The Tarikh-e-Chibhal (تاریخ چھبال, “History of Chibhal”) of Thakur Major Singh of Dewa Vatala, dated 1983 Bikrami (c. 1926), was the first book-length history of the Chib Rajputs, the clan that ruled Bhimber in today’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Around it stand the British records of 1868 and 1911, a second Tarikh-e-Chibhal, two unpublished manuscripts and, in 1997, the synthesis by Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan on which this series is based.
At a glance
- First written account
- Gujrat district settlement, 1868 (customary-law record, taken down from Chib headmen)
- First Chib history
- Thakur Major Singh of Dewa Vatala, Tarikh-e-Chibhal, 1983 Bikrami (c. 1926)
- Second Tarikh-e-Chibhal
- Mian Onkar Singh Chib; 2nd edition, Khwaja Press, Delhi, 1984
- Unpublished histories
- Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin Kohi Samahnavi; Raja Wilayat Khan “Khadim-e-Qaum” of Thotha Rai Bahadur (d. 1948)
- British reference works
- Griffin, The Chiefs of the Punjab; H. A. Rose, Glossary of the Tribes and Castes, vol. II (1911)
- Kangra genealogy
- Thakur Kahan Singh Balauria, Tawarikh-e-Rajputan-e-Punjab
- Modern synthesis
- Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan, Khandan-e-Chib Rajput and the 1997 life of Baba Shadi Shaheed
Before the books: priests, bards and kursi-namas
Until about two and a half centuries before the 1997 history was written, its author explains, the past of the Chib Rajputs survived only in kursi-namas: genealogical lists kept by the clan’s purohits (family priests), mirasis and bhats (bards), built from memories handed down “from breast to breast”. Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan treats them warily. A bard’s list, he observes, was often adjusted to please the patron who paid for it, so names and dates differ from one copy to the next, and such lists cannot by themselves carry the history of a clan (Iftikhar Ali Khan, 1997, p. 23).
That caution runs through his book. The Chibs ruled the hill state of Bhimber, on the edge of the Punjab plain, and the surrounding country called Chibhal for about four centuries, yet left no court chronicle of their own. Their story had to be rebuilt from British district records, from the genealogies of Kangra, from family papers and from the work of a handful of determined clansmen, Hindu and Muslim, who set out to write it down.
The 1868 Gujrat Settlement: the first written version
The earliest written account the book discusses is the settlement of Gujrat district compiled in 1868, in its record of riwaj-e-am, the customary law of the district’s tribes. Gujrat matters, the author explains, because much of the north, north-east and north-west of the district once belonged to the Bhimber state, which the Chibs held from Raja Chib Chand’s accession until the British arrived in 1840 and the arrangement between Gulab Singh and the British in 1846 (pp. 24–25). The compiler of the settlement took the Chib story down from a few of the clan’s sardars and village headmen (p. 19).
Their version runs like this. An Iranian prince, Muhammad Gohar Khan, known as Gohar Shah, came to the Deccan and married the daughter of a Raja Nahar Chand. Their son, Abdar Chand (reading uncertain), was raised a Hindu and made a name at the court of Alauddin Khilji. A later Nahar Chand of the same line somehow won Kangra; his sons Odhe Chand and Chib Chand quarrelled, and Chib Chand settled at Manglora (Mughlora) near Bhimber, married the daughter of the Brahman ruler Raja Sri Pat and inherited his state. The line stayed Hindu for six generations until, in the seventh, Raja Shadip Chand became a Muslim in the reign of Humayun (pp. 19–20).
Iftikhar Ali Khan calls this “baseless and invented”. In the late Mughal period, he argues, Indian Muslims of martial families found themselves passed over by rulers who preferred soldiers of foreign descent, and many answered by grafting an Arab or Iranian ancestor onto their pedigrees; for some eight centuries, from Abdar Chand (965 AD) to the age of Aurangzeb, no Chib had heard of an Iranian forefather. He adds that the genealogy of Kot Kangra gives Nahar Chand four sons, not two, and likens the tale to a story from the Thousand and One Nights (pp. 20–21). The rival theories are weighed in Where did the Chibs come from?
Thakur Kahan Singh Balauria and the genealogy of Kangra
For the Chibs’ Katoch ancestry the book leans on the “historian of Dogristan”, Thakur Kahan Singh Balauria (also written Balawria), whose Tawarikh-e-Rajputan-e-Punjab it calls the most reliable source on the question (p. 21). Kahan Singh traces the Katoch house of Kangra, or Nagarkot, to Bhumi Chand of the Kashyap gotra, and through Raja Susharm Chand of the Mahabharata age, to whom tradition credits the building of Kangra Fort. Many generations later Raja Megh Chand of Kangra had four sons: Hari Chand, ancestor of the Guleria Rajputs; Karam Chand, who took the throne; Partab Chand, from whom descend the rajas of Bhimber, “whose tribe is famous as Chib”; and Parag Chand, whose descendants settled in Hoshiarpur district. Partab Chand’s son Narain Chand, also called Nahar Chand, had four sons, Chib, Dhru, Ambu and Aji Chand, and the eldest founded the Chib clan (pp. 21–22).
Kahan Singh also wrote a life of Maharaja Gulab Singh and a history of the rajas of Jammu and Kashmir, both in the book’s bibliography. His Punjab volume was hard to find: Rai Zahid Hussain Jarral, an advocate of Gujrat, recalls lending his copy to Iftikhar Ali Khan in 1975, when the latter was compiling his first Chib history (p. 442). The Kangra background is told in From Kangra to Bhimber: the Katoch origins.
Thakur Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal (1926): the first Chib history
The first true history of the clan was the work of a Hindu Chib. Thakur Major Singh of Dewa Vatala compiled Tarikh-e-Chibhal in 1983 Bikrami, and the 1997 book quotes it as “printed 1983 Bikrami, corresponding to 1926 AD” (pp. 23, 259, 290). His name is printed in several ways (Majhar, Mehjar, Mahjar, Majar), but on pp. 289 and 394 it is spelled out as Major Singh. One citation gives the work a fuller title, Tarikh-e-Rajgan-e-Bhimber wa Qaum-e-Chibhal (“History of the Rajas of Bhimber and the Chibhal People”), probably for the same book (p. 316).
Major Singh belonged to the Hindu Chibs descended from Raja Ghaggi Khan, the line that Rose describes as holding the garhs, or strongholds, of Deva and Batala. A family chart in the book places him in the eighth generation from Sohesh Chand (reading uncertain), founder of the Thakri sub-branch of the Watala family, and records that he died in the month of Asauj, 1995 Bikrami (c. 1938) (p. 394). His people’s story is told in The Hindu Chibs of Dewa Vatala.
He named his authorities: a Tarikh-e-Rajputan-e-Punjab, Kahan Singh Balauria’s life of Maharaja Gulab Singh, a life of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Shahjahan Nama of Muhammad Salih Kambo Lahori and a Tarikh-e-Kohliyan (reading uncertain). Iftikhar Ali Khan is blunt that these books mention the Chibs only in passing and suspects they were cited to lend the new work authority. Yet he is generous about the achievement. Before Major Singh nobody had gathered the scattered pages of Chib history into a book; without him that history might still be oral memory alone, and every Chib, he writes, will always be proud of it (pp. 23–24).
What the 1926 Tarikh-e-Chibhal covers
The 1997 book quotes Major Singh more than any other writer, and its page references give a rough map of his contents:
| Tarikh-e-Chibhal | Subject | Quoted in the 1997 book |
|---|---|---|
| p. 21 | Raja Chib Chand and his brothers | p. 32 |
| pp. 26–34 | Life and miracles of Baba Shadi Shaheed, the first written account of the saint | pp. 88–91, 354 |
| pp. 61–64 | The founding of Bhimber and the Mughal-era Mehtas | pp. 42–44 |
| pp. 65–68 | Raja Ismail Khan, the Mehtas and Jammu | p. 123 |
| pp. 69–80 | Raja Sultan Khan, last ruler of Bhimber | from p. 127 |
| pp. 85–87 | Thotha Rai Bahadur | p. 141 |
| p. 88 | Mandi Da’ora | p. 316 |
| p. 92 | The Samahni family | p. 331 |
| pp. 93–94 | Malot and Ghawaliyan | pp. 259, 264 |
| p. 108 | Panjeri, with a list of Chib commissioned officers | pp. 289–290 |
Iftikhar Ali Khan relies on Major Singh but argues with him often. He rejects the Thakur’s view that Raja Shadab Khan, Baba Shadi Shaheed, was made a Muslim under compulsion by the emperor of Delhi (p. 113; see Forced or free?). He names Raja Shadab Khan, not a Raja Dharam Chand, as the father of Raja Bhom Khan and Raja Mal Khan (p. 42); follows the manuscripts and old genealogies, which give Raja Ghaggi Khan four or five sons where the Thakur gives two (p. 137); and explains the name Chibhal Rikki as “Rai-ki”, the share of the younger son who bore the title Rai, where Major Singh read “ra’aya-ki”, “of the subjects” (pp. 38, 43). Within decades the book had become a rarity. When Khan Iqbal Sikandar Khan of Khui Ratta first read Iftikhar Ali Khan’s Khandan-e-Chib Rajput, some eighteen years before 1997, it was the only work on Chibhal to be had, because Major Singh’s history “had long been unobtainable” (p. 433).
In the oldest history (c. 1926)
The whole of Major Singh’s book, 113 printed pages in three Parts, has now been scanned (only pp. 44–45 are missing from the copy used) and is summarised in Tarikh-e-Chibhal, chapter by chapter. Its first pages settle the question of the title. The title page of Major Singh (c. 1926) reads Tarikh-e-Rajgan-e-Bhimber wa Qaum-e-Chibhal, and the text opens under the heading Tarikh-e-Chibhal (p. 6), so the two titles cited in the 1997 book belong to one work. The author signs himself simply “Major Singh Chib”, Qaum ka sevak (“servant of the nation”), in a calligraphic form that can also be read Mehjar, which explains the variant spellings (p. 5); the title Thakur does not appear on the title page, though he uses it to sign his closing poems (pp. 112–113), and no date or press is printed anywhere in the book, whose colophon names only the scribe, a katib of the Lahore newspaper Milap (p. 112).
His own list of sources (p. 5) begins with the Hari Vansh, the Harivamsha, followed without a stop by Tarikh-e-Rajputan-e-Punjab. The 1997 book read the two together as “Tarikh-e-Rajputan-e-Punjab, by Hari Dinesh” (p. 23), so the puzzling “Hari Dinesh” noted below is a misreading. Major Singh names no authors at all: the attributions to Kahan Singh Balauria and Muhammad Salih Kambo are the 1997 book’s own. He adds that he used handwritten papers and oral information, expected mistakes in a first attempt and hoped to correct them “in a second edition” (p. 5). In his closing pages he again calls the book a first attempt, promises a second edition for the families left out and asks readers to set prejudice aside, since “the history of a nation is a true photograph” (pp. 109–110). His life and family, traced from his own charts and his uncles’ careers at the Jammu court, are told in Thakur Major Singh Chib: life of the first Chib historian. See also The first history of the Chib Rajputs comes online.
Mian Onkar Singh Chib and the second Tarikh-e-Chibhal
A second book of the same title was written by Mian Onkar Singh Chib (called Thakur Onkar Singh on p. 32). The 1997 history cites its second edition, printed at the Khwaja Press, Jama Masjid, Delhi, in 1984, and calls it “worthy of a hundred praises” (p. 65). Its chapter on Raja Chib Chand (pp. 34–39) supplies the narrative Iftikhar Ali Khan adopts. When Raja Megh Chand’s courtiers passed over the rightful heir, Partab Chand, in favour of his younger brother Karam Chand, Partab Chand soon died of grief, and his son Narain Chand left Kangra for good at the beginning of the fifteenth century with four sons, Chib, Dhru, Ambu and Aji Chand. Crossing the Jammu hills, they first lodged like travellers in the house of an old Brahmin woman at Mughlora, east of Bhimber (pp. 65–67).
The book does not say where Onkar Singh lived or when his first edition appeared. It also mentions a Mian Onkar Singh of Mandi Ghawaliyan, a tehsildar connected by marriage to the Jammu royal family, without saying whether he and the historian are the same man.
Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin Kohi Samahnavi’s manuscript
The Muslim counterpart to the two Thakurs was the late Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin “Kohi” of Chowki Samahni, in the Samahni valley of Bhimber district, whom the book honours as the “historian of Chibhal”. His own Tarikh-e-Chibhal was never printed. Iftikhar Ali Khan worked from a manuscript copy (qalami nuskha) and a draft (musawwada), and the Maulvi’s heirs at Samahni also kept a genealogy of the clan, the shajra of the Rajgan of Khui Ratta (pp. 24, 258, 265, 432).
The manuscript is one of the book’s main sources for the Muslim period. It supplies the life of Raja Shadab Khan as ruler and healer: the gift for curing boils he received from a faqir as a young prince, his cure of Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi in Delhi and, as the manuscript claims, a governorship of Qandahar and the administration of Kashmir in 1526 (pp. 116, 353–354). It gives the succession of the rajas of Bhimber from Raja Bhom Khan to Raja Sultan Khan (pp. 116–123), the founding of the mandis of Chibhal Rajana (p. 258), and accounts of Ghawaliyan, Panjeri and the Samahni family of Raja Hakim Khan (pp. 264–265, 290, 331). It also engages with earlier writers, noting that Sir Lepel Griffin and other historians place Raja Shadip Chand’s conversion under Babur while the Tarikh-e-Chibhal places it under Ibrahim Lodhi (p. 116). The Maulvi and Major Singh do not always agree: the manuscript makes Raja Jaisak Khan, founder of Panjeri, the second son of Raja Mal Khan, while Major Singh makes him the third (pp. 289–290).
Raja Wilayat Khan, “servant of the clan”
The most adventurous researcher was Raja Wilayat Khan, son of Raja Alam Khan, of Thotha Rai Bahadur in Kharian tehsil of Gujrat district, remembered by the title carved on his gravestone, Khadim-e-Qaum, “servant of the nation”; the book calls him Khadim-e-Qaum-e-Chib. To obtain the genealogy of the rajas of Nagarkot Kangra he spent several months at Kangra and then with the purohits of Hardwar, the priests who keep pilgrims’ family registers, and had the Katoch genealogy and the Chib shajra certified by them. He completed a history of the Chibs, but death came before he could publish it. He lies in the old Lari graveyard of Thotha Rai Bahadur, and his gravestone gives his date of death as 23 January 1948 (pp. 24–25, 186). The book calls his labour “peerless” and lists the unpublished manuscript among its sources (p. 432). His village and its rais are the subject of Thotha Rai Bahadur.
Wilayat Khan’s findings, as the book summarises them, differ sharply from the other accounts. He derived the Kangra house from the Tanwar (Tomar) Rajputs of Delhi. A Tanwar prince, Sarhandu Dev (reading uncertain), ruling at Hoshang Nagar (Hoshiarpur), was driven into the hills by Samudragupta; his son founded Nagar Koti, the later Nagarkot Kangra; and Katoch Dev Chand, born about 570 AD, built the fort of Kot Kangra and gave the family its Katoch name. Raja Udiman Chand of Kangra served Anang Pal Tanwar of Delhi in 1135, and his sons died fighting for Prithviraj Chauhan. Udiman’s grandson Nahar Chand had a son, Sujan Chand, by a Jamwal rani and three more, Chib, Pirag and Odiyan Chand, by a second wife; when Sujan took the throne he sent his half-brothers to distant jagirs. Chib Chand received the land north of Sialkot and south of Jammu as far as the Chenab, ruled it from Chaprar, married Punja Devi, the only child of Raja Sri Pat Wadhan of Bhimber, and inherited Bhimber about 1230 (pp. 29–31).
Iftikhar Ali Khan answers point by point (pp. 31–32). Chib Chand’s great-grandfather, he says, was Raja Megh Chand, number 455 in the Kangra throne list, not Udiman Chand. Narain (Nahar) Chand never sat on the Kangra throne. Chib Chand’s brothers were Dhru, Ambu and Aji Chand, as Major Singh, Onkar Singh and Kahan Singh all agree. Chaprar was never part of Kangra, and a prince who held such fertile land would hardly have sought shelter in an old woman’s house in the stony hills of Mughlora. And a date of 1230 is impossible, because Megh Chand was still ruling Kangra when Timur invaded India in 1398.
Not to be confused
Several men named Wilayat Khan appear in the book. The historian of Thotha Rai Bahadur, who died in January 1948, is not Naib Subedar Raja Wilayat Khan of Barhang, who fought for Bhimber in October 1947, nor Raja Muhammad Wilayat Khan of Kasgumah, ADC to the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir.
Rose, Griffin and the British record
Two British reference works anchor the book’s account of the clan’s place in Punjab society. The first is H. A. Rose’s A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province, whose entry on the Chibs (vol. II, pp. 169–170, 1911) the book translates in full (pp. 25–28). Rose describes the Chibs as a Rajput tribe of the lower Jammu hills and northern Gujrat, after whom the hill country on the left bank of the Jhelum was called Chibhal. He records their claim to descend, at least on the mother’s side, from the Katoch of Kangra, and names “Sar Sadi” (Baba Shadi Shaheed) as the first Chib to accept Islam. He describes the custom of mu-tarashi, the first shaving of a boy’s head at the saint’s shrine, without which no child counted as a true Chib; and the old hierarchy of four mandis (Malot, Bandala, Ghawaliyan and Rajal), four garhs held by the Ghaghial and eighty-four dheris, which divided the clan into Mandial, Garhial and Dheral grades. His list of fourteen gots descended from the saint is examined in The fourteen septs of the Chib clan. Iftikhar Ali Khan corrects Rose twice: Baba Shadi Shaheed died under Akbar, not Aurangzeb, being a contemporary of Ibrahim Lodhi, Babur, Humayun and Akbar; and Raja Ghaghi Khan was the full brother, not the cousin, of Raja Ghanni Khan (pp. 26–27).
The second is Sir Lepel Griffin’s The Chiefs of the Punjab, first published in 1865 and later revised by Charles Francis Massy, which the book calls “world-famous” and uses in its Urdu translation, Tazkira-e-Ruasa-e-Punjab (pp. 238–245 and 325–328). It reproduces the entries and family trees for three Chib houses of British Punjab: Khan Bahadur Raja Muhammad Akbar Khan, “Chief of the Chib Tribe”, of the Bhimber royal line at Jhelum; Raja Muhammad Khan, ra’is of Pothi; and Chaudhri Raja Muhammad Akbar Khan, ra’is of Bisa (pp. 150–164). Griffin dates Chib Chand’s arrival to about 1400 AD and says he had his father-in-law and family killed at a feast, a darker story than the family tradition printed a few pages later (pp. 156–157, 165). These extracts are discussed in The Chibs in The Chiefs of the Punjab.
Family genealogies and papers
Alongside the books, the author drew on genealogies and papers kept by Chib families, sources “on which a little reliance can be placed” (p. 24):
- the Shajra-e-Nasab Qaum Chib, the genealogy of the Rajgan of Khui Ratta, held by the heirs of Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin at Samahni;
- a genealogy “with some historical events” kept at Jhelum by the descendants of Raja Sultan Khan, the last ruler of Bhimber;
- genealogies and historical notes prepared over the years by Rai Sahib Dilawar Khan of Thotha Rai Bahadur, who died on 29 April 1936 (pp. 24, 143);
- the English-language family papers of Raja Sultan Lal Husain Khan, chief notable of the Pothi jagir in Gujrat district (p. 431);
- the family trees printed at the end of the book, many credited to named family compilers (pp. 388–430).
The 1997 synthesis
All these strands were drawn together by Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan, an advocate of Karachi from Barhang near Bhimber. His first book, Khandan-e-Chib Rajput, was in preparation in 1975; his life of Baba Shadi Shaheed, with its long account of the clan, its rajas and its families, followed in 1997. His method shows on almost every page: he quotes his predecessors at length, names their pages and then argues with them, adding family trees, inscriptions and the testimony of living witnesses. Every work he lists is annotated in Sources on Chib Rajput history.
- 1868 The settlement of Gujrat district records the Chib origin story told by the clan’s headmen.
- 1911 H. A. Rose’s Glossary, vol. II, includes an entry on the Chibs.
- c. 1926 Thakur Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal (1983 Bikrami), the first Chib history.
- 1936 Death of Rai Sahib Dilawar Khan of Thotha Rai Bahadur, keeper of family genealogies (29 April).
- c. 1938 Death of Thakur Major Singh (Asauj, 1995 Bikrami).
- 1948 Death of Raja Wilayat Khan on 23 January; his history remains unpublished.
- 1975 Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan at work on Khandan-e-Chib Rajput.
- 1984 Second edition of Mian Onkar Singh Chib’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal, Delhi.
- 1997 Iftikhar Ali Khan’s life of Baba Shadi Shaheed; preface dated Barhang, January 1997.
When did Chib Chand come to Bhimber? How the sources compare
Set side by side, the historians of Chibhal disagree most about two questions: when Raja Chib Chand reached Bhimber, and when and how his descendant Raja Shadab Khan became a Muslim.
| Source | Chib Chand in Bhimber | Conversion of Raja Shadab Khan |
|---|---|---|
| Gujrat Settlement, 1868 | Settles at Manglora (Mughlora); line traced from Abdar Chand, 965 AD | Raja Shadip Chand, seventh generation, under Humayun |
| Rose, Glossary (1911) | “Fourteen centuries” earlier (as printed in the Urdu) | “Sar Sadi”; died under Aurangzeb |
| Griffin, Chiefs of the Punjab | About 1400 AD | Under Babur (as reported in the Zain-ul-Abidin manuscript) |
| Thakur Major Singh (c. 1926) | Son of Narain Chand; brother of Dhru, Ambu and Aji Chand; arrives “at the end of the thirteenth century Bikrami”, roughly the 1240s (Major Singh (c. 1926), p. 21) | Under Ibrahim Lodhi, by compulsion of the Delhi emperor |
| Raja Wilayat Khan (MS, before 1948) | Inherits Bhimber about 1230 | Not covered in the extract |
| Pothi, Kasgumah and Lehri family account | About 1350 | Not stated in the extract |
| Mian Onkar Singh (Delhi, 1984) | Beginning of the 15th century, with his father Narain Chand | Not quoted |
| Iftikhar Ali Khan (1997) | First quarter of the 15th century | Freely; a contemporary of Ibrahim Lodhi to Akbar, he died under Akbar |
Sources differ
Even within the 1997 book the details shift. Kahan Singh’s genealogy makes Partab Chand the third son of Raja Megh Chand (p. 22), while the author’s critique of Wilayat Khan makes him the second (p. 31). The Tarikh-e-Rajputan-e-Punjab is credited to Kahan Singh on p. 21 but, in the list of Major Singh’s sources, to a “Hari Dinesh” (reading uncertain) on p. 23. And Major Singh gives Baba Shadi Shaheed two sons by his Muslim wife where the Zain-ul-Abidin manuscript gives three (p. 117).
Frequently asked questions
Who wrote the Tarikh-e-Chibhal?
Two printed books share the title. The first, and the first history of the Chib Rajputs, was compiled by Thakur Major Singh, a Hindu Chib of Dewa Vatala, and is dated 1983 Bikrami (c. 1926). A second Tarikh-e-Chibhal by Mian Onkar Singh Chib appeared in a second edition at Delhi in 1984, and Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin Kohi Samahnavi left an unpublished manuscript history of the same name.
What is the earliest written account of the Chibs?
The earliest written version discussed in the 1997 Chib history is the 1868 settlement of Gujrat district, whose customary-law record took the clan’s story down from a few Chib headmen. It traces the Chibs to an Iranian prince, Gohar Shah, a claim the 1997 book rejects as invented.
Was Raja Wilayat Khan’s history of the Chibs published?
No. Raja Wilayat Khan of Thotha Rai Bahadur, remembered as Khadim-e-Qaum (servant of the nation), spent months with the purohits of Kangra and Hardwar to have the Katoch and Chib genealogies certified and completed a history, but he died on 23 January 1948 before it could be printed. Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan used and criticised the manuscript in 1997.
What does Rose’s Glossary say about the Chib Rajputs?
H. A. Rose’s Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (vol. II, 1911, pp. 169–170) calls the Chibs a Rajput tribe of the lower Jammu hills and northern Gujrat who claim Katoch descent from Kangra. It describes their four mandis, four garhs and 84 dheris, fourteen gots descended from Baba Shadi Shaheed, and the custom of shaving Chib boys’ heads at his shrine.
Which source does the 1997 Chib history trust most?
For the clan’s Kangra ancestry it calls Thakur Kahan Singh Balauria’s Tawarikh-e-Rajputan-e-Punjab the most reliable source, and for the date of Chib Chand’s migration it follows Mian Onkar Singh’s account of the early fifteenth century. It rejects the 1868 Iranian-prince story and quotes Thakur Major Singh at length while correcting him on several points.
Sources
- Thakur Major Singh Chib, Tarikh-e-Rajgan-e-Bhimber wa Qaum-e-Chibhal (Tarikh-e-Chibhal; Urdu, c. 1926), pp. 1–6, 21, 109–113.
- Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan, Raja Shadab Khan alias Hazrat Baba Shadi Shaheed (Urdu, Barhang/Karachi, 1997), pp. 19–32, 38, 42–44, 65–67, 113–117, 123–127, 137, 141–143, 150–165, 186, 258–265, 289–290, 316, 331, 354, 394, 431–433, 442.
- Thakur Major Singh, Tarikh-e-Chibhal (1983 Bikrami, c. 1926), as quoted in the above.
- Mian Onkar Singh Chib, Tarikh-e-Chibhal, 2nd ed. (Khwaja Press, Delhi, 1984), pp. 34–39, as quoted.
- Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin Kohi Samahnavi, Tarikh-e-Chibhal (unpublished manuscript), as quoted.
- Raja Wilayat Khan of Thotha Rai Bahadur, unpublished research on the Chibs, as summarised on pp. 29–31.
- H. A. Rose, A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province, vol. II (1911), pp. 169–170.
- Sir Lepel Griffin, The Chiefs of the Punjab, Urdu translation Tazkira-e-Ruasa-e-Punjab, pp. 238–245, 325–328.
- Thakur Kahan Singh Balauria, Tawarikh-e-Rajputan-e-Punjab.
This article is part of our series based on the 1997 Chib history; see the book, chapter by chapter. Spellings of names follow the book.
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