——
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BIR
324
and then Shall Jafar,the fourth in descent, having expelled one Rakamdin, the local Rajbhar chief, from the neighbouring village of Kachhauchha, took possession of it while his younger brother. Shah Muhammad, founded the hamlet which adjoins it on the west, to which he gave the name of Ashrafpur. Thenceforth the town was known as Ashrafpur Kachhauchha, which name it still retains. Rasfilpur,
,
•
member of the family, Shah Ali Makhdum, the neighbourhood. It is said, that being thirsty, he drew water from a well, and having drunk thereof he was heard to remark " Bas, khari," or, in other words, " enough, it is brackish;" and from that hour the name of the town that still exists there has been Baskhari. At a subsequent
period, a
also established himself in
The fame
of
Makhdum
ants, inhabiting
Ashraf and of Abdur-Razzfiq and his descendKachhauchha and Baskhari, soon spread far and wide
rent-free grants were from time to time made for the support of themselves and their establishments by Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb, Emperors of Delhi, the title-deeds of which I have examined. These grants were recognized until the death of Asif-ud-daula, but in the reign of his successor Saadat Ali, ten-sixteenths of them were resumed ; and in after years the remaining aim.ma lands of the family also disappeared under the usurpations of the chiefs of different clans that then overraii the neighbourhood. We now find the descendants of Abdur-Razzaq recorded at the revised settlement as proprietors of the three villages only of Baskhdri, Ashrafpur Kachhauchha and Rasiilpur, in which latter is the shrine of the
and
great saint himself, of which more will be said
when
treating of fairs and
shrines.
—
II. The Sayyads of Nasirahad. Next in antiquity amongst the ex-. isting families, according to popular belief, come the Sayyads of Nasirabad. The first of the stock, Nasir-ud-din, is said to have come from some place in the far west, in the days of Taimiir ;* to have settled himself
on a small estate of nine mauzas and to have given to it his own name. These villages, in the dayis of Akbar, were held by the Sayyads under revenue-free (aimma) grants, but the family was subjected to the same vicissitudes as were the other Sayyads of whom I have already written. Seven of the nine villages which constituted the Nasirabad estate were absorbed into the Birhar taluqas more than a century ago. Of the remaining two, Tnauza Bhora is still the property of the Sayyads
they hold sub-tenures only in the parent village Nasirabad.
—
III. -The Pathdn Chaudhris of Ohahora. Contemporaneous with the advent of the aforesaid Sayyad families, was the arrival of the Pathan Chaudhris of Chahora. The ancestor of this family was a Chauhan Chhattri of Sambhal Muradabad, who is said to have changed his religion in the days of Taimiir. One of his successors (name unknown) established himself in this pargana, and he or his descendants must have been both able and influential, for they acquired much property one of them, A'lam Khan, being ruler of tappa Chahora of fifty-one mauzas another Mang^h Khan, had tappa Hisamuddinpur of twenty mauzas and a third, Bhoj Khan, held taluqa A'inwan of thirty-three mauzas.
See explanatory
nq,ie
about Tainnir in the Surharpur report.
_
