Tank District

Tank District ٹانک
District
Area Map for the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA showing Tank District alongside other districts
Country	Pakistan
Province	Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Capital	Tank
Area
• Total	1,679 km2 (648 sq mi)
Population  (1998)
• Total	238,216
• Density	142/km2 (370/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+5 (PST)

Tank (Urdu: ٹانک, Saraiki: ٹاک /big>,Pashto: ٹک), is the southern district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, the city of Tank is the capital of the district, which consists Union Council City I and Union Council City II. There are totally sixteen Union councils of district Tank. Tank was formerly part (Tahsil) of district Dera Ismail Khan District. Tank is bounded by the districts of Lakki Marwat to the northeast, Dera Ismail Khan to the east and southeast, and South Waziristan to the southwest, west, and northwest. The climate in Tank reaches 110-120 °F, however in the cold, harsh winters of the mountains, people come to Tank to enjoy a pleasant stay and then resort back during the summer.

Administration

The district contains one tahsil (subdivision), also called Tank. And is represented in the Provincial Assembly by one elected MPA, Ghulam Qader Bittani, who represents the following constituency:

• PF-69 (Tank-1)

History

Prelude

The northern territory between the Indus river and the mountains of Afghanistan was deemed impossible to tread in the days before the creation of Pakistan. Many a kings and great warriors tried to conquer the land by might but the fierce natives would flee them away. With successive by empires from the north like Alexander the Great, the great and Genghis Khan and Mongols from the east and the south, the natives were centred into a limited and desolate land, yet not defeated completely.

The Macedonians flee

At the Battle of the Hydaspes (now the Beas River), fought between Alexander the Great's army and the Indian king Purushotthama (better known as Porus), the Macedonian army refused to go any further. It is said that Alexander's army's was at risk of being trapped, or was faced by an enemy army too big to defeat, and had to retreat southwards through the Makran Desert.

File:Lord and Lady Curzon alongside kill.jpg

Lord and Lady Curzon alongside prize kill, a tiger

The Sikh and British invasions

Finally, the Sikhs from the south over-ran the local tribes. They annexed the land in 1838. Somewhere in the midst of this turmoil, the British were assembling against the Afghans and the First British-Afghan War commenced. Soon the British they took over in 1848; . The British regiments weren't able to occupy the entire territory and remained in camps at the foothills of the mountains. The harsh and dangerous upland terrain remained unexplored.

"...even the shadows of the hills were hazardous."

The British Colonial Rule

The eastern border of the Kingdom of Kabul (Afghanistan) was undefined until 1893 when the Durand Line was demarcated. Done in haste, the Durand Line demarcation is still rallied against (see Interesting References section for more on that). At that moment, the line was used to intentionally separate the fierce Pushtun tribes from the tame. Under the same agreement, the tribes of Waziristan were clearly designated as being under the British rule.

Tank seen as a centre for negotiation

The British negotiated with the tribes through their agents in the border towns and Tank was a centre of negotiation with the Mahsud tribe - the Nawab of Tank having married a Mahsud wife. For the Britishers the Mahsud tribe was the most difficult to control, and in 1860 when the Mahsuds attacked the British with a 3000 strong Lashkar the British were forced to penetrate into the territory of Tank to control them.

The birth of a province

In January 1899, Lord Curzon was appointed Viceroy of India. Reaching India shortly after the suppression of the frontier risings of 1897-98, he paid special attention to the independent tribes of the north-west frontier and inaugurated a new province called the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), and pursued a policy of forceful control mingled with conciliation. The only major armed outbreak on this frontier during the period of his administration was the Mahsud Waziri campaign of 1901.

Culture and Society

The people

The northern settlers are Pushto-speaking people who make their livelihood by farming, land ownership, gun running, smuggling, falcon catching, migration for employment to the Persian Gulf, or by ownership of shops and businesses in Tank.

"Jirga" by definition means council. These are the religious circles and a group of people that decide the fate of the dwellers and rule the people by their sets of laws and principles.

The main language of the district is pashto. 85% of the population of the district speaks pashto, while most of the remaining speaks seraiki.

The tribes

The natives are ruled and distributed into various Pukhtun tribes including the Katti Khel who were the ruler and chiefs (Nawab) of Tank, Bhittanis, Kundi, Mianis (they live in the Gomal valley of Tank), Marwats, Hafiz Khel(Gandapur), Wazir's and the Mahsuds SHEIKH(KOT PATHAN).SHEIKH Tribe in GUL IMAM Both these tribes are at constant quarrel with each other over the territory of Tank as being theirs.

The actual Nawabs of Tank are Katti Khel who came as invaders from Afghanistan with Ibrahim Lodhi. One of generals of his army was appointed as the chief and nawab of Tank, who belonged to province of Katawaz in Afghanistan. The later descendents of him are known as Katti Khel who reside in Tank and Dera Ismail Khan. The chiefs of Katti Khel family were Nawab Shah Nawaz Khan, Nawab Sarwar Khan, Qatal Khan, Nawab Ghulam Qasim Khan, Nawab Quttubudin Khan, whose descendents are Nawab Haibat Khan (deceased 1993), Nawabzadas Azmat, Rehmat, Sadat, Niamet, Nusrat and Hashmat (deceased 1999) Khans. Other members of the family are those who live in Gomal and are descendants of the exiled brother of Nawab Quttubudin Khan who gave them lands for their maintenance and upkeep. These at times do lay claim to the title but have remained of no consequence other than occasionally participating in minor political activity. The language of the district is pashto.

KUNDI

Gulimam ,Daraki,Pai,Shah Alam are the main populous kundi villages.Gulimam is the well known village of them ,having the personalities i,e Habib Ullah Kundi,Mosam Khan ,Shakir Kundi,Amin Jan sheikh.

GullImam

Gullimam is one of major towns of district Tank .Its population is round about 10000 . K,Slamzi.Nasar,Sheikh tribes are the main population of gullImam.Peaople are mostly farmers .it has produced personalities in various walks of life.Habib ullah kundi,Aman ullah kundi ,Fazal Karim kundi,Abdul waheed kundi,irfan kundi, Shakir Azeem Kundi,,Amin Jan Sheikh,Maulana Abdur Rauf ,are the well known personalities of Tank.

See also

• Federally Administered Tribal Areas
• Indus River
• Beas River
• Pashtun people
• Lord Curzon
• Alexander the Great

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• Durand Line re-demarcation
• http://www.maplandia.com/pakistan/n-w-f-p/dera-ismail-khan/mullazai/