Khairpur

Khairpur, or Khyrpoor, a native state of India, in the Sind province of Bombay. Area, 6050 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 199,313, showing an apparent increase of 55% in the decade; estimated revenue, £90,000. Like other parts of Sind, Khairpur consists of a great alluvial plain, very rich and fertile in the neighbourhood of the Indus and the irrigation canals, the remaining area being a continuous series of sand-hill ridges covered with a stunted brushwood, where cultivation is altogether impossible. A small ridge of limestone hills passes through the northern part of the state, being a continuation of a ridge known as the Ghar, running southwards from Rohri. The state is watered by five canals drawn off from the Indus, besides the Eastern Nara, a canal which follows an old bed of the Indus. In the desert tracts are pits of natron.

Khairpur town is situated on a canal 15 m. E. of the Indus, with a railway station, 20 m. S. of Sukkur, on the Kotri-Rohri branch of the North-Western railway, which here crosses a corner of the state. Pop. (1901), 14,014. There are manufactures of cloth, carpets, goldsmiths’ work and arms, and an export trade in indigo, grain and oilseeds.

The chief, or mir, of Khairpur belongs to a Baluch family, known as the Talpur, which rose on the fall of the Kalhora dynasty of Sind. About 1813, during the troubles in Kabul incidental to the establishment of the Barakzai dynasty, the mirs were able to withhold the tribute which up to that date had been somewhat irregularly paid to the rulers of Afghanistan. In 1832 the individuality of the Khairpur state was recognized by the British government in a treaty under which the use of the river Indus and the roads of Sind were secured. When the first Kabul expedition was decided on, the mir of Khairpur, Ali Murad, cordially supported the British policy; and the result was that, after the battles of Meeanee and Daba had put the whole of Sind at the disposal of the British, Khairpur was the only state allowed to retain its political existence under the protection of the paramount power. The chief mir, Faiz Mahommed Khan, G.C.I.E., who was an enlightened ruler, died in 1909, shortly after returning from a pilgrimage to the Shiite shrine of Kerbela.