This book is the outcome of my own experience of the want of something of the kind in the early autumn of 1897, when the Second Battalion of my old Corps, the Sherwood Foresters, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment, then serving at Bareilly, was ordered to join the Tirah Expeditionary Force. The Battalion had then been in India for nearly fifteen years, but only one or two of the officers, and none of the other ranks, had ever been west of the Indus, and few of us therefore knew anything of

To do justice to an introduction to a book such as this, one requires to have first-hand knowledge of all the tribes on the Indian Frontier; but although I have served a good many years in India, and some six years altogether in peace and war on the Frontier itself, I cannot even pretend to possess the requisite knowledge to criticise this careful and complete work. Colonel Wylly has done me the honour of asking me to godfather his book, I am sure more on account of our having been friends for s

The whole of the country lying immediately to the west of the Punjab, and between it and the kingdom of Afghanistan, is held by the two great nations of Pathan and Baluch, the former lying to the north and the latter to the south of a line drawn from the western face of the Suleiman Mountains opposite Dera Ghazi Khan, almost due west to Quetta. The land, then, of the Pathans may be said to comprise the regions of the Sufed Koh and the Suleiman and adjacent mountains with their numerous offshoots

The first time the Hassanzai clan came into notice was on the occasion of the murder by them of two officers of the Indian Customs Department. Shortly after the annexation of the Punjab a preventive line was established along the left bank of the Indus, so far as British jurisdiction extended, to prevent trans-Indus salt being smuggled into the Punjab. In 1851 this line was extended five miles beyond Torbela to a point on the Indus where the cis-Indus territory of the Nawab of Amb commenced. In

The clansmen occupying the British border from the Black Mountain to the Utman Khel territory belong, with the exception of the Gaduns, to the important tribe of Yusafzai Pathans, of which the Hassanzais, Akazais and Chagarzais, already described, are also branches. The Yusafzais inhabit the division of that name in the Peshawar district, as well as independent territory beyond the border. They are the descendants of the original Gandhari, who in ancient days occupied the Peshawar Valley, emigra

None of the dwellers in the territories described in the last chapter gave us any trouble during the first few years which followed upon the taking over of the frontier by the British. In 1853, however, it became necessary to punish the Hindustani fanatics, who had afforded some assistance to the Hassanzais during the expedition which the British Government undertook against them in the previous year, and who had seized the fort at Kotla on the right bank of the Indus, belonging to the Nawab of

Up to the year 1895 the only Akozais of Swat with whom the British had had any dealings were the Baizais and Ranizais, who inhabited the country south of the Morah Mountain. Operations against the Baizais, 1847. —The first time we came in contact with these people was in October 1847, when Major George Lawrence, then holding the Peshawar Valley for the Sikhs, was fired on by the men of the Baizai village of Babuzai, and, obtaining no satisfaction for the outrage, he determined to attack the vill

In the middle of the last century the favourite raiding ground of the restless spirits of the Utman Khels was the Hastnagar division. Early in 1852, they permitted one Ajun Khan, a notoriously disaffected man, to take up his residence in Utman Khel villages to the north of the district, and here he gathered together a band of adventurers like himself to raid upon our border. Finally in April, Ajun Khan collected some 200 mounted men, attacked Charsada, the headquarters of the division, plundered

It will be convenient here to give some account of Umra Khan of Jandol, whose usurpations were responsible for the formation of the Chitral Relief Expedition, the operations of which, in the countries of Dir and Bajaur, are about to be described. Umra Khan was a younger son of the Khan of Jandol, and a grandson of the Chief of Bajaur who took up arms against us during the Ambela campaign. He quarrelled with his father and was expelled from the country; but returning in 1878 he killed his elder b

Chitral is the largest and the most important state on the northern part of the north-western frontier. It lies immediately to the west of Gilgit, while on the other side it is divided by the Hindu Kush from the province of Kafiristan—transferred to the dominions of Afghanistan during the latter part of the reign of the late Amir Abdurrahman Khan. South of Gilgit the Shandur spur and the watershed between the Chitral and Panjkora Rivers divide the country from Yasin, Kohistan and Dir; it is bord

The Mohmands are divided into two main branches, the trans-frontier or Bar (hill) Mohmands and the cis-frontier or Kuz (plain) Mohmands, and both belong to the Ghoria Khel branch of the Afghans, who, when driven from their holdings on the head waters of the Tarnak and Arghastan Rivers by the Tarin Afghans, emigrated eastwards, at the commencement of the fifteenth century, by way of Ghazni, Kabul and Ningrahar. The Bar Mohmands separated from those of the Kuz branch at Dakka, the latter going to

The British Government first came into contact with the Mohmands during the Afghan War of 1838–42, at which time one Saadat Khan was Chief of Lalpura. On the news of the approach of the British army, Turabaz Khan, his cousin and enemy, immediately started off to meet the army of the Indus at Jhelum. Saadat Khan thereupon espoused the cause of the Barakzais, and Turabaz Khan was installed as Khan of Lalpura by Colonel Wade, and seems to have done loyal service for Mackeson while we held Afghanist

The Afridis are a large tribe, inhabiting the lower and easternmost spurs of the Safed Koh Range, to the west and south of the Peshawar district, including the Bazar and Bara Valleys. On the east they are bounded by British territory; on their north they have the Mohmands; west, the Shinwaris; and south, the Orakzais and Bangash. Their origin is very obscure; Bellew identifies them with one of the peoples referred to by Herodotus; their traditions, however, says James, would lead us to believe t

As has been already mentioned, British connection with the Afridis as a tribe commenced in 1839, when Colonel Wade, with a contingent of Sikh troops, forced the Khyber Pass. The first occasion, however, after the annexation of the Peshawar Valley, upon which we came into actual conflict with any of the clan, was in 1850. In the previous year, following the example of former governors of Peshawar, the British entered into an agreement with the Adam Khel, or Kohat Pass Afridis, to pay them Rs. 570

The tract of country inhabited by this tribe is some sixty miles long by about twenty broad. It is bounded on the north by the Shinwaris and Afridis, on the east by the Bangash and Afridis, on the south by the Bangash and the Zaimukhts, and on the west by the Kharmana River and by the country of the Chamkannis. The Orakzais also possess some settlements in British territory in the Kohat district. The Orakzai country proper is generally termed Orakzai Tirah, and it contains four principal valleys

Up to the year 1855 the Orakzais, though occasionally committing petty depredations on the border, and known to be capable of mischief if so inclined, gave no positive trouble to the British authorities; but in the spring of that year many of the tribe were concerned in the demonstrations and attacks upon posts and parties in the Miranzai Valley, mention of which will be found in Chapter XVI. Divisions of the Ismailzai clan had been especially aggressive; the Akhel division had attacked a villag

Since the territories of the above-mentioned tribes are either situated in, or are most easily approached from, the Miranzai and Kurram, the account of these peoples had better be prefaced by some description of those valleys. During the days of Sikh rule on the frontier, Miranzai remained under the Governor of Kohat, but not much interference was attempted. On the annexation of the Punjab by the Government of India, Miranzai, being an outlying territory, was overlooked when possession was taken

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 t

Darwesh Khels. —Immediately after the annexation of the Punjab, the Umarzai sub-division of the Ahmadzai Wazirs began and continued to give trouble on our border. A dispute which commenced with a disagreement with a Bannuchi chief, responsible for the collection of the revenue from Wazir villages in our territory, gradually developed into a grievance against the local British authority, and finally, early in 1850, men from several divisions of the Ahmadzai, to the number of 1500, attacked our po

No book dealing with the military relations, now and in the past, of the Indian Government and the frontier tribes, can be said to be complete, which does not contain some allusion to the armament of these men. In the matter of small arms we have not invariably possessed the conspicuous superiority which might have been expected of a highly-civilised nation warring against a semi-savage people. Readers of Kaye’s History of the War in Afghanistan will not need to be reminded how frequently both t