Chibhal Nama (چبھال نامہ, “the Book of Chibhal”) is the third written history of the Chib Rajputs, the clan whose rajas ruled Bhimber in today’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Captain (Retd) Muhammad Nadeem Khan of Tonin, Tehsil Samahni, wrote it in Urdu between 2019 and 2023, and Dua Publications issued it without a printed date. This guide follows the book chapter by chapter and shows where it repeats, adds to or differs from the two older histories: Thakur Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal (c. 1926), the original, and Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan’s book of 1997.
At a glance
- Title
- Chibhal Nama (چبھال نامہ): “the complete history of the ancient State of Bhimber and of Raja Shadab Khan, known as Baba Shadi Shaheed, from the first generation to the last” (p. 3)
- Author
- Captain (Retd) Muhammad Nadeem Khan, “Captain Khan”, of Tonin, Tehsil Samahni, District Bhimber
- His offices
- Central President, Chib Rajput Council Pakistan; Member, Central Executive Committee, Muslim League (N), Azad Jammu and Kashmir
- Publisher
- Dua Publications; no place, printer or year printed
- Date
- c. 2023: written after 2019 (p. 172); it mentions the 2023 local elections (pp. 184, 245); a first edition
- Length
- Urdu prose; about 297 pages; 121 headings
- Main sources
- Dr Raja Ijaz-ur-Rahman’s lost manuscript; the 1997 history; a later Delhi edition of Tarikh-e-Chibhal; Griffin, Latif and Fauq
- Copy used
- Printed pp. 2–293; pp. 294–297 missing
About Chibhal Nama
The author calls the book “not a campaign against any qaum” but an attempt to give the descendants of Bhimber’s rulers the history of their state, because about three generations of Chibs had grown up without it and the older books were out of print. He promises to look honestly at the quarrels between the descendants of Raja Bhom Khan and Raja Mal Khan, and takes as his model of honest history Suraj Mal of Bundi, who would not hide his raja’s faults (pp. 14–21).
It is the only one of the three Chib histories to bring the families into the 2020s: about half of it (pp. 135–282) records families of Bhimber, Mirpur, Kotli and Gujrat, with careers and deaths as recent as 2022.
Read: Tarikh-e-Chibhal, chapter by chapter · The 1997 book, chapter by chapter · The historians of Chibhal
How the book is organised
The book has no numbered chapters; its 121 headings are grouped here as follows, and some subjects, such as Pothi and the events of 1810, are told twice.
| Pages | Section | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| 2–30 | Front matter | Contents, hamd and na’at, introduction, the word “Rajput” |
| 31–53 | Chibhal and Bhimber | The 22 hill states; the State of Bhimber to 1996; Raja Chib Chand |
| 53–103 | The rajas | Goja Pir to Sultan Khan; Faiz Talab Khan; the royal family today |
| 103–134 | The clan | Khari Kariali; Pothi; mandis and dheris; 34 settlements |
| 135–282 | Families | Mirpur to Samahni; the Thakials and Domals; Hindu Chibs in India; a table of rulers |
| 282–293 | Lists | Rajput books, magazines, films and saints; clarifications |
The author: Captain Muhammad Nadeem Khan
Captain (Retd) Muhammad Nadeem Khan, “Captain Khan”, served as an officer in the Pakistan Army (p. 264). He signs as Central President of the Chib Rajput Council Pakistan and as a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Muslim League (N) in Azad Kashmir. The council was founded in 2003 by Raja Yunus Yaqub Khan of Sadwal Chaban, Tehsil Kharian, its Central Chairman (p. 186), and the author became its president in 2019 (p. 172).
He is the third son of Raja Lal Khan and grandson of Raja Khwaja Khan of Mohra Graan, Tonin Riki, of the Haveli-wala family. He places the family among the descendants of Raja Jaisak Khan, founder of Mandi Panjeri, without giving the generations between (pp. 263–264); Major Singh had already listed “both Tonins” among Jaisak Khan’s villages (Major Singh (c. 1926), pp. 84, 89). He records that his grandfather and father cured the back pain called chak with the big toe of the right foot, the gift the Chibs trace to Baba Shadi Shaheed (p. 57), as Major Singh had treated children’s swellings in Jammu (Major Singh (c. 1926), p. 28).
How the book came to be (pp. 168–173)
The book grew from the notes of Dr Raja Ijaz-ur-Rahman of Panjeri (1935–2003), who retired as District Health Officer, Mirpur, in 1995 and set out to learn “who we are, where we have come from, why we are called Chib Rajputs”. He read Rajput and Kashmir histories, among them a Tarikh-e-Chibhal credited to Onkar Singh Chib, and found in his family a Jammu revenue pedigree of his maternal grandfather (pp. 168–171).
In 2005 the doctor’s cousin, Raja Aftab Ahmad Khan, then superintendent of the Central Jail at Muzaffarabad and now a retired DIG, gave the author the crumbling manuscript to copy out. The author began a book of his own, but his draft and books were destroyed in the earthquake of 8 October 2005. He rewrote what he remembered and, on becoming the council’s president in 2019, resolved to finish the doctor’s “unfinished mission” (pp. 171–173). He names his debts openly: the doctor’s manuscript, Aftab Ahmad Khan’s help and Iftikhar Ali Khan’s book, which gave him “great help” (pp. 158, 173, 291). He calls himself “neither highly educated nor a historian” (p. 291).
Its sources and its place among the three histories
Much of Chibhal Nama comes from the 1997 history of Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan, often word for word and usually without credit, from the bounds of Chibhal to the families of Khui Ratta and Samahni. Where it repeats the 1997 account, it is a copy, not a third witness.
The author also had Major Singh’s text, for two passages missing from the 1997 book appear in his (Major Singh (c. 1926), pp. 32, 37–39; Chibhal Nama, pp. 62, 72–74). But he quotes Major Singh by the pages of a later edition: his “pp. 48, 49 and 54” are pp. 30, 31 and 36 of the c. 1926 book, and his “second edition” describes events after 1947 (pp. 60–61, 69, 233, 237); two sayings he credits to Major Singh are not found in our copy of the c. 1926 book (pp. 54, 72). His book list credits Tarikh-e-Chibhal to Onkar Singh Chib, Khwaja Press, Delhi (p. 283), whose second edition the 1997 history dates to 1984; he was probably using it. This site cites Major Singh from the c. 1926 original.
Its own material is the families of the last fifty years, which no other book records, the Thakial and Domal chapters, the Chib villages in India, new versions of old stories and a dated table of rulers. Its AD dates for the early rajas and its 1839–1848 story of Faiz Talab Khan give no source.
How our articles use the three books
Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal (c. 1926) is the original: where the books differ, our articles give his account first, then what the 1997 history and Chibhal Nama add or dispute. Chibhal Nama’s unsourced dates appear as its own dating, never as fact.
Read: Sources on Chib history · Thakur Major Singh Chib
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Sources
- Thakur Major Singh Chib, Tarikh-e-Rajgan-e-Bhimber wa Qaum-e-Chibhal (Tarikh-e-Chibhal; Urdu, c. 1926), pp. 7–8, 17–40, 57–58, 73–79, 82–84, 88–89, 93, 97–99.
- Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan, Raja Shadab Khan alias Hazrat Baba Shadi Shaheed (Urdu, Barhang/Karachi, 1997), pp. 18, 30–32, 63–70, 113–123, 146–157, 165, 256.
- Captain (Retd) Muhammad Nadeem Khan, Chibhal Nama (Urdu, Dua Publications, no date [c. 2023]), pp. 2–293.
- Lepel Griffin and C. F. Massy, The Chiefs of the Punjab, as reproduced in the 1997 book, pp. 150–157.
This page is the guide to the third Chib history. It compares Chibhal Nama with Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal (c. 1926, the original) and the 1997 history. Spellings of names follow the books.