Nurzai

The Nurzai belong to the Panjpai branch of the Durrani. Elphinstone lists five Panjpai clans in 1815: Nurzai, Alizai, Ishaqzai, Khugiani and Maku. Encyclopaedia Iranica names only three, the Nurzai, Alizai and Ishaqzai, and places them mostly in the west of Afghanistan, in the Helmand, Farah, Sistan and Herat.

In the Khulasat al-Ansab, as printed by Dorn, Isa son of Abdal had five sons, Alizye, Turzye, Ishakzye, Maku and Khogani, "and these five khails they call Panjpai". Dorn points out that Elphinstone has Noorzye where his manuscript reads Turzye. Bellew names two Nurzai divisions, Badi and Chalak, and adds that little was known of the tribe.^1,2,3,4,6

Elphinstone reckoned the Nurzai as numerous as the Barakzai, whom he put at not less than thirty thousand families, but wrote that they counted for less in Afghan affairs because they were scattered through the hills of the west and the desert of the south. Almost all were shepherds. They wintered in the grassy patches of that dry country and moved in the middle of spring to the Siahband hills. Those on the Sistan frontier raided and were raided by their Baloch neighbours. The small Maku and Khugiani clans had no lands of their own, and some of them lived among the Nurzai.

Bellew's figure in 1891 is also thirty thousand families, mostly pastoral. He places them along the Helmand in Garmsir, in Farah, Deh Rawat, the Siahband hills of Ghor, Isfarzar and the Adraskan valley as far as the borders of Sistan. Elphinstone mentions one fixed seat in the east of the Durrani country: the castle of Ahmad Khan Nurzai at Murgha, watered by the Kadanai stream.^7,6,8

Ahmad Khan Nurzai appears in Elphinstone's history across three reigns. In about 1786 Timur Shah sent him with an army into Sind; the Talpur chiefs drew him into an ambush, and he retreated to Shikarpur after heavy losses. In 1800 Shah Zaman gave him the vanguard of the army marching against Prince Mahmud. Fateh Khan Barakzai, Mahmud's ally, seized Ahmad Khan's brother Abdullah and threatened to kill him, and Ahmad Khan went over to Mahmud with his whole force at Sar-i Asp. Shah Zaman's army broke up and the king fled towards Kabul. Earlier in the same campaign, Kandahar had opened its gates to Mahmud when Fateh Khan threw himself on the protection of Abdullah, a chief of the garrison; Caroe identifies this Abdullah as Abdullah Khan of the Nurzai.

Under Shah Shuja, Ahmad Khan was guardian of Prince Kaiser at Kandahar. Fateh Khan persuaded Kaiser to imprison him, and in 1804, once released, Ahmad Khan handed Kandahar to Prince Kamran. Another Nurzai, Mir Wais, shared command of the fifteen thousand men Shah Zaman sent against Kashmir in 1800. Elphinstone also records that Shah Mahmud executed Mir Alam Khan, head of the Nurzai, and that Afghans condemned the act as unjust, though not as unlawful.^9,10,11,12,5