Kurram Agency
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kurram or Karam (Urdu: کرم ) tribal agency is located in the FATA area of Pakistan. Until the year 2000, when divisions were abolished, Kurram District used to be part of the Peshawar Division of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
The Kurram River drains the southern flanks of the Safed Koh mountain range, and enters the Indus plains north of Bannu. It crosses the Afghan-Pakistan border about 80 km southwest of Jalalabad, and joins the Indus near Isa Khel after a course of more than 320 km (200 miles). The district has an area of 3,310 km² (1,278 sq. miles); the population according to the 1998 census was 448,310[1]. It lies between the Miranzai Valley and the Afghan border, and is inhabited by the Pashtun Turis, a tribe of Turki and Pathan origin who are supposed to have subjugated the Bangash Pashtun about six hundred years ago. The language of the tribe is Pashto, but unlike majority of the Pashtuns they are Shias.
It is highly irrigated, well peopled, and crowded with small fortified villages, orchards and groves, to which a fine background is afforded by the dark pine forests and alpine snows of the Safed Koh. The beauty and climate of the valley attracted some of the Mogul emperors of Delhi, and the remains exist of a garden planted by Shah Jahan.
The Kurram River crosses the Afghan-Pakistan border about 80 km southwest of Jalalabad and in ancient times offered the most direct route to Kabul and Gardez, but the route crossed the Peiwar Pass 3,439 m (11,283 ft) high, just over 20 km west of Parachinar, which was blocked by snow for several months of the year.
Contents |
[edit] History
According to the Gazetteer of Kurram. The richness of the land gradually weaned the Turks from their nomadic life. Sections built villages and settled permanent; they ceased to be Kuchi and became Kothi this abandonment of their nomadic habits by the majority of the resulted, as it was bound to do, in a contraction of the area in effective possession. The upper Kurram plain was safe as their head-quarters, but hills and slopes below the Safed Koh and Mandher over which their graziers had kept an efficient watch, now afforded a menace as a place in which an encroaching tribe could established itself. To guard against this settlements of Mangales and Muqbols were half invited half allowed to push themselves in conditions of vassalage, and on promise to afford a buttress against any enemy aggression. In the lower Kurram, where for climatic reasons candidates for settlements were fewer, the problem was not easily solved. The Chardi Turis seem to have been the first to abandon their nomadic life.As the numbers who went down to graze every year became less,the area under control contracted. Sangroba and Hadmela were left far behind and as the Turis receded the Watizai Zaimushts gradually pushed in, until all that was left was a settlement at and about Alizai. On the western side the Saragallas retained, and still largely retain their habits. They too put in settlements around Biliamin and after much intervening warfare had finally to admit Bangashes brother not as vassals, but for the rest they retain unimpaired the rights on the western bank which they acquirerd at the time the conquest.
With Chardis this was for from being the course left unsupported by their Kuchis they maintained a precarious existence at Alizai until even then they had to give three-fifths of their land to the Watizai Zaimushts in return for their assistance in a feud they had entered upon with Bilyamin. Consequently the hills and the grazing grounds passed from the Turizun to the Zaimushtzun and as the other Zaimushts section being unopposed had settled themselves on the left bank below Sadda.
[edit] References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Bowles, Gordon T. (1977). The People of Asia. London. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
- Scott-Moncrieff, Major-General Sir George K. "The Roads of the North-West Frontier." Blackwood's Magazine, No. MCCCIV, Vol. CCXV, June 1924, pp. 743-757.
- Arthur Swinson, (1967). North-West Frontier. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, Washington.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Pictures
|
|||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
