he found that in the Salt Range they had been subdued by the Awans, Janjuas and other Jat tribes, which had adopted the Muslim religion we may conclude therefore that they may have been Muslims before this period. It is still uncertain when the Jats embraced Islam, but when Babur invaded India in 1525 A.

Critically, the process of conversion was said to have been a much slower process by. Most Jats clans of western Punjab have traditions that they accepted Islam at the hands of many famous Sufi saints of Punjab, Shaikh Faridudin Ganj Shaker of Pakpattan, Ahmad Sirhindi of east Punjab and Baha-ud-din Zakariya of Multan, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar of Sindh, Jalaluddin Surkh-Posh Bukhari of Bahawalpur area. As these Jats became farmers, they started accepting Islam. Between the 11th and the 13th centuries, the Jats became essentially a farming population, taking advantage in the growth of irrigation. Many Jat clans initially settled in a region known as the Bar country, which referred to the country between the rivers of Punjab, thinly populated with scanty rainfall which accommodated a type of pastoral nomadism which was based primary on the rearing of goats and camels. īetween the 10th and the 13th Century, there was large immigration of Jat groups northwards to Punjab and eastwards towards what is now Rajasthan. The Muslim conquest chronicles further point at the important concentrations of Jats in towns and fortresses of Lower and Central Sindh. The Jats were the first external converts to Islam, and many were employed as soldiers by the new Arab Muslim administration in Sindh. These Jats are often referred as Zatts ( Arabic: الزُّطِّ, romanized: Az-Zutt) in early Arab writings. When Arabs entered Sindh and other Southern regions of current Pakistan in the seventh century, the chief tribal groupings they found were the Jats and the Med people. It is though confirmed that they were pastoralists who had migrated from the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh and Balochistan to the Northern regions around the Middle Ages.

The Jats have been identified by one writer with the gypsies of Europe, another makes their original home in the Mesopotamian marshes, others again consider them to be the descendants of the Jatii, Getae and other Scythian races, which entered the subcontinent in about the beginning of the Christian era. Muslim Jats are relatively from the same branch of origin as the greater diverse Jat community.

Punjabi jatt