Kharoti

Elphinstone set out the Ghilzai as two families, Turan and Burhan. Turan's sons were the Hotak and the Tokhi, and the Sulaiman Khel, Ali Khel, Sahak, Andar and Taraki belonged to Burhan. The Kharoti he left open: it was uncertain, he wrote, even among the Ghilzai, to which branch they should be assigned. In another place he says the Kharoti were connected with the Ghilzai only in name, a community whose interests had grown apart from theirs.

The Kharoti have their own story. Robinson, who wrote his survey of the nomad tribes in 1934, records it. Sulaiman, Tokhi and Hotak were walking along a road near a Sayyid village when they met a donkey with a load. Sulaiman claimed the donkey, Tokhi the load, and Hotak whatever was on top of the load. On top was a boy sitting on barley bread. Hotak took him and named him Kharota, from khar, donkey, and rota, barley bread. He married a Hotak wife and became the ancestor of the Kharoti, who say to this day that the Hotak are their closest friends. Rose gives the two sides. The Kharoti say they are an offshoot of the Tokhi, but the Tokhi say they come from a foundling the tribe adopted. Bellew says the same: the Kharoti claim kinship with the Ghilzai and say they were a branch of the Tokhi long since separated, while the Sahak Ghilzai call them their dependants, or hamsaya. Robinson thought the likeliest account was that the Kharoti, like the Nasir, were at first dependants who grew in numbers and wealth until they counted themselves equals of the sons of Turan.

Bellew had a theory of his own. He took the name Kharoti to stand for the Kharaita, a merchant Rajput clan, and Rose records that he identified them with the Arachoti of Alexander's historians, pointing out that they still live in ancient Arachosia. Robinson added that their build and temper differ from the Ghilzai proper and that the question could be settled only by anthropometry. Encyclopaedia Iranica, in its article on the Ghilzai, reckons the Kharoti with the Hotak and the Tokhi among the western Ghilzai, the descendants of Turan.^1–5

پر دې ولاړ: استعماري اسناد · مرجع اثار

Elphinstone placed the Kharoti east of Katawaz, among the branches of the Sulaiman range, with the main ridge on the east, the Gomal on the west and a spur dividing them from Gardez on the north. Their country enclosed the small district of Urgun, held by the Furmuli, whom he calls Tajiks. He counted four villages, of which Sirufza, the largest, had 500 houses, and 5,000 or 6,000 families, most of them farmers. They had one harvest a year and snow for three months. Their villages were hemmed in by steep mountains and pine forest, and he reports the Kharoti saying that there was neither room to extend the fields nor grazing under the pines. Bellew also gave 6,000 families, and put them at Paltu and Dwa Gomal on the eastern slopes of the Sulaiman range, with Urgun, which he calls Warghun, held by the Furmuli, and on the western slopes from the Paltu pass to Katawaz.

Robinson, in 1934, found the Kharoti in two main groups. The hill Kharoti (gharwal) were the Urgun Kharoti, living in fortified villages such as Sarafza, Almasti and Sarobi in Urgun. The plain Kharoti (samwal) were the Ghazni Kharoti, who spent the summer at Karabagh near Ghazni. Others went in summer to Khakran and Nawar in the Hazarajat and wintered in the Arghandab valley and elsewhere in Kandahar, and some wintered at Jalalabad after summers in the Kohdaman north of Kabul. Rose, writing for the Dera Ismail Khan border, says they held the country about the sources of the Gomal in Warghun, south by east of Ghazni, and wintered in the Tank tahsil. Robinson counted 8,000 Urgun Kharoti and about 2,000 fighting men among the Ghazni Kharoti.^1–3,5

پر دې ولاړ: استعماري اسناد

Elphinstone says the Kharoti were often at war with the Wazirs and Jadran on their borders and with the Furmuli, and that the last of these wars, begun over murders, gave no quarter. He quotes a Kharoti: their war was not for power or glory but for blood. Robinson names the other great quarrel, a feud with the Sulaiman Khel that was kept quiet while both tribes were in British territory and broke out again across the border. On the winter migration to Dera Ismail Khan the Kharoti used the Dhanasar route and the Sulaiman Khel the Gomal.

Robinson also records events of his own time. The Kharoti who came to the upper Tochi valley by the Kazha route were attacked by the Khaddar Khel Wazirs at the mouth of the Baba Shaga stream near Boya in 1922, and afterwards changed their road. In April 1932, after fighting with the Darpa Khel Dawar on the Dande plain near Miramshah, the Urgun Kharoti except those of Sarobi went down by way of Ghazni and Zhob in autumn that year, until the quarrel was settled.^1,5

پر دې ولاړ: استعماري اسناد

Elphinstone explains how a group of Kharoti became wanderers. Land was divided among sons under Muslim law until each share was too small to keep a man, and many handed their land to their brothers and took up herding. Upwards of three hundred families, he wrote, had done so, and they spent the winter in the Daman and the summer near Ghazni, yet still obeyed the hereditary khan of the Kharoti. Robinson places the same separation about a hundred and fifty years before 1934, when some three hundred families left Urgun and gradually acquired land at Karabagh, Ghazni. The poorer Kharoti, he says, went to India in winter as labourers on roads, walls and canals, and were particularly expert in digging karezes, the underground water channels. Others peddled cloth and lent money on credit as far as Assam, Bengal and Nepal.

The Zhob District Gazetteer (1907) counted Kharoti among the nomad Ghilzai who entered Zhob each October between Kamar-ud-din Karez and Kashatu, grazed their flocks and moved on to Hindubagh, Kila Saifullah, Duki, Loralai and Musa Khel, while the poorer sections, the Kanda Khel and Barai, stayed at Sang-ghar and sold firewood. At the census of 1901 there were 868 Kharoti among the 7,500 Ghilzai counted in Zhob. Robinson found their leader among the Powindahs who wintered in Loralai District to be Muhammad Karim Khan of the Raji Khel, a Yahiya Khel man who was a brigadier in Afghanistan, and the leading family of all the Kharoti that of Mehr Jan of the Liwan Khel, who lived at Sarafza and never went to India.^1,5,6

پر دې ولاړ: استعماري اسناد

Robinson divides the Kharoti into three branches: the Zakho Khel, the Ade Khel and the Ya (Yahiya) Khel. The Zakho Khel include the Madu Khel, Liwan Khel, Qasim Khel and Bandar Khel; the Ade Khel include the Alo Khel, Marzak, Mamand and Sherak Khel; the Yahiya Khel include the Raji Khel, Zawli Khel, Khaddar Khel and Tor Khel. Bellew gave a list of Kharoti sections with different names.^2,5

پر دې ولاړ: استعماري اسناد