Mashwani

The Makhzan-i Afghani, in Dorn's translation, tells how Sayyid Muhammad Gisudaraz settled among the Afghans between the Kerranians, the Kakar and the Sheeranies. The three tribes came to him for help in a time of fright, and when the Sayyid prayed for them and they were released, their heads offered him a young girl each. He accepted and married all three. The Kakar wife bore Masvani, the Sheerani wife Ishturani, and the Kerranian wife the twins Honi and Vardak. These four clans, the text adds, are Sayyids but are counted as Afghans, and the Masvani, it says, are the Sayyids among the Kakar. Masvani, it records, had nine sons: Tukuz, Lodin, Matakati, Suleiman, Roghani, Kazbuli, Ghareb, Kharbari and Diaz.

The note in Dorn's annotations, from the Khulasat al-Ansab, says Mashvani was born to the Kakar lady and is a nephew of Kakar; his descendants, called Mashvanies, live in Masharahrud, between Shorawak and Baluchistan; Lodin belongs to them also, and the Mandozai count themselves among them, though some deny that the Mandozai descend from Mashvani. Rose, in his glossary, gives the account that Mishwani was a Sayyid, one of four sons of Muhammad-i-Gisu-Daraz, 'Muhammad of the long locks', by a Kakar woman, a daughter or granddaughter of Kakar whose husband Danai, Kakar's father, had adopted. The Hazara gazetteer repeats this, adding that other Sayyids do not admit the Mishwani's Sayyid descent and do not marry with them.^1–4

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In the 1907 Hazara gazetteer the Mishwani number 3,992 and live in Sirikot, Kundi, Amarkhana and Gadwalian at the north-east end of the Gandgarh range, with some, mostly as occupancy tenants, in neighbouring villages. Sirikot, which the gazetteer calls their chief village, lies in a basin at the top of the range about 12 miles west of Haripur, and had 2,827 people at the gazetteer's census. The gazetteer says that with little land at home, a great number of Mishwani are in government service. Rose adds that some of the tribe crossed the Indus with the Utmanzai as their retainers, and describes them as living in Hazara and affiliated to the Kakar there. Their head in the gazetteer's time was Said Sharif of Sirikot, who held a small jagir and a post in the 62nd Punjabis.

The gazetteer's history of Hazara puts the Mishwani among the privileged tenants, associated on easy terms with the Utmanzai landowners, the warisan, and liable to military service on the border. In 1822, it says, the Sikhs, after winning a battle at Sari at the foot of the range, were defeated trying to reduce Sirikot. In 1824 they tried again. At Nara, where the path up to Sirikot begins, the Mishwani and the Saidkhani Utmanzai made a stand, beat back a Sikh force of 8,000 and sent it to Haripur with a loss of 500 men. Hari Singh himself was struck down by a stone thrown from the walls. Ranjit Singh then came to Hazara, called the chiefs who had taken refuge at Sirikot, and only three obeyed, among them Shah Muhammad, the head of the Mishwani; a fort with a garrison of 500 was built in the Sirikot hills. Afterwards Hari Singh had the two principal Mishwani headmen blown from guns and evicted the Mishwani from Sirikot; they lived in exile across the Indus until 1830, when they were allowed back. Major Abbott found them staunch supporters in 1848, in the gazetteer's words, and put up a tombstone at Sirikot for Saleh Muhammad Mishwani Malik, who died in 1851.^3–5

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The Mashwani of the Khulasat al-Ansab live in Masharahrud, and the Quetta-Pishin gazetteer describes the Shorarud valley as the home of the Mashwani who claim to be Sayyids. At the census of 1901 the valley had 1,062 people, of whom 504 were Mashwani Sayyids, 47 Kakars and 457 Brahui. The Mashwani and Kakars spoke Pashto, and the Mashwani were landowners or tenants, with a few in trade in India; they held the best land of the valley. The gazetteer says the village of Muhammad Khel was founded about nine generations earlier by Muhammad Mashwani, and lists among its Mashwani sections the Shah Mir Khel, Husain Khel and Lodin. Under Akbar, it adds, the Mashwani of Shorarud paid seven Kandahari maunds of butter and 200 sheep, worth Rs. 628, and in the early nineteenth century the governor Khushdil Khan, finding that they paid no revenue, assessed them at one-tenth.^2,5

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