Orakzai

In the Afghan genealogies Orak, ancestor of the Orakzai, is a son of Kodai in the Karlanri line. The Makhzan-i Afghani lists an Ourakzye twice, once under Kodai and once under Gharon in the Bitan line. The Khulasat al-Ansab, which says the Varokzye live in Tirah, Raverty, who calls them descendants of Kodaey, Bellew and Caroe all use the Karlanri placement.

The tribe has five main clans: the Daulatzai, Ismailzai, Lashkarzai, Massozai and Alizai. Ibbetson adds the Ali Khel, Mishti, Shaikhan and part of the Malla Khel, who are counted as Orakzai of the hamsaya (client) clan though, as he puts it, distinct by descent. Bellew in 1891 reckoned these adopted clans at more than 10,000 families, about a third of the tribe. He also noted that the Orakzai spoke a Pashto dialect of their own, further from the Pashto of the Yusufzai than Afridi speech, and that the tribe was split between the Samil and Gar factions.^1,2,3,4,6,8

Ibbetson's account of the Kohat tribes puts the Orakzai, about 1300, in possession of the Kohat valley from Resi on the Indus to Kohat itself. In the late fourteenth century the Bangash, pressed by the Ghilzai, moved east from Gardez into Kurram and then joined the Khattak against the Orakzai. The struggle lasted nearly a century, and by the close of the fifteenth century the Orakzai had been pushed into the hills on the north-western border of Kohat. Bellew's informants dated the two expulsions, first by the Khattak and then by the Bangash, to six or seven hundred and about 450 years before his time.

Tirah, their country since then, is the mountain tract drained by the Mastura, the Khanki Toi and the Khurmana, three rivers that rise near Mittughar (12,470 feet) on the Safed Koh. The Orakzai hold the upper Mastura and Khanki valleys, the Khurmana Darra and the northern slopes of the Samana range above Miranzai. The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 records that every section of the tribe went up into these valleys for the summer, and that the high valleys, at 5,000 to 7,000 feet, lay under snow in winter. Tradition gives the earlier people of Tirah as the Tirahis, who were driven out by the followers of Pir Roshan; a remnant fled to Nangarhar.^5,6,7

Many Orakzai, the Daulatzai above all, joined the Roshani movement. In 1619 or 1620 Mahabat Khan, governor of Kabul for the emperor Jahangir, had 300 Daulatzai Roshani converts killed. Ghairat Khan was then sent through Kohat to invade Tirah. At the foot of the Sampagha pass he met the Roshanis under Ihdad and the Daulatzai under Malik Tor, and the Mughal force was driven back with heavy loss.

After Jahangir died in 1627 the Orakzai and Afridi attacked Muzaffar Khan, the governor, on the road from Peshawar to Kabul. On 12 June 1630 a lashkar of Afridi, Orakzai, Bangash and other tribes surrounded Peshawar under the Roshani leader Abdul Qadir. After Abdul Qadir's death in 1635 the Mughals sent another force into Tirah, and the Orakzai chief Asar Mir and the Afridi Yusuf submitted and were given lands at Panipat near Delhi. In 1658 the imperial diwan at Peshawar was sent to Tirah against a fresh Orakzai and Afridi revolt. After the Mughal decline Tirah was, in the gazetteer's words, virtually independent, owing at times a nominal allegiance to Kabul.^7,8

British expeditions from Kohat went against the Rabia Khel Orakzai in 1855 and the Bizoti in 1869. The two Miranzai expeditions of 1891 were aimed at the Orakzai along the crest of the Samana and ended with British posts built along the range, Fort Lockhart and Saragarhi among them. Saragarhi village belonged to the Babi Khel section of the Rabia Khel.

In 1897 the Orakzai and Afridi rose together. The Orakzai attacked the Samana posts, and on 12 September several thousand of them overran Saragarhi, held by 21 men of the 36th Sikhs, who were all killed. Sir William Lockhart then took 34,500 men into Tirah from Shinawari in Miranzai. His troops stormed the heights of Dargai, crossed the Khanki and Mastura valleys by the Sampagha and Arhanga passes, overran Tirah and returned to Peshawar down the Bara valley in December. The gazetteer of 1908 records no further trouble on the Orakzai border after 1897.⁷

Most Orakzai are Sunni, with some Shia sections. Sources differ on how many: Ibbetson names only the Muhammad Khel, the largest sept of the Daulatzai, as Shia; Bellew lists most Daulatzai sections as Shia, with the Utman, Firoz, Bazoti and Usturi as Sunni; the Imperial Gazetteer calls many of the Orakzai of Tirah Shia; and Balland, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, counts a small part of the Orakzai with the Bangash and Turi as the only Shia Pashtuns.

Ibbetson wrote that the rulers of Bhopal in central India belonged to the Orakzai. The Imperial Gazetteer's article on Bhopal agrees that the founder, Dost Muhammad Khan, was an Afghan from Tirah, but calls him one of the Mirzai Khel of the Barakzais.

Under Pakistan the Orakzai country lay in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, governed under the Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1901. The FATA Interim Governance Regulation of 28 May 2018 replaced that law, and the Twenty-fifth Amendment, signed on 31 May 2018, merged the tribal areas into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.^{4,6,7,9,10,11}