On the annexation of the Punjab in 1849 by the Indian Government, and our consequent occupation of Kohat, the inhabitants of Waziristan became our neighbours for one hundred and forty miles along the boundary line—from the north-west corner of the Kohat district to the Gomal Pass west of Dera Ismail Khan. Waziristan, the frontier Switzerland, is in shape a rough parallelogram, averaging one hundred miles in length from north to south, with a general breadth of sixty miles from east to west; at the north-west corner a wedge of hilly country juts into the Kohat and Bannu districts. It is bounded on the west and north-west by Afghanistan; on the north-east and east by the British districts of Kurram, Kohat, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan; and on the south by Baluchistan. The chief inhabitants of Waziristan are:
1.
The Darwesh Khels.
2.
The Mahsuds.
3.
The Batannis.
4.
The Dawaris.
419The two first named are the only Wazirs proper, and all four have but little in common with each other, and for many generations have been in a perpetual state of feud.
Origin of the Wazirs
Bellew and Ibbetson are inclined to think that the Wazirs are a tribe of Rajput origin, and it is probable that ethnologically they are an Indian race with a large admixture of Scythian or Tartar blood. Their own traditions, however, represent them to be the descendants of Wazir, who was the son of Suleiman, who was the son of Kakai, himself the son of Karlan and grandson of Ghurghusht, so that they are usually described as being a tribe of Karlanri or Ghurghusht Pathans. From this common origin come the Wazirs, a title which properly includes both Darwesh Khel and Mahsuds, but the name Wazir has now been practically appropriated by the former. The ancient home of the Wazirs appears to have been in Birmal, in Afghanistan, whence they began to move eastward at the close of the fourteenth century, ousting the Khattaks from Shawal and the Kohat border north of the Tochi. In process of time they took possession of the mountainous region about Shuidar, and the whole country as far as the Gomal River, south of which but few of their settlements are to be found. The Darwesh Khel and Mahsuds differ greatly in habits and characteristics, and are practically separate tribes; but despite the enmity existing between them, their villages are much mixed up, and many of the leading men of each are connected by marriage.
Waziristan has been described by Oliver as “a land 420of high and difficult hills, deep and rugged defiles, brave and hardy people, in their way as independent and patriotic, and, in the presence of the common enemy, hardly less united, than the famous compatriots of Tell. Geographically and politically the two have several points in common; and as regards the mass of hills that lie between the Gomal and the Tochi, or Dawar Valley, of which Kaniguram is about the centre, this is more especially true. The east front is protected by the bare hills, held by the Batannis; beyond which are ravines, flanked by precipitous cliffs, which occasionally widen out to enclose small valleys fairly fertile, from one hundred to one thousand yards wide, but narrowing again as they ascend. Not unfrequently the mouth is a mere gorge or tangi (waist), where the water forces its way through a range crossing it at right angles and forming a colossal natural barrier. In these valleys, and the small strips of alluvial land which border the base of the higher mountains, locally called Kaches—which are quite a distinctive feature of the whole range—there is often a good deal of cultivation, the whole carefully terraced, and irrigated by means of channels cut out of the hill sides, a great deal of ingenuity and skill being expended in leading the water from field to field.”
The principal rivers in Waziristan are the Kurram, Kaitu, Tochi and Gomal; the valley of the last-named is particularly barren, there being hardly any cultivation to be seen between Murtaza and Khajuri Kach, and no villages along the river itself. The 421tributaries of the Gomal in southern Waziristan flow through the wide and open, but stony and barren plains of Wana, Spin and Zarmelan. Indeed, Waziristan answers to the description Pathans give of their country when they tell us, that “when God made the world there were a lot of stones and rocks and lumber left over, which were all dumped down on this frontier, and that this accounts for its unattractive appearance.”
Their Country
“Waziristan,” writes Holdich, “the land of the Waziris or Wazirs, constitutes a little independent mountain state, geographically apart from the larger mountain systems to the north and south. No roads through Waziristan lead to Afghanistan—at least no roads that are better than mere mountain footpaths. Of these there is no lack at any part of the frontier. North of Waziristan the Tochi Valley affords a through route about which we know little; and south of it the Gomal Valley leads to Ghazni; but at the back of Waziristan, between it and the plateau or high-land of Afghanistan, there is a band of rough hills packed in more or less parallel lines across the path from India, which shuts off the head of the Tochi from the Ghazni plains, and forms the barrier through which the Gomal breaks ere it reaches the open stony plain of Wana. Wana lies to the south-west of Waziristan. From the Gomal River southward commences the true Suleimani mountain system, presenting a band of rugged, serrated ridges, facing the Indus, and preserving the attitude of an impenetrable barrier (an attitude which is, after all, only a magnificent assumption) 422between the plains of the Indus and Afghanistan.... Waziristan is sufficiently far north to partake rather of the characteristics of the mountains of the Kurram and Safed Koh than of the Suleiman Hills to the south. There are pine trees and grand deodars on the far slopes of Waziristan to the west; there are magnificent ilex (oak) trees, which throw broad square spaces of solid shade. The young ilex sprouts all over the lower slopes of the hills, imitating holly in its early stages. The spreading poplar is the glory of many a village, and the ubiquitous bher, or jujube, is in every low-lying nullah. And Waziristan possesses a glorious group of mountains, culminating in two giant peaks—Shuidar, or Sheikh Haidar, to the north, Pirghal to the south—each of them rising 11,000 feet above the plains of the Indus, and standing like twin sentinels, guardians of the western passes of the country. From Shuidar, looking northward, one may see the flat, white back of the Safed Koh, which divides the Khyber from the Kurram, culminating in Sika Ram (16,000 feet), and from Pirghal, the craggy outline of Kaisarghar, the highest peak of the mountain called the Takht-i-Suleiman, bars further view to the south. From both peaks westward there stretches a boundless vista of ridge and hazy plain, a diapason of tender distances fainting to lighter tints of blue, till it is only against the yellowing evening sky that the pale silhouette of the hills that stand about Ghazni can be detected.... The wide cultivated ramp formed by the valley of the Tochi to the north of Waziristan, as well as the more 423restricted valley of the Gomal to the south, are both of them highroads to Ghazni. They figure in history, though no modern force has ever made use of them. Tradition points to the former as the route sometimes selected by that arch-raider of the Indian frontier, Mahmud of Ghazni, early in the eleventh century, who is said to have swept down with hordes of irregular cavalry through the band of hills which heads the Tochi Valley with a rapidity that seems incredible in these days, and to have laid waste the Indus Valley from Bannu to Multan.... The Tochi,[135] moreover, dominates much of the northern hills of Waziristan. We have not yet shut off Waziristan from Afghanistan, and the Wazirs will be as ripe for mischief in the future as in the past. But Waziristan is now dovetailed in between the Gomal and the Tochi, and the influence of our military pressure north and south, as well as east, cannot fail to make for peace and good order.... If there is so much to be said for the occupation of the Tochi (a more or less isolated valley) surely there is yet more to be said for the occupation of the Gomal. The Tochi Valley leads nowhere, so far as we are concerned at present.... The Gomal is the most important pass between the Khyber and the Bolan. It gives access to the very centre of Afghanistan from India. It is the regular highway for thousands of trading and fighting people who bring their Kafilas yearly to India.... From Wana we not only dominate the southern Waziri valleys, but we round off the line of frontier outposts 424which hold all the wild people of the Suleiman mountains in check from Quetta to Waziristan. It secures the end of the chain, and can itself be supported and fed either from India by the Gomal Pass, or from Quetta by the Zhob Valley.”
The Tochi and the Gomal
Some explanation of this last sentence is necessary; at Khajuri Kach—“the plain of palms,” trees which, by the way, are here said to be conspicuous by their absence—the Zhob River flows into the Gomal, and here the road bifurcates, that along the Zhob Valley leading to Quetta, the other continuing north-west along the Gomal to Ghazni. Further on again, at Domandi, the Gomal is joined by a river called the Kundar, the valley route of which leads directly to Kandahar.
Of the approach to Ghazni by the Tochi we know that it is easy enough, for we have made it so, as far as Sheranni, and thence onward to the Katanni Kotal very difficult, steep and broken; but we know practically nothing of the road between the head of the Katanni Pass and Ghazni. Of the Gomal route, so far as Domandi and Wana is familiar enough, but we would give much to know more than we do of the country beyond.
Physically the Wazirs are tall and muscular, and they are also courageous, while, though poor, they are hospitable. They raise a good breed of horses, said to have Arab blood in them, derived from horses left behind him by Nadir Shah, but they are themselves bad riders for the most part, and are essentially footmen. They are a pastoral rather than an agricultural 425race, and possess herds of small black cattle and sheep in abundance. Unlike most other independent border tribes, the Wazirs have had the good sense to avoid, to a large extent, internal feuds, and their unity as a tribe is proverbial. Their blood-feuds are consequently not so indiscriminate as those of some of their neighbours, it being ruled that the slaying of the actual murderer is sufficient. They are satisfied also with what they call “make-up money,” the price of a male adult being Rs. 1300; a woman is only half-price, while the tariff for sword-cuts is on a graduated scale—some twelve rupees for the first half inch!
The Wazirs are Muhammadans of the Sunni sect, but, like any other Pathan tribe, they are not particularly strict in the performance of their religious duties. The mullahs have influence only so far as the observances of religion go, and are powerless in political matters, but the Wazirs are an especially democratic and independent people, and even their own Maliks have little real control over them.
General Unpopularity
Of the Wazirs, Enriquez tells us that they “are held in abomination by all their Pathan neighbours, who have a common saying to the effect that ‘a Wazir will murder you for the sake of your pugaree.’ ... To the poor of their own community they are said to be charitable, and they do not offer violence to the wives and children of their personal foes. Their barbarity to all strangers, however, is such that every Pathan sepoy in the Indian Army longs for nothing so keenly as a Wazir war.”
426“Of the Wazir,” said Edwardes, “it is literally true that his hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”
The Darwesh Khel are divided into two main clans:
1.
The Utmanzais.
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