Innermost Asia : vol.1 / Page 96 (Color Image)

0096	Innermost Asia : vol.1

Modern
local
history.

From the time when the Hindukush region passed out of China's sphere of interest in the eighth
century reliable historical records concerning Yāsīn and the adjoining valleys fail us for nearly
a thousand years. The account of local history which Colonel Biddulph and others have gathered
from oral tradition assumes a definite shape only with the advent to power, towards the end of the
seventeenth or early in the eighteenth century, of the family, apparently of Badakhshān origin,
from which are descended both the Katūr rulers of Chitrāl and the Khushwaqts originally
established in Mastūj.¹⁰ The Khushwaqt branch appears very soon to have asserted its power
over Yāsīn also ; and owing to the superior capacity for war or for intrigue possessed by many of
its members, the whole of the Gilgit valley likewise passed at different times under its temporary
domination. There is no need to examine here the tangled web of a story in which struggles,
marked uniformly by treachery and murder and waged between close relations or with members
of the rival house of Chitrāl, prevailed right down to the close of the nineteenth century.¹¹ A few
points, however, deserve mention. It is interesting to note that, as I have had occasion to point
out elsewhere, we owe the earliest exact record connected with Khushwaqt rule in Mastūj and
Yāsīn to Chinese intervention in 1749.¹² Traditions of Chinese or ' Kalmak ' invasion still survive
in Yāsīn, but are too vague to be fixed chronologically.

Advantages
of geo-
graphical
position.

Significance attaches to the fact that though the Yārkhun valley below and above Mastūj is
the original seat of the Khushwaqt branch, yet Yāsīn was always preferred by them as a residence.¹³
This preference is fully accounted for by the advantages which Yāsīn offers by its geographical
position and natural features. The fact that in its main valley open ground of comparatively
great width extends for a distance of about forty miles would alone suffice to give it importance.
There are here none of those narrow defiles, formed by precipitous spurs of rocky or vast debris
shoots, which in other great valleys to the south of the main Hindukush greatly reduce the area
of arable ground and render communication between them difficult. The glacier-fed waters of the
Yāsīn river and its side streams make irrigation easy, and if considerable portions of the available
ground are now left uncultivated, the cause is certainly not want of water but an inadequate
population. The same high flanking ranges, showing peaks over 20,000 feet in height, which assure
this abundant supply of water, also protect Yāsīn against attack on all sides except the south.
There, too, as the account of Kao Hsien-chih's expedition shows, the Gilgit river, unfordable
for the greater part of the year, serves as a very effective obstacle to invasion, especially as the
extremely precipitous spurs on either side of the outlet of the Yāsīn river form flanking defences
of exceptional strength.

Fertility
of soil,

That Yāsīn could, and once did, support far more than the present population, estimated at
about five hundred families or about 4,700 souls, is proved by the extent of the ground capable
of irrigation and by the fertility of the soil. The fact that the whole of the main valley from Darkōt
village down to the point where it debouches opposite Gūpis lies at the moderate elevation of
between 7,000 and a little over 9,000 feet would alone account for this fertility. But the north

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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Citation Information

OCR Text

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books