# Buner: the Barandu valley, Pir Baba's shrine and the Ambela pass

> Buner is the mountain-ringed basin of the Barandu river in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, home of the Iliaszai Yusufzai and Pir Baba's shrine at Pacha, and the country that held a British column at the Ambela pass in 1863. The 2023 census counted 1,016,869 people.

- URL: https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/buner
- Subject: Historical places and regions
- Language: English
- Published: 2026-11-04
- Last updated: 2026-11-04
- Author: Pashtunxwa Editors

## At a glance

- Buner is the basin of the Barandu river in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a ring of mountains between Swat, the Indus and the Peshawar plain. The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 puts its main valley at about 10 miles across, "well cultivated, and level". [1]
- Its people, the Bunerwals, are Yusufzai of the [Iliaszai](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/tribes/iliaszai) branch. The Gazetteer says the clans around them recognised Buner as the head of their confederacy. [1] [3]
- The district had 1,016,869 people in the 2023 census, in 1,865 square kilometres. [10]
- Pir Baba's shrine at Pacha is, in Caroe's words, "the most hallowed shrine in all the Frontier country". [6]
- In October to December 1863 the Bunerwals, joined by the Akhund of Swat and others, held a British column in the Ambela pass for more than a month. [2] [4] [5]
- Buner was part of the Buddhist country of Udyana. Aurel Stein matched its ruins and Mount Ilam to the Chinese pilgrims' accounts. [1] [7]
- In April 2009 militants from Swat took Buner, and the army began an operation there on 28 April. [11] [12] [13]

## The valley and its passes

The Gazetteer places Buner between 34° 22' and 34° 37' N and 72° 15' and 72° 48' E. Swat Kohistan lies to the north, Swat and Sam Ranizai to the west, the dependent tribes and Peshawar district to the south, and the Black Mountain and Hazara to the east. Buner is the basin of the Barandu, which joins the Indus near Amb. The side valleys are narrower and less fertile than the main one, but better wooded. The Gazetteer says the people are marked by an aloofness that comes from there being no trade route through the country. [1]

Bellew, who lived among the Yusufzai in the early 1860s, described the central plain as hill-girt, about eighteen miles by twelve, drained by a perennial stream, the Barandu. He counted ninety-four to a hundred villages in it. [3] He listed three passes into Swat: the Karakar, the Jowarai and the Gokand, all very difficult and used only by men on foot. [3] Barth, working in Swat in 1954, lists the Karakar among the passes over which Swat has contact with Buner and Peshawar. [8] Caroe says the Barandu runs east to the Indus, the opposite direction from the Swat river. [6]

Chamla, to the south, is a smaller valley that Bellew calls "properly a tributary valley to that of Buhnair" (his spelling of Buner), about fourteen miles long and four wide, with Kogah as its chief town. [3] Beyond it the Mahaban mountain rises toward the Indus. The Ambela pass is the way from the Peshawar plain into Chamla. [2] [4]

Caroe describes the setting of Pir Baba's shrine, under the range between Buner and Swat, with the twin peaks of Dosirra and Ilam rising behind it as "majestic sentinels". He records a legend that the Buner tribes once fought over which of the two was higher, and says the argument still runs. [6]

## The clans of Buner

Bellew describes the Iliaszai as the Yusufzai division of Buner. In one passage he lists seven clans: Aishazai, Salarzai, Nurizai, Doulatzai (generally called Panjpai), Gadaizai, Makhozai and Chagurzai. [3] In his genealogy he names five divisions descended from Ilias: Salarzai, Gadaizai, Makhozai, Ashaizai and Panjpai. He gives their chief towns as Jowar, Padsha, Shukaoli, Turasak and Bagra, and reckons the Iliaszai at about eleven thousand people with two thousand matchlock-men. [3] These are his own counts from the early 1860s. Padsha is Bellew's spelling for the chief town of the Gadaizai, and its identification with Pacha is not made in his text.

See [the Iliaszai](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/tribes/iliaszai) and [the Yusufzai](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/yusufzai-tribe-of-swat-and-mardan) for the genealogies. Caroe says that Shaikh Mali's survey of the Yusufzai lands in the sixteenth century already took account of Buner, and that at some unrecorded time afterwards the Yusuf branch took Swat, the Panjkora, Buner and all the hill country while the Mandanr were confined to the plain. [6] See [the Mandanr](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/tribes/mandanr).

The Gazetteer notes that the clans between Buner and Peshawar district, the Gaduns, Salarzai and Khudu Khel, recognised Buner as the head of their confederacy. [1] See [the Gadun](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/tribes/gadun).

## Buddhist Buner

The Gazetteer says Buner was part of the ancient kingdom of Udyana and "abounds in archaeological remains of great interest". It names Mahaban, Banj, Asgram, Panjkotai, Gumbatai and Girarai. Mahaban had been guessed to be the rock of Aornos that Alexander besieged, but Stein, who visited it under tribal escort in 1904, concluded that the topography did not fit. Banj has been suggested as the place where the Buddha gave his body to a starving tigress. From Stein's survey of January 1898 the Gazetteer takes the identification of Panjkotai with the Mahavana monastery of the Chinese pilgrims, of Gumbatai near Tursak with the Mosu monastery, and of Girarai with the shrine of the pigeon ransomed by the Buddha. The Gazetteer adds that the buildings the pilgrims described are in ruins and the sculptures removed. [1]

Stein came back in 1926 and described the Gokand valley, on Buner's eastern side. At Top-dara he found a stupa on a square base about 80 by 75 feet, standing about 8 feet high at its best corner, "remarkably well preserved" under thick growth. The dome facing was well laid masonry of the Gandhara type. Near it were the walls of a small hall. In the same valley a weathered Bodhisattva, about three feet high, was carved on a rock face. [7]

The mountain Stein cared most about was Ilam, 9,237 feet by his measure. Hindu traders settled in Swat and Buner made a pilgrimage there, on the first day of the month of Jyaistha, to a string of pools on the summit that they called the Amarakunda. Stein recognised in the flat-topped rocks beside them the "square stones like couches" that Xuanzang described on the mountain he calls Hi-lo. Gujars of the region, Stein says, claimed the summit stone as the resting place of a *shahid*, a martyr. [7]

## Pir Baba and Pacha

Pacha, in the north of the valley, holds the tomb of Sayyid Ali Tirmizi, Pir Baba, the Sufi who settled in Buner in the sixteenth century. [6] His life is told in [Pir Baba of Buner](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/pir-baba-sayyid-ali-tirmizi) and his opponent in [Akhund Darweza](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/akhund-darweza).

Caroe says the pir sought a more secluded place than the busy Doaba, found it near Pacha "in the recesses of Buner", and was buried there. Of the shrine he writes that pilgrims of all sorts visit it, and that in the Mardan courts of thirty years earlier the usual opening to a witness's evidence was "When I was on my way to (or from) a pilgrimage to Pir Baba Ziarat". The old shrine was, he says, a ramshackle carved wooden building containing the tombs of the pir and a close disciple, with some argument about which was which. [6] Stein, passing in 1926, called it the holiest Muslim shrine in Buner, visited all year by thousands from the Peshawar valley and the hills as far as Indus Kohistan. His escort halted two days at Pacha so that they could pray there, and he was not encouraged to enter. In 1898 orders had forbidden unbelievers to go in. [7] The Imperial Gazetteer's provincial volume says the shrines of the Akhund of Swat and Pir Baba draw pilgrims from "all parts of the Muhammadan world". [2] Barth names Pir Baba's and the Akhund's as the two major shrines of the area. [8]

Caroe says the new shrine at Saidu in Swat was beginning, in the 1860s, to gain popularity at the expense of Pir Baba Ziarat. [6]

## Ambela, 1863

The war of 1863 began with the Hindustani colony. Followers of Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi, the Mujahidin, had settled on the Indus at Sittana, and after the British expedition of 1858 they moved to Malka on the north side of the Mahaban mountain. The Imperial Gazetteer says they kidnapped Hindu traders from Hazara. [2] [4] Caroe says they used Malka as a base to harass the Mardan and Swabi border. [6]

### The British account

In the autumn of 1863 a force under Neville Chamberlain was sent to destroy Malka, with Reynell Taylor as political officer. Adye puts the force at about 5,000 men, a quarter of them British soldiers, with eleven guns. [5] The Imperial Gazetteer says it was 9,000 strong after reinforcement. Caroe says over 6,000. [2] [6] The plan, Paget writes, was to march through the Ambela defile into the Chamla valley and on to Malka. Colonel Taylor had written that the Bunerwals had no sympathy with the Hindustanis, because they followed the Akhund of Swat, who had denounced the colony. [5] The Bunerwals told Taylor they would act on the defensive and oppose the force only if it entered Buner. [4]

The first troops reached the Ambela pass on 20 October. [4] [6] Caroe says that the convoy took more than forty-eight hours to arrive, and by then surprise had been lost. [6] Many officers, Adye reports, believed that the days the animals blocked the gorge were the cause of the Bunerwals' hostility. [5] Adye adds that the delay confirmed what the Hindustanis had predicted, and that the Bunerwals' worst suspicions were aroused. [5]

On 25 October the British commander wrote that the Bunerwals seemed to have applied to the Akhund for help. [5] By the end of the month Paget reports the Akhund had joined them with upwards of a hundred standards from Swat, and that Bajaur, Dir and other tribes followed. Major James reckoned about 15,000 men in arms against the force. [4] Chamberlain's despatch compared the Akhund's standing to the Pope's, and Colonel Taylor believed he had come because he feared losing his following in Buner. [4] The fuller account is in [the Akhund of Swat](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/akhund-of-swat-saidu-baba).

The fighting centred on the Crag picquet, a rocky knoll on the right of the British position. Caroe says it was attacked four times, taken three times and retaken three times, and that Chamberlain, who led one assault, was severely wounded. [6] Adye gives the British loss in the two days of 15 and 16 December as 172 killed and wounded. [5] The Gazetteer's total for the campaign is 20 officers and 219 men killed and 670 wounded. [2] Caroe writes that "the troops had 900 killed", which does not match the Gazetteer, and that about a thousand men on both sides died around the Crag. [6]

The coalition began to come apart. Paget says that on 10 December the Buner chiefs came into camp and agreed to help destroy Malka, and that on the 14th they said they had been overruled by newcomers from Dir. [4] On 15 and 16 December the British took the ridge. Paget says the Bunerwals took no prominent part, and that the men who fought were chiefly Hindustanis, Bajauris, Swatis and the men of Dir. [4] The Buner jirga came back on the 17th and asked for orders. [4] Rather than send a brigade, Major James let the Bunerwals burn Malka under Taylor's eye. It was burned on 22 December in the presence of British officers, and the British left the mountains on Christmas Day. [4] [5]

### The tribal side

The record of the campaign is mostly British. The nearest thing to a Bunerwal account is the version Caroe says he heard, about thirty years before he wrote in 1958, from a Buner Khan who was a descendant of Zaidullah Khan of Daggar, the old chief who led the Buner jirga. [6]

Caroe says the British judged it unnecessary, and unwise, to warn the Buner and Chamla tribes of the column's aim. Ajab Khan of Sudhum, who was linked by marriage to the Buner Khans and felt slighted at not being consulted, wrote, he says, to his friends in Buner that the purdah of Buner would be lifted for ever. The phrase, Caroe says, is one the tribes use for the inviolability of their country, preserved behind a veil as jealously as a woman's modesty. [6] At first, according to Caroe, the Akhund stood aloof, because the British had said they wanted only Chamla and would not enter Buner. He joined when the fighting went on. [6]

Under the flag of truce, in Caroe's telling, the tribal leaders talked freely with Chamberlain and Taylor and made it clear that they thought themselves "fighting for a freedom never yet lost". [6] The Swat historian Sultan-i-Rome writes that the British advance was blocked and the tribes of Buner and Swat rose en masse; "the Imperial Power failed but its diplomacy worked and a truce was concluded." [9] The Imperial Gazetteer says the object of the expedition was attained, and that Malka "was destroyed by the people of Buner themselves as a guarantee of their submission". [2]

On Malka, Caroe gives Zaidullah Khan's side. The Khans of Buner agreed to take a small British party to Malka, with the argument that, if they did not, the British would come with an army and enter Buner and then Swat. The Akhund favoured the plan, Caroe says, partly because he feared further resistance by the Mujahidin would cost the tribes their independence. At Malka, with the village burning and the Amazai gathering angrily around Taylor, Zaidullah, "his one eye glinting", shouted that the Buner jirga had given its word to destroy Malka and bring the Englishmen back safe, and that anyone who wished to interfere must first fight the united strength of Buner. [6] Paget has the same scene, with Zaidullah saying "I am answerable for these men", and draws the lesson that the Mahaban tribes were "powerless to resist the will of Buner". Caroe draws another: that Yusufzai who give their word can be relied on. [4] [6]

## After Ambela

In 1877 lashkars of Bunerwals crossed the Malandrai and Ambela passes into Sudhum and burned villages. Caroe says Ajab Khan organised the raid, to rehabilitate himself with the government, and was tried for making war against the Crown. [6]

In January 1898 a British expedition went through Buner, and fines were collected from the Khudu Khel and the Gaduns of the Yusufzai border. [2] Stein, who went with it, reached Pacha with General Meiklejohn's brigade. [7] The Gazetteer records that the Mulla Mastan, Sad-ullah Khan, the son of a Bunerwal malik who had spent years at Ajmer and returned to Buner in 1895, was expelled by political pressure from Dir and Swat. [2] Caroe says that until 1898 Buner was behind the veil. [6]

## Under the Swat State

Sultan-i-Rome writes that Buner was invaded in April 1923 by forces of the Swat State, working with the supporting *dala*, the local alliance of Buner. [9] Barth's study, based on 1954 fieldwork, describes the State as divided among three Mashirs, for Upper Swat, Lower Swat and Kohistan, and Buner, and says the Wazir-i-Mal held the Buner post. [8] The State's rulers are described in [Miangul Abdul Wadud](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/miangul-abdul-wadud-wali-of-swat), and its area in [Swat](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/swat-valley). Sultan-i-Rome writes that people outside the State called all of its territory, including Buner, Swat. [9]

## Population

The 2023 census counted 1,016,869 people in Buner district, 508,172 of them male and 508,669 female, in 1,865 square kilometres, a density of 545.24 a square kilometre. The district appears in the table with no urban population. The same table gives the 2017 figure as 895,460 and an annual growth of 2.15 per cent between the censuses, and an average household of 8.5 people. [10] The 2023 count is a census count, and the 2017 figure is as printed in the 2023 table.

## The Taliban in Buner, 2009

Buner was among the districts covered by the Malakand peace accord, and the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation took effect on 16 April 2009. [13] [14] The Crisis Group, writing in 2013, says the militants entered Buner in late April, "once again provoking countrywide outrage", and that the military then had to respond. [14] Dawn's report of 10 April 2009 already has Swat's Taliban in Buner. It says that instead of pulling out, as the militants had announced the day before, they took control of new areas on that Friday, including the shrine of Pir Baba, burned television sets, pictures and tapes, and locked the shrine to stop its followers from visiting it. A police officer at the Pir Baba station told Dawn that his seniors had told him not to interfere. [11] The two reports do not agree on the date of the entry, and the Long War Journal's description of 28 April, that the militants "took control of Buner just eight days after advancing into the district", is not specific.

The Taliban's side in Dawn's report is a spokesman in Sultanwas, who said that people who had fled should come home, but that those who had taken up arms against the militants would not be spared. The paper also reported that the militants had met hundreds of local people, especially young men, who stayed with them all day, and that they had occupied the houses of elders organising an anti-Taliban lashkar. [11]

The army side is the statement of Major General Athar Abbas, the military spokesman, as the Long War Journal reported it on 28 April: that the aim was "to eliminate and expel militants from Buner". He said there were more than 500 fighters, where the government had earlier claimed about 100 local ones. [13] Al Jazeera reported on 29 April that the army said it had retaken the district headquarters at Daggar and killed about fifty fighters at a cost of one soldier, and had recovered 18 of about 70 police and paramilitaries seized by the militants. [12] The Crisis Group's verdict on the operation as a whole, in the Malakand division, is that it displaced almost three million people, that the military fought from a distance, "including use of heavy fire into Buner district from safer neighbouring regions", destroying crops, roads and buildings, and that it did not stop the militant leaders from fleeing. [14]

A suicide bomber killed the head of a local anti-Taliban lashkar in Buner in November 2012. [14]

## Sources
1. [Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. 9 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), pp. 88-89 ("Buner")](https://archive.org/details/imperialgazettee09grea) (Colonial record): Boundaries, the Barandu basin, Buner as head of the Gaduns, Salarzai and Khudu Khel, and the Buddhist sites with Stein's identifications. OCR text.
2. [Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: North-West Frontier Province (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1908), pp. 20-23, 34, 223-225 ("Buner", "Ambela")](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.280287) (Colonial record): The Hindustani colony, the Ambela campaign and its losses, the 1898 expedition, the Mulla Mastan and the shrines. OCR text; page numbers from running heads.
3. [H. W. Bellew, A General Report on the Yusufzais (Lahore: Government Press, 1864), pp. 61-62 and 174-175](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.501651) (Colonial record): The Buhnair plain, the passes, Chamla and the Iliaszai clans in the early 1860s. OCR text, badly garbled in places; page numbers from the printed markers.
4. [W. H. Paget, A Record of the Expeditions undertaken against the North-West Frontier Tribes (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1874), pp. 100-104, 109-110, 120-122, 141-153](https://archive.org/details/dli.pahar.0783) (Colonial record): The official British account of the 1863 Ambela campaign, the Akhund's arrival, the Bunerwals' negotiations and the burning of Malka. OCR text.
5. [John Adye, Sitana: A Mountain Campaign on the Borders of Afghanistan in 1863 (London: Richard Bentley, 1867), pp. 24-29, 43, 56-74, 86-91](https://archive.org/details/sitanaamountain01adyegoog) (Colonial record): A British officer's narrative of the campaign: Colonel Taylor's expectations, the delay in the gorge, the Crag picquet and the end of the war. OCR text.
6. [Olaf Caroe, The Pathans, 550 B.C.-A.D. 1957 (London: Macmillan, 1958), pp. 54-55, 182-183, 198-199, 205-206, 357-359, 363-370](https://archive.org/details/dli.pahar.3135) (Colonial record): Pir Baba's shrine, the Yusufzai land survey, the Ambela campaign with the Buner Khan's version, the 1877 raid and Buner behind the veil until 1898. OCR text.
7. [Aurel Stein, An Archaeological Tour in Upper Swat and Adjacent Hill Tracts, Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India no. 42 (Calcutta, 1930), pp. 94-104](https://archive.org/details/dli.pahar.2415) (Primary source): Stein's 1926 tour of Buner: Gokand stupa, Pacha and the shrine, and Mount Ilam. OCR text.
8. [Fredrik Barth, Political Leadership among Swat Pathans (London: Athlone Press, 1959; reprint 1965), pp. 5, 60-61, 129-130](https://archive.org/details/dli.pahar.3284) (Modern scholarship): The passes to Buner, the two major shrines and the Mashir of Buner in the Swat State. OCR text; page numbers inferred from running heads.
9. [Sultan-i-Rome, Forestry in the Princely State of Swat and Kalam (North-West Pakistan): A Historical Perspective on Norms and Practices, NCCR North-South Dialogue no. 9 (2007), pp. 19, 26, 104](https://sdpi.org/assets/lib/uploads/Sultan_NCCR_Dialogue_9.pdf) (Modern scholarship): A Swat historian on Ambela as a Buner and Swat rising and on the Swat State's invasion of Buner in April 1923.
10. [Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Census 2023, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Table 1 (Wayback Machine copy of pbs.gov.pk)](https://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/population/2023/tables/table_1_kp_province.pdf) (Primary source): Area, population, density, household size and growth for Buner district in 2023, with the 2017 count as printed there.
11. ["Taliban move into new Buner areas", Dawn (10 April 2009)](https://www.dawn.com/news/456351) (News or magazine): The Swat Taliban in Buner, the shrine of Pir Baba, a militant spokesman's statement and a local lashkar.
12. ["Pakistan 'takes Buner from Taliban'", Al Jazeera English (29 April 2009; Wayback Machine copy)](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2009/04/200942992043258475.html) (News or magazine): Army statements on 29 April: Daggar retaken, about fifty militants killed, 18 of about 70 abducted police recovered.
13. ["Pakistan launches operation against the Taliban in Buner", The Long War Journal (28 April 2009; Wayback Machine copy)](https://longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/pakistan_launches_op_1.php) (News or magazine): The start of the Buner operation, Major General Athar Abbas's aim and the army's estimates of militant numbers.
14. [International Crisis Group, Pakistan: Countering Militancy in PATA, Asia Report no. 242 (15 January 2013), pp. 2, 10-11, 21 (Wayback Machine copy)](https://www.crisisgroup.org/sites/default/files/pakistan-countering-militancy-in-pata.pdf) (Modern scholarship): The Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, the entry into Buner, the operation's costs and the 2012 lashkar killing.

## Common questions

### Where is Buner and who lives there?

Buner is a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the basin of the Barandu river between Swat, the Indus and the Peshawar plain. Its people are Yusufzai of the Iliaszai branch, called Bunerwals, and the 2023 census counted 1,016,869 people in 1,865 square kilometres.

### What is the shrine of Pir Baba?

It is the tomb of the Sufi Sayyid Ali Tirmizi, Pir Baba, at Pacha in northern Buner. Olaf Caroe called it the most hallowed shrine in all the Frontier country, and Aurel Stein found thousands of pilgrims visiting it in 1926.

### What happened at the Ambela pass in 1863?

A British column under Neville Chamberlain entered the pass on 20 October 1863 to destroy the Hindustani colony at Malka. The Bunerwals opposed it, the Akhund of Swat and tribes from Swat, Bajaur and Dir joined them, and the force was held in the pass until mid-December. The Bunerwals then burned Malka themselves on 22 December.

### Did the Taliban hold Buner in 2009?

Militants from Swat moved into Buner in April 2009 and took control of areas including Pir Baba's shrine, according to Dawn on 10 April. The army began an operation there on 28 April, and Al Jazeera reported the district headquarters at Daggar retaken on 29 April.

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Cite as: Pashtunxwa, "Buner: the Barandu valley, Pir Baba's shrine and the Ambela pass", https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/buner (last updated 2026-11-04).