# The Faqir of Ipi (Mirza Ali Khan) of Waziristan

> Mirza Ali Khan, the Faqir of Ipi, was a Tori Khel Wazir religious leader who led resistance in Waziristan from the Islam Bibi case of 1936 until his death in April 1960, first against British rule and then against Pakistan.

- URL: https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/faqir-of-ipi
- Subject: Notable people
- Language: English
- Published: 2026-11-04
- Last updated: 2026-11-04
- Author: Pashtunxwa Editors

## At a glance

- Mirza Ali Khan, known as the Faqir of Ipi, was a religious leader of the Tori Khel branch of the Utmanzai Wazirs, from the Tochi valley of North Waziristan. [1] [2] [4]
- Sources give his birth year as about 1890, 1891, 1897 or between 1898 and 1901. [2] [4] [7] [8]
- His campaign began with the Islam Bibi case of 1936, a Hindu girl who became a Muslim and married in [Bannu](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/bannu), and a court order that she live apart from her husband until she came of age. [1] [2] [4]
- British columns marched into the Khaisora valley on 25 November 1936 and withdrew two days later. The campaign of 1936 and 1937 cost British and Indian forces almost 1,000 casualties. [3]
- From about 1938 he lived in caves at Gorwekht, beside the Durand Line, and stayed there until he died in April 1960. [2] [4] [6]
- Swinson called him treacherous and Spain said he took bribes; the Times obituary of 1960 called him a man of principle. Pakistani writers such as Cheema call him a gallant opponent of the British. [3] [4] [2]

## A Tori Khel boy from the Tochi valley

Mirza Ali Khan came from the Tori Khel, a branch of the Utmanzai Wazirs whose country is in the Tochi and Khaisora valleys of North Waziristan. [1] [2] (For the land, see [the geography of the Pashtun lands](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/pashtun-lands-geography).) Aamir Mushtaq Cheema, a retired Pakistani army officer and historian of the Tochi Scouts, says he was born in 1897 at Shankai Kairta Banda near Khajuri, the son of a religious man named Arsala Khan, and notes that some books give 1901. [2] Spain, an American who knew the frontier, wrote "about 1890". [4] The Express Tribune says 1891, and The News on Sunday gives a span of 1898 to 1901. [7] [8] A writer in 2016 who follows Milan Hauner's study gives 1892 to 1897. [6]

Cheema says the family moved to Bannu in 1905, that he studied there under a Maulvi Ahmad Khan, and that after his father died in 1922 he went back to the Tochi, built a madrasa at Spalga and taught. [2] The News on Sunday says the father died when the boy was twelve. [8] Sana Haroon, a historian of the frontier, says only that he had his religious training "from a variety of local sources" before he met the Naqib Sahib of Charbagh, a religious leader of the line of the Akhund Ghaffur and [the Hadda Mulla](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/hadda-mulla-najmuddin), and later Khilafat supporters in India. [1] Cheema adds that he was not from one of the area's hereditary religious families. [2] On how such families work, see [religion among Pashtuns](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/religion-among-pashtuns).

The Hajj gives two chronologies. Fazlur Rahman, summarising the historian Milan Hauner in 2016, puts his pilgrimage in 1923, after which he settled at Ipi, a village by the military road from Bannu to Razmak. [6] Cheema has him travelling to Syria on the way, marrying and buying property there, and coming home to the Tochi only in 1928. [2] Cheema places the invitation to Ipi after April 1936: the elders, he says, asked him to look after their mosque as he was leaving for Afghanistan in despair. [2] Haroon has him already settled there and "ignored as relatively innocuous until 1936". [1]

## The Islam Bibi case, 1936

Early in 1936 a young Hindu woman in Bannu district became a Muslim and married. The sources spell her Hindu name Ram Kori or Ram Kaur, and give her husband as Noor Ali, or Syed Noor Ali Shah. [2] [7] Spain calls him a Pathan schoolmaster. [4] Her family charged him with abduction, and as Haroon summarises it, the court found no evidence of abduction or of legal consent, because the girl was a minor, and ruled that she should live with a third party until she came of age and could decide for herself. [1] Bannu's Muslims heard it as a government decision for the Hindu community against the Muslim one. [1] Spain, following the court, says she "had been kidnapped and married". [4]

Cheema dates the marriage to 3 April 1936 and says a jirga of Tochi ulema met on 11 April. He quotes The Times of 21 April 1936, which called the Daurs "a fanatical priest-ridden tribe" and said that when they sought the sympathy of the Tori Khel Wazirs and Shabi Khel Mahsuds, "it was felt that military precautions should be taken". [2] The Daur lashkar, a tribal fighting force, was broken up without bloodshed by the Tochi Scouts, who also pulled down three houses of leading Daur maliks, among them the Faqir's. [2] Haroon says he called a jirga to draw the Daur's attention to the government's "interference in religion", and sought support from the [Haji Turangzai](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/haji-sahib-of-turangzai), the Faqir of Alingar and other mullas of the tribal areas. [1]

Cheema notes a second grievance that was already there. The Tori Khel had agreed with the political administration to a road from Mir Ali south into the lower Khaisora, for which the tribe received 7,500 rupees a year as Khaisora allowance, and the Faqir now tied that road to the Islam Bibi case. [2] Haroon reports Alan Warren's caution that the Faqir's popularity was "partly Tori Khel tribal interest in preventing government penetration into the Khaisora". She asks why Shabi Khel Mahsuds and Wazirs from Afghanistan joined him, and answers: booty, and target practice against the Indian Army. [1]

British writers saw other causes. Lieutenant-Colonel C. E. Bruce, who served in or beside Waziristan from 1923 to 1928, partly as Resident, published a book in 1938 asking why, "after ten years of universally admitted success", Waziristan had flared up again. He blamed a failure to support the tribal headmen and, repeating a correspondent of Truth, contracts given to Hindu and "down-country" contractors. [10] The book does not name the Faqir.

## The Khaisora, November 1936

On 25 November 1936 two brigade-sized columns set out to meet at Biche Kashkai: the Razmak column from Damdil and the Tochi column from Mir Ali. [3] The British official history called it "purely a peaceful demonstration on a timed programme", with orders to take no offensive action unless forced to retaliate. [3] The Razmak column had 14 killed and 43 wounded before it reached the camp. The Tochi column stopped four miles short for the night, and the RAF parachuted in four tons of supplies at dawn. On 27 November both columns withdrew to Mir Ali. [3]

The official history said the opposition "was a surprise which exceeded all estimates" and that the only explanation was that the Faqir's propaganda had succeeded "to an extent which had not been considered possible". [3] Numbers differ. Haroon says he attacked with a lashkar of 2,000, joined afterwards by 1,200 Mahsuds and Wazirs from Afghanistan. [1] Cheema puts the hostile tribesmen at the clash at no more than 200 and says the Faqir lost 50 men; his prestige, he adds, "increased enormously". [2]

Matthews, in a US Army study, says the reinforced force went into the Khaisora in early December, burned Biche Kashkai in the last week of the month and drove the Faqir and about 850 fighters out of the valley. By January the RAF had pushed them into caves outside Arsal Kot. [3] A jirga of the Tori Khel at Mir Ali on 10 January 1937 accepted terms: 100 rifles, 100 hostages, a fine, and a clause that the tribe must "either control Fakir of Ipi or expel him". It agreed on 11 January. [2] The tribe paid its fine and did not hand him over. Haroon says the government's inability to corner and extract him "in itself made him a more notable and exciting figure". [1]

## Arsal Kot and the end of the large lashkars, 1937

The Faqir came back in the spring. On 9 April 1937 a Mahsud and [Bhittani](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/tribes/bhittani) force under Khonia Khel ambushed a convoy of trucks in the Shahur Tangi gorge, killing 47 British and Indian soldiers and wounding 50. [3] Khonia Khel appears in Cheema's list of the Faqir's khalifas, the commanders he appointed on what Cheema calls the Islamic pattern. [2] Matthews puts the lashkar in the third week of April at about 3,000 men, and Haroon at 4,000. [3] [1] Almost three brigades advanced from Mir Ali on 23 April, and in May a new Waziristan Division, led by the Tochi Scouts, attacked the lashkars in the Shaktu valley. Arsal Kot was taken and destroyed without a fight on 28 May. "Once again however, the Faqir of Ipi slipped away." [3]

The campaign cost the British and Indian forces almost 1,000 casualties, Matthews says. [3] Spain says the Wazirs "tied down almost 50,000 regulars of the British Indian Army in two years of guerrilla warfare". [4]

His followers believed, Rahman says, that bullets would not harm true ghazis, that a basket of loaves under a cloth could feed a crowd, and that bombs dropped from aircraft would turn to paper. [6] Indian intelligence studied the beliefs as a factor in the campaign. [6] Cheema writes that a local will still say a stone on the Bannu to Mir Ali road "was a tank but Fakir turned it into a stone". [2] The same history says there was no mass desertion and no mutiny in the Tochi Scouts or any Frontier Corps unit this time, as there had been in 1919. [2] (For 1919, see [the Anglo-Afghan wars](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/anglo-afghan-wars-1839-1919).)

## Gorwekht, 1938 to 1960

After 1937 he moved west. Cheema says he settled in the Gurweikht valley among the Madda Khel, a section of the Ibrahim Khel found on both sides of the Durand Line. [2] Spain describes a "cliffside cave at Gorweckht, astride the Durand Line", where he stayed "for his last score of years" with few followers. [4] Rahman puts the caves a mile from Afghan territory. [6] (For the line itself, see [the Durand Line](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/durand-line-1893).) Rahman also says the British tried to settle him on land outside Waziristan and asked the Afghan government to help catch him, and failed in both. [6]

From there he ran a war of small actions: homemade bombs on roads, mines, cut telephone wires and sniping in 1938, according to Cheema, who calls him *Amir-e-Jihad*, the commander of the jihad, and names the khalifas he appointed. [2] In May 1942 he besieged the fortified post at Datta Khel with about 500 men, and two more infantry brigades were needed before the road opened in August. [6]

His own side did not always follow. In 1945 the Manzar Khel under a retired subedar, Darim Khan, handed hostile men to the government, and Madda Khel allies of the Faqir tried to make an example of them. [2] Cheema says Darim Khan "was not impressed with the Fakir of Ipi's version of Islam", and that many Wazirs called the lashkar's looting of an outlying hamlet far from *ghazwa*, holy war. [2] Darim Khan and his son were shot on 30 November 1945. Cheema says one of the men who shot them said the Faqir had promised him a rifle, a wife and 1,000 rupees. [2] This rests on the Scouts' history alone.

## The Second World War

The Axis powers took an interest. O'Halpin, a historian of Irish and Afghan neutrality, says it was "a fairly open secret" by 1940 that the Italians were paying a subsidy to the Faqir, and quotes a decoded cable of December 1940 in which the Italian minister at Kabul said the Faqir was carrying out "the usual attacks upon military posts and traffic". He added that "the Fakir talks of 900 British soldiers killed, but this is certainly an exaggeration". [5] O'Halpin concludes that the Faqir "never delivered the widespread tribal revolt of which the Axis powers dreamed" but tied down many British forces. [5]

Hauner, as Rahman summarises him, names Pietro Quaroni, the Italian minister, as the driving spirit. The first payment was approved only in March 1941, and the Faqir's terms were 25,000 pounds every other month, doubled if unrest spread and tripled for a general rising. [6] The legation's secretary, Enrico Anzilotti, reportedly reached him in disguise in June 1941, though the Abwehr denied it. [6] Two German agents sent in July 1941 with money and ammunition were ambushed by an Afghan patrol in the Logar valley, and one, Professor Manfred Oberdorffer, was killed. [6] The Faqir himself wrote to mullas in southern Waziristan that no help should be given to the Germans because they were opposed to Islam. [6] Haroon says he "conferred with an Italian envoy about the possibilities for foreign support". [1]

Indian intelligence in 1943 and 1944 found he had no wireless transmitter and that no European had been at Gorwekht, Hauner reports. In October 1942 the British minister at Kabul, Sir Francis Wylie, wrote that the Axis legations had succeeded in giving "very little trouble" compared with "the not inconsiderable fears which we harbour about their activities". [6] Quaroni told British interrogators in 1943 that after Germany attacked Russia the Faqir's authority was too limited and he could not gather more than 10,000 followers. [6] Earlier claims had been looser: the Daily Herald said on 16 April 1937 that Mussolini was behind the revolt, and the British minister in Kabul found nothing to support it. [6]

## After 1947

In early 1947, Haroon says, the Faqir assured the Muslim League of his support for Pakistan. By July he had circulated a letter suggesting that the "unity of Islam" mattered less than the unity of the frontier tribes. [1] In the referendum of 1947 the tribal agencies had no vote; see [the partition article](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/partition-and-the-1947-nwfp-referendum).

In June 1948 he gathered a lashkar and occupied the Datta Khel khassadar post. [1] Dawn reported on 28 June that India was paying him through its embassy in Kabul; Haroon says historians questioned the claim, which rested on a letter said to be from the Faqir to the Indian prime minister. [1] The Pakistan Air Force bombed Shabi Khel villages, the Afghan press took up his cause and called for "Pakhtunistan", and the Faqir "became a national crisis". [1] A CIA information report of April 1949 says he was in regular contact with the Russian embassy in Kabul and that the Tochi Scouts had captured an Afghan army officer dressed as a tribesman. It is one uncorroborated report. [9] Hauner, quoted by the Express Tribune, says the Soviet allegation "still needs to be substantiated by hard evidence". [7]

What he wanted is disputed. Haroon writes that Kabul helped him set up a "Waziristan Branch of the Pakhtunistan National Assembly" and that in a 1950 interview with an American journalist he described an independent state of which he would be head, but "this was comprised solely of an autonomous Waziristan". She concludes that he wanted to be the sole representative of the Wazirs to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. [1] The News on Sunday says a jirga at Gurwek on 29 May 1949 asked Pakistan to recognise an independent state, and the Express Tribune that a jirga made him its president. [8] [7] The News on Sunday says the movement collapsed when his commander Mehar Dil gave himself up to the Bannu police in November 1954. [8] For the Khudai Khidmatgar side, see [Bacha Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgar](https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/bacha-khan-and-the-khudai-khidmatgar).

## Death and memory

He died at Gorwekht of asthma in April 1960. [2] [8] The Express Tribune marks 16 April as the anniversary. [7] Cheema gives 20 April and cites The Times of that date in his footnote, which is the date Spain and Hauner's text give for the obituary, so 20 April may be the notice and not the death. [2] [4] [6] The News on Sunday says he was buried in Datta Khel tehsil, and Cheema that his grave at Gurweikht is a place of prayer. [8] [2]

The Times of 20 April 1960 called him "a man of principle and saintliness" and said retired officers and political agents who had served on the frontier would read of his death with "wistful regret", "to the memory of a doughty and honourable opponent". [4] [6] Spain, who quotes the obituary, puts beside it a Pakistani official's verdict, "a vicious old man, twisted with hate and selfishness", and his own: "He took bribes from all who would pay them." [4] Matthews quotes the historian Arthur Swinson, who called him "brutal and treacherous even by Pathan standards". [3] Cheema, whose book is the Scouts' own history, calls him "the most noble, the most gallant opponent" of the Scouts. [2] Haroon notes that the government's "furore about the fanaticism of the Wazirs and their mulla" hid a greater fear: that its tribal policy could contain only part of what people did. [1] Caroe's *The Pathans*, the standard British account of the frontier, does not mention him. [6]

## Sources
1. [Sana Haroon, Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland (London: Hurst, 2007), pp. 166–172, 176–177, 185–189 and 192–193](https://archive.org/details/frontier-of-faith-islam-in-the-indo-afghan-borderland) (Modern scholarship): The Faqir's religious training, the Islam Bibi case and the rising of 1936–37, Warren's caution about motives, his stance in 1947, the Datta Khel attack of 1948, Kabul's support and his own aims in the 1950 interview. Read in the archive.org full text; page numbers are from the text's page markers.
2. [Aamir Mushtaq Cheema, An Illustrated History of North Waziristan Militia and Tochi Scouts 1895–2012 (Islamabad: War Studies, 2013), chapters on 1936–47, 1947–60 and 1960–71](https://archive.org/details/north-waziristan-faqir-of-ipi-and-tochi-scouts.-1896-2012) (Modern scholarship): Life details, the Islam Bibi case in the Tochi, the Khaisora operations, Gorwekht, the khalifas, the Manzar Khel case of 1945, 1948 and his death. A regimental history by a retired Pakistani army officer, drawing on Tochi Scouts records and The Times.
3. [Matt M. Matthews, An Ever Present Danger: A Concise History of British Military Operations on the North-West Frontier, 1849–1947, Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper 33 (Fort Leavenworth, 2010), pp. 55–62](https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA523451) (Modern scholarship): The columns of November 1936, the 1937 operations, casualties, and quotations from the British official history and from Alan Warren and Arthur Swinson.
4. [James W. Spain, The Way of the Pathans (London: Robert Hale, 1962), pp. 49–50 and 131–133](https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.36506) (Modern scholarship): The Islam Bibi case in one sentence, his birth year, the cave at Gorwekht, the Times obituary of 20 April 1960 and Spain's own and a Pakistani official's judgments.
5. [Eunan O'Halpin, "Ireland and Afghanistan compared: Britain's neutral neighbours in the Second World War", IIIS Discussion Paper 196 (Trinity College Dublin, December 2006), pp. 12–13](https://www.tcd.ie/triss/assets/PDFs/iiis/iiisdp196.pdf) (Modern scholarship): The Italian subsidy, the decoded cable of December 1940 and the judgment that he never delivered the general revolt the Axis wanted.
6. [Fazlur Rahman, "Faqir of Ipi: Myth and Reality", History of Pashtuns (blog), 26 July 2016 (reproducing Milan Hauner, "One Man against the Empire", Journal of Contemporary History 16, 1981)](https://historyofpashtuns.blogspot.com/2016/07/faqir-of-ipi-myth-and-reality.html) (Modern scholarship): Hauner's account of the Axis approaches, the Faqir's miracles and his years at Gorwekht, and the Times obituary. The text follows Hauner closely and carries his notes; Hauner's article itself could not be opened.
7. [Zulfiqar Ali, "The legendary guerilla Faqir of Ipi unremembered on his 115th anniversary", The Express Tribune, 17 April 2016](https://tribune.com.pk/story/1086737/entertainment) (News or magazine): The 16 April anniversary, the birth year 1891, the appointment as president of a Pashtunistan assembly and quotations from Hauner and The Telegraph.
8. [Mohammad Hussain Hunarmal, "The formidable Faqir", The News on Sunday, 14 February 2021](https://www.thenews.pk/tns/detail/789500-the-formidable-faqir) (News or magazine): The birth span, the Gurwek jirga of 1949, the collapse of 1954 after Mehar Dil's surrender and the burial place.
9. [CIA Reading Room, "Relations between the Fakir of Ipi and the Russian Embassy at Kabul", information report CIA-RDP82-00457R002600650007-9, 27 April 1949](https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp82-00457r002600650007-9) (Primary source): A single unevaluated intelligence report of contact with the Soviet embassy, reported as such.
10. [Lt.-Col. C. E. Bruce, Waziristan 1936–1937: The Problems of the North-West Frontiers of India and their Solutions (Aldershot: Gale & Polden, 1938), pp. 4–12](https://archive.org/details/waziristan193619031345mbp) (Colonial record): A retired frontier officer's contemporary British criticism of policy as the cause of the rising; the book does not name the Faqir.

## Common questions

### Who was the Faqir of Ipi?

Mirza Ali Khan, a Tori Khel Wazir of the Tochi valley, who led resistance in Waziristan from 1936 until he died in 1960, first against the British and then against Pakistan. He took his name from Ipi, the village in the Tochi valley where he settled. [1] [6]

### What was the Islam Bibi case?

In 1936 a Hindu girl in Bannu became a Muslim and married. A court found her a minor and ordered her to live apart from her husband until she came of age. Bannu's Muslims took it as British justice favouring Hindus, and the Faqir drew on the anger to raise the Daur and Tori Khel. [1] [4]

### Did Germany and Italy support him?

O'Halpin says it was an open secret by 1940 that Italy paid him, and Hauner says Germany tried to reach him in 1941. Both conclude he never raised the general rising the Axis wanted. [5] [6]

### Did he want a Pashtun state?

Afghan and Pakistani sources say he was named president of a "Pashtunistan" assembly. Haroon, from a 1950 interview, says his state was an autonomous Waziristan with himself at its head. [1] [7] [8]

### How did he die?

Of asthma, in April 1960, at Gorwekht, still in the caves where he had lived since the late 1930s. [2] [8]

---

Cite as: Pashtunxwa, "The Faqir of Ipi (Mirza Ali Khan) of Waziristan", https://www.pashtunxwa.com/articles/faqir-of-ipi (last updated 2026-11-04).