The Dilazak and Tajik

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This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on The Races, Castes and Tribes of the People in the Report on the Census of the Panjab published in 1883 by the late Sir Denzil Ibbetson, KCSI Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article.

The Dilazak and Tajik

(Caste No. 145)

Acting upon the advice of an educated Extra Assistant Commissioner a native of Peshawar, I unfortunately took the figures for Tajik and Dilazak together under the head Tajik. In reality they are distinct. Of the 2,048 persons entered in my tables as Tajik, 1,519 are really Dilazak, and so returned themselves. Besides these there are 1,546 Dilazak who have returned themselves as Pathans, of whom 825 are in Rawal pindi and 695 in Ilazara. The origin and early history of the Dilazak have already been noticed in sections 408 and 409. They were the inhabitants of the Peshawar valley before the Pathan invasion, and are apparently of Seythic origin and came into the Panjab with the Jats and Katti in the 5th and 6th centuries. They soon became powerful r.nd important and niled the whole valley as far as the Indus and the foot of the northern hills. In the first half of the 13th century the Yusufzai and JMohmand drove them across the Indus into Chach-Pakhli. But their efforts to regain their lost territories were such a perpetual source of disturbance, that at length Jahangir deported them en masse and distributed them over Hindustan and the Dakhan. Scattered famihes of them are still to be found along the leit bank of the Indus in Hazara and Rawalpindi.

The Tajik are apparently the original inhabitants of Persia ; but now-a days the word is used throughout Afghanistan to denote any Persian-speak- ing people who are not either Saiyad, Afghan, or Hazara ; much as Jat or Hindki is used on the upper Indus to denote the speakers of Panjabi or its dialects. They are described by Dr. Bellew as peaceable, industrious, faithful, and intelligent. In the villages they cultivate, and in the towns they are artisans and traders ; while almost all the clerkly classes of Afghanistan are Tajiks.