1862.] An account of Upper and Lower Suwat. 243 
connive at such acts, much less the bishops and priests of those 
countries. Such too is the case in Suwat. The Akhund is high 
priest or rather a devotee, whom the people regard as a saint, and 
who is looked upon, by the people of those extensive regions around, 
as the head of their religion ; hut he is without the slightest real 
power, either temporal or spiritual; his influence being solely through 
the respect in which he is held. 
It is in the villages on the outskirts of Suwat, and other places on 
the border, that bad characters, who have fled from justice, seek 
shelter, with whom the Akhund, as already stated, has no more to 
do than the man in the moon; but parties, for their own purposes, 
make use of the Akhund’s name. 
The Suwati Afghans are so tyrannical, so prejudiced, and so fana¬ 
tical, that even the admonitions, and the expostulations of the 
Akhund are unpalatable to them. Whatever they do not like, or 
whatever may be against the custom of their Afghan nature from 
time immemorial, they will neither listen, nor attend to. A cir¬ 
cumstance which lately happened is a proof of this. A trader of 
Peshawar, after great expense of time and money, had caused to be 
felled, in the hilly district above Suwat, about two thousand pine 
trees, which, in their rough state, were thrown into the river, for the 
purpose of being floated down to Peshawar. When the trader and 
his people, with their rafts, entered the Suwat boundary, the Suwatfs 
seized them, and would not allow the rafts to proceed. The trader 
supposing the Akhund to have influence, went and complained to 
him. The Suwatfs of Lower Suwat, through fear of their chiefs, 
with whom the Akhund had expostulated about the behaviour of 
their people, gave up all the trees they had not made use of them¬ 
selves, and they were not many ; but the people of Upper Suwat, 
that is to say, from Charbagh to Chur-rraey, on both sides of the 
river, would not obey, and did not; and the trees may still be seen, 
lying about in hundreds, on the river’s banks. 
With the exception of a few servants, the Akhund, whose name is 
flEabd-ul-ghaffiir, has no followers whatever. He is of the Naikbf 
Khel (the Naikpee Khail of Elphinstone,) and left Suwat when a 
mere child. He resided in the Khattak country, at Sarae, at the 
zmrat or shrine of Shaykh Pam-Kar, where he remained as a student 
of theology until past his thirtieth year ; and was so abstinent that 
