everal villages in Gujar Khan tehsil of Rawalpindi district are home to the Bhatti Rajputs. Among the best known is Jajja, about 2 kilometres west of Sukho Mor.

The village is home to the Jajja Education Complex, which includes a cadet college for boys and a girls’ college, both with residential hostels. Founded by Lt-Gen Lehrasab Khan (retired), the institutions attract students from Jajja and across Pakistan.

Beyond its educational institutions, Jajja has a history that extends well beyond the classroom. I visited the village to document its heritage, speaking with residents there and with others in Rawalpindi while researching this article.

Jajja has produced a number of prominent figures in Pakistan’s armed forces and civil service, as well as several writers and intellectuals.

To trace Jajja’s history, I conducted interviews with local residents, including several conversations with Muhammad Sharif Shaad, 79, a writer and former director of programmes at Radio Pakistan. A native of Jajja, who now lives in Rawalpindi, Shaad has written extensively on Pothohari literature and translated the Holy Quran into Pothohari. He has also received three awards from the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony for his books on the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). His literary work deserves a separate discussion. The account below draws on our interviews.

According to Shaad, present-day Jajja was established after the original settlement was abandoned. The earlier village, also known as Boora, lay about 3 kilometres west of Jattal in Gujar Khan tehsil and was the first settlement of the Bhatti Rajputs.

The origins of the village are disputed. In his Memoirs, Raja Walayat Hussain states that Jajja was founded in the mid-18th Century by a settler from Kahuta. He does not cite any sources. Shaad, by contrast, believes the original settlement dates to the first quarter of the 18th Century.

Residents later moved from Old Jajja to Boora, a settlement on the banks of the Kasi nullah. According to local tradition, only a handful of families initially relocated: a few settled in Boora, while about nine households established what is now the present-day village of Jajja. Other families followed in the years that followed.

According to Shaad, other communities settled in Jajja over time, including Dhamial Rajputs and families from several traditional occupational groups. Today, the village is home to about five Dhamial Rajput households, along with families descended from nai (barber), mistri (carpenter), lohar (blacksmith), kumhar (potter) and mochi (cobbler) castes.

Shaad says these families migrated to Jajja from neighbouring villages across Gujar Khan and Chakwal. The nai family came from Sogadat near Sahang; the mistris from Dhoke Bhatt near Mohra Aheer; the lohars from Sukho; the kumhars from Gulyana; and the mochis from Doda village in Chakwal district. He had compiled this information while researching his forthcoming book on Jajja and shared it during our interviews.

Jajja has a long association with military service. Many of its residents served in the British Indian Army and, later, the Pakistan Army. Among the earliest known was Bagh Ali, who retired from the British Indian Army with the rank of captain. He was awarded the title of Sardar Bahadur and appointed to the Order of British India.

Captain Bagh Ali built a bungalow in the village for his son, Mumtaz Ali, who later retired as a major general in the Pakistan Army and received the Sitara-i-Jurat twice. Bagh Ali died in 1953 and was buried in the village cemetery.

Another prominent military person from Jajja was Captain Roshan Din, who also served in the British Indian Army. His father, Mardan Ali, was one of the village’s leading landowners and a devotee of Maulvi Abdul Sattar Chishti Sabiri Kalyami (d. 1941), a disciple of Khwaja Fazluddin Shah Chishti Sabiri Kalyami (d. 1891). According to local accounts, Abdul Sattar attracted a substantial following in Jajja.

During my visit, Haji Abdul Razzaq, a retired member of the Pakistan Air Force, guided me through the village, including its graveyards, mosques, shrine and the former home of Captain Roshan Din.

Beyond its educational institutions, Jajja has a history that extends well beyond the classroom.

The house, one of the finest surviving colonial-era buildings in Jajja, is a striking example of Pothohari domestic architecture. Its façade is defined by five cusped arches supported by columns and opens onto a spacious courtyard.

From the courtyard, five ornate columns lead into a covered verandah, from which carved wooden doors open into the surrounding rooms. The central doorway is the most elaborate. It is surmounted by a calligraphic panel framed by painted floral motifs dating from the house’s construction that have been restored later.

Carved wooden doors are among the defining features of historic houses across Pothohar, reflecting both the region’s craftsmanship and the status of the families who commissioned those. According to local accounts, the house was built by the renowned mason Allah Ditta of Sakrila. Similar examples of fine woodcarving survive in historic houses in villages along the Sukho-Dhoke Budhal Road.

Every window and ventilator is crowned by an arched head decorated with carved lime-stucco floral ornament. Horizontal and vertical stucco bands frame the façade, enclosing five recessed panels with low-relief floral designs. Together, these elements demonstrate the skill of local craftsmen and make the house one of the finest surviving examples of traditional domestic architecture in Jajja and the surrounding villages.

As the house’s painted decoration faded over time, it was retraced on tracing paper before being repainted. An inscription records that the restoration was carried out in 1426 AH (2005) by Rasheed, a calligrapher from Gurha village, who carefully preserved the original designs.

Jajja has three mosques, the oldest of which is the Jamia Masjid in the centre of the village. It once featured carved wooden doors, but these were removed during a later rebuilding. The Kausar Mosque, on the Sukho-Dhoke Budhal Road, was built by Muhammad Sharif Shaad and named after his wife, Naseem Kausar, who died in 2017 and is buried in the village’s western cemetery.

Jajja has two graveyards, known locally as the eastern and western cemeteries. The eastern cemetery, or Pind, occupies an ancient mound that may date to the Hindu Shahi dynasty period or represent the remains of a Buddhist stupa, although its origins have yet to be established. It contains the graves of Bhatti Rajput families and members of other communities, including several stone tombs. The weathered gravestones, some now crumbling, suggest that the cemetery has been in use for around two centuries.

North-west of the village lies a large pond, known locally as Booray Ni Ban and, more recently, Bava Ni Ban. Beside it stands a banyan tree and the shrine of Baba Pir Qutab Shah.

Little is known about the figure commemorated at the shrine. Neither his origins nor the date of his arrival in Jajja can be established from local sources. Shaad recalls that, during his childhood, there was no tomb marking the grave and that he had never heard the name Baba Pir Qutab Shah. Over time, however, an annual festival at the site started.

The shrine reflects a broader pattern found across the Pothohar Plateau, where places of local veneration gradually acquire shrines, annual festivals and oral traditions despite limited historical evidence about their origins. As these sites attract larger numbers of devotees, new stories and claims of miracles may become associated with them. The influence of their custodians often grows alongside the shrines’ religious and social importance.

The writer, an anthropologist, is an associate professor at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad. He has authored 18 books on Pakistan’s cultural heritage and anthropology. He tweets @kalhorozulfiqar. He may be contacted at [email protected]