Regions with significant populations | |
---|---|
Balochistan, Sindh, Punjab | |
Languages | |
Balochi, Sindhi, Saraiki and Jadgali languages | |
Religion | |
Islam | |
Related ethnic groups | |
• Baloch people • Jat Muslims |
The Jats of Balochistan are tribes of Jat origin[1] found in the Balochistan province of Pakistan.[2][3] They are estimated to be around 10% of the total population of Balochistan, being the fourth largest ethnic group of Balochistan. A large proportion are in the profession of camel herding.[4] Jadgals are another Jat ethnic group living in Balochistan.[5]
The major Jat tribes in Balochistan include:
By the time of Muhammad bin Qasim's conquest of Sind in the eighth century, Arab writers described agglomerations of Jats and Meds in the arid, the wet, and the mountainous regions of the conquered land of the Sindh[9] and Makran regions of today's Pakistani province of Balochistan, which at that time was part of Sindh. The Arabs referred to the Jats as "Zutts" (Arabic: الزُّطِّ). The Jats were present in Makran and Lasbela long before the migration of ancestors of the Baloch from Kerman, Khorasan and the Sistan and Baluchistan provinces of present-day Iran. The Arab rulers though professing a theologically egalitarian religion, maintained the position of Jats and the discriminatory practices against them that had been put in place in the long period of Hindu rule in Sind between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries.
...Bizanjo, Mengal, Sajdi and Zehri as Jadgal or Jats...