HARKING BACK: In search of ancestors strange mysteries unveiled

This search for ancestors was triggered by some documents given to me by my uncle, though much younger in age, he was hungry for more information about our family. The ‘hakeem’ had a good look at me and told me that if I needed to trace my family history he would tell me the exact person to go to if I told him my family ‘haveli’ address and name. I did the needed and he picked up a dark brown almost dilapidated file that had the names of all the old ‘hakeems’ in the old walled city. He targeted our elders Kucha Chabakswaran house and recommended that I visit a certain ‘hakeem’ shop. With a rare urgency I headed that way and found a small old shop laden with jute sacks with dried herbs and even stranger tree bark.

He spent his time and said to me: “What is your exact name”. I told him and after a search over three or four pages he said: “Are you the grandson of Syeda Begum of the Chishti family of Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti?” That came as a shock. On getting an affirmative response he told me a few things I had never known. The antics of my elders had better remain secret. But the very fact that he knew my English mother’s name and all her children, even those born in England, was a wee bit upsetting. “Gosh, this chap is dangerous,” I said to myself.

He then turned a few pages as if to discover other juicy facts and said: “Your distinguished grandmother married a Sheikh … just imagine”, he murmured to himself. I was getting annoyed but the old ‘hakeem’ was loaded with information I had never known. The shocking thing was that he knew just where my Sheikh grandfather once lived in Lohari Gate, and that my thrice removed great grandfather was Sheikh Ghias and Sheikh Elahi Bakhsh, the chief of artillery in the army of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, and that his brother Sheikh Shamsuddin who had set up an ammunition factory in Amritsar, which the British dismantled. That was understandable for the Sikh era had ended.

Then the old ‘hakeem’ set about telling me about my paternal ancestors. To be honest I never knew all these facts, and the purpose of writing this column is to make young people interested and aware of their lineage. He flipped through a number of files, and seemed almost possessed by the exercise. I must confess I was scared of what he would next tell me. Then he started: “You are Nilli Jatts, traditionally cavalrymen, and your ‘gotra’ is Sindhu Jatt. Your entire family were members of a daring cavalry regiment in the Army of Ranjit Singh named ‘Nilli Dasta’.”

“They were great attackers and within minutes dispersed after disrupting retreating Afghan looters”, he said with a smile. Suddenly he was sounding more like a nationalistic historian loaded with facts. His narration was his seldom used script.

It then suddenly made sense that sitting in Kucha Chabakswaran, or the Prescient of Horsemen, why a location makes great sense about old original families. As I had read ‘Tehkiqat-e-Chishti’ by Noor Ahmed Chishti, who was my grandmother’s grandfather, which was revised by the family, more so by the well-known scholar Allama Qasim Jaffer, who always claimed that the family were original Syeds. Obviously the old man laughed it off and asked us not to listen to ‘half-truths’.

I had been through its revised version in which the family tree actually has my name as well as that of my brothers and sisters. But my interest in my paternal family needed a more in-depth explanation. He pulled out an old yellowing paper and put on a very strong lens. “Ah, your ancestors belonged to the Kanhaiya Misl which was based in Dera Baba Nanak, Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Ajnala, as well as Nag. They had a lot of ammunition making concerns.”

All these made considerable sense because later on when the British took over a majority of my father’s uncles and cousins became engineers. My grandfather’s elder brother, Sheikh Abdur Rehman, had a hand in designing the Guddu Barrage and was Punjab’s Chief Engineer. But I was interested in the family origins of the parents of Sheikh Elahi Bakhsh and Sheikh Ghias.

It seems that six generations ago the entire clan flowed from a Mamee Rajo, daughter of Sheikh Wali Muhammad. This part of the clan belonged to a village near Amritsar. Now Rahim Bakhsh had two wives but no issue. The intricate details would bore the reader, but in the end we see Sheikh Shamsuddin, the ordinance factory owner and grandson of Elahi Bakhsh the chief of Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s artillery. The other branches are so large that it will take pages to describe, so we remain glued to the ordinance factory great grandfather.

He had a son Sheikh Abdullah, who died in 1908. His death saddened the father who died in 1909. The youngest Abdul Karim died aged four in 1909. His wife died in 1908. Then comes my grandfather Sheikh Abdul Rahim, the Zaildar of Ferozpur who died after falling from his horse in 1922. My father Abdul Hamid Sheikh was born in 1919 and died in 1971. Then there are other brothers and cousins and the list is endless.

The point is that once we had an ancient system that kept track of each and every person in the old walled city. This function, the old ‘hakeem’ told me was taken over in British days by the Town Hall, but with the coming of Pakistan the old system was not recognised and the Town Hall system ceased functioning in the 1960s. This is sad because had we a proper system of archives spread across the city, and the land, we would be a much more organised society.

It seems that after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan thousands of their citizens started living in the old walled city. They are now in a majority there and their origin and ancestors are totally unknown. This made the old ledger system useless. Added to this was the filing of ‘fake votes’ for elections and the mess is that no one knows just where from and when they came there.

To expect a new system to be put in place, it seems, is wishing for the moon. But then it does make sense to know who we are and what our family stands for. With the joint family now no longer of relevance in urban areas, it would be very difficult to have such an amazing system again. The best one can expect from the government is to set up a ‘Births, Deaths and Marriages’ Department like they have in the UK for three centuries. This will be an ideal way to make the Nadra fool-proof. It will help every person to pass on to their children and grandchildren the best information about their past. That surely will make the future more meaningful.