Tank District

At the Battle of the Hydaspes (now the Beas River), fought between Alexander the Great's army and the Indian king Purushotthama (better known as Porus), the Macedonian army refused to go any further. It is said that the Alexander's army was at risk of being trapped, or was faced by an enemy army too big to defeat, and had to retreat southwards through the Makran desert.

Islam came in the Tank region in the eighth century A.D., when Umayyad general Muhammad Bin Qasim attacked the Multan region and the nearby areas. The tribe known as Arain in the Tank district is the generation of those Arab soldiers who came towards Multan with Muhammad Bin Qasim.

Finally, the Sikhs from the south overran the local tribes. They annexed the land in 1838. Somewhere in the midst of this turmoil, the British were assembling against the Pashtuns and the First British-Afghan War commenced. The British took over in 1848. The British regiments weren't able to occupy the entire territory and remained in the camps at the foothills of the mountains, while the harsh and dangerous upland terrain remained unexplored.

"...even the shadows of the hills were hazardous."[3]

The eastern border of the Kingdom of Kabul was undefined until 1893 when the Durand Line was established. Under the same agreement, the tribes of Waziristan were clearly designated as being under the British rule.

The British negotiated with the tribes through their agents in the border towns and Tank was a centre of negotiation with the Mahsud tribe. For the Britishers, the Mahsud tribe was the most difficult to control. In 1860, when the Mullah Shaleem Kaka Machi Khel Mahsud's army attacked the British with a 3000 strong armed-men, the British were forced to penetrate into the territory of Tank to control them.

In January 1899, Lord Curzon was appointed as the Viceroy of India. Reaching India shortly after the suppression of the frontier risings of 1897–98, he paid special attention to the independent tribes of the north-west frontier and inaugurated a new province called the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), and pursued a policy of forceful control mingled with conciliation. The only major armed outbreak on this frontier during the period of his administration was the Mahsud Waziri campaign of 1901.

After the partition of the subcontinent, the Tank district became a part of Pakistan. In 2018, the Frontier Region Tank was formally merged with Tank district.

1. Tank Tehsil (Urdu: تحصیل ٹانک)(Pashto: ټانک تحصیل‎)
2. Jandola Tehsil (Urdu: تحصیل جنڈولہ)(Pashto: جنډوله تحصیل‎)
   • formerly Frontier Region Tank (Urdu: سرحدی علاقہ ٹانک)(Pashto: ټانک سرحدي سیمه‎)

The Shrine of Pir Sabir Shah Baba is one of the most visited places in the city. A number of devotees from the city and adjacent districts including Bannu, Lakki and Dera Ismail Khan visit this shrine. The three-day Urs of Pir Sabir Shah Baba is annually organized from June 2 to June 5. Earlier, the Urs was considered to be one of the big festivals of the city and a large number of people attended the Urs. The Shrine Custodian still distribute foods among people visiting the shrine and Halwa (a traditional sweet) is usually given on every Wednesday. Second popular shrine in the Tank region is the Mama Pir Ziarat which is located near Umar Adda and a number of devotees visit the shrine of Mama Pir. The Urs of Mama Pir is also organized annually.

Nawab Qilla is a mud fort built most probably by Nawab Katal Khan with views over an area of more than two hundred Kanals of land. The Qilla is situated at one corner of the Tank city and that is the imaginary line-dividing Tank into upper and lower part. The mud walls are several feet high approximately equal to a modern-day three-story building. Huge trunks of trees can be seen poking out from the walls of Qilla. These were used to give strength and stability to the mud walls. There were four huge burgs at each corner of the Qilla with several intervening pickets at regular distance all around. The four main burgs were used as an entrance for armed men who could move around and reach guard posts from within the Qilla without being seen from outside. The Qilla had three gigantic gates. The diameter or thickness of the wall from the top was initially equal to so that a Tanga (Horse Cart) could easily move over it. The residence of the Nawab Sahib was in the center of Qilla.

The Nawab Bagh was situated at the back of Nawab Qilla, spread over an area of more than five hundred Kanals of land. This bagh was well looked after before, during Nawab Qasim Khan time and perhaps in the early days of Qutbuddin Khan. Nawab Qutbuddin Khan had kept large herd of buffalos, cows and it was not unusual to see a herd of two hundred or more buffalos, cows moving toward Nawab Qilla every day. Nawab Bagh as said before even in the sixties was deserted, has now completely disappeared as the land was sold by Qutbuddin s’ sons and a housing colony named Qutub colony has been constructed over its place right up to city police station and Pir Sabir Shah mausoleum.