Lately, there are some people on social media who are going around referring to Khizr Khan, the founder of the Sayyid (or Syed) dynasty of Delhi, as a Bhatti Rajput of Punjab. This stems from a distorted reading of a passage from Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi.
Khizr Khan never bore the title Malik Mardan. It was his adoptive grandfather, Malik Mardan Daulat, who originally came from Herat. At one point, the author of Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi — a courtier serving a Sayyid sultan, the son of Khizr Khan — rebukes those slaves who deserted Khizr Khan and joined Sarang Khan. The author, in a typical style of a court historian, is indignant that slaves would forsake an owner of manliness (مردان) like Khizr Khan.
Tabaqat-i-Akbari (and the sources that in turn relied on Tabaqat-i-Akbari) distorted the تہی of Farsi into بہتی (Bhatti). Thus, “Malik Mardan Bhatti” came into being. This is, of course, a misreading of the Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi by the author of Tabaqat-i-Akbari (who relied on it for the history of the Sayyid dynasty). Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi, the author of Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi, strongly insists that Khizr Khan was a Syed. So it does not make sense for him to blurt out a Bhatti identity for him out of the blue. It is also not some Bhatti chieftain in the service of Khizr Khan; as already pointed out, it is simply a miswriting of the text of Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi.
This correction was highlighted by the reputed Indian historian H. S. Hodivala 86 years ago, as well as by several others.
The Afghan Identity Attributed to Khizr Khan
The only other identity that has been ascribed to Khizr Khan—apart from the Sayyid identity given in the Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi—is the Afghan (Pashtun) identity mentioned by the author of Muntakhab al-Lubab, who writes:
“He, Khizr Khan, was by origin and by the names of his ancestors an Afghan, as is apparent from the title Malik; but after he came to the throne of Delhi, the historians of his reign, upon very weak proofs, applied to him in a loose way the title of Saiyid.”
— Muntakhab al-Lubab, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. VII, p. 405
It is not unreasonable to assume that Khizr Khan’s ancestors may have migrated from Pakhtunkhwa to India. More than a dozen major Pashtun tribes and several dozen smaller clans claim Sayyid descent while also identifying as Afghan (Pashtun). The most notable among them are the Dilazak, a Pashtun tribe that once inhabited the vast region stretching from Ningrahar to Hasan Abdal and from Bajaur to Peshawar–Nowshera.
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