Pashtun dresses in early 19th century. Paintings by Imam Bakhsh Lahori

Illustrations by Imam Bakhsh Lahori for the memoirs of General Claude-Auguste Court (French general of Ranjit Singh), Lahore. Source

Yousafzai Pashtun. Source

Peshawari cultivators. Source

A Pashtun cavalier. Source

Inhabitant of Dir (a Yousafzai Pashtun). Source

A man from Tirah of the Khyber region. Source

An inhabitant of Bannu. Source

An Afridi Pashtun. Source

A Mohmand Pashtun. Source

An inhabitant of Bajaur, most likely from the Tarkani or Tarkalanri tribe.

 

Bangash, Turi and Wazir tribesmen, c. 1835.

‘Ladies from Kabul’, photographed in Bannu, 1958 (c)

‘Ladies from Kabul’, [photographed in Bannu, Pakistan c 1958]

The photograph is held with others taken by Dr Stella Underhill when she was based at the Church Mission Society hospital at Bannu (in present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan). The caption with the photograph records that the women were from the capital of Afghanistan.

Source: Cadbury Research Library

A Pashtun from Bannu, 1946

 

"Fierce glance and hawklike eye tell the Pathan character". From "The National Geographic magazine", 1946. 

Caption: "Seen at Bannu, this young blade wears an inverted lambskin jacket. On his turban he keeps an amulet to ward off snipers' bullets. Some of his friends may reach 6 feet 9. Tribal legends tell him he is descendant of Israel's lost tribes. What a Hollywood villain he would make ! ".

Bannu tongawala, 1939. Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection.

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Ghazi Dilasa Khan of Bannu (born 1777 A.D.)

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"Awghan" (اوغان) is not a derogatory distortion of the word Afghan

Some Pashtuns of Afghanistan (particularly the diaspora) get offended when Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras refer to them as Awghan (اوغان), thinking it is a derogatory distortion of the word Afghan. 

But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it is Awghan which is original while Afghan might be its Arabic or Persian modification of later times. 

 

In ancient Bactrian documents, Pashtuns are mentioned as "αβαγανο" i.e., Abagano or Awagano (since "b" is interchangeable with "w"). 

Source: "Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan II: Letters and Buddist Texts", by Nicholas Sims-Williams, p-144

 

Source: "Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan II: Letters and Buddist Texts", by Nicholas Sims-Williams, p-144

Indian astronomer Varāha Mihira mentioned them as Avagāṇa in his Bṛhat-saṃhitā in 6th century A.D.

Source:  Encyclopedia Iranic

Hsuen Tsang, in 629 A.D, refers to the people living between Bannu and Ghazni as " O-Po-Kien". According to Alexander Cunningham, O-Po-Kien is rendering of Avaghan in Chinese. 

The original spelling Awghan occasionally occur in the medieval Persian sources of the last millennium. From Tarikh Nama-i-Herat (written in circa 1320 A.D) :-

History of Bannu

Bannu is mentioned in the events of year 1398 AD, when Amir Timur invaded India , at which time he came through Kurma'h into Bannu [1]. In Timur's biography "Zafar-namah", name of the place is written as Bano with long a (بانو). Timur left a body of his troops in Bannu to deal with turbulence caused by Awghans (i.e Afghans) and crossed the Indus to enter India. Traditional oral history of Bannuchis also verify the fact that they originally named the place Bano (بانو). According to Pashtun tradition, Bano (بانو) was the wife of Shitak, whence his descendants are called Bannuzais or Bannuchis. She had two sons, Kiwi and Surani. Bannuchis dug drains and sowed corn after occupying these lands, and said, "Let us call this place Bano, after our mother, for its fruitful, even as she was". With time Bano changed to Bannu (بنو).

Yousafzais of Ghoriwala in Bannu

Hasan Khan Yousafzai, the progenitor of the Mughal Khels of Ghoriwala town in Bannu, was an adventurer from Yusufzai country, who settled in Bannu in early18th century. His son Umar Khan removed to Ghoriwala, and by degrees worked himself into position of a chief, his followers being mostly Jat and Awan Hindkis. Fourth in descent from him was Mughal Khan, who has given his name to his small but powerful clan. He was a great man, had six wives and many sons, and greatly extended the limits of his tappa. His grandson Jafar rose to power by first subjecting all his relations to his will, and then the neighboring tappa of Ismail Khel, over which Allahdad, a distant cousin of his, became chief. On the outbreak of the second Anglo-Sikh war, Allahdad and Jafar took opposite sides, the former against the British, the latter for British. Jafar Khan raised two hundred men for British for service in Bannu, and sent his eldest son, Sardad, at the head of twenty-eight sawars to assist at the siege of Multan. For these and other services, Jafar Khan was rewarded the perpetual jagir assignment of one-eighth the revenues of both the Ghoriwala and Ismail Khel tappas, and on is paying a balance of revenue due from the latter was made its malik as well. He also received a grant of land in Nar assessed at Rs. 940 in 1884. He died in 1859, and was seceded by his eldest son Sardad Khan, who drew Rs. 2,523 as his jagir grant and Rs. 1,063 in 1884 as head of the two tappas above named. He was made a police officer zaildar in 1863 and deprived of the office owing to incapacity in December 1871. (Ref: Bannu Gazetteer, 1883, p-138)

In 1883 the Yousafzais of Ghoriwala still had preserved the Yousafzai dialect and the Yousafzai physiognomy. (Bannu Gazetteer, 1883, p-30).

An image which is falsely attributed to Jafar Khan Yousafzai of Ghoriwala

Someone cropped a figure from a painting in Fraser Album, printed it, gave it a fake caption and falsely claimed that it is placed in "London Museum".

The above figure was actually named Mirza Bahram and he was a horse-merchant from Kabul. The following painting which is part of the collections of James Fraser and William Fraser and was commissioned by the latter in circa 1816-1820.

E.S Fraser (James Fraser and William Fraser's father) transcribed the five figures in the above painting as follow:

1st figure. Khodadad Khan son of Meerza Bahram. 2d. Meerza Bahram, an Afghan born at Caubul (Kabul), a horse merchant. 3d. Seyyeed Khan, a Dooraunee Patan (Durrani Pashtun), a merchant of Candahar. 4th. Nunmoo Lahoree, a trooper, and residing at Delhee. 5th. Moolah Seyed Oollah, a Dooraunee Patan, a horse merchant of Caubul.

The reference given by Sothbeys is:  M. Archer and T. Falk, India Revealed: the Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser 1801-35, London, 1989, p.113, no.101.

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Ghazi Dilasa Khan of Bannu (born 1777 A.D.)

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Ghazi Dilasa Khan of Bannu (born 1777 A.D.)

The Bannuchis (Shitak Pashtuns of the Bannu region) stoutly resisted all intruders—Mughals, Durranis, and Wazirs alike. A Hindustani named Ghulam Muhammad, who visited Bannu in 1782, described its people as follows:-

"The horses and swords of Bannu are remarkably good; and the people are exceedingly brave and bold. They are Shitaks, the descendants of Sharaf-ud-Din, alias Shitak, son of Karlarnaey".

In 1823, the Sikhs crossed the Indus, marched through Isa Khel and Marwat without opposition and and pushed on to the outskirts of Bannu. However they returned without establishing any garrison there. From 1823 to 1845, about nine times the Sikh army invaded Bannu but could not occupy it. The Khalsa force commander used to come with a large Sikh army, which never entered the valleys without fear. They generally succeeded in extracting some revenue by force, but at the cost of suffering severe losses at the hands of determined Bannuchis. 

In June 1838, Shah Shuja Saddozai (grandson of Ahmad Shah Durrani) entered into a tripartite agreement with Ranjit Singh and the British government. Under article I of this agreement, Shah Shuja ceded Bannu among other trans-Indus regions to the Sikhs. Ranjit Singh lost no time in attempting to occupy this new territory. Ranjit Singh demanded one lac rupees as tribute from the Bannuchis. But Bannu, although a plain area, had fortified villages like those of Waziristan hills. Ranjit Singh could not occupy it and contended with periodical raids to devastate the country and carried off whatever booty could be secured.

The most notable among Bannuchis who offered stiff resistance to Sikhs, was Malik Dilasa Khan, referred to as a 'Ghazi' for fighting against Sikhs. He was born in 1777 AD in the house of Khattak Khan. Alam Khan and Ghazi Khan were his grandfather and great-grandfather respectively. Malik Daud Shah, the ancestor of Malik Dilasa Khan, was third in lineal descent from Suranaey son of Shitak.  Dilasa Khan belonged to village Daud Shah. It is his indefatigable struggle against the Sikhs that brought Malik Dilasa Khan to the limelight and in the history of Shitaks his name is mentioned with great respect and reverence. In 1847, prior to the battle of Khyber that was fought between Dost Muhammad Khan of Kabul and Sikhs, a friend of Dost Muhammad Khan mentioned the name of Dilasa Khan to the latter and asked him to send for him as he was the fiercest enemy of the Sikhs and would be of great help to the Durranis.

Malik Dilasa Khan fought a number of battles against the Sikhs in and around Bannu however, his contemporaries mentioned only two battles in some details. In 1826 the Sikhs led by Kanwar Karak Singh, visited Bannu for the second time for revenue collection. Malik Dilasa Khan refused to make the payment and raised a call for jihad. A few Maliks joined him. A fierce battle was fought near village Gul Hasan Amandi wherein Malik Dilasa Khan was defeated. He took refuse with Dawars in the Tochi valley.

Then we hear about him when the Sikhs visited Bannu for the fourth time in 1834 under the command of Tara Singh. He camped in the village of Akra. Malik Dilasa Khan made arrangement for jihad and fortified his village. Tara Singh tried to catch Malik Dilasa Khan unprepared. He attacked him at dawn and bombarded Mamash Khel, the village of Malik Dilasa Khan of Daud Shah Tappa, with artillery guns and made a breach in the mud fort wall. Malik Dilasa Khan, before the Sikhs could make use of the breach, cordoned it off with barbed wire and bushes. At night he sallied out and repulsed the Sikhs' attacks and inflicted upon them a loss of over three hundred men. A ballad celebrating his victory, recorded by Septimus Smet Thorburn in his book in 1876, runs as under:-

The 'Ghazi Dilasa' taunts them as 'Kafirs' and replies:
"Countries are of no use to me:
If I am martyred, God will give me paradise.
All the world is fleeting, as we are born from earth."
The Sikh force came and pitched against Dilasa.
Day and night, oh friends! they fought without ceasing.
It was a great earthquake. Boys and girls were kept awake.
Thanks be to God that Dilasa came out with honour.
He fought with the infidels; he became a Ghazi.
All the people praise him; from sins he has been cleansed.
The Houris of paradise have made him their own - it is a truth from the book.
He put the Sikhs to flight. Where will they flee religionless?

Soon after Khalsa army under Kunwar Nao Nihal Singh and Raja Surjeet Singh reached Bannu. They besieged Malik Dilasa Khan's fort. Most of the Bannuchi Maliks abandoned Malik Dilasa Khan. The Sikhs massacred a nearby village where a cow had been slaughtered. They cut the hands of all those who survived the killing and burnt the village. They extracted about eighteen thousand rupees from Malik Asad Hasan Khel who had to sell his entire household to meet the demand.

Sir Herbert Benjamin Edwardes, who came in very intimate contact with the Shitaks as a tribe and seem most of their mid-nineteenth century Maliks and Khans, did not treat them favorably except Dilasa Khan. Edwardes had heard a lot about him from the Sikhs who had suffered at the hands of Dilasa Khan and from the commoners who supported the latter. Once he asked Malik Mir Alam Khan of Ahmadi Tappa as to who Dilasa Khan was? the latter replied and Edwardes quotes.

"Dilasa Khan is a sentry"

He further writes,

"Though, the Sikhs are afraid of Dilasa Khan"

For the Shitaks, Edwardes and Sikhs, both were evil; the only difference was the Shitaks considered the latter the bigger evil. Later, Dilasa Khan ultimately chose the lesser evil and met Edwardes who kept him in his camp as a guest. On day, Shamsher Singh, to irritate him sent his men to Dilasa Khan's Tappa and that very night Dilasa Khan who was about seventy years old, made his escape good to Dawar valley and never returned to his country.

Sources:

1- "History of the Pathans", by Haroon Rahsid, Vol-5
2- "Notes on Afghanistan and part of Baluchistan", by H.G.Raverty
3- "Bannu or our Afghan frontier", by S.S.Thorburn
4- "A year in the Punjab" by H.B. Edwardes

Cavalryman from Bannu, c.1830-40 AD. The portrait is from album of paintings held in the British Library.

Hindus of Bannu

Source: www.apnabannu.com

The Hindus were much equally scattered throughout all parts of the district except the Waziri tracts, in which there were very few. Of the 30,000 in the district in 1877-78, fully two-thirds were engaged in trade, the rest gained a living as agriculturists in different villages. The majority had been Aroras (Kirars), the rest being Brahmins and Khatris. They were much reserved to their communities, acquisitive (very necessary and useful it may be in their places in those days due to their position as minority), but possessed of few manly qualities and both despised and envied by the Musalman tribes of the district for the wealth and property they possessed. Of the Aroras, 11,275 were Uttaradhi and 10,580 were Dakhana as recorded at the Census of 1881. This strength was doubled when they left Bannu in 1947. They were chiefly guarded by Musslaman Malluks in the villages and by the District Administration in the walled city of Bannu. In 1947, about 50,000 Hindus souls migrated to India. They were given a peaceful send off by the local Malluks. Only one dozen families are now residing at Bannu. They were mainly known as Bannuwal Hindus and Lakkiwal Hindus among the tribes. They were learned class in the district who remained peaceful in Bannu throughout their stay. In Bannu, they had been speaking Hinko language but were well versed in Bannusi and Marwat accents. Those living in Mianwali used to speak the Niazis accent. Bannu city was occupied by almost 60% Hindus which percentage was reduced to 50% by 1940 AD since many of them shifted to villages where they purchased land once a ban on purchase of property by non-Muslims in villages was lifted by the Provincial Congress Cabinet under Chief Minister Doctor Khan Sahib in 1939. The ban was imposed by Sahibzada Abdul Quyyum Khan, the first Chief Minister of NWFP (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) in 1937/38.

In 1947, many Hindu families sold their land under compulsion of leaving their homes for migration to India. The Hindu property thus unsold by then was taken over by the Pakistan Government and a department known as Custodian Department looked after the property till the time much of the property was auctioned in 1954 to 1960 but a lot of it was given to the Mahajirs who migrated from India. The religious places of Hindus and Sikhs are still guarded by the District Administration.

Like Niazis who were once a part of District Bannu but driven out by the Marwats, the role of Hindus in Bannu who migrated to India due to partition, cannot ignored. The Hindus community (as well as some Sikh families) had a complete hold on the business line in Bannu except arms making, and 80% of houses and shops at Bannu city were purely held by them. In fact, Bannu city was erected for their protection by Lt. Edwardes in 1847 thence completed by Major Taylor in 1848; and they doubtlessly attained distinction in Bannu by virtue of hard work. They left their immovable property under the assurances from the Malluks and the district administration that their property would be returned to them if they might not find their migration to India and subsequent settlement there, either impossible or hard. However, when ten years passed and none returned, the property at city was completely taken over by Custodian Department (raised for the purpose) and after letting some houses and shops given to the Mahajirs from India, the rest was auctioned under government auctioneers which properties are now possessed by different classes. The land in villages was possessed by the Malluks and then after 30 years declared as their property.

The Hindus were not touched or molested at Bannu at the time of partition, rather they were looked after well and transported in their transports to Bannu Railway Station. The wealthy families managed to go by Air from Pakistan but majority of the families travelled by trained and while entering Punjab, many families at the hands of the Muslim bandits, suffered badly. Very touching scenes were observed when Hindus kissed the soil of Bannu while moving off the land with tears in their eyes. Their places of worship are still guarded by the District Administration through the Custodian Department and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Government of Pakistan. Even after their settlement till this date in India, they speak Bannuwal language at homes and love the language. In marriages they also play Bannuwal dhol and enjoy typical Bannuwal dances. However, here at Bannu, they are remembered with good words, people talk about their ways and manners, in places of meeting. Despite some incident that took place like the sad case of Islam Bibi, a newly converted girl to Islam who had fallen in love with a pir of Jhando Khel, in 1936; they all remained much respectful to the Bannuchi communities and maintained peace, wishing tranquility for the district in general.

Apart from their business line in grains; and sell or purchase of audible items like ghee, sugar, gurr and tea in the district; they even had been running the cinemas and private mechanized transport. Many of them were even tangewala (ekkawala). There were two cinemas in Bannu known as Regal Cinema and In-city Cinema, erected in 1930, run by Khanna family ( Hindu) and Kania Singh family (Sikh) respectively. ‘In-city Cinema’ was initially known as ‘talkies’ but when in 1947, Kania Singh embraced Islam and was named as Sheikh Saleem, the cinema was consequently named as ‘Saleem Theatre’. Regal cinema was owned by Bannu Garrison in 1947 when Khanna family left for India. It was subsequently leased out to Late Amanullah Khan and his brothers (Kachozai family). These two cinemas have been demolished recently by their owners due to the old brick structures that had gone dangerous after eighty years (or perhaps due to threats from Taliban), and now new commercial centers are being erected in place.

Till late in 1962, the Hindus of Miranshah and Bannu who opted to stay in Pakistan, had been collectively and regularly celebrating dosehra, dewali etc., with whom many Bannuchis also used to join them on such occasions at the specified parks. They had been distributing sweets on such occasions and sending these to the Bannuchi families living close to them. Typical bilateral relations of the mebers of the two religeons existed that remained combined for centuries.

After partition, as mentioned above, many Hindu families migrated to Delhi, Faridabad, Kanpur, Haridwar, Dehradun, Lucknow, Bareily, Rampur, Agra, Vrindavan and Bombay. Rampur (Uttar Pradesh) is having majority of Bannuwal communities.

The Hindus community dressed like Bannuchis with only a difference in Turban which they used to wear around their heads differently. Some Hindus in Bannu were well off and politically well placed. The most influential among them was Kanwar Bhan Bagai, a famous transporter, grain supplier and owner of many houses and around 100 shops in Bannu city in the second quarter of 20th century. He was the head of the Bannuwal Hindus and carried weight in his decision at the British offices.

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Ghazi Dilasa Khan of Bannu (born 1777 A.D.)

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