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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 15, p. 343.

HIS TOP Y 343 cooped up at last in the frontier hills. The Khattaks are said to have left their native home in the Sulaiman mountains about the thirteenth century and settled in Bannu. Owing to a quarrel with the ancestors of the Bannūchis, they migrated northward two hundred years later and occupied their present domains. Babar made a raid through the District in 1505, being attracted by a false hope of plunder, and sacked Kohat and Hangu. The Mughal emperors were unable to maintain more than a nominal control over the tract. One of the Khattak chiefs, Malik Akor, agreed with Akbar to protect the country south of the Kabul river from depredations, and received in return a grant of territory with the right of levying tolls at the Akora ferry. He was thus enabled to assume the chieftainship of his tribe, and to hand down his authority to his descendants, who ruled at Akora, among them being the warrior poet Khushhal Khan. Kohat became part of the Durrani empire in 1747; but authority was exercised only through the Bangash and Khattak chiefs. Early in the nineteenth century, Kohat and Hangu formed a governorship under Sardar Samad Khan, one of the Barakzai brotherhood, whose leader, Dost Muhammad, usurped the throne of Afghanistan. The sons of Sardar Samad Khan were driven out about 1828 by the Peshawar Sardars, the principal of whom was Sultan Muhammad Khan. In the Teri lahsil, shortly after the establishment of the power of Ahmad Shah Durrani, it became the custom for a junior member of the Akora family to rule as sub-chief at Teri. This office gradually became hereditary, and sub-chiefs ruled the western Khattaks in complete independence of Akora. The history of affairs becomes very confused the Akora chiefs were constantly interfering in Teri affairs; there were generally two or more rival claimants; the chiefship was constantly changing hands, and assassinations and rebellion were matters of every- day occurrence. The Sikhs, on occupying the country, found themselves unable to levy revenue from the mountaineers. Ranjit Singh placed Sultan Muhammad Khan in a position of importance at Peshawar, and made him a grant of Kohat, Hangu, and Teri. One Rasūl Khan became chief of Teri, and on his death in 1843 was succeeded by his adopted son, Khwaja Muhammad Khan. Meanwhile, Sultan Muhammad Khan continued to govern the rest of the District through his sons, though the country was generally in a disturbed state, and the upper Miranzai villages were practically independent. When the Sikh troops took up arms at Peshawar on the outbreak of the second Sikh War, George Lawrence, the British officer there, took refuge at Kohat ; but Sultan Muhammad Khan played him false, and delivered him over as a prisoner to the Sikhs. At the close of the campaign, Sultan Muham- mad Khan and his adherents retired to Kabul, and the District with