History
Amb and surrounding areas have a long history which can be traced to the time of the invasion of the region by Alexander the Great. Arrian, Alexander's historian, did not indicate the exact location of Embolina, but since it is known that Aoronos was on the right bank of the River Indus, the town chosen to serve as Alexander's base of supplies may with good reason be also looked for there. The mention in Ptolemy's Geography of Embolina as a town of Indo-Scythia situated on the Indus supports this theory.
In 1854 General James Abbott, the British frontier officer from whom Abbottabad, administrative centre of Hazara, takes its name, discussed the location of Aornos on the Mahaban range south of Buner. He proposed, as M. Court, one of Ranjit Singh's French generals had done before him in 1839, to recognize Embolina in the village of Amb situated on the right bank of the Indus.This is the place from which the Nawabs of Amb took their title.
Amb State was once known as Mulk e Tanawal (Country/area of Tanawal). The word 'Tanawal' is derived from Taniwal, with Amb as its capital, and was the tribal homeland of the Tanoli people. The early history of the region goes back to the centuries before the Mughal Empire, when in the early fourteenth century the Tanoli tribe under its chieftains arrived here from Central Asia, via Afghanistan, and conquered it and settled here on the banks of the river Indus and a wide area around it, which thus came to be known as Tanawal.
From early on, the Tanawal area by and large managed to remain free from the influence of the Mughals, Afghans, Sikhs and British; and beyond paying occasional simple taxes to central authorities, the people of Tanawal had little or no contact with the outside world for long. At most times, they would resist such authority, preferring to be ruled by their own chiefs at a local level. Initially, uptil the late-18th or early-19th centuries, Tanawal itself was not one consolidated state but an area where several important Tanoli chiefs each exterted his powers within a zone of influence, although the Hindwal section chiefs remained comparatively stronger and one of them, Mir Painda Khan, was finally able to bring the whole area under his sway.
Read more about this topic: Amb (princely State)
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