# Rohilkhand & Katehar (रुहेलखंड)

> An Afghan settlement that took root in a Katehari plain, and a forest edge that never accepted either.

Rohilkhand is the one part of the Gangetic plain named after the people who moved into it. Pashtun soldiers and traders settled through the eighteenth century over an older Katehar countryside, founded a state, lost it to Awadh and the Company in 1774, and kept a single princely remnant at Rampur — which then spent two centuries buying manuscripts and hiring musicians. The result is a compact, unusually productive region: the Rampur khayal and instrumental lineages, the Barelvi movement that shapes Sunni practice across South Asia, a court kitchen with an Afghan accent, brass at Moradabad and flutes at Pilibhit, and a terai forest edge with a wholly separate Tharu and Buksa culture behind it.

- Source: https://bharatsangraha.com/regions/rohilkhand
- Language: en
- Tier 1 macro cultural realm: Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
- Tier 2 cultural region: Rohilkhand & Katehar
- Indigenous scope: The plain that lies between the Ganga and the first rise of the Himalaya — bounded on the north by the bhabar gravel and the terai swamp forest, on the west by the Ganga, and fading south and east into the Doab and the Awadh lowland. It is the wettest and coolest part of the northern plain, watered by short Himalayan rivers that reach it fully grown, and its older name, Katehar, is the one the land answers to; Rohilkhand is what an eighteenth-century Afghan settlement made of it. The result is a countryside with a Katehari base, a Pashtun overlay, and a forest edge where Tharu and Buksa communities have their own answer to all of it.
- Overlapping administrative units: Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand
- Tier 3 micro-regions: Ramganga Plain (Fertile alluvium and sugarcane belt); Terai Edge (Sal forest, grassland and swamp); Katehar Core (Ganga–Ramganga interfluve)
- Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Katehari and Kauravi speech, Tharu, Kumaoni and Punjabi in the terai

## Terrain and eco-zones

Humid subtropical, and the wettest stretch of the plain west of Bihar — 1,000 to 1,400 mm a year, rising as you approach the hills, with heavy dew and thick winter fog. January nights fall to 3–5 °C, and May afternoons reach 43–45 °C, though the terai edge stays several degrees cooler and much more humid.

**Landforms:** Level Gangetic alluvium, better watered than the Doab to its west, Bhabar — the porous gravel apron at the foot of the hills, where rivers sink underground, Terai — the swampy belt below the bhabar where those rivers re-emerge, historically malarial and forested, Sal and sissoo forest along the northern edge, now confined to the protected areas, Ganga khadar along the western boundary

**Rivers and waters:** Ramganga — the region's own river, Himalayan-fed and the axis of the plain, Ganga — the western boundary, Sharda (Kali) — the eastern boundary and the border with Nepal at Banbasa, Gomti's headwaters, rising from the region's marshes, Kosi, Bhakra, Deoha, Garra and Bahgul

- **Winter** (November–February, 4–24 °C): Cold, damp and heavily fogged, with dew that persists all morning. Cane crushing, the urs season at Bareilly and the best birdwatching in the terai.
- **Summer** (March–June, 26–45 °C): Hot but shorter than further south, and the terai stays humid rather than dry. Mango season through Amroha and Bijnor from late June.
- **Monsoon** (July–September, 26–34 °C): The heaviest rainfall on the plain. Rivers coming off the hills rise fast and flood the terai; roads north of Pilibhit become unreliable.
- **Post-monsoon** (October, 20–32 °C): Clear and green; the forest opens to visitors from mid-November.

**Best time to visit:** November to March for the towns and the forests both. The Urs-e-Razavi at Bareilly follows the Islamic calendar and fills the city; Pilibhit Tiger Reserve is closed through the monsoon.

## History

## Foodways

Two kitchens layered on one plain. Underneath is a Katehari wheat, cane and dairy foodway indistinguishable from the Doab's. Over it sits the Rohilla kitchen — Afghan in its instincts, meat-forward, whole-spice, drier and less perfumed than Awadh's, and refined at Rampur into a court cuisine that is its own school rather than a branch of Lucknow's. In the terai, a third foodway again: river fish, rice, wild greens and pig, cooked by Tharu households who share almost nothing with either.

**Primary cooking medium:** Desi ghee in the court and festival kitchen, Mustard oil for everyday cooking, Rendered mutton fat in the Rohilla kitchen

**Dominant sour agents:** Dahi, Amchur and dried plum, Lemon and lime, Tamarind in the chaat and street kitchen, Anardana

**Spice register:** Whole spice used boldly, in the Afghan manner — black cardamom, cinnamon, clove and coriander seed left visible in the dish rather than infused and removed. Rampur adds saffron, ginger and dried fruit for its court dishes but stops well short of Awadh's kewra and rose. The everyday plain kitchen is plainer still: turmeric, chilli, coriander and a lot of asafoetida.

**Staple grains and carbs:** Wheat, Rice, in the terai and the canal tracts, Sugarcane, as a crop and effectively as a food, Maize on the bhabar edge

**Preservation:** Gur, shakkar and khandsari from the winter kolhu, Mango and chilli pickle in mustard oil, Sun-dried badiyan and papad, Khoya for the sweet trade, Smoked and sun-dried river fish in the terai

### Taar korma
Meat is cooked in yoghurt and browned onion until the gravy reduces to the point where it pulls into a thread off a spoon — the taar. The consistency, not the spicing, is what the dish is judged on, and it is the signature test of a Rampuri cook.
Also found in: Awadh

### Shab deg
Turnip and meat sealed in a pot and cooked overnight — shab, the night — so the turnip absorbs the meat and loses its own texture completely. A dish Rampur shares with Kashmir and with nowhere in between, a direct trace of the two courts' connection.
Also found in: Kashmir Valley

### Khade masale ka gosht
Meat cooked with whole spices and no ground masala at all, so the gravy stays thin and clear and the aroma comes from the spices left in the pot. The Afghan end of the region's cooking, and the plainest good thing in it.
Also found in: Deccan Plateau, Punjab Doabs

### Kolhu crushing and gur boiling
Cane crushed at the village kolhu and boiled down in open pans through the winter night. Rohilkhand runs alongside the Doab as India's densest cane belt.
Also found in: Antarved Doab, Haryana Bangar & Bagar

### Terai fish smoking
River fish split, salted and hung over a slow wood fire in Tharu households, then stored for the flood months when fishing is impossible. Related to eastern and Nepali terai practice, not to anything in the plain below.
Also found in: Mithilanchal

## Dishes

Rampur's is the court kitchen worth travelling for, and it is genuinely distinct from Awadh's — drier, more whole-spice, less scented, with a strand of Afghan and Kashmiri cooking that Lucknow does not have. Outside it, the region eats what the northern plain eats, with a very good street-food tradition at Moradabad and Bareilly.

### Rampuri taar korma
Mutton in a reduced yoghurt and browned-onion gravy cooked until it threads. Served with sheermal or a plain roti; the test of the cook is the consistency, not the spicing.
Where to try: Rampur's old-city kitchens, and at weddings — it is a wedding dish before it is a restaurant one.

### Adrak ka halwa
Ginger grated, squeezed, cooked down with khoya, ghee and sugar until dark and pungent — a winter sweet unique to Rampur, made nowhere else in India in this form.

### Shab deg
Turnips and meat sealed in a pot and cooked all night, so the turnip turns dark and dense. Made in winter; the same dish exists in Kashmir and nowhere between.

### Doodhiya biryani
A pale Rampuri biryani cooked with milk, with almost no chilli and a great deal of restraint — a court dish that reads as under-seasoned until you have had it twice.

### Khade masale ka keema
Minced meat cooked with whole spices left in, sharp with ginger and green chilli.

### Moradabadi dal
Yellow moong dal cooked thin, poured over a heap of raw onion, coriander, green chilli, lemon and a dry masala, and eaten with a spoon from a leaf bowl on the street. Moradabad's own dish and a local obsession.
Where to try: Any evening cart in Moradabad; the older ones sell nothing else.

### Bareilly ki nihari and kebab
The old-city nihari trade, sold from before dawn with kulcha, and a seekh kebab tradition that runs to a coarser grind than Lucknow's.

### Sewaiyan and sheer khurma
Fine vermicelli in reduced milk with dates and nuts, made in enormous quantity at Eid — the region supplies dried sewai to much of north India.

### Bedmi, kachori and jalebi
The plain's standard morning meal, identical to the Doab's and eaten just as early.

### Gur ki roti and gannay ka ras
Fresh jaggery worked into bread, and cane juice pressed at the roadside through the crushing season.

### Tharu bagiya and jhingri
Steamed rice-flour dumplings with a lentil or fish filling, and small river fish cooked whole with wild herbs — the terai kitchen, which uses no wheat and very little dairy.

### Amroha and Bijnor mangoes
Dussehri, Langra and Chausa from orchards along the Ganga, sold from late June — the region competes with Malihabad and does not always lose.

**Staples:** Wheat roti, Rice in the terai, Arhar and moong dal, Milk, curd and ghee, Seasonal vegetables and mustard greens

**Sweets:** Adrak ka halwa, Sewaiyan, Khoya barfi, Balushahi, Gur ki kheer

**Street food:** Moradabadi dal, Nihari and kulcha, Seekh kebab, Chaat and gol gappe, Roasted chana and gur in winter

**Drinks:** Sugarcane juice, Lassi, Thandai, Kahwa-style spiced tea in the Rampuri households

## Dress and textiles

Rampur's court dress and the Rohilla military inheritance kept a distinct men's wardrobe here — the angarkha and the Rampuri cap — while Bareilly's zardozi workshops supplied the embroidery. In the terai the Tharu wardrobe is unrelated to any of it: a wrapped lehnga, heavy silver, and tattooing that used to be near-universal among women.

### Rampuri topi and angarkha
A flat brimless cap worn with a side-tied coat — the Rohilla and Rampuri court form, still worn in the older quarters and at religious gatherings.
Worn by: Men
Worn for: Formal and everyday in the old city

### Sherwani and churidar
Tailored in Rampur and Bareilly with local zardozi, worn across the region's Muslim households and by the qasbah gentry generally.
Worn by: Men
Worn for: Weddings and formal

### Ghagra, kurti and odhna
The Katehari village wardrobe, close to the Doab's, giving way to the sari in the towns.
Worn by: Women, rural
Worn for: Everyday

### Tharu lehnga and choli
A short wrapped skirt in dark cloth with a bordered choli and a heavy silver neck ring, worn with layered silver at the ankle and forearm. Distinct from anything worn on the plain below.
Worn by: Tharu women
Worn for: Everyday and festival

### Bareilly zari and zardozi
Metal-thread embroidery on an adda frame, supplying the wedding and export trade — one of the largest zari clusters in Uttar Pradesh after Lucknow and Varanasi.

### Rampur applique and velvet work
Court-derived applique and metal-thread work on velvet, historically for canopies, cushions and processional trappings.

### Tharu handloom
Coarse cotton weaving and grass matting made within Tharu households, with geometric borders in indigo and madder.

**Jewellery:** Heavy silver hansli and hasli among Tharu women, Jhumka — Bareilly's jhumka is a national reference, thanks to one film song, Nath and karanphool, Gold worn as savings in the trading towns

## Arts and artisanal heritage

### Tharu Holi and Sakhiya Pai dance — tribal
Line and circle dances performed to drum and cymbal over several nights, with the Barka Nach retelling episodes of the Mahabharata in a Tharu version. Performed in the villages of the terai and rarely staged outside them.

### Laat Sahab procession — ritual
A figure titled Laat Sahab is seated on a buffalo cart and paraded through the city, pelted with shoes and abuse along the way — a ritual mockery of colonial authority that has survived as the town's defining public event, and requires heavy policing to keep it good-humoured.

### Nautanki and swang — folk
The sung folk-opera of the northern plain, in the same tradition as the Doab's Hathras and Kanpur styles.

### Naqqal and bhand — folk
Mimicry and comic sketch, historically attached to the Rampur court and now almost gone.

### Rampur-Sahaswan gharana
A major khayal school formed at the Rampur court in the nineteenth century by Inayat Hussain Khan, carried on by Mushtaq Hussain Khan, Nissar Hussain Khan and Ghulam Mustafa Khan, and brought to a wide public by Rashid Khan. Known for a full-throated, note-complete delivery and elaborate taans.

### The Rampur Senia line
The instrumental tradition descending from Tansen's family, held at Rampur by Wazir Khan, court musician to the Nawab. Allauddin Khan came to Rampur to study with him, and through Allauddin Khan the line runs to Maihar, Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar — which makes Rampur the source of most twentieth-century instrumental music that reached the world.

### Naat khwani and qawwali
Devotional singing in praise of the Prophet is central to Barelvi practice, and Bareilly is one of its major centres. Qawwali is sung at the dargahs of Bareilly, Badaun and Amroha, especially through the urs season.

### Tharu song
Seasonal and life-cycle songs of the terai, sung antiphonally by women, with the Barka Nach cycle sung by men over successive nights.

### Sohar, kajri and vivah geet
The village life-cycle repertoire of the plain, in the Katehari register.

### Ramlila and Rasleela
Staged in every plains town through Ashwin, with a large Ravan effigy burnt at the maidan.

### Barka Nach
The Tharu narrative dance-drama of the terai, performed over several nights in the winter and centred on a Mahabharata retelling with local characters and a Tharu ritual frame.

### Moradabad metal craft (GI registered)
Peetal Nagri — the brass city, one of India's largest handicraft export clusters, employing several lakh people across thousands of small units and supplying homeware to Europe and North America.
Material: Brass, then aluminium, iron and mixed metal
Technique: Sand casting, hand engraving and chasing, and the nakkashi and khudai surface work; electroplating and lacquer finishing for export.

### Pilibhit bansuri (GI registered)
A town that makes the overwhelming majority of India's bamboo flutes — a few thousand artisans, mostly working at home, whose product goes out through Delhi to the whole country.
Material: Assam and Kerala bamboo
Technique: Bamboo seasoned, bored, and holes burnt and filed to pitch by hand, then tuned individually; every flute is finished against a reference note.

### Amroha dholak (GI registered)
Drum-making concentrated in a few mohallas of Amroha, supplying the north Indian folk and devotional music trade.
Material: Mango and sheesham wood, goat and buffalo hide
Technique: The shell is turned from a single block, the heads laced with cord under tension, and the tuning ring set by hand.

### Sambhal horn and bone craft (GI registered)
Combs, handles, tableware and figures made from abattoir by-products — a craft that expanded after the ivory ban and now exports widely.
Material: Buffalo horn and bone
Technique: Heating, flattening, carving and polishing horn into laminated and turned forms.

### Nagina ebony and wood carving (GI-worthy)
A carving town on the Ganga side of the region, working in a heavier, darker idiom than Saharanpur's.
Material: Ebony, sheesham and mango wood
Technique: Deep relief carving and brass and bone inlay on turned and joined forms.

### Rampuri chaku
The folding knife whose name entered Hindi cinema as shorthand for menace. The long-blade version has been restricted for decades, and the surviving trade makes smaller working knives.
Material: Steel and horn or wood
Technique: Forged and ground blade with a folding lock mechanism and a riveted handle.

### Bareilly manjha and bamboo work
Kite string prepared for competitive kite-cutting, made in Bareilly in enough quantity that the city's name is attached to it nationally, alongside a cane and bamboo furniture trade.
Material: Cotton thread, abrasive paste, bamboo and cane
Technique: Thread coated with a ground-glass and rice paste and dried on frames; cane split and woven for furniture.

## Folk songs

### Naat and manqabat (Urdu)
Praise of the Prophet and of saints, sung solo or in chorus. Bareilly's role in the Barelvi tradition makes this the region's most widely heard sung form.
Sung at: Milad gatherings and the urs season

### Barka Nach cycle (Tharu)
A Tharu retelling of Mahabharata episodes, sung and danced by men through the night with drum and cymbal.
Sung at: Winter nights, over several sessions

### Tharu jhumra and mangal geet (Tharu)
Marriage, harvest and forest life, sung antiphonally by women in the terai villages.
Sung at: Weddings, harvest, Holi

### Kajri and jhoola (Katehari Hindi)
Monsoon separation songs, sung on swings, in the shared repertoire of the whole plain.
Sung at: Sawan

### Sohar and vivah geet (Katehari Hindi)
Household life-cycle songs, with a well-developed gaari repertoire of ritual abuse at weddings.
Sung at: Births and weddings

### Holi phag and Laat Sahab songs (Hindi and Urdu)
Satire and mock-abuse directed at authority, sung during the Laat Sahab procession — a licensed insult tradition with a colonial target and a much older form.
Sung at: Holi, particularly at Shahjahanpur

### Alha (Katehari and Bundeli)
The Alha-Udal ballad, sung in the southern districts of the region.
Sung at: The monsoon

## Dialect and oral traditions

The plain speaks a Western Hindi of its own, usually called Katehari after the older name of the country, sitting between the Kauravi of the Doab, the Braj of the south-west and the Awadhi of the east. Over it lies an Urdu with real institutional depth — Rampur's library and court, Bareilly's seminaries, Amroha's and Badaun's poets. Behind both, on the forest edge, Tharu is a separate language altogether, and Punjabi and Kumaoni arrived in the terai within living memory.

### Katehari — Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi
The plain's own speech across Bareilly, Badaun, Shahjahanpur and Pilibhit; recorded as Hindi in every census and rarely written.

### Rampuri and Rohilkhandi Urdu — Indo-Aryan, Hindustani
A literary Urdu register sustained by the Rampur court, the Raza Library and a dense network of madrasas — the register of Jigar Moradabadi, Fani and Shakeel Badayuni and Jaun Elia.

### Tharu — Indo-Aryan, Eastern (Terai group)
Spoken across the terai on both sides of the India–Nepal border, in several regional varieties that are not always mutually intelligible; Rana Tharu is the variety of this stretch.

### Buksa (Bhoksa) — Indo-Aryan
A small terai language of the Buksa community, heavily overlaid by Hindi and now seriously endangered.

### Terai Punjabi and Kumaoni — Indo-Aryan; Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari
Brought by Sikh farming families settled after 1947 and by hill migrants coming down to the plains; both are now ordinary terai languages.

#### Indigenous terminology

- **Rohilla** (रुहेला): A Pashtun of the eighteenth-century settlement — from Roh, the hill country of eastern Afghanistan. The word became the region's name and, later, a surname and a caste identity.
- **Katehar** (कटेहर): The older name of the plain, from the Katehriya Rajputs who held it. Still the name used in land records, genealogies and by people describing where they are actually from.
- **Bhabar and terai** (भाबर / तराई): The gravel apron where hill rivers sink underground, and the swampy belt below it where they re-emerge. The two words describe a hydrology, and they determined where anyone could live before malaria control.
- **Taar** (तार): The thread a properly reduced korma gravy pulls off a spoon — the single word by which a Rampuri cook is judged.
- **Shab deg** (शब देग): Night pot — the overnight turnip-and-meat dish, and the method as much as the dish.
- **Dargah and urs** (दरगाह / उर्स): A saint's tomb-shrine, and the annual observance of the saint's death anniversary, treated as a wedding with the divine. The Bareilly urs is among the largest in India.
- **Nakkashi** (नक्काशी): The chased and engraved surface work on Moradabad brass, done freehand with a chisel while the piece is held on a lac bed.
- **Kolhu** (कोल्हू): The cane crusher and the whole winter establishment of crushing and boiling that surrounds it.
- **Badhaiya** (बधैया): Congratulatory song and the gift given with it at a birth or wedding.
- **Barka Nach** (बरका नाच): The great dance — the Tharu winter narrative performance, held over several nights and led by men who inherit the roles.

#### Sayings

- "Jhumka gira re, Bareilly ke bazaar mein" — literally: The earring fell, in the Bareilly bazaar — A 1966 film song that permanently attached the jhumka to the city. Jewellers still sell against it, and it is the first thing most Indians say when Bareilly is mentioned.
- "Rampur ka chaku" — literally: A Rampur knife — Shorthand for a threat, from decades of Hindi cinema. The town's actual trade is now in kitchen and working knives.
- "Gud khaye, gulgule se parhez" — literally: Eats jaggery but avoids jaggery cakes — Hypocrisy about the thing you are already doing — a proverb of the cane country.
- "Jangal mein rahen, aur sher se bair" — literally: To live in the forest and quarrel with the tiger — Said in the terai villages, and meant fairly literally — the region has among the highest rates of human-tiger conflict in India.

## Places

### Rampur Raza Library, Rampur
Founded in 1774 by Nawab Faizullah Khan and now an institution of national importance, holding tens of thousands of manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and Sanskrit, Mughal miniatures, and a seventh-century Quran fragment. Housed in the Hamid Manzil inside the fort.

### Kothi Khas Bagh and the Rampur Fort, Rampur
The Nawabs' palace complex — a large, half-forgotten early twentieth-century pile whose scale explains how much revenue a small state could concentrate.

### Dargah-e-Ala Hazrat, Bareilly
The shrine of Ahmed Raza Khan, from whom the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam takes its name. The annual urs draws lakhs of pilgrims from across South Asia and the diaspora, and the surrounding institutions are the school's organisational centre.

### The Nath temples of Bareilly, Bareilly
Seven Shiva temples — Alakhnath, Dhopeshwar Nath, Madhi Nath, Tapeshwar Nath, Trivati Nath, Banke Bihari and Pashupati Nath — which give the city its other name, Nath Nagri, and are circuited together by pilgrims.

### Ahichhatra, Bareilly
The capital of northern Panchala, an enormous fortified mound with terracottas and Painted Grey Ware layers, and a Jain pilgrimage site connected with Parshvanatha. One of the largest unexcavated ancient city sites in India.

### Jama Masjid, Badaun, Budaun
Built in 1223 under Iltutmish, among the oldest and largest surviving congregational mosques in India, and the marker of Badaun's period as a provincial capital of the Delhi Sultanate.

### Dargah of Shah Wilayat, Amroha
A thirteenth-century shrine known for the scorpions in its precinct, which by long local account do not sting — visitors are handed one to hold. The urs draws pilgrims from across western Uttar Pradesh.

### Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, Pilibhit
A narrow strip of terai sal forest and grassland along the Sharda, with one of the highest tiger densities in the country for its size and a documented record of doubling its population. Part of the transboundary landscape shared with Nepal.
Best time: November–June

### Tharu villages of the Khatima and Chandan Chowki belt, Udham Singh Nagar, Lakhimpur border
Mud-and-thatch villages with painted walls and raised granaries, where the Tharu Barka Nach is performed in winter. Visited respectfully and by arrangement rather than as a stop on a circuit.

### Govind Ballabh Pant University, Pantnagar, Udham Singh Nagar
India's first agricultural university, founded in 1960 on reclaimed terai land, and the institution where the Green Revolution's wheat and rice varieties were tested and multiplied for the northern plain.

### Moradabad brass market, Moradabad
The Peeli Kothi and Bartan Bazaar area, where the whole chain from casting yard to export packer sits within a few streets. Worth walking through in the morning when the workshops are open.

### Sambhal and Chandausi old towns, Sambhal
Two very old market towns with Sultanate-period fabric, horn and bone workshops, and a grain and sugar trade that predates the railway.

### Kakori and Shahjahanpur revolutionary sites, Shahjahanpur
The town that produced both Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla Khan, hanged in 1927 for the Kakori train action; memorials to both stand in the city.

## Festivals

- **Urs-e-Razavi** (25th of Safar, lunar): The annual urs at Bareilly's Dargah-e-Ala Hazrat, drawing lakhs of Barelvi pilgrims from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Gulf and Britain. The city runs on it for three days.
- **Laat Sahab ki Barat** (The day after Holi): Shahjahanpur's shoe-pelting procession, in which a masked figure representing colonial authority is paraded on a buffalo cart and abused by the crowd. Held for well over a century, and policed heavily.
- **Tharu Barka Nach and Holi** (Winter, and Phalgun): The terai's own festival season — narrative dance over several nights, and a Tharu Holi that is closer to a harvest and ancestor observance than to the plains version.
- **Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Zuha** (Lunar calendar): Observed with unusual scale here; the region's sewai trade supplies much of northern India for the occasion.
- **Ganga Dussehra and Kartik Purnima** (Jyeshtha (May–June); Kartik (November)): Bathing fairs on the Ganga at Bijnor, Garhmukteshwar's opposite bank and Kachhla, with cattle markets attached.
- **Ramlila and Dussehra** (Ashwin (September–October)): Town-maidan Ramlila cycles through the region, with the Bareilly and Moradabad performances the largest.
- **Numaish and Bareilly Mahotsav** (Winter): Trade and craft fairs held in the district towns through the cold months, with kavi sammelan and mushaira.

## People

- **Ahmed Raza Khan (Ala Hazrat)** (1856–1921) — Islamic scholar: Wrote and taught at Bareilly, and gave his name to the Barelvi school — the strand of South Asian Sunni Islam centred on devotion to the Prophet and on the shrines, and today the majority tradition in much of the subcontinent.
- **Hafiz Rahmat Khan** (1710–1774) — Ruler: Regent of the Rohilla state and its principal builder, killed at the battle of Miranpur Katra in 1774, which ended Rohilkhand's independence and led to the founding of Rampur as its remnant.
- **Ustad Wazir Khan** (c. 1860–1926) — Musician: Court musician at Rampur and holder of the Senia instrumental tradition; his teaching of Allauddin Khan is the link through which that lineage reached Maihar, and from there Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar.
- **Ustad Inayat Hussain Khan** (1849–1919) — Musician: Founded the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana of khayal singing at the Rampur court, a school defined by full-voiced delivery and elaborate taan work.
- **Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan** (1931–2021) — Musician: Of the Rampur-Sahaswan line, born at Badaun; a teacher whose students included several generations of Hindi film and classical singers.
- **Ustad Rashid Khan** (1968–2024) — Musician: Born at Sahaswan in Badaun; the most widely heard khayal singer of his generation, and the reason the gharana's name is familiar far outside classical audiences.
- **Jigar Moradabadi** (1890–1960) — Poet: Among the most popular Urdu ghazal poets of the twentieth century, and a mushaira performer whose recitation style shaped how the ghazal is heard.
- **Shakeel Badayuni** (1916–1970) — Poet and lyricist: From Badaun; wrote Urdu ghazal and, with the composer Naushad, some of the most durable Hindi film songs of the 1950s and 1960s.
- **Kamal Amrohi** (1918–1993) — Filmmaker: From Amroha; wrote and directed Mahal and Pakeezah, and brought the qasbah Urdu idiom of this region into Hindi cinema.
- **Jaun Elia** (1931–2002) — Poet: Born at Amroha and later in Karachi; a poet whose reputation has grown steadily since his death and whose Amrohvi family produced three generations of Urdu writers.
- **Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla Khan** (1897–1927; 1900–1927) — Revolutionaries: Both from Shahjahanpur, both hanged in December 1927 for the Kakori train action — and remembered together, as a Hindu and a Muslim from the same town in the same conspiracy.
- **Begum Hazrat Mahal's Rohilla allies and the 1857 leadership** (1857–1859) — Rebellion: Khan Bahadur Khan, grandson of Hafiz Rahmat Khan, led the 1857 government at Bareilly for nearly a year — the longest-held rebel administration in the region.

## Freedom fighters

## Shops and premises

- **The Moradabad brass workshops**, Moradabad: Engraved and cast brassware, by weight Buy from the workshop lanes rather than the export showrooms; the engraving is done freehand while the piece sits on a lac bed.
- **The Pilibhit flute makers**, Pilibhit: Bamboo bansuri, tuned individually Ask for the pitch you want; a good maker will finish and tune one to order in a few hours.
- **Rampur's wedding kitchens**, Rampur: Taar korma, shab deg and adrak ka halwa Rampuri cooking is a caterer's tradition more than a restaurant one — the best of it is cooked for weddings, by families who are booked months ahead.
- **The Amroha dholak mohallas**, Amroha: Dholak, naal and tabla shells Whole streets of drum makers; the shells are turned locally and the skins fitted to order.
- **Moradabadi dal carts**, Moradabad: Thin moong dal with raw onion and masala An evening trade; the older carts sell one thing and close when it is gone.
- **The Sambhal horn workshops**, Sambhal: Horn and bone combs, handles and tableware
- **Bareilly's zari workshops and jhumka shops**, Bareilly: Zardozi embroidery, and the earrings the city is known for

## How to reach

**By air:** Bareilly Airport (BEK); Pantnagar Airport (PGH); Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi (DEL)

**By rail:** Bareilly Junction (BE); Moradabad Junction (MB); Rampur Junction (RMU); Pilibhit Junction (PBE); Shahjahanpur (SPN)

**By road:** NH 9 — Delhi–Moradabad–Rampur–Bareilly–Sitapur, the region's spine, NH 24 alignment and the Delhi–Meerut–Moradabad corridor, NH 530 and NH 731 towards Pilibhit and the terai, Bareilly–Nainital road, the standard hill approach from the plain

**By water:** Ganga ferries at the Bijnor and Kachhla crossings, seasonal

**Getting around:** Trains between the district towns, and shared vehicles beyond them. The terai is best reached from Pilibhit or Khatima and needs a private vehicle; forest roads are closed in the monsoon, and night driving near the reserve edge is discouraged for good reason.

## The small things

### A region named after immigrants
Rohilkhand is the land of the Rohillas — Pashtuns from the hill country of eastern Afghanistan who settled here through the eighteenth century, took over an existing Katehriya Rajput countryside, and gave the whole plain their name within two generations.

### A library older than the state that kept it
Rampur's Raza Library was founded in 1774, the same year the Rohilla state was destroyed. The princely remnant spent the next century and a half buying manuscripts, and the result is one of the great collections of Islamic and Indic texts anywhere.

### The lineage that left Rampur and reached the world
Allauddin Khan came to Rampur to study with Wazir Khan, the court's Senia instrumentalist. He then founded the Maihar tradition and taught Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar. Most of what the world heard as Indian classical music in the twentieth century runs back through a Rampur court appointment.

### Two towns, two Islams
Bareilly and Deoband are about 250 km apart on the same plain, and the two schools of South Asian Sunni thought that take their names from them have been arguing since the 1880s. Both are exported worldwide; both remain headquartered in small north Indian towns.

### Scorpions that do not sting
At the Shah Wilayat dargah in Amroha, visitors are handed scorpions from the shrine precinct on the understanding that they will not sting inside it. The claim is very old, entirely local, and repeated by people of both faiths.

### Most of India's flutes come from one town
Pilibhit makes the great majority of the bamboo flutes played in India, from bamboo shipped in from Assam and Kerala. Each hole is burnt and filed by hand and each flute tuned individually, which is why they are sold by pitch rather than by size.

### A dish shared with Kashmir and nowhere in between
Shab deg — turnip and meat cooked overnight in a sealed pot — is made in Rampur and in the Kashmir Valley and essentially nowhere on the plain between them. It is a leftover of the two courts' relationship, preserved as a winter dish.

### Shoes thrown at a colonial officer, every year since
Shahjahanpur's Laat Sahab procession puts a figure representing a colonial Lieutenant Governor on a buffalo cart and lets the city pelt him with footwear. The empire has been gone for nearly eighty years; the procession has not.

### A swamp turned into a granary
The terai was malarial forest until the 1950s. DDT spraying, land grants to Sikh farming families displaced in 1947, and the founding of Pantnagar university turned it into one of the most productive agricultural belts in India within twenty years — and reduced the Tharu and Buksa to a minority in their own country.

### Brass, and what happened to it
Moradabad's brass industry now works largely in aluminium, iron and mixed metals for export, because Western buyers wanted different finishes and lower prices. The engraving skills stayed; the metal changed.

## Cross-border corridors

### Rohilla Afghan Corridor
Spans: Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand

Pashtun military settlement in eighteenth-century north India — the Rohillas of this plain, the Afghan founders of Tonk in Rajasthan, and the Afghan-founded state of Bhopal, sharing surnames, kinship, dress, a whole-spice kitchen and a preference for the sherwani and the flat cap.

Divergence: Bhopal and Tonk kept their states and their Afghan identity into the twentieth century; Rohilkhand lost its state in 1774 and kept only Rampur, so the identity survives here as cuisine, language and surname rather than as polity.

### Barelvi–Deobandi Corridor (crosses an international border)
Spans: Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Pakistan, Bangladesh

Two schools of Sunni thought founded in two towns of this plain in the 1860s and 1880s, each with madrasa networks, publishing houses and mosque affiliations across South Asia, the Gulf and the British and South African diasporas.

Divergence: Barelvi practice is built around the shrine, the urs and devotional naat; Deobandi practice around the seminary and a reformist scepticism of the same. Their disagreement is one of the most consequential in modern South Asian Islam.

### Rampur Music Corridor (crosses an international border)
Spans: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra

The khayal of the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana and the instrumental Senia line held at the Rampur court, carried out by Allauddin Khan to Maihar and from there into the Kolkata and Bombay concert worlds and onto the international stage.

Divergence: The vocal gharana stayed close to home and to the qasbah; the instrumental line left entirely and became the global face of Indian classical music, while Rampur itself no longer supports either.

### Terai Tharu Corridor (crosses an international border)
Spans: Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Nepal

Tharu communities, their language, their raised granary architecture, wall painting, Barka Nach performance and fish-and-rice foodway, running the length of the terai from the Sharda to the Kosi and across the Nepal border.

Divergence: Nepal's Tharu became a recognised nationality with political representation and a written literature; the Indian Tharu are a scheduled tribe divided across three states, and the varieties are drifting apart.

### Terai Tiger Landscape (crosses an international border)
Spans: Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Nepal

A continuous forest and grassland belt — Pilibhit, Dudhwa, Kishanpur and, across the border, Shuklaphanta and Bardiya — with tiger, swamp deer and rhino populations that move between them along river corridors.

Divergence: Nepal's side is managed as a single contiguous landscape with buffer-zone community forestry; the Indian side is split between two states and fragmented by cane fields, and carries a much higher rate of human-wildlife conflict.

### Cane and Gur Belt
Spans: Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana

Sugarcane, the village kolhu, gur and khandsari, and the sugar-mill politics that come with them — continuous from the Doab through Rohilkhand into the terai.

Divergence: The terai's cane came with the post-1947 settlement and is grown on large holdings; Rohilkhand's is older, smallholder and tied to the village crushing economy.

## Sources

- [Uttar Pradesh Tourism — official portal](https://uptourism.gov.in/)
- [Rampur Raza Library](https://razalibrary.gov.in/)
- [Geographical Indications Registry, India — registered GI list](https://ipindia.gov.in/registered-gls.htm)
- [Pilibhit Tiger Reserve — National Tiger Conservation Authority](https://ntca.gov.in/)
- [Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology](https://www.gbpuat.ac.in/)
- [Census of India 2011 — language and scheduled tribe tables](https://censusindia.gov.in/)

_Last reviewed 2026-08-30._