Place · Baloch settlement belt on the Indus · Pakistan
Dera Ismāʿīl Khān & the Derajat
Founded in the later fifteenth century by Ismāʿīl Khān, a Baloch chief of the Hot tribe, and one of the Deras — with Dera Ghāzī Khān — that mark where Baloch migration out of the hills settled onto the Indus plain. The Derajat is the hinge of the region: Baloch in origin, Saraiki in speech, Pashtun in its hinterland, and the point where the Gomal caravans came out of the mountains to sell. The town has been moved twice by the river.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 31.831, 70.902
Worth knowing
The two Deras are named after the two brothers who founded them, which makes a stretch of the Indus's right bank the only place in the subcontinent where a pair of cities carry the first names of the men who arrived there.
Connections (3)
- Mythic displacement toMīr Chākar Khān Rind
The Baloch came out of the hills eastward, and Mīr Chākar is the reason the movement is dated. Defeated in the Rind–Lāsharī wars, he left Sibi, allied with Humāyūn against Sher Shāh Sūri, and took land in the Punjab, where he is buried at Satghara. The same displacement settled Baloch tribes along the Indus's right bank, which is what the Derajat is: Dera Ismāʿīl Khān and Dera Ghāzī Khān are Baloch foundations of the later fifteenth century, Baloch in origin and Saraiki in speech ever since.
- Site adjacencyGomal Pass
Dera Ismāʿīl Khān is where the Gomal comes out. The pass carries the valley down from the Ghazni uplands and delivers it to the Indus plain at this town, which is why a Baloch chief's fifteenth-century foundation became the market at the foot of a caravan route — the Povindah kafilas wintered here and dispersed from here into India. The town has been moved twice because the Indus shifted, but the position relative to the mouth of the Gomal has not changed.
- Route adjacencyBahāuddin Zakariya & Rukn-e-Ālam
Multan and the two Deras are the Saraiki-speaking Indus belt, and they belong to one another rather than to the Punjab above or Sindh below. The Derajat was settled by Baloch tribes coming east out of the hills in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Multan was the old city of the same reach of river, with its Suhrawardi shrines and its tilework. The speech, the shrine culture and the Baloch descent run continuously from Dera Ismāʿīl Khān down through Dera Ghāzī Khān to Multan and beyond.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dera Ismail Khan”. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Punjab volume, on the Derajat; Robert Nichols, Settling the Frontier.
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