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Fig. 132.

Area, 2858 sq. m. Cultd area, 673 sq. m. Pop. 603,028. Land Rev. Rs. 512,897 = £34,193.

Hazára is a typical montane and submontane district with a copious rainfall and a good climate. It has every kind of cultivation from narrow terraced kalsí fields built laboriously up steep mountain slopes to very rich lands watered by canal cuts from the Dor or Haro. Hazára is divided into three tahsíls, Haripur, Abbottábád, and Mansehra. Between a fourth and a fifth of this area is culturable and cultivated. In this crowded district the words are synonymous. The above figure does not include the 204 square miles of Feudal Tanáwal. The rainfall is copious and the crops generally speaking secure. The principal are maize 42 and wheat 25 p.c. Hazára was part of the territory made over to Rája Guláb Singh in 1846, but he handed it back in exchange for some districts near Jammu. The maintenance of British authority in Hazára in face of great odds by the Deputy Commissioner, Captain James Abbott, during the Second Sikh War is a bright page in Panjáb history, honourable alike to himself and his faithful local allies. The population is as mixed as the soils. Patháns are numerous, but they are split up into small tribes. The Swátís of Mansehra are the most important section. After Patháns Gújars and Awáns are the chief tribes. The Gakkhars, though few in number, hold much land and a dominant position in the Khánpur tract on the Ráwalpindí border. The Deputy Commissioner is also responsible for our relations with 98,000 trans-border tribesmen. The district is a wedge interposed between Kashmír on the east and Pesháwar and the tribal territory north of Pesháwar on the west. The Indus becomes the border about eight miles to the north of Amb, and the district consists mainly of the areas drained by its tributaries the Unhár, Siran, Dor, and Haro. On the eastern side the Jhelam is the boundary with Kashmir from Kohála to a point below Domel, where the Kunhár meets it. Thence the Kunhár is the boundary to near Garhí Habíbullah. To the south of Garhí the watershed of the Kunhár and Jhelam is close to these rivers and the country is very rough and poor. West of Garhí it is represented by the chain which separates the Kunhár and Siran Valleys and ends on the frontier at Musa ká Musalla (13,378 feet). This chain includes one peak over 17,000 feet, Málí ká Parvat, which is the highest in the district. The Kunhár rises at the top of the Kágan Glen, where it has a course of about 100 miles to Bálakot. Here the glen ends, for the fall between Bálakot and Garhí Habíbullah is comparatively small. There is a good mule road from Garhí Habíbullah to the Bábusar Pass at the top of the Kágan Glen, and beyond it to Chilás. There are rest-houses, some very small, at each stage from Bálakot to Chilás. The Kágan is a beautiful mountain glen. At places the narrow road looks sheer down on the river hundreds of feet below, rushing through a narrow gorge with the logs from the deodár forests tossing on the surface, and the sensation, it must be confessed, is not wholly pleasant. But again it passes close to some quiet pretty stretch of this same Kunhár. There are side glens, one of which opposite Naran contains the beautiful Safarmulk Lake. Near the top of the main glen the Lulusar Lake at a height of 11,167 feet and with an average depth of 150 feet is passed on the left. In the lower part of the glen much maize is grown. As one ascends almost the last crop to be seen is a coarse barley sown in June and reaped in August. Where the trees and the crops end the rich grass pastures begin. Kágan covers between one-third and one-fourth of the whole district. The Siran flows through the beautiful Bhogarmang Glen, at the foot of which it receives from the west the drainage of the Konsh Glen. Forcing its way through the rough Tanáwal hills, it leaves Feudal Tanáwal and Badhnak on its right, and finally after its junction with the Dor flows round the north of the Gandgarh Range and joins the Indus below Torbela. The bare Gandgarh Hills run south from Torbela parallel with the Indus. The Dor rises in the hills to the south of Abbottábád and drains the Haripur plain. A range of rough hills divides the Dor valley from that of the Haro, which again is separated from Ráwalpindí by the Khánpur Range. To the west of the Siran the Unhár flows through Agror and Feudal Tanáwal, and joins the Indus a little above Amb. Irrigation cuts are taken from all these streams, and the irrigated cultivation is often of a very high character. The best cultivation of the district is in the Haripur plain and the much smaller Orash and Pakhlí plains and in the Haro valley. There is much unirrigated cultivation in the first, and it is generally secure except in the dry tract in the south-west traversed by the new railway from Sarai Kála. The little Orash plain below Abbottábád is famous for its maize and the Pakhlí plain for its rice.

Feudal Tanáwal is a very rough hilly country between the Siran on the east and the Black Mountain and the river Indus on the west. It is the appanage of the Kháns of Amb and Phulra.

North of Feudal Tanáwal is Agror. In 1891 the rights of the last Khán were declared forfeit for abetment of raids by trans-bordermen.

There are fine forests in Hazára, but unfortunately the deodár is confined to the Kágan Glen and the Upper Siran. Nathiagalí, the summer headquarters of the Chief Commissioner, is in the Dungagalí Range. The Serai Kála-Srínagar railway will run through Hazára. There is a good mule road from Murree to Abbottábád through the Galís.

2. Tribal Territory