Makhial | A Historic Village of Wanhar |Chakwal | Punjab

Описание: Makhiala Fort, Chakwal, Punjab Province, Pakistan

Around 45 kilometres from Chakwal city, a small road branches out of the Aara-Basharat Road and leads to Makhiala, a sleepy village at the peak of a mountain in the Jnangar Valley of the Salt Range.

The surrounding hilly terrain is covered with kau, also known as wild olive, and phulahi. There are a number of coal mines in these hills, and patches of cultivatable land are highly fertile. The valley itself is mesmerising, echoing with the whistles of partridges and chukars.

The ruins of Makhiala Fort greet visitors to the village itself. Once the seat of power of the Janjua Rajputs, it was from this fort that the sultans of Makhiala ruled the area for at least seven centuries.

The site now resembles wilderness. There is also a crumbled brick and stone wall, two water tanks, a natural entrance carved out between two rocks, a pond and a banyan tree as old as the fort itself.

The ceiling of a drawing room, its wood pillars and an old fan that was run by a servant still stand. The two tanks, which supplied water for drinking and bathing to inhabitants of the fort are dry for most of the year barring the monsoon, when they are filled with rainwater; the pond too.

According to Sir Lepel H. Griffin, it was Raja Mal, “a descendent of the Pandus and of the Rathore Rajput race who about the year 980 AD immigrated to the Punjab from Jodhpur or Kannauj”.

In The Punjab Chiefs, Griffin wrote that Raja Mal had heard that the Pandus had once taken shelter in the hills to the north of Jhelum, and journeyed there with his followers and relatives and laid the foundation of the Rajgarh village that was later named Malot afte