Thotha Rai Bahadur: The Rais of Khari Kariali

Thotha Rai Bahadur is a village in Kharian tehsil of Gujrat district, in Pakistan’s Punjab, and the ancestral seat of the Rais of Khari Kariali, the senior line of Raja Mal Khan’s Chib descendants. It takes its name from Rai Bahadur Khan, a ta’alluqadar of 84 villages in the reign of Aurangzeb, and has been the home of the Tikka of Khari Kariali and his kin for more than three centuries.

Thotha Rai Bahadur’s origins: the kot on the mound

The story of Thotha Rai Bahadur belongs to Khari Kariali, the western Chib state that fell to Raja Mal Khan, son of Raja Shadab Khan (Baba Shadi Shaheed), when the country of the Chib Rajputs was divided in the Mughal period. Mal Khan, his eldest son Raja Ali Ghayas Khan (Alghash Khan) and his grandson Raja Budha Khan lived at Balani, also called Kartu Balani and now Purani (Old) Balani, which then lay on the royal road from Kashmir through Bhimber and Jhelum to Kabul (pp. 139, 141). Budha Khan’s family, with full access to the Mughal court, won the dependent holding of 84 villages and several imperial ranks (p. 141).

Budha Khan’s eldest son, named in different passages Raja Malik Khan, Malik Hasan Khan or Raja Mal Khan the second, moved out of Balani and built houses and forts on a high mound about a kos, a mile and a half to two miles, west of the village of Thotha. Four generations lived in this kot: Malik Khan, his son Rai Rawal Khan, Rai Rawal’s son Rai Ghazni Khan (also read Rai Arti) and his son Rai Man Shah (pp. 139, 141–142). Before the mandis were established, the book adds, this seat was also known as Bhimber Reki, the Rai’s Bhimber (p. 141).

Rai Bahadur Khan and the emperor’s camp

Rai Man Shah’s eldest son, Rai Bahadur Khan, was ta’alluqadar of 84 villages. He built a fortress around the kot and renamed the nearby village of Thotha, where Thotha Jats were settled, after himself: Thotha Rai Bahadur. It became the centre of all Raja Mal Khan’s descendants (pp. 141–142). Thakur Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal discusses the name and its background on its pages 85–87 (p. 141).

The family also remembers an imperial favour. Beside Kartu Balani on the royal road, where the tents of the emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir (r. 1658–1707) had been pitched, the emperor granted Rai Bahadur Khan a block of five hundred bighas as a reward for good service. The tract, between Balani and Pir Khana, is still called Chak Rai Bahadur (p. 142). Rai Bahadur Khan had four brothers, Mian Hamzah, Mian Janda, Mian Kalyan Khan and Mian Aliya, whose descendants all live in Thotha Rai Bahadur, and two sons, Rai Shujawal Khan and Balawar Khan (p. 142).

A feud with Samahni: from 84 villages to 22

The next generation brought disaster, and the book tells the story in detail (p. 142). Hakim Khan of Samahni, a kinsman descended from Raja Alghash Khan’s son Shah Khan, had risen high at the Mughal court: his daughter’s daughter was a consort of Aurangzeb, and Hakim Khan became the emperor’s chauri-bardar, the bearer of the fly-whisk (pp. 142, 144). Coveting the 84 villages, he plotted to kill Rai Shujawal Khan. He bribed a Mirasi, one of the hereditary bards, who struck at the sleeping Rai with a sword at night and cut off his feet; Hakim Khan then left for Delhi.

Rai Shujawal’s son, Rai Baz Khan, resolved on revenge, and when Hakim Khan next returned from Delhi he killed him. Because Hakim Khan was an official of the imperial court, the 84 villages were confiscated and Rai Baz Khan was held in confinement for some time. He came home with a parwana, a written grant, for 22 villages instead of 84 (pp. 141–142). Besides Thotha Rai Bahadur, the family’s holdings included Chak Rai Sultan and Chak Rai Bahadur Hisam, and near Samahni once Chak Sarsala, which no longer exists (p. 141). The Samahni side of the story is told in the Samahni Chibs.

Rai Sultan Khan and the burnt title-deeds

Rai Baz Khan died in the old kot. After his death, the book says, an elderly ta’alluqadar who wished to harm his son Rai Sultan Khan burned all the family’s sanads and pattas, its title-deeds and leases, and the jagirs suffered for it. Rai Sultan Khan held 22 villages. He also settled a new block of a thousand bighas, after displacing the Chauhans who held it, still known as Chak Sultan, and he was the first of the line to come down from the kot and live in the village itself (p. 143).

The Rais of Thotha Rai Bahadur

The book lists the heads of the house from Rai Bahadur Khan to its own day (pp. 141–143, 184–185). Dates are given only for the later chiefs.

Rai Dilawar Khan and the tikka of 1879

Rai Fateh Muhammad Khan was succeeded by his eldest son, Rai Dilawar Khan. On 28 Maghar 1936 Bikrami, about December 1879, the qashqa of rajaship, the tikka mark of a chief, was given to him in the presence of notables of the Chib gots, Ghanyal, Ghambyal, Rupal, Malkal, Mahmyal, Samwalia, Miana, Dhoryal and Jaiskal, and of the Jarral and Gakkhar tribes, and the succession was entered in the government records (p. 143).

When Tarikh-e-Chibhal was written in the 1920s, Rai Dilawar Khan was a kursi-nashin of Rawalpindi Division, entitled to a chair at official durbars, and a safed-posh, or recognised local notable; he had served seven years on the District Board, held 75 bighas of revenue-free land and was well regarded by both the brotherhood and the government (p. 143). He also compiled family genealogies and historical notes that the author later used as sources (p. 24). He died on 29 April 1936 and lies in the ancient Lari graveyard of Thotha Rai Bahadur, under an inscription that styles him Rai Bahadur and wali, or ruler, of Thotha Rai Bahadur (p. 143).

Who applies the tikka

By a custom that the book traces to Baba Shadi Shaheed himself, the tikka of the Khari Kariali house is applied only by the sajjada-nashin, the hereditary successor, of the saint Miran Syed Jafar Shah, and the ceremony takes place at Thotha Rai Bahadur (p. 114). When the head of the Bhimber royal family was installed at Jhelum in 1908, the gaddi-nashin of Syed Jafar’s khanqah, Pir Lal Nath, attended alongside Rai Dilawar Khan of Thotha Rai Bahadur (p. 136).

Rai Abdullah Khan and the shrine of Baba Shadi Shaheed

Rai Dilawar Khan’s eldest son, Rai Abdullah Khan, served as naib tahsildar in Phalia and Chakwal tehsils and as office superintendent to the Deputy Commissioner of Mianwali, and retired as a tahsildar. The book calls him one of the most renowned personalities of the Chibhal brotherhood in his time (p. 143).

He was also devoted to his ancestor. Before 1947 he was president of the management committee formed by the Chibhal brotherhood to run the shrine of Baba Shadi Shaheed on Aadhi Dhak near Bhimber, and the present domed roof of the shrine’s old mosque was completed during his presidency (p. 184). The committee’s secretary, Master Raja Khan Malik Khan of Barhang, told the author that the mosque’s wooden roof had fallen in three or four times after repairs, until the saint appeared to him in a dream and told him to build a dome instead; the domed roof, he said, has stood ever since (p. 380; see the shrine of Baba Shadi Shaheed). Rai Abdullah Khan died on 23 December 1959 and is buried in the family graveyard (p. 184).

The sons of Rai Abdullah Khan

• Rai Bahadur Abdullah Khan (d. 1959)
  • Rai Muhammad Ziaullah Khan (7 June 1905 – 21 October 1989): began in the civil service before 1947, became Settlement Commissioner after it and retired as a Deputy Commissioner; succeeded his father; left no son
  • Major Raja Muhammad Sanaullah Khan (1 June 1907 – 18 December 1985, at Rawalpindi): army officer, retired as a major and lived in Gujrat; known for his wide knowledge of Chibhal
    • Col. (Retd) Raja Parvez Masood Akhtar Khan, Tikka of Khari Kariali and Rai of Thotha Rai Bahadur (1997)
    • Brig. (Retd) Raja Gulrez Akhtar Khan
    • Maj. Gen. Raja Asif Dilawaiz Khan, serving in 1997
    • Maj. (Retd) Raja Amjad Naukhez Khan
    • Raja Sajid Mahmood Khan and Raja Tariq Dilawaiz Khan, in business
  • Raja Munirullah Khan (1909 – 3 August 1965, at Lahore): revenue officer, whose gravestone calls his death a martyrdom; his sons Raja Masood Akhtar Khan and Raja Shahid Mahmood Khan are in business

A refuge for the Bhimber royal family

After the fall of Bhimber, Raja Sultan Khan’s son Raja Faiz Talab Khan brought his family, household and armed retainers to Thotha Rai Bahadur (pp. 135, 148). The book’s two accounts differ on the details: he stayed six or seven years, or about ten, until Gulab Singh of Jammu, told that the Chibs were gathering there to retake Bhimber, had him moved away from the Grand Trunk Road. He received a pension of Rs 10,000 a year from the British and eventually settled at Saidpur in Jhelum district (pp. 135–136, 148, 153). See the Bhimber royal family.

Raja Wilayat Khan, servant of the Chib nation

Thotha Rai Bahadur also produced one of the clan’s pioneering researchers. Raja Wilayat Khan, son of Raja Alam Khan, was known as Khadim-e-Qaum Chib, servant of the Chib nation. To compile the history of Chibhal he spent months with the Hindu family priests, the prohits, of Nagarkot Kangra and Hardwar, and had the genealogy of the Katoch house of Kangra and the shajra of the Chibs attested by them (pp. 25, 186). He completed a history of the clan but died suddenly on 23 January 1948 before it could be published, and lies in the Lari graveyard (p. 186). The 1997 author summarises his findings and corrects several of them (pp. 29–32); see the historians of Chibhal.

Notable people of Thotha Rai Bahadur

Beyond the Rai family, the book lists men of the village who made their mark (pp. 185–186):

• Armed forces: Major (Retd) Raja Ikramullah Khan, brother-in-law of Rai Abdullah Khan’s sons, whose seven sons include Air Vice Marshal Raja Muhammad Aftab Khan of the Pakistan Air Force, Colonel Raja Waqar Ahmad Khan and Dr Raja Mubashir Iqbal; Subedar Major (Retd) Raja Ubaidullah Khan; Colonel (Retd) Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan; Subedar (Retd) Raja Muhammad Asghar Khan; Chief Petty Officer Raja Muhammad Arif Khan; Major Raja Muhammad Azhar Khan; Colonel Raja Nadeem Iqbal Khan; Flying Officer Raja Tahir Mahmood Khan; Lieutenant Raja Jamroz Khan, Tamgha-e-Jurat; and Raja Allah Ditta Khan Shaheed, Sitara-e-Jurat.
• Local government: former chairmen of the Thotha Rai Bahadur Union Council Raja Muhammad Ashraf Khan, son of Raja Dilawar Khan; Raja Allah Ditta Khan, son of Raja Feroz Khan; Raja Feroz Khan, son of Lt. Raja Jamroz Khan, also a member of the advisory committee of Baba Shadi Shaheed’s shrine; and Raja Muhammad Zulfiqar Khan, son of Raja Muhammad Shafi Khan, also a member of the Gujrat District Council.
• Law and banking: Shahid Mahmood Raja, advocate, general secretary of the Kharian Bar in 1989; the bank managers Raja Gulzar Khan and Raja Muhammad Iqbal; and Raja Azhar Mahmood of the National Savings Centre.

Timeline

• Mughal era Raja Mal Khan’s line settles at Balani; Budha Khan’s son builds the kot west of Thotha
• 1658–1707 In Aurangzeb’s reign Rai Bahadur Khan renames Thotha and receives Chak Rai Bahadur; the feud with Hakim Khan cuts the holding from 84 villages to 22
• 1810 Khari Kariali is annexed by Ranjit Singh
• c. 1849 Raja Faiz Talab Khan of Bhimber takes refuge at Thotha Rai Bahadur
• 1879 Rai Dilawar Khan installed as chief (28 Maghar 1936 Bikrami)
• 1936 Death of Rai Dilawar Khan (29 April)
• 1948 Death of Raja Wilayat Khan, Khadim-e-Qaum (23 January)
• 1959 Death of Rai Abdullah Khan (23 December)
• 1989 Death of Rai Muhammad Ziaullah Khan (21 October)
• 1997 Col. (Retd) Raja Parvez Masood Akhtar Khan named as Tikka of Khari Kariali

Frequently asked questions

Continue reading

• Khari KarialiThe second Chib state and the house of Raja Mal Khan
• The Bhimber Royal FamilyFrom Faiz Talab Khan to the present chief
• The Shrine of Baba Shadi ShaheedThe tomb on Aadhi Dhak near Bhimber
• The Samahni ChibsRaja Hakim Khan, Raj Bai and the kot of Samahni
• The Historians of ChibhalWho wrote the history of the Chibs?
• Pothi and LehriTwo Chib jagirs, one ancestor