Utman Khel

The Khulasat al-Ansab makes Otman a son of Kodai, of the Karlanri line, and Rose's Glossary (1914) calls the Utman Khel "probably Pathans of the Kodai branch of the Karlanri". Bellew and Longworth Dames place them under Kakai instead. Two other stories tie the tribe to Mahmud of Ghazni. One, noted by Ibbetson, makes them descendants of Utman, a follower of Mahmud who settled about 1000 in the country they now hold. Bellew (1891) says Mahmud brought them from Ghor early in the 11th century and planted them there as a military colony.^1,4,3,5

Ibbetson describes the Utman Khel as Karlanri neighbours of the Khakhay in the Gomal valley who left with them for Kabul, moved on through the Khyber to Peshawar, and shared in the conquest of the Dilazak country. When the allies divided the hills, the Utman Khel took the valley of the Swat river up to Arang Barang and its junction with the Panjkora. Caroe calls them hamsaya, clients, of the Yusufzai, and says they were first given Ambahar and a long belt of rough country across the north of the Samah; later Khattak inroads left them only five small villages in the plain north of Katlang. Elphinstone records that the Yusufzai assigned the Utman Khel their territory in the mountains east of Bajaur. Ibbetson adds that the Baizai Yusufzai called them in as allies against the Ranizai, and the Utman Khel kept the north-east corner of the Lundkhwar valley.

In the chronicles' account of the Battle of Shaikh Tapur, dated by Raverty to 1550, the Utman Khel fought in Khan Kajju's Yusufzai army against the Ghoria Khel.^5,7,6

Elphinstone (1815) describes the Utman Khel hills separating Swat from Bajaur, with snow for five or six months on the highest, terraced fields on the northern slopes, a strip of level land on the edge of Bajaur and two narrow valleys opening into lower Swat. He met only one Utman Khel man. From him he learned that the tribe had a khan with great power, who punished bloodshed with heavy fines and compensation to the dead man's family, that they lived in villages of ten to sixteen terraced houses, and that they were at war with the Tarkalani. He gave their number as never less than ten thousand families.

The Imperial Gazetteer (1908) puts the Utman Khel country between the Rud and Ambahar rivers and east between the Swat river and the Peshawar district to the Ranizai border, a network of bare hills fertile only in strips along the Rud, with a few more villages east of Lundkhwar. Ibbetson names two chief clans: the Umar Khel in the hills on the Peshawar frontier and the stronger Asil Khel on the Swat river. The Gazetteer notes that their Pashto differs little from the Yusufzai standard.^2,6,8,5

After the British annexed the Peshawar valley in 1849, punitive expeditions were sent against the Utman Khel in 1849 and 1852, the second with 2,200 troops, and again in 1866 and 1878, when the Guides were sent against them and the Ranizai. Utman Khel contingents joined the Akhund of Swat's forces against the British at Ambela in 1863. In the 1880s a religious leader known as the Makrani Mulla came to the Utman Khel country and raised a coalition against Umra Khan of Jandol. In the rising of 1897 Utman Khel tribesmen joined the attack on the Malakand post, and by the end of the year British troops had entered the Utman Khel country; the Gazetteer lists a further expedition in 1898. The 1910 Dictionary of the Pathan Tribes gives the tribe 12,000 fighting men north-west of the Peshawar border.^8,9