Pir Roshan - Exile and Rebellion

Exile and Rebellion

Bayazid belonged to a religious family and his father was a Qazi of Waziristan area. However, Bayazid himself was against many of the customs which prevailed in his time and specifically in his family. These were usually the fringe benefits which his family received being considered as scholarly and religious. He was known as a strong willed, stubborn man inclined to "express" himself. Once this led to a heated argument with his brother and upon intervention of his father he was given the choice of either he leave or his give up his radical ideas. He opted to leave and started spreading his ideas away from his home. He found ears in the Mohmand tribesmen, from there he went to the Peshawar valley and started spreading his message to the Khalils and Muhammadzais. However when he and his followers started spreading word of their movement amongst the Yousafzais he went into direct confrontation with the orthodox followers of Pir Baba of Buner. Soon he established his base in the Tirah valley where he rallied other tribes to his cause. He eventually raised the flag of open rebellion to the Mughal Emperor Akbar after Akbar's proclamation of Din-i-Ilahi and although he led his army successfully in several skirmishes and battles against Mughal forces, they were eventually routed in a major battle in Nangarhar by the Mughal General Muhsin Khan.

He escaped but later would be surrounded, and wounded, by a Yousafzai Lashkar near Topi and later killed by them near Tarbela. There is a controversy about his year of death, which is recorded as 1585. But it looks more likely that it was in 1581, soon after he was defeated by the Mughal General along with his sons. All his sons were put to death with one exception. His youngest, fourteen-year-old, son Jalala who was also captured was, due to his tender age, pardoned and released by Emperor Akbar himself. This son—Jalala—soon took up arms and it was this Pir Jalala Khan who engaged Mughal armies successfully. Raja Birbal a favorite of Mughal Emperor Akbar, was killed fighting against Jalala Pir near Jamrod in what is now the Khyber Agency in 1587.(This also supports Pir Roshan's death in 1581, as Jalala (it is rumored that the city of "Jalalabad" is named after him) was by then leading his Lashkars in the field). After Jalala's death on the battlefield, his nephew Ahdad (also spelled Ihdad)Khan took charge of the struggle against many of the famous Mughal commanders of that time, like Raja Man Singh, Zain Khan Kokaltash, Qaleech Khan, Mahabat Khan, Ghairat Khan and Muzaffar Khan. As part of a concerted campaign to destroy the Roshaniyyas, around 1619 or 1620, Mahabat Khan, under the Emperor Jahangir, treacherously massacred 300 Daulatzai Orakzai in the Tirah (which straddles the Khyber and Kurram agencies today), who were Roshaniyya members. Absent and on a visit to see Emperor Jahangir at Rohtas, Ghairat Khan was sent back to the Tirah region to engage the Roshaniyya forces with a large military force via Kohat. He advanced to the foot of the Sampagha pass, which was held by the Roshaniyyas under Ahdad Khan and the Daulatzai under Malik Tor.

The Rajputs attacked the former and the latter were assailed by Ghairat Khan's own troops, but the Mughal forces were repulsed with great loss. Six years later, however, Muzaffar Khan, son of Khwaja Abdul Hasan, then Sibahddr of Kabul, marched against Ahdad Khan by the Sugawand pass and Gardez, and after five or six months' of intense fighting, Ahdad Khan was killed fighting sword in hand and his head sent back to Emperor Jahangir. Ahdad Khan's Roshaniyya followers then took refuge in the Logar. The death of Jahangir in 1627 led to a general uprising of the Afghans against Mughal forces to put an end to attempts of Mughal domination.

Later Abdul Qadir, Ahdad's son, along with his mother and Ahdad's widow, Allai Khatoon (daughter of Pir Jalala), returned to the Tirah to seek badal (vengeance). There, under Abdul Qadir's command, the Roshaniyya defeated Muzaffar Khan's forces. Muzaffar Khan was attacked while on his way from Peshawar to Kabul, and severely handled by the Orakzai and Afridis. Muzaffar Khan was killed near Peshawar. Abdul Qadir attacked Peshawar, plundered the city, and invested the citadel.

It was not till the time of Mughal Emperor Shah Jehan (1628–1658) the grandson of Emperor Akbar (1542–1605) when a truce was brokered through Mughal commander Said Khan with Abdul Qadir, Bayazid's great grandson. Thus, the "peace" was brokered between the grandson of the Emperor and the great grandson of "Insurgent/Freedom Fighter." It was only after Emperor Akbar's death in 1605, that Bayazid Khan's descendants who moved to Jullundhar purchased lands from the local land owners and established Basti Danishmandan and Basti Sheikh Derveish and later Basti Baba Khel (in fact at the place of Basti Baba Khel there already existed a village which was appendid by "Khel" to pushtunize it). The Baba Khel branch of the Baraki would live here in fortress like compounds fighting off the sikhs who surrounded their lands until the early 20th century (the last skirmishes between the two). In 1947, with the partition, his descendants (many serving in the British Indian Army and Navy) would flee to the new state of Pakistan.