Biloch: Early History
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
Early history
Their account of their origin is that they are descended from Mir Hamzah, a Qureshi Arab and an uncle of the Prophet, and were settled at Halab or Aleppo, till, siding with Husen, they were expelled by Yaziz, the second of the Umeyid Caliphs. This would be about 680 A. D. They fled to the hill country of Kirman in Persia, where they lived quietly for some time, and so increased in numbers that the King became desirous of binding them in himself by ties of marriage. He accord ingly demanded a wife from each of the forty-four bolaks or tribes into which they are said to have then been divided, though all traces of them have long since been lost. But their fathers had never given their daughters in wedlock to a stranger, and they therefore sent forty-four boys dressed up in girls' clothes, and fled before the deception could be discovered. They moved south-eastwards into Kech Makran or the tract between Afghanistan and the coast of the Arabian Sea, then but partially inhabited, and there finally settled in the country which is now known as Bilochistan.
From Jalal Khan, the Chief under whose leadership they made their last migration, sprang four sons, Rind, Hot, Lashari and Korai, and a daughter Jato. Five of their tribes still bear these names, but the Rind and Lashari appear to have been pre-eminent ; and the Biloches, or at least that portion of the nation which later on moved northwards to our border, were divided into two great sections under those names, and I beheve that all Biloch tribes still consider themselves as belonging to one or other of these sections. Thus
Mr Fryer quotes authorities for the occupation of the Makran Mountains by Biloches at least BB early as (1) the beginning of the fifth century; (2) the middle of the seventh century. (Derah Ghizi Settlement Report, p. 19.)
The Mazari and Drisbak, who trace their descent from Hot claim to belong to the Rind section. Some five hundred years after their settlement in Kech Maknui, the Rind, Lashuri, and .Tatoi moved northwards into the country about Kelat, to the west of the lower Sulemans, the Rind setting in Shoran, the Lashari in Gandava, and the Jatoi in Sevi and Dhadon, while the Khosa remained in Kech and the Hot in Makran.They are said to have dis pposessed and driven into Sindh a Jat people, ruled over by a Hindu prince with the Sindhi title of Jum and the name of Nindava, whose capital was at Kelat. After a time the charms of a woman led to jealousy between the nephews of Mir Chakar and Mir Gwahram Khan, the Chiefs of the Rind and Lashari sections. Their claims were to be decided by a horse-race held in Rind Territory, in which the hosts loosened the girth of their rivals saddle.
A fight resulted, and the Rind, who were at first worsted, called to their aid Sultan Husen,- King of Khorasan, and drove the Lashari out into Haidarabad and Tatta in Sindh, where they no longer exist as an individual tribe. From this event the Biloches date the growth of their present tribal organisation ; and as there is now no localised tube bearing the name of Rind, and as almost all the great tribes of our frontier claim to be of Rind extraction, it is probable that the Rind, left sole possessors of the hill country of Kelat (for the Jatoi also consider themselves as belonging to the Rind section of the nation), gradually split up into the tribes which we now find on the Derah Ghazi border. Several of these tribes have taken their names from the locali ties which they now hold, which shows that their names are not older than their occupation of their present territories.
