Niazi

The Niazi (Pashto : نیازي)is a famous Pashtun tribe, a group of the Ghilzai Pashtuns of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The word "Niazi" is like the other forms of Pashtun tribes such as Yusafzai and Orakzai. Niazi is dervied from "Nia-zai". In the Pashtun tribal hierarchy Niazi is one the most respected tribe.

History

Imran Khan Niazi: Pakistani cricketer and politician

The tribes of the Dera Ismail Khan district and the surrounding areas belong almost exclusively to the lineage of Sheikh Baitan, third son of Qais Abdur Rashid. His descendents are known as Bitanni. In the early part of the 8th century, when Baitan was living in his original home on the western slopes of the Ghor mountains, prince Shah Husain of Persia, a descendant of the Ghori kings, flying before the Arab invaders took refuge with him, and married his daughter Bibi Matto. From him are descended the Matti section of the nation, which embraces the Ghilzai, Lodi, and Sherwani pathans. The Ghilzai were the most prominent of all the Afghan tribes till the rise of the Durrani power, while the Lodi section gave to Delhi the Lodi and Suri dynasties. To the Ghilzai and Lodi, and especially to the former, being almost all the tribes of warrior traders who are included under the term Pawindah, from parwindah, the Persian word for a bale of goods, or perhaps more probably, from the same root as powal, a Pashto word for 'to graze'.

It is not to be wondered that these warlike tribes cast covetous eyes on the plains of Indus, held as they were by a Jat population. Early in the 13th century, about the time of Shahab ud-Din Ghori, the Prangi and Suri tribes of the Lodi branch, with their kinsmen the Sherwani, settled in the northern part of the district immediately under the Sulaimans, the Prangi and the Suri holding Tank and Rori, while the Sherwani settled south of the Luni in Draban and Chandwan. In the early part of the 15th century the Niazi, another Lodi tribe, followed their kinsmen from Shalgar (Ghazni) into Tank, where they lived quietly as Pawindahs for nearly a century, when they crossed the trans-Indus Salt Range and settled in the country now held by the Marwat in the south of the Bannu district, then almost uninhabited save by a sprinkling of pastoral Jats, where Babur mentioned them as cultivators in 1505.

During the reign of the Lodi and Suri sultans of Delhi, the Prangi and Suri tribes from which these dynasties sprang, and their neighbors the Niazi, seem to have migrated almost bodily from Afghanistan into Pakistan, where the Niazi rose to considerable power, one of their being the Governor of Lahore. In the early days of Akbar's reign the Lohani, another Lodi tribe, who had been expelled by the Sulaiman Khel Ghilzai from their homes in Katawaz in the Ghazni mountains, crossed the Sulaiman range, the other Lodi tribes were too weak to resist them; and they removed the remaining Prangi and Suri from the Tank. The Lohani are divided into four subtribes, the Marwat, Daulat Khel, Mian Khel and Tator. About the beginning of the 17th century the Daulat Khel quaralled with the Marwats and the Mian Khel and drove them out of Tank. The Marwats moved northwards across the Salt Range and drove the Niazi eastwards across the Kurram and Salt Range into Isa Khel and the banks of the Indus, where they found a mixed Awan and Jat population whom they expelled. Their ancestor Niazai had three sons, Bahai, Jamal and Khaku. The descendents of the first are no longer distinguishable; while the Isa Khel among the Jamal, and the Mushani and Sarhang clans among the Khaku, have overshadowed the other clans and given their names to the most important existing divisions of the tribe. The Isa Khel took root in the south of their new country and shortly developed into agriculturists; the second settled farther to the north round about Kamar Mushani, and seem for a time to have led a pastoral life; while the majority of the Sarhangs, after drifting about for several generations, permanently established themselves across Indus, on the destruction of the Gakhar stronghold of Muazam Nagar by one of Ahmad Shah's lieutenants. That event occurred about 1748, and with it terminated the long connection of the Gakhars with Mianwali. They seem to have been dominant in the northern parts of the country even before the Emperor Akbar presented it in jagir to two of their chiefs. During the civil commotions of Jahangir's reign, the Niazi are said to have driven the Gakhars across the Salt Range, and though in the following reign the latter recovered their position, still their hold on the country was precarious, and came to an end about the middle of the nineteenth century. The Niazi established themselves in Isa Khel about 270 years ago, but their Sarhang branch did not finally obtain its present possessions in Mianwali until nearly 150 years later. The acquisition of their cis-Indus possessions was necessarily gradual, the country having a settled though weak government, and being inhabited by Awans and Jats.

People

Niazis in Pakistan currently live mainly in Bhakkar, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Chakwal District, Swabi , Mardan, Hangu , Kohat and Mianwali district of Punjab Pakistan. However, a large number of the Niazi tribe still lives in parts of Afghanistan, mainly in Qalaye Niazi, Gardez, Logar and Paktia province. A considerable number have also settled in Karachi and other major Pakistani cities such as Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar.

Language

Tribe members living in Afghanistan speak Pashto, as do those inhabiting the districts of Hangu, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Kohat, Swabi and Mardan in the NWFP. However, those Pashtuns living east of Kohat and those living in Punjab have not retained their ancestral language and speak Saraiki dialect which is influenced by Pashto. Niazis strongly observe a pre-Islamic honor code formally known as Pashtunwali.