Origin of Turis and Jajis

 The Turis, or Torizais as they are sometimes called, are a tribe of whose origin little definite is known, but all authorities are agreed that if Afghans at all they are not Afghans of pure descent. Muhammad Hayat Khan says they are Karlanri Afghans, Lumsden says they are of Mughal extraction ; Ibbetson regards them as being probably Tartar tribes which accompanied Chengis Khan and Timur in their Indian raids ; Bonarjee calls them a tribe of mixed blood — Indian stock with a Tartar admixture ; while Edwardes and others say that they are a Hindki race, some sixty families of whom, about four or five hundred years ago, because of drought, migrated from their native country in the Punjab (opposite Nilab on the Indus in the Kohat district).to the Kurram Valley, or, as it was then called, the Bangash Valley, and became hamsayas of its inhabitants. They themselves support this last tradition, but say that the ancestor who originally settled at Nilab was one Torghani Turk, who came from Persia. In his diary of the year 1506 the Emperor Baber mentions the presence of Turis in the Kurram Valley. About the year 1700, owing to a quarrel arising out of insults offered to Turi women, the Turis and Jajis, who were then united, attacked the Bangash, and the Turis gradually made themselves masters of the Kurram Valley, the Bangash remaining on in their turn as hamsayas. [1]

In 1702 A.D. the Turis and Jajis whose permanent homes were near Nilab on the Indus, and who migrated annually during the summer to the Kurram valley, remained there as vassals of Bangashs. They subsequently got involved in a fight with Bangash over the elopement of a Turi woman with a Bangash. As a result they expelled some of the neighboring Bangash clans and got settled there permanently. [2]

Turis and Jajis themselves claim descent from one Toghani Turk who came from Persia and settled at Nilab in the Punjab [3], while another tradition names Samarkand as the dwelling place of their forefather. [4]

References:

1- Harold Carmichael Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan, p-410-411

2-  Pathans: Compiled Under the Order of the Government of India at the Recruiting Office, Peshawar, p-9

3-  Ridgway, Pashtoons: History, Culture & Traditions, p-158

4-  Studia Iranica, Volumes 15-16, p-203