The Samahni Chibs: Raja Hakim Khan, Raj Bai and the Kot of Samahni

The Samahni Chibs (خاندانِ سماہنی) are a branch of the Chib Rajputs settled in the Samahni valley of Bhimber District, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, descended from Raja Shah Khan, a great-grandson of Baba Shadi Shaheed. Samahni history, as the Chib chronicles tell it, centres on Raja Hakim Khan, a courtier of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb who founded the Kot (fort) of Samahni and whose granddaughter, the book says, was the mother of the future emperor Bahadur Shah I.

Samahni history: the valley and its monuments

The Samahni valley lies north of Bhimber, beyond the hill of Aadhi Dhak where Baba Shadi Shaheed’s shrine stands, on the line of the old Mughal road to Kashmir. The book describes it as a green and lovely valley, and it was dear to the early Chib rajas. Raja Goja Chand is said to have made his capital at Chowki Bandi, three miles west of Samahni, where his samadh (memorial), venerated as Goja Pir, still stands beside the Samahni–Mirpur road; he and his son Raja Shadab Khan, escaping the heat of Bhimber, also kept a summer residence in the valley, called in the old texts Bhaddu Dhara (reading uncertain). At Ralwah, near Samahni, is Thal Pir, where tradition says Raja Shadab Khan’s brother Raja Dal Khan was killed.

Older remains are scattered through the valley. Between Samahni and Bandala stand two ancient temples of huge black stones, which local people call the Dhere and ascribe to giants and fairies; nearby are traces of a pond known as Pariyon ka Talla, “the Fairies’ Pond”, and farmers have ploughed up bronze vessels and old coins. The Mughals left the Sarai of Sa’dabad beside Bandala, which the book says is named after Sa’d Khan, Shah Jahan’s superintendent of buildings, and on the hill above it the fort of Baghsar.

Today Samahni is a sub-division of Bhimber District; the book credits that status to the efforts of Raja Maqsood Ahmad Khan of Bandala, elected to the Azad Kashmir Assembly from Samahni in 1985.

From Raja Mal Khan to Raja Shah Khan

The Samahni family, one of the branches of the Chib Rajputs, belongs to the house of Raja Mal Khan, the son of Baba Shadi Shaheed who received Khari Kariali, the western half of the old Chib state of Bhimber, while his elder brother Raja Bhom Khan kept the throne (see The Rajas of Bhimber). Mal Khan’s line is known as Chibhal Rekah, or Raika. His eldest son, Raja Ali Ghiyas Khan — remembered by the bards as Raja Alghas or Algas Khan, and described as an influential member of the Mughal court — had three sons: Raja Buddha Khan, Raja Shah Khan and Raja Jabbu Khan.

Buddha Khan’s descendants founded Thotha Rai Bahadur and a great many other villages, and Jabbu Khan’s settled at Bisa Kalan, Bisa Khurd, Jagoan and Kotla. The Samahni family descends from the middle son, Shah Khan, who stayed on at Balani, the family seat on the old imperial road. The tables of old landholdings at the end of the book list the Samahnial got among the branches of the Thotha Rai Bahadur house.

• Raja Shadab Khan (Baba Shadi Shaheed)
  • Raja Mal Khan — Khari Kariali (Chibhal Rekah)
    • Raja Ali Ghiyas (Alghas) Khan
      • Raja Buddha Khan — Thotha Rai Bahadur and its branches
      • Raja Shah Khan — ancestor of the Samahni family
        • … Raja Hakim Khan — founder of the Kot of Samahni
        • … Raja Mahmud Khan, son of Rafiullah — jagirdar in the 1880s
        • … Raja Buddhe Khan — Zaildar of Samahni in the twentieth century
      • Raja Jabbu Khan — Bisa Kalan, Bisa Khurd, Jagoan and Kotla

Raja Hakim Khan, courtier of Aurangzeb

Among Shah Khan’s descendants the most famous was Raja Hakim Khan. The book preserves two versions of his story.

The Samahni historian’s account

Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin Kohi Samahnavi, Samahni’s own historian, wrote in his manuscript that Hakim Khan’s daughter’s daughter Raj Bai — daughter of Chatar Sainha (reading uncertain), the Jarral Raja of Rajaur (Rajouri) — was the favourite consort of the emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir and the mother of Muazzam Shah, later ruler of the empire. Through this connection Hakim Khan had great access at the Mughal court. He left Gotriala for the Samahni tract, then called Bhaddu Dehra Thath (reading uncertain), where he received many villages in jagir with a mansab (rank) of twelve thousand — an exceptionally high rank by Mughal standards — and laid the foundations of the Kot, the fort of Samahni. At one time the family was also given a mandi of its own, which was later abandoned.

Thakur Major Singh’s account

Thakur Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal (1926) is more modest. It says the family formerly lived at Chhani Gotriala, in British territory, and that Hakim Khan was the emperor’s chauri-bardar, the bearer of the royal fly-whisk. From Gotriala the family’s elder came to the Samahni area, where the state granted it a jagir.

Raj Bai or Nawab Bai?

Mughal histories know the Rajouri princess who bore Aurangzeb’s son Prince Muhammad Muazzam — the emperor Bahadur Shah I, who reigned from 1707 to 1712 — as Nawab Bai. The book itself uses both names: Raj Bai in the Maulvi’s account, and Nawab Bai, daughter of a Raja Sainha of Rajouri, in the Thakur’s. The link between the Rajouri princess and Samahni rests on Chib family tradition.

A blood feud with Thotha Rai Bahadur

The Thakur also tells how Hakim Khan’s ambition ended. Coveting the eighty-four villages held by his kinsman Rai Shujawal Khan, chief of Thotha Rai Bahadur, Hakim Khan bribed a Mirasi, one of the hereditary bards and genealogists, to kill him. The assassin struck at Shujawal Khan as he slept, and the sword cut off the chief’s feet. Hakim Khan withdrew to Delhi. When he next came home, Shujawal’s son Rai Baz Khan seized his chance and beheaded him.

Because Hakim Khan was an officer of the imperial court, the emperor confiscated the eighty-four villages and held Rai Baz Khan in confinement for a time; he came home with a grant for only twenty-two. Another passage in the book confirms that in Rai Baz Khan’s time all but twenty-two villages were confiscated “in connection with the killing of Hakim Khan Samahniyal”.

The Kot and the Samahni jagir

Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin lists the villages that went with the Samahni share, or dheri: Dab, Sandu’ah, Ramloh and Sarsala, along with the old site of the abandoned mandi. The tables of old landholdings at the end of the book name Hakim Khan as chief of the Samahni dheri — one of the four senior dheris of Chibhal Raika, whose chiefs each held a small group of villages — with Samahni, Dab, Sandu’ah, Kot and Ralwah; a note adds that Ralwah was a jagir held together with Kot Samahni. Chak Sarsala, near Samahni, once part of the Thotha Rai Bahadur holding, had disappeared by the time the book was written.

Raja Mahmud Khan and the tank at the shrine

In the 1880s the jagirdar of Samahni, Raja Mahmud Khan, built a masonry tank beside the shrine of Baba Shadi Shaheed on Aadhi Dhak, fed by a stone channel that collects rainwater from the hillside. Its Persian inscription names the builder as Mahmud Khan son of Rafiullah, of Jagir Sahan (reading uncertain), and records that it was completed in the month of Shawwal 1303 AH — July 1886. The tank was rebuilt in December 1986, and the shrine’s old domed mosque stands beside it.

Not far away is another gift from Samahni: the Sukka Talab, the “Dry Tank”, on the old road below Aadhi Dhak, built in Chait 1937 Bikrami (about 1880) by a charitable Hindu merchant of Samahni whose name has been forgotten.

Samahni in the twentieth century

The best-known Samahni Chib of modern times is Raja Muhammad Zaman Ali Khan, known as Raja Buddhe Khan, Zaildar and Jagirdar of Samahni, who led the valley in the 1931 movement against Dogra rule and again in the fighting of October 1947. The book also profiles:

• Raja Fateh Khan, Buddhe Khan’s younger brother, a popular figure across the valley’s biradaris who brought development projects to Samahni, took part in the events of 1947 and was President of the Tehsil Muslim Conference, Bhimber;
• Raja Zulfiqar Ali Khan, Buddhe Khan’s son, a social and political worker and former chairman of Union Council Chowki;
• Major Raja Fateh Khan, of another Samahni family, who retired from the army as a major;
• Professor Raja Manzoor Ahmad Khan, an educationist long settled in England;
• Raja Abdul Rahman Khan, who passed his matriculation at Bhimber in 1955, became headmaster of the Government Pilot High School at Samahni and later a District Education Officer;
• Raja Rahmatullah Khan and Raja Latif Khan, social and political workers and members of the advisory committee of Baba Shadi Shaheed’s shrine.

The book ends the chapter with the leading men of other villages of the valley:

Much of what is known about the family comes from Samahni itself. Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin “Kohi” of Chowki Samahni compiled the unpublished manuscript history that the book quotes so often, and his heirs at Samahni kept one of the genealogies the author consulted (see The Historians of Chibhal). The valley’s other Chib families are described in Mandi Bandala and Mandi Ghawaliyan.

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• Raja Buddhe KhanThe Zaildar of Samahni and the 1931 movement
• Thotha Rai BahadurThe Rais of Khari Kariali
• Khari KarialiThe second Chib state and the house of Raja Mal Khan
• Thal PirRaja Shadab Khan, Raja Dal Khan and a war between brothers
• Raja Goja ChandThe raja whose samadh stands at Chowki
• Mandi BandalaSarai Saadabad, the Zaildars and the Khori jagir