The First History of the Chib Rajputs Comes Online

The first history of the Chib Rajputs, Thakur Major Singh Chib’s Urdu Tarikh-e-Chibhal (تاریخ چبھال), printed in about 1926, is now online in full. All 113 printed pages, from the title page and the life of Raja Dharam Chand, remembered by Muslim Chibs as Baba Shadi Shaheed, to the rajas of Bhimber, the Chib soldiers of the 1920s and the author’s closing poems, have been scanned and summarised in English; only pp. 44–45 are missing from the copy used.

What is the first history of the Chib Rajputs?

For centuries the story of the Chibs, the Rajput clan whose rajas ruled Bhimber, in today’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir near the Punjab border, lived in memory and in the pedigree rolls of priests and bards. The first person to turn it into a book was a Chib himself: Thakur Major Singh of Deva Vatala, a Hindu of the branch descended from Raja Ghaggi Khan. His Tarikh-e-Rajgan-e-Bhimber wa Qaum-e-Chibhal, “History of the Rajas of Bhimber and of the Chibhal nation”, better known by its running title Tarikh-e-Chibhal, was written in Urdu and lithographed in a scribe’s hand. The book itself carries no date, but Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan’s 1997 history of the clan cites it as printed in 1983 Bikrami, about 1926, and calls it “the first attempt to compile the history of the Chib qaum” (Iftikhar Ali Khan, 1997, p. 23).

Why it matters

Almost every later history of the Chib Rajputs rests on this book. Iftikhar Ali Khan quotes it more than any other source and credits its author with saving Chib history from remaining oral memory alone (pp. 23–24). Until now, however, readers knew it only through such quotations, because copies had long been rare: a commendation printed in the 1997 book says it “had long been unobtainable” by the late 1970s (p. 433). The original shows what the quotations left out and where later writers reshaped it. The full summary is on our page Tarikh-e-Chibhal, chapter by chapter; here are thirteen things it reveals, eight from its first thirty pages and five from the rest of the book.

Eight highlights from the first thirty pages

1. A plea against the Iranian-prince story. The preface rejects a Gujrat settlement record that gave the Chibs an Iranian ancestor and had Raja Shadi Khan become a Muslim at his own request under Humayun. Faith rests on belief, the author argues, while qaum, lineage, is another thing; Muslim Chib notables, he says, agreed (pp. 4–5). See Where did the Chibs come from?
2. A goddess’s sweat, explained away. The Katoch founder Bhumi Chand is said to have sprung from drops of sweat that fell from a Shakti’s brow in a war of gods and Daityas; the author treats the story as a metaphor for a hero who appeared suddenly (pp. 6–7). See Bhumi Chand.
3. 481 numbered rulers. An eleven-page shajra numbers the line from Bhum Chand (No. 1) through Raja Megh Chand of Kangra (No. 455) and Raja Chib Chand (No. 458) to Raja Sultan Khan (No. 481), the last ruler of Bhimber (pp. 10–20). See The Chib shajra.
4. A fourth son for Baba Shadi Shaheed. The family tree gives Raja Dharam Chand four sons, adding Gul Muhammad Khan (read “Gul Mural” on this page; later pages spell the name out), apparently the ancestor of the Samahni family, to the three known from later histories, and settles his grandson Ghaghi’s line at Deva Vatala (p. 19). See The Samahni Chibs.
5. An early date for Chib Chand. The book has Raja Narain Chand leave Kangra with his four sons “at the end of the thirteenth century Bikrami”, about 1240 AD, long before the fifteenth-century date most later historians prefer (p. 21). See When did the Chibs come to Bhimber?
6. A jewel, a wedding and a feast. A jewel sold in Bhimber leads the Thakial raja Sri Pat to marry his only daughter to Chib Chand. When Sri Pat dies without a son, the book says, Chib Chand invites the Thakials to a feast at which many are killed, a harsher account than later Chib histories give (pp. 21–23). See The Thakial Rajputs.
7. A vow still kept. Chib Chand promises the Thakials’ priests that his descendants will always honour them, and the author, comparing the vow with Bhishma’s in the Mahabharata, says Hindu Chibs still gave these Verha Brahmins equal dues at weddings in his day (pp. 23–25). See Chib Chand’s vow.
8. The earliest life of Baba Shadi Shaheed. Chapter 3 tells how Raja Dharam Chand received his healing touch from a holy man called the Panj Pir, cured Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi and was, in the author’s view, made a Muslim and married in Delhi by force, a claim the 1997 history disputes. The author adds that he himself performed the Chib toe-cure for swellings below the ear in Jammu (pp. 26–30). See Baba Shadi Shaheed and Forced or free?

Five highlights from the rest of the book

9. The Baba’s shrine as the author knew it. The end of Chapter 3 tells of the raja’s duel with Haibat Qandhari, the black dog that buried his head and the Rani taken into his grave, and describes the shrine at Aadhi Dhak, five miles from Bhimber: Hindus called it Sidh Sadi and Muslims Bawa Shadi Shahid, and Chibs of both faiths brought their children there for their first haircut (pp. 31–34). See The shrine at Aadhi Dhak.
10. How one family became two. When Delhi ruled that only a Muslim could be raja, the author writes, Ghaggi refused the throne and his brother Ghanni Chand became Raja Ghanni Khan. Ghaggi’s great-grandson Dasu Khan, born after his father’s death and saved by a loyal bard’s buried treasure, founded the Hindu Chibs of Deva Vatala, who later fought Ranjit Singh’s army in their jungles and saw both Vatala and Deva burned (pp. 35–60). See How the Chibs divided and Vatala against Ranjit Singh.
11. The rise and fall of the rajas of Bhimber. Part 2 tells how Akbar’s Mehtas settled the land, how Chibhal passed under Jammu and the murder of Mehta Bahadur Singh brought a Jammu-appointed wazir to Bhimber, and how Raja Sultan Khan, after beating two Sikh armies, was seized at prayer in Jammu, ending the state in Samvat 1883, about 1826 (pp. 61–82). See The Mehtas of Bhimber and Raja Sultan Khan.
12. Customs and the case for compulsion. Part 3 records the Chibs’ three grades of rajas, mandiyals and dheridars, their marriage rules and their division of inheritance by wives’ lines, and the author’s six arguments that Baba Shadi Shaheed was made a Muslim against his will, a view the 1997 history rejects (pp. 95–101). See Chib marriage and inheritance and Forced or free?
13. Soldiers, memorials and a farewell. The last chapter lists the great Chib jagirs, the war memorials of Damala, Bisa and Thotha Rai Bahadur, a War Darbar held at Bhimber on 11 February 1918 and dozens of Chib officers village by village; the author then thanks his helpers, Hindu and Muslim, and closes with two poems calling the young of the nation to wake (pp. 101–113). See The Chibs in the First World War, Chib officers in 1926 and Thakur Major Singh Chib.

What is still missing

Very little. Only two pages are missing from the copy used, pp. 44–45, which probably finished the genealogy of the Vatala Chibs; a few lines at the foot of pp. 56, 76 and 103 are lost in the scans, and the speckled last page (p. 113) cannot be read in full. Everything the 1997 history quotes from later pages, from the end of the Baba’s story (pp. 31–34) to the list of commissioned officers (pp. 107–109), can now be checked against the original.

Help us complete it

The book was digitised as part of the ChibRajputs.com history project of Engr. Fakhar Jabran Chib. If your family owns a copy of Tarikh-e-Chibhal, especially one with pp. 44–45, or knows where one is kept, please contact us. Every page is summarised in the chapter-by-chapter guide, so that every Chib, Muslim or Hindu, can read what the oldest written account of the clan actually says.

Continue reading

• Tarikh-e-Chibhal, Chapter by ChapterEvery page of the oldest Chib history, summarised
• The Chib Shajra: 481 GenerationsThe complete numbered king-list of pp. 10–20
• Bhumi ChandThe origin legend of the Katoch and the Chibs
• When Did the Chibs Come to Bhimber?Dating Raja Chib Chand
• The Historians of ChibhalWho wrote the history of the Chibs?
• Chib RajputsHistory, origins and clans of the Chibs of Bhimber
• Thakur Major Singh ChibThe life of the first Chib historian
• How the Chibs DividedHindu and Muslim lines after Raja Dharam Chand