Afridi

“ It is his individual touch, his brilliancy in initiative and coolness and daring in execution that has earned the Afridi his high reputation among Pathans. The trans-frontier Pathan with his eternal blood-feuds would naturally have the advantage in this kind of work over the Pathan from our side of the border; his whole life from his boyhood up is a preparation for it. That is why some of the most brilliant soldiers in the Indian Army have been Afridis. ”

“ The strategical advantages conferred by the possession of this tract of country are especially great in the event of the Afridi tribe being ever again arrayed against us. These Shiah clans command one of the shortest routes from the Kohat side to the centre of Tirah by the Landuki Pass; there is access to the Bara Valley by the Maturi or the Uchpal Pass, and by Waran to the Khyber Afridi settlements in Rajgal and Maidan. 362They also overlook the territory of three of the hamsaya clans, and are in rear of the country of some of the Ismailzai divisions. ”

“ It is through their country that the way to the heart of the Afridi mountains lies. They keep the front door to Maidan (which is near the Dargai Pass across the Samana) , whilst the back door is open to Afghanistan, but they possess no back door themselves, so that once their valleys (Khanki and Mastura) are held, they are in the power of the enemy and they must submit. ”

“ AFRIDI, a Pathan tribe inhabiting the mountains on the Peshawar border of the North-West Frontier province of India. The Afridis are the most powerful and independent tribe on the border, and the largest with the exception of the Waziris. Their special country is the lower and easternmost spurs of the Safed Koh range, to the west and south of the Peshawar district, including the Bazar and Bara valleys. On their east they are bounded by British districts, on the north by the Mohmands, on the west by the Shinwaris and on the south by the Orakzai and Bangash tribes. ”

“ The Malikdin Khel is the Khan Khel or head clan of the Afridis, and is closely connected with the Kambar Khel, their settlements in Maidan, Chora and Kajurai lying together. In Maidan they occupy the central and northern portion of the valley—Bagh, the recognised meeting place of the Afridi Jirgahs, “where the Khyber raid and Afridi rebellion of 1897–98 were planned, and where fanaticism, 270intrigue and sedition have always been hot-bedded and nourished,” being in their country. The Malikdin Khels number some 6000 fighting men, and are Samil in politics. ”

“ The Kambar Khel is numerically the most powerful of all the Afridi clans, being able on emergency to put 10,000 armed men in the field; they belong to the Gar political faction. This clan is very migratory, occupying in the hot weather the Kahu Darra and the valley of the Shalobar River, which joins the Bara River at Dwatoi, and moving in the winter to the Kajurai Plain and to other minor settlements. This clan is very strongly represented in the Indian Army and Border Militia. ”

“ As Soldiers The Afridi in appearance is generally a fine, tall, athletic highlander, whose springy step at once denotes 263his mountain origin. They are lean but muscular men, with long, gaunt faces, high noses and cheekbones, and rather fair complexions. ”

“ The twenty thousand Afridis living in the immediate Peshawar frontier are the most turbulent, fanatical, irresponsible tribe of all, ever ripe for revolt, always scheming and conspiring, ready to attack the power that supports them with subsidies,—literally quarreling with their own bread and butter, or, what is more vital, with their own powder and shot. ”

“ The fact is that the British public had become so accustomed to almost bloodless victories over savage enemies that they failed to appreciate the extraordinary difficulties of the Afridi country, and the advantages to the defence which the possession of long-range rifles and smokeless powder confers. Moreover, there are no better marksmen in the world than the Afridis, who are born soldiers, and the mobility of hardy mountaineers in their native hills necessarily exceeds that of regular troops encumbered with baggage and supplies. ”

“ No man may kill his brother while he holds the plough in his hand. The blood-feud is the life of the Afridi, but they prefer some reason in the start. Thus when a certain rifleman ran amuck, and it was necessary that he should be shot, some of his relatives appealed to the officer in command, begging that to them might be given the killing of him since were it done by any not of his own family a feud must be started and many deaths ensue. ”

“ Wishing to live at peace with this tribe, England made an agreement some time ago with them whereby some of the British forts in the hill country were put under the care of the Afridis. Money was paid to the tribe, and arms given out to the men, so that they might be strong enough to protect the British interests. ”

“ The Afridis, who number about thirty thousand families, say they were transplanted by Mahmûd of Ghuzni from the Ghor country, which lies between Kabul and Herat, to their present hills as military colonists for the defence of the Khyber Pass. Two centuries later the colony was increased by fresh arrivals planted by Shahabuddin Ghori. They are probably of Turkish descent. The Afridis are partly cave dwellers, but live also in movable huts of matting and wickerwork—a rough imitation of the Turkoman Khirgar. They have few villages and no tents. ”

“ Our opponents were the great tribe of Afridis, who people the mountains to the west of the cantonment of Peshawar, and who furnish some of the best soldiers in our Punjab regiments. The Afridis are subdivided into a number of clans, all antagonistic to each other. Intertribal wars are of frequent occurrence, and although on many occasions we have been compelled to undertake punitory expeditions against certain of these, [405] it has never been our lot to find such a unanimity of feeling against us as on this occasion. ”

“ A few, who are too old or too young to fight, remain at home and look after the cattle and the scraggy gardens upon the gravelly hillsides. The women are as hardy and as enduring as the men and are taught to handle the rifle. The British authorities are confident of the loyalty of the Afridis and believe that the present arrangement would be absolutely safe in time of war as it is in time of peace--that they would permit no armed body, whether Russians or Afghans, to cross the pass without the consent of both sides, as is provided by treaty stipulations. ”

“ The British connexion with the Adam Khel Afridis commenced immediately after the annexation of the Peshawar and Kohat districts. Following the example of all previous rulers of the country, the British agreed to pay the tribe a subsidy to protect the pass. But in 1850 a thousand Afridis attacked a body of sappers engaged in making the road, killing twelve and wounding six. It was supposed that they disliked the making of a road which would lay open their fastnesses to regular troops. An expedition of 3200 British troops was despatched, which traversed the country and punished them. ”

“ We may quite assume that such a force as is now being collected can be trusted to defeat the Afridis, if they venture to meet us in open fight; but if they resort solely to harassing tactics, we shall have our work cut out for us. ”

“ Our soldiers are more suitably trained for the particular warfare waged in these border hills; they are infinitely better armed; the services of transport and supply are more efficiently organised; the country of the independent tribesmen is more thoroughly known; the moral effect of uniformly successful expeditions—are all factors which more than counterbalance any accession of strength which the last twenty-five years have brought to the Afridis. ”

“ These tribesmen are wiry-looking mountaineers, but they are not such fine men physically, their reputation for courage does not stand so high, nor are they as formidable as their northern neighbours, the Afridis, while they are prone to be influenced by fanaticism to a far greater extent. ”

“ Amir and Afridis The initial outbreaks, preceding that of the Afridis, occurred on the 10th June, 1897, in the Tochi Valley, on the 26th July at the Malakand, and on the 7th August at Shabkadar in the Peshawar Valley; and shortly after this latter date the possibility of the rising, already sufficiently formidable, spreading to the Afridis and Orakzais, caused the concentration at Rawal Pindi of two brigades, in addition to those which had already been formed for service against other tribes on the frontier. ”

“ Anyhow, the result of the expedition fully justified the choice of its commander. The Afridis acknowledged themselves to be thoroughly beaten; and Sir William Lockhart's tact in dealing with them after they had submitted has led to the re-establishment of friendly relations between them and ourselves on a firmer basis than before. What their present attitude is may be judged from the fact that Yar Mahomed, the head of the Malikdin Khels, recently petitioned the Government of India to be allowed to raise 1,500 tribesmen for service in South Africa. ”

“ The youth from whom the figure was taken belonged to the Msegurra tribe; of which I can only state that it is an occupant of some part of the back of the coast of Zanzibar, or Mozambique.
The present group prepares us for a Kaffre; let it also prepare us for a negro one. That all Africans are not negroes may be seen from the figures before us. The negro form is by no means universal—not even in the hottest parts of Africa—not even between the tropics: it is only in the lower levels that the true negro is to be found. ”

“ Each tribe was preceded by its Kait, on horseback and armed only with a stick, then came all the tribe—men, women, and children, two and two, bearing on their heads dishes filled with kuskussu; the richest Arabs walked apart from the line carrying whole sheep, spitted and roasted on a stake. When they had reached Abd-el-Kader’s tent, the chief of each tribe stepped forward and informed him that they had brought the tribute, the Arabs set their dishes on the ground before the tent and thrust the points of the spits on which the sheep were impaled into the ground. ”

“ I have heard of the former of these nations in almost every country I have visited in Africa, from Egypt to the White Nile, including Kordofan and Abyssinia, and even in Arabia, whither their fame has been carried, doubtless, by pilgrims. They are, by most, believed to exist near the Fertit country (south of Darfour) , where there are copper-mines, and the people of which file their teeth to points, saw-fashion.... There is no tribe in this part of Africa, indeed scarcely an individual, but believes in the existence of a race of men with tails. ”

“ Colonel Baker, on his trip to Albert Nyanza found that at least 15,000 Arabs, subjects of the Khedive of Egypt, were engaged in the African slave trade, with head-quarters at Kartoum, and mostly in the pay of merchants there. They were nothing but cruel brigands, well armed and officered, and equal to any outrage on the natives to secure slaves and other booty. They sowed the seeds of anarchy throughout Africa, and contributed to the suspicion, treachery, black-mailing, and every evil that cropped out in the chiefs of the African tribes. ”

“ Of course, being a sensible fellow, and not imaginative, I tried to crystallize my nervous presentiment. Couldn’t, though. It was too subtle, too elusive—too damned African, to put it in the proverbial nutshell. All I was sure of was a sort of half-feeling—and I’ve had it before and since—that Africa was not a continent, but—oh, a being, a sinister, hateful, cruel, brooding monster, with a heart and soul and desires—rotten desires, mostly—and that this Africa hated me, because I was white, because I was an interloper, because I had no business there except—well, dollars and cents. ”

“ Sheikh Afifi now sent me news that his tribe had revolted and had joined the Rizighat, but he himself, true to his promise, was leaving his own country with his family and relatives and was coming to me via Dar Helba, and that he had sent his brother Ali with a message to Beshari Bey Wad Bekir, the head-Sheikh of the Beni Helba, with whom solemn oaths had been exchanged, agreeing to his safe conduct through his country, and therefore he hoped to be with me in a few days. ”

“ In West Africa the propagators of Islam, although using the language of the Prophet, are not Arabs, but Negroes of various tribes. As traders or artisans, they visit the populations along the banks of the Gambia, and penetrate even as far as Ashantiand Dahomey, on the Gold Coast and Bight of Benin. In East Africa the propaganda is also very active on the shores of the Indian Ocean, although here the Arab or Swahili dealers take no interest in the conversion of their wretched victims. ”

“ While this part of the continent was being converted, willingly or by force, to Islam, eastern Africa was invaded in its turn by colonies of merchants, who, however, readily became warriors, and never failed to be apostles. It was thus that Islam gained the shores of the Red Sea, Somaliland, the Zanzibar coast as far as Kiloa, and the islands as far as the Comoto Islands and Madagascar. One nation alone, Ethiopia, entrenched in its huge, mountainous citadel, held out against them. ”

“ A great rendezvous of these was accordingly made, at a spot between the Hejâz and Irâc, whither, yielding to the persuasion of Omar, they now bent their steps. There was rivalry between Jarîr and Arfaja as to the command of this tribe; but the levy had some grudge against Arfaja, who therefore left them and took the command of his own tribe, the Beni Azd. Arfaja is also said, by another tradition, to have led the Beni Bajîla into Syria; but that (if true) must have been a different body of men, and at a different time. ”