In 326 BC Alexander the Great met King Porus on the banks of the Jhelum, the river that flows past the Chib homeland. Katoch tradition and the Chibs’ shajra remember Porus as Raja Parmanand Chandra, an ancestor of the Chib Rajputs.
The hills between the Jhelum and the Chenab were known in ancient times as Darvabhisara, and their king Abisares dealt with Alexander the Great. Later they became Chibhal, the land of the Chibs. The long history of the Chib homeland.
Before the Mughals, Bhimber already guarded the southern road into Kashmir. In the age of the Kashmir Sultans a Chib raja turned back an invading army, fugitives sought refuge in his hills, and the armies of three empires passed beneath them.
Rupyal, Barwana, Ghaniyal, Ghaghial and ten more: the fourteen septs of the Chib clan, the ancestors they are named after, and the old order of mandis, garhs and dheris that once divided the kingdom of Bhimber.
After Raja Sultan Khan, the Chibs lost Bhimber to the rising Dogra power of Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu. How more than four centuries of Chib rule came to an end between the 1820s and the Treaty of Amritsar of 1846, and what became of the old ruling families.
A French doctor in the camp of Aurangzeb, an English veterinary surgeon on his way to Central Asia and an English artist bound for Kashmir: what three European travellers saw at Bhimber between 1665 and the 1830s.
The Chibs descend from the Katoch rajas of Kangra, one of the oldest royal houses of the Himalayas. Around 1400 Raja Partab Chand, son of Raja Megh Chand, founded the Chib state of Bhimber, and his son Chib Chand gave the clan and the land of Chibhal their name.
In 1812 Raja Sultan Khan held the heights above Bhimber against a Sikh army sent under Prince Kharak Singh and forced it to retreat: the proudest victory in the history of the Chib rajas.
Raja Sultan Khan defended Bhimber against the Sikh kingdom of Lahore for more than a decade. Imprisoned, released and finally killed at Jammu, he was the last independent ruler of the Chibs.
Faith, lineage, honour and hospitality: the customs that have bound the Muslim Chib Rajputs together for five centuries, from the old fiefs of the Bhimber kingdom to the family gatherings of today.