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Notes on the Eusofzye tribes of Afghanistan. By the late Capt. Edward Conolly. 



The country of tlie Eusofzyes> is naturally, and by themselves, divided 

 into the Sum, (a Pushtoo word signifying a plain) and the Kohistan or 

 hilly districts, comprising the valleys of Chumla, Booneer, Swat, &c. and the 

 physical characteristics of the two divisions are hardly more opposed to 

 each other, than are the manners and condition of their respective in- 

 habitants. The present memoir will treat chiefly of the Sum, with a few 

 exceptions (to be hereafter mentioned) ; the whole of this tract is peopled 

 by that great branch of the Eusofzyes, called the Munder.'' Scattered over a 

 perfectly level plain, every where practicable for guns, in villages which 

 mutual jealousy prevents them from fortifying even with walls, the Mun- 

 ders have always been exposed to the inroad of foreign invaders, and 

 seem in consequence to have early sought the protection of, and willingly 

 to have submitted to, some one chief of their own clan ; though their peculiar 

 democratic institutions prevented their acknowledging obedience to any 

 minor authority, if we except that capricious and limited deference which 

 custom has accorded to the petty Mulliks. The Mullikzyes, a powerfiil and 

 numerous tribe, whose principal seat is Yar Hossein, the largest village in 

 the Sum, are said formerly to have given a Khan to the Munders;^ but 

 the chieftainship has been in the family of Punjtar since the days of 

 Aurungzebe, whose letters patent it still possesses. Though in the confusion 

 consequent on the dismemberment of the monarchy, several chiefs have 

 risen to limited authority in the Sum, all of them acknowledge as their 

 rightful head — ^if they have ceased to pay obedience to the descendants of— 

 Bagho Khan, the founder of that family, and these alone possess the power 

 of life and death, the Beri Kheil (that of Bagho) being regarded with a 

 respect hardly inferior to that paid by the Dauranees to their Sudozyes. ■* 



Futteh Khan, sixth in descent from Bagho, died a few days before I left 

 Peshawer. The high character he supported during a period of peculiar 

 difficulty, and the light which his history throws on the present condition 

 of the Eusofzyes, require that a slight sketch of hia career should be given. 

 It was during the short, but brilliant reign of Syud Ahmed,^ whose prin- 

 cipal supporter he was, and to whom he may be said to have given the 

 crown, that Futteh Khan obtained his greatest power; not only the 

 Munders, but the Eusofs of Swat and Booneer seem to have acknowledged 

 him as their head and leader at this period, but on the defeat and death 

 of the Syud Badshah, the consequence of Futteh Khan became daily less 

 and less. The Sikhs flushed with victory, poured large armies and large 

 treasures into the plain, and by bribing some, and intimidating others, con- 

 trived, if they could not get possession of the country, to weaken it by 

 exciting jealousies and divisions among the petty tribes, and by substitu- 

 ting numerous small lordships in the place of one common interest. The 



