Around 45 kilometres from Chakwal city, a small road branches out of the Aara-Basharat Road and leads to Makhiala, a sleepy village at the peak of a mountain in the Jnangar Valley of the Salt Range.

The surrounding hilly terrain is covered with kau, also known as wild olive, and phulahi. There are a number of coal mines in these hills, and patches of cultivatable land are highly fertile. The valley itself is mesmerising, echoing with the whistles of partridges and chukars.

The ruins of Makhiala Fort greet visitors to the village itself. Once the seat of power of the Janjua Rajputs, it was from this fort that the sultans of Makhiala ruled the area for at least seven centuries.

The site now resembles wilderness. There is also a crumbled brick and stone wall, two water tanks, a natural entrance carved out between two rocks, a pond and a banyan tree as old as the fort itself.

The ceiling of a drawing room, its wood pillars and an old fan that was run by a servant still stand. The two tanks, which supplied water for drinking and bathing to inhabitants of the fort are dry for most of the year barring the monsoon, when they are filled with rainwater; the pond too.

According to Sir Lepel H. Griffin, it was Raja Mal, “a descendent of the Pandus and of the Rathore Rajput race who about the year 980 AD immigrated to the Punjab from Jodhpur or Kannauj”.

In The Punjab Chiefs, Griffin wrote that Raja Mal had heard that the Pandus had once taken shelter in the hills to the north of Jhelum, and journeyed there with his followers and relatives and laid the foundation of the Rajgarh village that was later named Malot after him.

Raja Mal had five sons, Wir, Jodh, Kehla, Tarloni and Khaka. The descendants of Kehla currently live in Kahuta and Kallar Syedan in the Rawalpindi district, while Tarloni’s descendants live in Amb and Attock. Khaka’s descendants live in Muzaffarabad and Kot Khaka, and villages near Jammu.

Griffin devotes more attention to Wir and Jodh who, after their father’s death, divided their state. Wir took possession of the Khewra Salt Mines, Pind Dadan Khan and Kahoon, while Jodh took the salt mines of Makrach and conquered the town of Makshala, home of Brahmans. Raja Jodh renamed Makshala Makhiala, and built a fort.

Jodh had four sons – Raja Rahpal, Raja Sanspal, Raja Jaspal and Raja Jaipal. The Janjuas ruled from Kussak Fort, Nandna Fort, Malot Fort and Makhiala Fort in the Salt Range in Chakwal district.

According to Jhelum District Gazetteer, the Janjuas’ supremacy was undisputed until they were invaded by the Sikhs, at which point Maharaja Ranjit Singh himself had to besiege the Kussak and Makhiala forts.

He met the Janjuas with fierce resistance, but the sultans of Kussak and Makhiala were forced to surrender after Ranjit Singh cut off their water supply. It was with the fall of the Makhiala Fort that the long rule of the Janjuas came to an end.

“We cannot preserve the remains of the fort, but we are still preserving an old drawing room that is almost 300 years old,” one of the descendants of the sultans of Makhiala, Raja Hamid, said.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2018