Zaimusht

Rose's Glossary reproduces Longworth Dames's table of the genealogies in the Makhzan-i Afghani and its descendants. In it Spin, the white son of Tarin, is the ancestor of both the Spin Tarins and the Zaimukht. The Glossary's section on the Kohat border says the Zaimusht are a tribe of Spin Tarin Afghans.

Bellew, in 1891, says instead that the Zaimukht are said to be a colony of the Tor Tarin. No source gives a date or an account of how a Tarin group came so far north.^1–3

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Rose says the Zaimusht inhabit the hills between the Kurram and the Orakzai border on the north-west frontier of Kohat. Bellew puts them between the Orakzai and the Turi of the Kurram valley, living by the Shakali, Sangroba and Makhazai streams that run into the Kurram, and reckons them at five thousand families. The Dictionary of the Pathan Tribes (1910) places them in the country between the Zawaghar range, the Kurram river and Miranzai.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1911 describes the country as a triangle with the Samana range as its base and the village of Thal in the Kurram valley as its apex, about 400 square miles, of which the Orakzai held a quarter. It gives the Zaimukhts a fighting strength of some 3,000 men. Nevill, in 1912, says the western half of the Miranzai valley is bounded by Zaimukht territory, and that going up the valley from Thal it lies to the north.^3,4,6,7

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The Dictionary counts 2,310 Zaimukhts in two clans, the Khoidad Khel or Eastern Zaimukhts and the Mamozai, or Muhammadzai, the Western Zaimukhts. Its separate entries for the two clans give 1,747 and 800. Bellew likewise divides the tribe into Khwaedad and Mamu, and lists the Khwaedad sections as Ali, Ibrahim, Ismail, Karim and Umar among others.^3,4

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All the military accounts below are British, written from the side of the officers who led the columns, and the Zaimukht side is not in them. Nevill, quoting Colonel Paget, says that on 21 October 1856 a force of 4,876 under Brigadier-General Chamberlain approached Torawari, a Zaimukht stronghold, after raids in the Miranzai valley, and surrounded it at dawn. The headmen were told to give up criminals sheltering there, pay a fine and give security. When they did not, the guns shelled the village until the women came out with the Koran, and the village was searched and stacks of fodder burnt.

In the Second Afghan War Nevill says the Zaimukhts harassed the British line of communication after 1878. Paget and Mason list an attack on the Gandiawar sarai, a commissariat station a few miles east of Thal, on 3 March 1879, in which the British lost six killed and five wounded, with help from the Alisherzai Orakzai, and the murder of Lieutenant Kinloch on 29 September 1879. Brigadier-General Tytler's force invaded the Zaimukht country on 8 December 1879, destroyed villages on the way, and advanced on Zawo, which Nevill calls the chief stronghold, on the 13th. British casualties were four officers and men, and Nevill says the tribe submitted six days after Zawo was destroyed. No later expedition has been sent against them, he adds.^7,8

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Rose names the Gar and Samil factions, which divide the Bangash and their neighbours, among them the Afridi, Orakzai, Khattak, Turi and Zaimusht. The Zaimusht are Samil, as the Dictionary also records.

In another section of the same Glossary, the Darwesh Khel Wazirs, moving down from Shawal, are said to have won the Saro plain from the Bangash and the Zaimusht, together with other lands taken from tribes in their way.^2,4,5

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