Zadran

The name is written Zadran, Jadran and Dzadran; Raverty gives Jzadrarn or Jzandrarn and Elphinstone Jadraun. The Khulasat al-Ansab, quoted by Dorn, counts the Zhandran among the descendants of Mangholi, one of the seven sons of Kodi, together with the Mughbal (Muqbil) and Bahadurzai, and says all three live next to Khost. Raverty (1880) and Rose's Glossary give the same three sub-tribes of the Mangal, and a genealogical table printed in Rose's second volume puts Jadran under Mangalai in the Kodai line. Caroe's table follows the same placement.

Bellew (1891) and Longworth Dames put the Zadran under Kakai instead. Bellew also wrote that the Zadran were not reckoned Afghan at all, and he derived their name from the Gadrosoi of the Greek writers, a guess with no support in the Pashtun sources. Khushal Khan Khattak's own table, as reported by Rose, groups Jadran with the Khattak and Utman; the printed text names their ancestor as Kodai, which may be a misprint for Kakai.^{1,6,7,4,2,3,12}

The Zadran hold the east slopes of the Sulaiman range east of Zurmat, between Paktia and Khost. Elphinstone, writing from reports in 1809, put them on the west face of the range from about the latitude of Sirufza to near the source of the Kurram, with the Wazirs on the east face, the Kharoti and the Ghazni country to the west and the Jaji to the north. Near the Kurram they grew grain; towards the Kharoti they herded goats through thick pine forest. He noted that travellers never visited their country.

Bellew reckoned them at 10,000 families on the forested hills between Khost and Zurmat, with their main section, the Akhtun, in the Shamal district on the western edge of Khost. In winter many came down to British territory as day labourers and were known as skilled diggers and well-sinkers. The Afghan gazetteer compiled by the British Intelligence Branch adds that they lived in small villages, partly in houses and partly in tents, sold wool and cheese at Gardez for cloth and grain, and had a strong fort at Kala Nak.^5,3,8

While British troops were in Khost during the war of 1878–80, the Zadran and the Mangal assembled in the hills north-west and west of the district but stayed on the defensive. In 1882 the Zadran fought Amir Abdur Rahman's troops; the gazetteer reports that they were subdued and that three Afghan posts were set up in their country.

In the Khost rebellion of 1924 against King Amanullah's reforms, a Zadran elder, Boland Khan, helped the pretender Abdul Karim cross from Waziristan, and the Zadran and Mangal swore allegiance to him as amir. The rebellion's leader, Mullah Abdullah, came from Utmani, a village of the Sepahi Khel of the Dari Khel Zadran, where his father had been given land to serve as imam; the Zadran writer quoted on this says the family was not Zadran by origin. When the other tribes gave up in late 1924, only the Zadran and the Sulaiman Khel kept fighting; Zadran leaders came to Kabul to negotiate on 22 December 1924. The historian Ghobar writes that local Zadran caught Mullah Abdullah and handed him over; he was executed with other leaders in Kabul on 25 May 1925.^8,9

A 2009 study in the CTC Sentinel placed most of the Zadran in Spera district of Khost, Zadran district of Paktia and Gayan district of Paktika. It described the Haqqani family as prominent Zadran and an open contest for leadership of the tribe after 2001 between the Haqqanis and Padcha Khan Zadran, who later sat in the Wolesi Jirga.¹⁰