoti, 102, 108 233,246, 248
Ain-i Akbari, 26 Bajaur, 9, 10, 67
Ajab Khan, 152, 179, 185, 200 Banda settlements, 60, 166, 239
Akbar (Mughal emperor), 10, 11, 32, Bani Israel, 33
40, 65, 79 Bengal, Permanent Settlement, 133,
Akbar Ahmed, xxv, 85, 228 161
Akbarnama, 26 Bhaku Khan, 41, 108
Akbarpura village, 127, 129 Balkh, 14, 39
Akbar Shah (Sayyid), 91, 11 1, 180 Barampta, 124, 176, 187
Akhbar (newsletters), 93 Barani land, 60, 209
Akhund Darweza, 27, 31, 32, 257, Barmoul, 2, 181
289 Barth, Fredrik, 17, 85
Akora, 76, 80, 96 Bayazid Ansari, 10, 32
Akozai, 225 Bazdurrah valley, 175
Allahdad Khan, 12 Buner valley, 42, 67, 175
Amazai, 41, 178
Ambela pass, 1863 conflict 178
Amirullah Khan of Palli, 176
Arlinghaus, J., 101 Cambridge school history, xix, 192
Arsala Khan, Zaida, 107, 110, 120, Caroe, Olaf, xxiv, 28,40, 91, 99-100,
149 179, 224
Atta Muhammad Khan, 164 Central Asia, xxvi, 39, trade 74
316 INDEX

Census data, analysis, (Shaikh Mali), Dorn, Bernhard, 27, 31

83, 130, 147, 209, 240, 242, 254 Dost Muhammad, 200
Chakdara, 223 Durrani dynasty, 72, 77
Chamkani, 80
Chamla valley, 178, 239
Charsadda, 96, 2 16
Chitral, 205, 223, 225 Eaton, Richard, 38 '
Christian Missionary Society, 160, East India Company, 74, 81, 93, 104,
199 119, 129, 133
Churchill, Winston, 226 Education, 63, 158-60, 199, 255
Classes (economic and social), 57, 72, Edwards, David, 227
84, 148, 192, 201, 207, 216, 240 Edwardes, Herbert B., 153, 160, 171
Colonial contact, xv, xviii, 221 Elphinstone, Mountstuart, xxiii, 3 1,
Colonial development, 207-8 81
Colonial 'fanaticism' discourse, 91, Enevoldsen, Jens, xxii
92-3, 110, 112, 163, 179,221-224,
226, 247
Conolly, Edward, 107-112
Court of Wards, 183, 200, 205 Fakirs, 83-5, 150, 164
Courts (civil and revenue), 163-4, Fateh Khan of Hoti, 73, 76
184, 201-5, 207 Fatteh Khan of Panjtar, 108
Criminality, xx, xxi, 177, 184-8 Ferishta, 26, 31
Fida Muhammad, 206
Flooding, 118
Fox, Richard, xxviii, 6, 207
Dalhousie, 142 Freitag, Sandria, xx
Dane, L., 214 Frontier (idea, bounds, policies,
Dargai village, 173 conflict), xiii, xx, xxviii, 122, 136,
Daud Khel, 18 1 153, 158, 172-7, 183, 193, 224,
Daudzai, 50, 66, 80, 138 253
Delhi, 74, 93, 152, 159 Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR),
Dera Ismail Khan, 105 183, 186, (Section 40) 205, 207,
Dilazaks, 3, 7 246, fines 258
Dir, 223, 225
Disease, 15, 111, 125
cholera, 126
dawa-i junani (Greek) care, 126 Gadun, 2
hakims, 126, 129 Genealogies, 5, 28, (Pir Baba) 29, 3 1,
malaria, 126, 216 34, Peshawar 37, 38, 40, 43, 58,
massage therapy, 111, 126 73, 113, 166, 289
medical missions, 160 Geography, xvi, 81, 117
smallpox, 126 Ghazi Baba village, 241
typhus epidemic, 125 Ghoriah Khel, 7, 8
Doaba, 8, 80, 117, 138 Ghulam Muhammad, 79
 INDEX 317

Ghulam Shah, Lundkhwar, 177 wheel 60, 80, 122, Swat river
Gigianis, 8 canal 207-9
Gilmartin, David, 17 1 Iskakot village, 173
Gommans, J., 38, 74 Islamic scholarship, 63 Islamic social
Gopal Das (Tarikh-i Peshawar), 17 1 and political movements, xviii,
Grima, Benedicte 17, 61 93-9, 111-2, 225
Gujar Garhi village, 142 Ismail Khel, 181
Gurkhas, 91, 196

Jagir land, awards, 64-5, 103

Hamsayas, 3, 130, 146, 164 Jalal, Ayesha, fn 249
Hag tora dues, 206 James, H. R., 136, 139, 179
Hashtnagar, 14, 58, 96, 127, 138 Jansson, E., xxi
Hastings, E. G., 167 Jehangir (Mughal emperor), 28, 30
Hayat-i Afghani (Muhammad Hayat Jehangira village, 104
Khan), 30 Jihad, 38, 89, 228, 246
Hazara district, fn 69, 95 Jirga, council, 20, 59, 171, 177,
Herat, 77 180-1, 184, 186-7, 207, 229
Hindustan/Hind, 60, 80, 292
Hindus, 65, 79, 110, 118, 128, 141,
145, 159, 204-5, 232
Historical narrative, xxv, 27, 35, 38, Kabul, 49, 195
48, 78-9, 221 Kabul river, 2, 79-80, 118
Historical periodization, xvii Kadir Khan, Toru, 149
History of the Hoti Family, 73, 78 Kais (Abd al-Rashid), 31, 73
Hoti, 58, lineage politics 102-4, 149, Kalpani nullah, 3, 122
195 Kalu Khan, 12
Humayun (Mughal emperor), 10 Kamalzai, 41, 58, 66, 73, 78, 169
Hund village, 96, 97, 118 Kandahar, 7, 33, 193-4, 292
Hundi, financial draft, 112 Karlanri, 40
Kashmir, 84, 90
Kashtkar (Chitral), 146
Kasim, Akhund, 63
Ibn Khaldun, 79 Katlang village, 8, 176, 230
Ibrahim Khan of Mardan, 204 Khadi Khan, 65
Ijara land, 203 Khairabad, 79
Imperial Assemblage 1877, 179, 184 Khalid bin Walid, 31
lnam land, 167, 204-5, 240 Khalil pargana, 140, 169
Indian Penal Code, 184, 187, 246 Khalils, 50, 57, 66
Indus river, 8, 1 1, 29, 80, 1 18 Khalsa pargana, 138, 169
Inheritance, 37, 145, 167, 170 Khan Jehan Lodi, 31
Iran, 80 Khan Kaju, 3, 8, 29
Irrigation, canals 50, 54, Persian Kharaj, 1 1
318 INDEX

Kharkai village, 176, 241 Limited Raj, xxxi

Khatris, 255 Lindholm, Charles, 5, 13
Khattak pargana, district, 2, 138, 169 Lindner, R. P., 38
Khattaks, 11, 14, 39, 67, 76, 80 Lineage (clan) dynamics, xiv
Khawja Muhammad Khan of Hoti, Literary works (diwans, etc.), 63
185, 199, 201, 205, 212 Ludhiana, 105, (district) 136
Kheshgi village, 127 Lumsden, Lt., 121, 124, 143, 152,
Khudu Khel, 57 174
Khushal Khan Khattak, 14, 39, 63, Lunkhwar, 14, 67, 149, 174, 230,
82 232, 235
Khyber pass, xiii, 9, 10, 194
Kishranzai, 58-9, 73, 78
Kohistan, 2
Kui village, 181 Macartney, John, 82
Kui Barmoul, 230, 241 Mackeson, 104-5, 107, 112
Kunar province, 163 Madras, ryohvari settlements, 134
Madrasas, xvi, 158
Mahdud Khan, 65
Mahmud of Ghazni, 35, 292
Lahore, 105 Maira, 9, 56, 117, 21 1-2
Lambardars, 144, 145, 153-4, 168, Maize, 61
230- 1 Makhzen Afghani, 26, 30
Land, as property, 134, 161-2, 167, Malakand Agency, 223
186, 212 Malakand pass, 67, 223
Land distribution, 59, 212 Malakand revolt 1897, 222, police
Land (revenue) settlements, 64, 75, reports, 230-40
120, 133-5, revenue farming 138, Malik Ahmad, 3, 8, 18, 50, 65
Lumsden (1847) 143, Peshawar Malik Ako, Khattak, 40
139, 141, 150, 152, 163, Regular Malik Shah Mansur, 9, 30
Settlement 166, Second Settlement Malka village, 175, 178
197, (1895) 213-215 Mandanr, 5,57,66,89, 107, 127, 148
Land records and administration, Mapping, fields, 166
164-5, 202 Marathas, 74, 77
Land surveys, 50, 64, 163 Mardan, 58, 143, 195, 214
Landey, 6 1-2 Marriage, 103, 145, 176, 204
Lashkar Khan, 73, 102 Martial race ideology, 196
Lawrence, George, 119, 143, 174 Marwats, 50
Legal codes, regimes Matta village, 230, 234, 241
British colonial, 123, 188 Mian Isa village, 232
Custom (rawaj), 17, 161 Mian Khan village, 182, 230, 239,
Customary law codes, 168-172 24 1
Sayyid Ahmad, 97 Migration, 3, 7, 28, 192, 199, 210,
Sikh, 105, 124 216, 255
see Pakhtunwali, Shari'a Military employment, 194-6, 216
 INDEX 3 19

Millenarianism, xviii, xxix, 89, 100, Pakhtun nationalism, 192, 22 1, 259

103, 222,224,228 Pakhtun society, 3, religious figures
Mir Afzal Khan, 120, 15 1 5, 6-7, 14, conflict 41, 56, 67, 85,
Mir Baba of Rustam, 143, 152, 212 101, 147, 171, 192, 222, 256
Mishranzai, 58 Pakhtunwali, 4, 15, 25, 56, 99
Modernization narrative, 227 Palli village, 141, 174, 176
Mohmands, 50, 51, 57, 66, 138, 163, Panipat, 1761 battle, 77
210, 216, tenants 238 Panjkora valley, 82
Mowajib (revenue payment) 121, 143, Panjtar village, 97, 107, 109, 162, 175
144, 149-51, 154 Pashto language (Pashtu, Pakhtu), 53,
Mughal empire, xvii, 10, 13, 68, 72 63, 11 1, 159, 173
Mughal farmans, 12, 64 Pastoralism, xvi, 117, 174
Muhabbat Khan, Toru, 2 12 Patwaris, 141, 165, 202, 234
Muhammad Hayat Khan, 30 Persia, xvi, 73, 77, 81
Muhammad Khan, 12, 65 Persian language, 111, 159, 173
Muhammad Khan of Hoti (Khan Peshawar, xiii, 80, 90, 105
1820-51), 102, 120 Peshawar district, xx, 135, land
Muhammad Yusuf, 230 settlement 138, 174, 181
Muhammadzai, 8, 80 Peshawar valley, 118, 143, 174
Muhibb Khan, Mohmand, 50 Pipal (Pipul) village, 181, 230, 241
Multan, 90, 125, 137 Police administration and regulations,
Mnqarrab Khan, 109 144, 185, 230
Muzaffargarh District, 137 Prang village, 127
Punishment, 19, 20, 105, 123-4, 140,
180-3, 187, 232, 239, 246, 258
Punjab, colonial administration, xx,
Nadir Shah, 72, 74-5 109, 119, 135, 138, 142, 147, 153,
Narinji village, 162 166
Nasir Khan, 74-5 Punjab land mortgage debt, 183, 213
Nazoh Khan, 64, 73, 75
Neamet Ullah (author of Makhzan),
27
Nisatta village, 127, 129 Qasba pargana, 169
North-West Frontier Province, 226 Qazis (Islamic judges), 98-9, 112,
Nowshera, 80, battle (1823) 91, 127 123, 145
Qeyamuddin Ahmad, 99

Orakzais, 50
Ottoman empire, 73 Rahman Baba (Abdur Rahman), 52-6
Railroads, 199, 209, 2 13-4
Ranizai valley, 14, 173, 175
Ranjit Singh, 90, 105
Pabbi, 80 Raverty, H. G., 27, fn 45, 173, 180
320 INDEX

Raz(z)ar, 41, 127, 169 Sher Ali, Hoti, 212

Revenue farming, see ijara Shergarh village, 173
Revenue remissions, 137, 197, 240 Sher Khan(a) village, 174, 181
Revolt of 1857, 152-3 Sher Shah Suri, 27, 65
Rittenberg, S., xxi Sikhs, 90, 91, 97, 105, 120
Rohi sandarai (mountain songs), 62 Sirbuland Khan, 151-2
Roshaniyyas, 10, 32, 36 Sitana, 95, 111, 162, 175
Russia, 105-6, 193 Slavery, 146
Rustam village, 143, 152, 178, 185 State authority, 89, 154, 158, 172,
174, 183,206,245,253
Subaltern studies, agency,
consciousness, xviii, xxvi, 222,
Sadozai, 41 229, 248
Safavids, 72 Sudhum valley, 122, 143, 149, 178,
Saidullah, 225, 247 212
Salma Shaheen, xxii Sufism, 52
Samah (plains), 2, 8, 90, 108, 110 Sutlej river, 104
Sangao village, 141, 174, 181, 241 Swabi, 197, 214
Sarbanni, 40 Swat river, 2
Sauda, 30 Swat valley, 67, 127, 174, 212, 225,
Sayyid Ahmad Shah, 94-103 232
Sayyid Ali Shah Tirmizi (Pir Baba),
29, 32
Sayyid Hussain, 111
Second Afghan War 1878-91, 173, Tahsildars, 165, 202
194, 197, grain prices 198, wages Tajiks, 36
198 Talal Asad, 72, 85
Sairai land, 58 Taliban, 19, 160
Sesadda, Utman Khel, 181 Talut, King, 3 1
Shad Muhammad Khan, 200, 204, Tapas, see landey
212 Tarikh-i HaJiz Rahmat Khani, xxi, 7,
Shahbaz Khan of Hoti, 13, 65 27,29
Shahbaz Khan, Khattak, 41 Tarikh-i Murassa, 40, 64, 76
Shah Jehan (Mughal emperor), 50 Tazkirat al-Abrar wa al-Ashrar, xxii,
Shah Shuja, 81, 106 27
Shah Waliullah, 95 Tenancy, 164, 17 1, 183, 192, 206,
Shahzada Shweb, 23 1 211, 238
Shah Zaman, 90 Thana village, 225
Shaikh Mali, 18, 29, 50 Timur, 29
Shaikh Tapur, 8 Timur Shah, 77, 81, 90
Shaikh Usman, 50 Tobacco, 2 14
Shajra-i-Kalan Ghoria, 78 Toru, 122, 128, 149
Sharnozai village, 230, 241 Trade, 3, arms 42, 74, 80, 175, 193-4,
Shari'a, 5, 17, 18, 20, 95, 97 197, 213-4, 255
 INDEX 32 1

Tribal scholarship, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, Widows, remarriage 36, inheritance

1, tribalization process 68, 83, 100 rights, 168-70
Trigonometrical Survey, 142 Women, gender roles 16-17, idealized
Tripartite Treaty, 106 norms 61, 99, education, 159

Ulema, 18, 90, 95, 98-9

Urdu language, 165 Yacub, Mehtar, 33
Ushr, 11, 98, 110 Yar Hussain village, 127
Usmanzai village, 97 Yar Muhammad, 98
Utman Bolak tahsil, 166, 197 Yusufi, Allah Bakhsh, fn 47
Utman Khel, 2, 14,66, 175, 180,233 Yusufzai Malguzari, 65
Utman Narna, 169 Yusufzais, 1, 7, (history) 29, 66
Utmanzai, 41, 94 Yusufzai subdivision, 136, 142, 155
Yusufzai tahsil, 166

Village craftsmen, artisans, 84, 146

Village destruction, relocation, 182 Zaida village, 98
Zaildars, 154
Zamindars, 82, 120, 130, 134, 234,
236
'Wahhabi' discussion, 99 Zard Ali, Pipal, 235, 237
Warburton, Robert, 200 Zormandi village, 174, 176
Wesh, 18, 20, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57, 67, Zuhak, King, 30
145