The Jadoons (also Gadoon) (Pashto: جدون) are one of the largest Pashtun tribes in Pakistan. They originate from Jallalabad and are now located in the southern Hazara Division area of Khyber Pakhtoonkhuwa, Pakistan,[1] partly in Gadoon area in Swabi on the southern slopes of Mahaban Mountains, and partly in Abbottabad District and Haripur District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Their language is Pashto in Swabi and Hindko in Abbottabad and Haripur. They are subdivided mainly into three sub-tribes: Salar, Mansoor and Hassa'zai.
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The Jadoons originated from Ashraf, also known as Jadoon (Gadoon) of the Panni clan of the Gharghasht Afghan. Panni, Kakar, Naghar and Dawi were four sons of Daney, who was the son of Ismail, also known as Ghurghusht, the son of Qais Abdur Rashid. They migrated from a place called Ghwara Margy, to the west of Kandahar two or three centuries ago, to the present area of "Gadoon/Jadoon", Swabi Distt,Khyber-pukhtoonkhwa. The people of this tribe call themselves Jadoons, but Eastern Afghans who change the letter S'h into K'h and "j" into "G" style them Gadoons as the letter J and G are interchangeable in the Pushto language, just as jillani and Gillani are synonyms. They created three tribes: Parni, Kakar, and Naghar (Dawi mixed with the Kakar).
The Jadoons were freedom fighters and fought against the Sikhs and the British in the early-19th century along with other Pashtun tribes of the region like the, Swati, Tareens, Khaji khail, and Shilmani. Their leader was Khan Sultan Muhammad khan Jadoon at this time. They are still the biggest land owners in the area,and the most influential.
In 1841 J. Forbes and John William Kaye said the following with reference to the Jadoons who lived in the tribal areas outside the limits of British India.[2]
The Jadoons are not British subjects, though they inhabit a portion of the district called Hazara. They inhabit a portion of the frontier below, that is south of the Hussanzye tribe, lying on the right bank of the Indus, and opposite to the British town of Torbeyla. Westward their territory extends till it meets the higher ranges of the Hindoo Koosh. The Mahabun mountain, with its dense forest, lies within their boundary, and the whole tract is wild and rugged in an almost inconceivable degree. Though the Jadoons accompanied the Yoosufzyes when they descended from Kabool in the fifteenth century, and conquered and occupied the valley of Peshawaur, they claim to have an independent origin, and are separate from the Yoosufzyes. The Jadoons have spread into the neighbouring district of Hazara, and now form one of the strongest tribes of that province, occupying the central portion; their villages lying from 1,500 to 6,000 feet above the plains of the Indus.[2]
The Jadoons occupy all of the southeastern portion of the territory between the Peshawar and Hazara borders, and southern slopes of Mahaban, having taken their present lands in the eastern Sama after the Jadoons and various Kashi chiefs of the Afghans had defeated the Dilazaks, and when Jahangir finally crushed the Dilazaks, they spread up the Dor valley as high as Abbottabad. Early in the 18th Century, on the expulsion of the Karlugh Turks by Syed Jalal Baba they appropriated the country about Dhamtour, and about hundred years later they took the Bagra tract from the remaining few Dilazaks who held it, while shortly before the Sikhs took the country their Hassanzai clan deprived the Karral of a portion of the Nilan valley".