Kamboj
Portrait of two unidentified men of the Kamboj (or Kamboh) tribe of Multan, ca.1862–72
Regions with significant populations
India • Pakistan
Languages
Punjabi • Dogri • Haryanvi • Hindi
Religion
Hinduism • Sikhism • Islam

The Kamboj (Devanagari: कंबोज, Nastaliq: کمبوج, Gurumukhi: ਕੰਬੋਜ ALA-LC: Kamboj), also Kamboh (Nastaliq: کمبوہ ALA-LC: Kamboh), is a caste and cultivating community of India and Pakistan that originally belonged to the central Punjab region.[1]

Muslim Kamboj were particularly influential in the administration and the military of the Mughal Empire from the times of Akbar onward, some famous personalities including Shahbaz Khan Kamboh and Shaikh Gadai Kamboh.[2]

Demographics

Religion

As per the 1931 census of British Punjab, most Kambojs followed Sikhism (42.4%) and Islam (41.5%), with a considerable minority following Hinduism (16.1%).[3]

Muslim members of the community are called as Kamboh. The Hindu Kambojs and the Sikh Kambojs are found in the Punjab, Haryana and Jammu regions in India, while most of the Muslim Kambohs are found in the province of Punjab in Pakistan.[4]

Numbers

As per the 2017 Pakistani census, Kamboj made around 5% of Lahore's population, which back then amounted to some 550 000 individuals out of a total population of 11 million.[5]

Notable people

See also

References

  1. ^ Ali, Imran (14 July 2014). The Punjab Under Imperialism, 1885-1947. Princeton University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-4008-5958-0.
  2. ^ Umar, Mohammad; Umar, Mohammed (1992). "The Kambohs: A Prominent Community of Indian Muslims in the Sixteenth Century (summary)". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 53: 328–330. ISSN 2249-1937.
  3. ^ Census of India 1931. Vol. 17, Punjab. Pt. 2, Tables.: Census Reports - 1931 (Report). 1933. pp. 291–292.
  4. ^ Singh, Pashaura; Fenech, Louis E. (27 March 2014). The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies. OUP Oxford. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-19-100411-7.
  5. ^ "District Profile". District Lahore - Government of Punjab. Archived from the original on 27 November 2023.

External links

Look up Kamboj in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Categories