Jat Muslim

Jat Muslim or Musalman Jat (Punjabi: جٹ مسلمان; Sindhi: مسلمان جاٽ), also spelled Jatt or Jutt (Punjabi pronunciation: [d͡ʒəʈːᵊ]), are an ethnoreligious group and a subgroup of the Jat people, who are followers of Islam and are native to the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent.[1] They are found primarily throughout the Sindh and Punjab regions of Pakistan,[2][3] with a small population in Afghanistan.[4] Jats began converting to Islam from the early Middle Ages onward and constitute a distinct subgroup within the diverse community of Jat people.[5]

Jat Muslim
Regions with significant populations
Pakistan • India • Afghanistan
Languages
Punjabi (and its dialects) • Lahnda • Sindhi (and its dialects) • Hindustani (Urdu-Hindi) • Khariboli
Religion
Islam
Related ethnic groups
Jat people • Gujars • Med people • Baloch

History

They were earliest people in the Indian subcontinent to have interacted with the Muslims as multiple trading communities of Jats already existed in the pre-Islamic Arabia. Jats were referred as Zatts (Arabic: الزُّطِّ, romanized: Az-Zutt) in early Arab writings and Jat-an in Persian.[6] They were present in Mesopotamia and Syria since the time of Sassanid emperor Bahram V (420–438) and were recruited in the Sassanid army as Siyabija and Andāghar.[7] Jats fought against the Muslims in the battle of Chains in 634 CE.[8]

When Arabs entered Sindh and southern Punjab regions of Pakistan in the seventh century, the chief tribal groupings they found were the Jats and the Med people. The Jats were employed as soldiers by the new Muslim administration in Sindh, with a special group known as Sayabijah serving as the treasurers in Basra during the reign of Ali, whose chief Abū Sālama al - Zutti was said to be a pious man.[9] The Muslim conquest chronicles point at the important concentrations of Jats in towns and fortresses of Lower and Central Sindh.[10][11] After Muslim conquest of Sindh in 712, multiple communities of Jats appeared in Iran and Khorasan, and a district they inhabited in Khuzistan or Bahrain came to be known as Al-Zutt,[12] as well as a quarter in Antioch which was also called Az-Zutt.[9] Some of the Jats who were made war prisoners became later famous in the Muslim world, such as the great Imam Abu Hanifa, according to some scholars including Wink,[13][14] and Imam Awza'i.[15] By mid 9th century, their population in the middle east well exceeded 27,000.[16] In 815, a Jat Muslim Al-Sari ibn al Hakam al-Zutti became the emir of Egypt amidst the Abbasid civil war.[17] He was first to attempt for establishing an autonomous Muslim dynasty in Egypt (815–826), and his sons Ubaydallah and Abu Nasr ruled Egypt until it was re-conquered by the Abbasid general Abdallah ibn Tahir in 826.[18] In 834, Jats rose into revolt against the Abbasid caliphate under their leader Muhammad ibn Uthman in the lower Iraq. The rebellion later came to be known as Zutt Rebellion. The rebels were defeated and deported to the village of Al-Zaffaraniya at the Arab-Byzantine border.[16] In 907, a Zutt[19] Ismaili da'i Abu Hatim al-Zutti became active in the region. His followers were called Baqliyya, a sub-sect of Qarmatians, who staged multiple uprisings against the Abbasids in south Iraq.[20] Afterwards, Jats lost their distinct identity in the Mesopotamia that they had previously,[16] probably merging with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq.[21]

Most Jats clans of western Punjab have traditions that they accepted Islam at the hands of Sufi saints of Punjab. Critically, the process of conversion was said to have been a much slower process.[22]

During the era of Mughals there appears to be a little change in their position, with one Nawab Sa'adullah Khan even serving as the Grand Vizier from 1645 to 1656.[23] After the decline of Mughal empire, many communities rose to into revolt. One of them were Afghan Rohillas, who had settled into Rohilkhand by then in large numbers. Their dynasty, the Rohilla dynasty (1714–1774) descended from Nawab Ali Muhammed Khan, who was a Jat[24][25][26] boy of age eight when he was adopted by the chief of the Pashtun Barech tribe, Sardar Daud Khan Rohilla.[25] Due to the role he played in the establishment of Rohilkhand and in the general history of Rohillas, he gained recognition as a Rohilla chief, however, he was not Afghan by birth. Although the Rohillas lost their kingdom after the first Rohilla War in 1774, Faizullah Khan, son of Ali Mohammed Khan, managed to become Nawab of princely state of Rampur. The Kalhoras (1701–1783) of Sindh were also probably from Channa tribe,[27] a sub-division of Jats.[28]

Social organization

In the plains of Punjab, there are many communities of Jat, some of whom had converted to Islam by the 18th century. Those clans that converted to Islam remained in what is now Pakistani Punjab after Partition. In Pakistan, most Jats are land-owning agriculturalists, and they form one of the numerous ethnic group in Sindh.[3][29]

Jats had a strong presence in Balochistan before the Baloch migrations in the medieval ages. The modern Baloch tribes of Babbar, Gurchani, Lanjwani, Kolachi, Zardari and Dodai descend directly from the Jats of Balochistan.

Jats, together with the Rajputs and Gujjars, are the dominant ethnically-Punjabi and religiously-Islamic tribes settled in the regions comprising eastern Pakistan.[30]

Notable people

See also

References
  1. Jairath, Vinod K. (3 April 2013). Frontiers of Embedded Muslim Communities in India. Routledge. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-136-19680-5.
  2. Jat caste on Encyclopedia Britannica website Retrieved 9 November 2020
  3. Jaffrelot, Christophe, ed. (2002). A History of Pakistan and Its Origins. Translated by Gillian Beaumont. London: Anthem Press. pp. 205–206. ISBN 9781843310303. OCLC 61512448.
  4. JĀT, Encyclopædia Iranica
  5. Khanna, Sunil K. (2004). "Jat". In Ember, Carol R.; Ember, Melvin (eds.). Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures. Vol. 2. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media. pp. 777–783. ISBN 9780387299051. OCLC 473757308.
  6. Wink, A. (2002). Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Early medieval India and the expansion of Islam 7th-11th centuries. Vol. 1. Brill Academic Publishers. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-391-04125-7. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  7. Wink, André (2002). Al-Hind, the Making of the Indo-Islamic World: Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam 7Th-11th Centuries. BRILL. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-391-04173-8.
  8. Abdulla, Ahmed (1987). An Observation: Perspective of Pakistan. Tanzeem Publishers. p. 137.
  9. Biladuri, Ahmad Bin Yahya Bin Jabir Al (1 March 2011). The Origins of the Islamic State: Being a Translation from the Arabic Accompanied With Annotations, Geographic and Historic Notes of the Kitab Futuh Al-buldan. Cosimo, Inc. p. 250. ISBN 978-1-61640-534-2.
  10. Wink, André (2002). Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World: Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam, 7th-11th Centuries. Vol. 1. Boston: Brill. pp. 154–160. ISBN 9780391041738. OCLC 48837811.
  11. "Zuṭṭ | people". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  12. Zakeri, Mohsen (1995). Sasanid Soldiers in Early Muslim Society: The Origins of 'Ayyārān and Futuwwa. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 122. ISBN 978-3-447-03652-8.
  13. Wink, André (1991). Al-hind: The Making of the Indo-islamic World. BRILL. p. 161. ISBN 978-90-04-09249-5. Some Jat freemen became famous in the Islamic world , as for instance Abu Hanifa ( 699-767 ? )
  14. Malik, Jamal (6 April 2020). Islam in South Asia: Revised, Enlarged and Updated Second Edition. BRILL. p. 44. ISBN 978-90-04-42271-1. ...Abu Hanifa (699–767), the founder of the Hanafi school of law, who was of Jat stock, most likely descending from those early prisoners sent to Iraq.
  15. Isḥāq, Muḥammad (1955). India's Contribution to the Study of Hadith Literature. University of Dacca. p. 199.
  16. The History of al-Ṭabarī Vol. 33: Storm and Stress along the Northern Frontiers of the ʿAbbasid Caliphate: The Caliphate of al-Muʿtaṣim A.D. 833-842/A.H. 218-227. State University of New York Press. 1 July 2015. p. 7–10. ISBN 978-0-7914-9721-0.
  17. Beg, Muhammad Abdul Jabbar (1981). Social Mobility in Islamic Civilization: The Classical Period : Y Muhammad Abdul Jabbar Beg. University of Malaya Press. p. 171. For instance , al - Sari b . alHakam b . Yusuf al - Zutti " was a governor of Egypt in 200-205 H./815-820 A.D. There were two other reported cases of social mobility among the Zutt people .
  18. Bianquis, Thierry (1998). "Autonomous Egypt from Ibn Ṭūlūn to Kāfūr, 868–969". In Petry, Carl F. (ed.). Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume One: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 86–119. ISBN 978-0-521-47137-4.
  19. Maclean, Derryl N. (1984). Religion and Society in Arab Sind. McGill University. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-315-20821-6.
  20. Daftary, Farhad (30 December 2011). Historical Dictionary of the Ismailis. Scarecrow Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-8108-7970-6.
  21. Wink, André (1991). Al-hind: The Making of the Indo-islamic World. BRILL. p. 157. ISBN 978-90-04-09249-5.
  22. Wink, André (2002). Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World: Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th-13th Centuries. Vol. 2. Boston: Brill. pp. 241–242. ISBN 9780391041745. OCLC 48837811.
  23. Journal of Central Asia. Centre for the Study of the Civilizations of Central Asia, Quaid-i-Azam University. 1992. p. 84. Retrieved 30 July 2022. Sadullah Khan was the son of Amir Bakhsh a cultivator of Chiniot . He belonged to a Jat family. He was born on Thursday , the 10th Safar 1000 A.H./1591 A.C.
  24. Irvine, W. (1971). Later Mughal. Atlantic Publishers & Distri. p. 118. Retrieved 30 July 2022. Once Daud was sent against the village of Bankauli, in pargana Chaumahla, with which his employer was at feud. Along with the plunder taken on this occasion Daud obtained possession of a Jat boy seven or eight years of age, whom he caused to be circumcised and then adopted under the name of Ali Muhammad Khan.
  25. Ḥusain, M.; Pakistan Historical Society (1957). A History of the Freedom Movement: 1707-1831. A History of the Freedom Movement: Being the Story of Muslim Struggle for the Freedom of Hind-Pakistan, 1707-1947. Pakistan Historical Society. p. 304. Retrieved 30 July 2022. Amongst other prisoners he obtained a young Jat boy of eight years . Daud took a fancy to him and adopted him as his son and named him ' Ali Muhammad Khan.
  26. Gommans, Jos J. L. (1995). The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire: C. 1710-1780. BRILL. p. 120. ISBN 978-90-04-10109-8. Most of the contemporary sources, however, call him a Jat or an Ahir.
  27. Brohī, ʻAlī Aḥmad (1998). The Temple of Sun God: Relics of the Past. Sangam Publications. p. 175. Kalhoras a local Sindhi tribe of Channa origin...
  28. Wink, A. (2002). Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Early medieval India and the expansion of Islam 7th-11th centuries. Vol. 1. Brill Academic Publishers. p. 158-159. ISBN 978-0-391-04125-7. Retrieved 2 August 2022. Samma, Sahtah, Chand(Channa)....which appear, at least in the Muslim sources, to be subdivisions of the Jats or to be put on a par with the Jats.
  29. Sumaira Jajja (29 December 2013). "When it comes to 'I do', the cult of clans matter". Dawn (newspaper). Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  30. Christophe Jaffrelot, ed. (2004). A history of Pakistan and its origins. London: Anthem Press. ISBN 1-84331-149-6. OCLC 56646546.
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