Jat clans of Balochistan

The Jats were the fourth largest community in Balochistan, according to the 1901 Census. Hughes-Buller, author of the Census report wrote

Jatts are most likely the Jatti of Pliny and Ptolomy, the Indo-Scythian Saka who migrated from the Oxus river area of Afghanistan to Iranian and Pakistani Balochistan in the Iron Age before Christ. It is likely they were in Balochistan a little before the various Baloch tribes arrived there from the Kurdistan area and Caspian regions of Iran (this is consistent with the Balochi language being most similar to Kurdish).

Jatoi and Jatgal are simply Jatts who were absorbed into the Baloch. Jatts had likely crossed the Indus into India before the arrival of Islam and Arabs in Sindh under Mohammad bin Qasim. They along with the Rajput who themselves were likely Jatts at one time were among the earliest in the area to convert to Islam and were recruited as soldiers under Muhammad Bin Qasim. It’s also said that they were great soldiers and were recruited into Persian armies and the Caliphs of Basra. Of course numerous Punjabi tribes have Jatt ancestors. This includes Muslims and Sikhs.

H H Risley in the Census of India, 1901, writes the following about the Kalat Balochistan area:

The principal population of these countries consisted of Jats and people resembling the Kurds. Now both General Cunningham and Colonel Tod agree that the Jats were of the Scythian stock, and the name Turan isused by Persian historians to distinguish the countries beyond the Oxus river from those to the south of it.

Istakhri also, in his account of Sijistan (Iran), gives a list of the provinces of that country, among which two are described as ‘country of the Baloch’. The desert infested by the Baloch seems in reality to have been not that to the south of the Karman Mountains, but the great desert now known as the Lut, which lies north and east of Karman, and separates it from Khorasan and Sistan. Idrisi, who was a careful writer, says that the Koch Mountains were inhabited by a savage race—a sort of Kurds—while the Baloch live to the north, and some to the west of them. He adds that they are prosperous, have much cattle, and are feared by their neighbours, and also confirms the statement that they do not infest the roads. Yakut is in substantial agreement with Idrisi. He also compares the Koch to the Kurds, and quotes an Arabic poem as follows: ‘What wild regions have we traversed, inhabited by Jatts (Zutt), Kurds, and savage Qufs!