and received lands at Panipat near Delhi. Simultaneously operations were undertaken in Kurram. Yet, in spite of these measures, Mir Yakut, the imperial Diwan at Peshawar, was sent to Tirah in 1658 to repress an Orakzai and Afridi revolt. Since the decay of the Mughal empire Tirah has been virtually independent, though owning at times a nominal allegiance to Kabul. Tirah was chiefly notable as the scene of the Tirah Campaign that the British launched in 1897. It was a cul-de-sac in the mountains and the difficulty of its passes and the fierceness of its inhabitants had hitherto preserved it inviolable from all invaders. According to a legend a group of Pashtuns living in Tirah, the Orakzai, got their name from an exiled prince from far away Persia. They include 18 tribes. Those 18 tribes are collectively known as Orakzai. But the greater part of Tirah's population belong to the Afridi tribe. A sub tribe known as the Oriya Khel belonged to the Zaka Khel clan of the Afridi tribe. They inhabited the Tirah Valley and are now located in Cherat Saleh Khana. Although they now fall under the Khattak tribe, the Oriya Khel acknowledge their lineage and still continue to call themselves afridi. This can be proven as the land records of Saleh Khana showed they initially belonged to afridis and to this day the inhabitants have not changed. further more the villagers of saleh khana still wear their turbans and grow their moustache like afridis, customs which have been passed down by the elders. Geography Tirah comprises an area of some six to seven hundred square miles and includes under this general name all the valleys lying round the source of the Bara River. The five chief valleys are Maidan, Rajgul, Waran, Bara and Mastura. Maidan, the summer home of the Afridis, lies close under the snow-bound ridges of the Safed Koh at an elevation of about . It is an oval plain about seven to long, and three or four wide, and slopes inwards towards the centre of its northern side, where all the drainage gathered from the four corners of the plain is shot into a narrow corkscrew outlet leading to the Bara Valley. Centuries of detritus accumulated in this basin have filled it up with rich alluvial soil and made it one of the most fertile valleys on the frontier. All its alluvial slopes are