Afridi

The Khulasat al-Ansab, as quoted by Dorn, traces the Afridi to Farid, the only son of Mani, in the Kodai branch of the Karlanri, and Raverty and Caroe follow it. Ibbetson's Pathan historians instead make them descendants of Usman, surnamed Afridi, son of Burhan, son of Kakai, and Bellew also puts them under Kakai. The Afridi call themselves Apridi. Bellew linked the name with the Aparytai of Herodotus (3.91); Encyclopaedia Iranica calls that etymology "highly improbable" and suggests the tribe absorbed an older Dardic population.

In the tribe's own account, recorded by Bellew, Mahmud of Ghazni settled them in the Khyber as military colonists and Shihab-ud-din Ghori added a second colony. Ibbetson names five old clans, the Mita, Miri, Aka, Ula and Adam Khel; the Mita Khel had mostly been deported to the Deccan by Jahangir and the Miri Khel had merged with others. In practice he counts eight clans: the Kuki, Malikdin, Qambar, Kamar and Zakha Khel, the Sipah, the Aka Khel and the Adam Khel. Iranica calls the first six the "Khyber clans" and the last two "assimilated" clans whom the six do not recognise.^1,2,8,4,5,3

Ibbetson describes the Afridi country as the eastern end of the Safed Koh: the Khyber hills, the Bara valley, the range between Peshawar and Kohat, and northern Tirah, which he says they took from the Orakzai under Jahangir. Bellew counted about 30,000 families in 1891. The Kuki Khel held the eastern Khyber as far as Ali Masjid and summered in the Rajgal glen. The Zakha Khel wintered in the Bazar valley and the pass up to Landi Kotal and summered in Maidan and the Bara. The Malikdin Khel, Qambar Khel, Sipah and Kamar Khel wintered on the Kajuri plain. The Adam Khel of the Kohat pass hills and the Aka Khel lived more settled lives, carrying salt and wood to British territory.

Iranica, citing Murray, says most Afridi apart from the Adam Khel were still nomadic at the end of the nineteenth century, and that early in that century they drove the Dardic-speaking Tirahi out of the Tirah heights. Elphinstone (1815) describes Khyber men in mat huts in the summer hills and in caves cut into the hillsides in winter.^4,5,3,6

Iranica dates the first record of the Afridi to Babur, who tried to bring them under control. The Mughals rarely kept the pass open for long; Man Singh had to force it in 1586. In 1672 a quarrel in Kunar, where Mughal soldiers insulted a Safi woman, united the Afridi, Shinwari, Mohmand and Safi against the governor, Muhammad Amin Khan. Raverty and Caroe name the Afridi chiefs Aimal Khan and Darya Khan as leaders. The tribesmen closed the kotal between modern Landi Kotal and Landi Khana with breastworks and rolled boulders onto the column; Caroe says Amin Khan escaped with four companions, and Khushal Khan Khattak put the Mughal loss at 40,000. The Imperial Gazetteer records another Mughal defeat by the Afridi at Gandab in 1673, and in 1674 Aimal Khan and Khushal took the fort at Nowshera.

In 1738 Nadir Shah's cavalry surprised the Mughal governor near Jamrud; the account Raverty quotes says an Afridi named Sarwar Khan guided them by the Tahtara path. Iranica says Ahmad Shah Durrani brought the Afridi into his army only nominally, and Elphinstone found the Khyber tribes drawing pensions from the Kabul king for keeping the road quiet. After his defeat on the Surkh Rud in 1801 Shah Shuja sheltered at Chora in the Bazar valley, and the next year he led about 12,000 Afridi against Peshawar and was beaten.^3,7,9,8,6

Sikh rule never went beyond Jamrud, fortified by Hari Singh in 1836. In the First Anglo-Afghan War Afridi fought Wade's column at Ali Masjid in July 1839 and closed the pass against Brigadier Wilde in January 1842. After the Sikh wars many enlisted in the Indian army. From 1857 to 1878 the Afghan government paid the Khyber clans and kept a garrison at Ali Masjid.

The Treaty of Gandamak (1879) gave Britain control of the pass. The Afridi received allowances of Rs 87,540 a year and guarded the road through their maliks, with a levy that grew into the Khyber Rifles. In August 1897, after the preaching of Mulla Sayyid Akbar of the Aka Khel, they took the Khyber posts and sacked the serai at Landi Kotal. Lockhart's Tirah expedition followed; by April 1898 the tribe had paid a fine of Rs 50,000 and 800 breech-loading rifles, and an October 1898 settlement restored the allowances. Iranica notes that the Afridi used each Anglo-Afghan war and both world wars to press their independence. In 1930 they twice attacked Peshawar, which Caroe heard their maliks compare with the 1802 assault.^7,3,8

Most Afridi live in Pakistan, in the Khyber hills, Tirah, the Bara valley and around the Kohat pass. Writing in 1984, C. M. Kieffer in Encyclopaedia Iranica met Afridi in eastern Afghanistan as traders, drivers and farm workers, often as hamsaya (clients) of landowners, and judged their numbers there to be small; he read the Afghan figure of 60,000 as an estimate for the whole tribe. The Afridi speak the northern (Pakhto) form of Pashto, which the Imperial Gazetteer (1908) says differs little from the Yusufzai standard.^3,7