Miani () is a pashtun tribe, who are the descendants of Saraban, the son of Qais Abdur Raseed. Now they mainly inhabit the Gomal plains of Pakistan in the

Tank District Tank District (, '; ') is a district in the Dera Ismail Khan Division of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The city of Tank is the headquarter of the district, which consists of Union Council City I and Union Council City II. There ...

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ; , ; abbr. KP or KPK), formerly known as the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is a Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Pakistan. Located in the Northern Pakistan, northwestern region of the country, Khyber ...

, which was formerly

North-West Frontier Province The North-West Frontier Province (NWFP; ) was a province of British India from 1901 to 1947, of the Dominion of Pakistan from 1947 to 1955, and of the Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Pakistan from 1970 to 2010. It was established on 9 November ...

. Major portion of the tribe also reside in Dera Ismael Khan ( kokar, Mandhran, Pusha Pull, Baloch Wanda etc ) Panjab ( Riaz Abad, Muzaffar gharh, Jhang etc) and Balochistan ( Harnai)and Historically Mianis have been migratory (kochi)Tribe migrating between the Derajat Pakistan and Afghanistan though historical Gomal Pass. Many of them settled in the Gomal plains by 1850.

History

Gomal plains

Though initially a

nomad Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pa ...

ic tribe, Mianis settled in the Gomal plains by or before 1850. The estimated population of the Miani tribe was about 800 in the 1870s. They were a semi-independent group that lived along the

Tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engine; ...

border, except for the hot season, when they moved into the hills. An important technique that the British used to manage the frontier was to make certain tribes responsible for monitoring who had passes to travel on particular routes into the hills. They called this “pass responsibility”. The Bhitannis first accepted pass responsibility on the Tank frontier. Then, pass responsibility for the Girni, Murtuza and Manjhi posts was assigned to the Miani and Ghurezai tribes in 1876. That year, they also accepted responsibility for monitoring passage into the Gomal Valley. In 1879, when Tank was raided by Tribals and an uprising took place, wherein the tribes believed that the British control over the area is weakening, these tribals looted a number of villages around Tank. The same fact has been narrated by Evelyn Berkelen Howell, that in January 1879. To protect Tank from further plundering British decided to handover the security of gomal pass to Miani tribe."

Miani in Baluchistan

Though a portion of Miani Tribe live in Baluchistan especially in the Shirani District, sizable population of the Miani people live in Sharigh Tehsil of Harnai District in Balochistan. District Development Profile, Planning and Development Department, Government of Balochistan in Collaboration with UNICEF, July 18, 2011

References

{{reflist Pashtun tribes Pashtun nomadic tribes Nomads Pashto-language surnames Pakistani names