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The Sial tribe (also written as Siyal, Syal, Sayal, Seyal) is a Jatt tribe in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, split between India and Pakistan.

Ethnographic classification

Denzil Ibbetson, an administrator of the British Raj, classified the Sial as Rajput tribe.

Following the introduction of the Punjab Land Alienation Act in 1900, the authorities of the Raj classified the Sials who inhabited the Punjab as an "agricultural tribe", a term that was administratively synonymous with the "martial race" classification that was used for the purposes of determining the suitability of a person as a recruit to the British Indian Army.

History

During the fifteenth- and sixteenth centuries, during the period of the Mughal empire, the Sial and Kharal tribes were dominant in parts of the lower Bari and Rachna doabs of Punjab. The 1809 Treaty of Amritsar, agreed between Ranjit Singh, the Sikh leader, and the British, gave him a carte blanche to consolidate territorial gains north of the Sutlej river at the expense both of other Sikh chiefs and their peers among the other dominant communities. In 1816, the Sial chief of Jhang, in Rachna doab, was ousted, having previously been forced to pay tribute to Singh for several years. The Sials in Jhang, as in many other areas of the Punjab, had once been nomadic pastoralists. They did not necessary cultivate all of the land that they controlled and it was the actions of the Sikh empire and, later, the land reforms of the Raj administration that caused them to turn to cultivation.

Popular culture

The Heer Ranjha and Mirza Sahiban, epic poems of Punjabi literature are pieces of fictional writing which refer to the Sials, who were the dominant tribe at the time. The two heroines, Heer is depicted as young and independent-minded daughter of a Sial chieftain in revolt against traditional tribal conservatism. Heer is portrayed as a Sial Jatt while Sahiban is also from a Jatt family.

Notable people with this surname

• Muhammad Arif Khan Rajbana Sial, former federal and provincial minister
• Amit Sial, an Indian actor working in Hindi cinema

References

1. Bayly, Susan (2001). Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge University Press. p. 140. ISBN 9780521798426.
2. Mazumder, Rajit K. (2003). The Indian Army and the Making of Punjab. Orient Blackswan. pp. 104–105. ISBN 9788178240596.
3. Grewal, J. S. (1998). The Sikhs of the Punjab. Cambridge University Press. pp. 4, 102–10 248. ISBN 9780521637640.
4. van den Dungen, P. H. M. (1968). "Changes in Status and Occupation in Nineteenth Century Panjab". In Low, Donald Anthony (ed.). Soundings in Modern South Asian History. University of California Press. pp. 72–74.
5. Mirza, Shafqat Tanvir (1991). Resistance Themes in Punjabi Literature. Lahore: Vanguard Books. pp. 9–17.
6. Shackle, Christopher (1992). "Transition and Transformation in Varis Shah's Hir". In Shackle, Christopher; Snell, Rupert (eds.). The Indian Narrative: Perspectives and Patterns. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 243. ISBN 978-3-44703-241-4. The Hir-Ranjha story is rather more complex in that even in its most reduced forms it implies a double rather than a single sequence of transitions associated with transformations of the hero. Dhido, a Jat of Takht Hazara in north-western Panjab, known by his caste-name as Ranjha, leaves home on the death of his father, and travels to Jhang, where he and Hir, daughter of the local Jatt chieftain of the Sial clan, fall in love. Their affair can only be sustained by Ranjha shedding his own chieftainly status to become Hir's father's buffalo-herd (mahinväl), thus enabling them to meet secretly in the grazing-grounds by the river Chenab.
7. Khan, Hussain A (2004). Re-Thinking Punjab: The Construction of Siraiki Identity. Lahore : Research and Publication Centres. p. 131. ISBN 978-9-69862-309-8.

• Rajput clans of Punjab
• Punjabi-language surnames
• Social groups of Punjab, India
• Punjabi tribes
• Social groups of Punjab, Pakistan
• Pakistani names
• Hindu surnames
• Indian surnames