ABSTRACT
The Introduction suggested that Barth's analysis of Swat society was ‘synecdochic’ in nature i.e. it saw the world through the eyes of the Khan and that view was taken as representative of what is apperceived by Swat society as a whole. The main sources of information, and certainly those providing the material for the four chapters that analyse Swat political organization and social action (Barth, 1959a, chapters 5, 7, 8 and 9), appear to be the big Khans such as Nalkot Pacha, Khan Bahadur Sahib and Taj Mahomed Khan (Figure 7, p. 103). Paragraphs describing informants in these chapters might well begin: ‘Malak Baba of Maruf Khel and the chief of Juna khel’ (ibid., p.113), or ‘There were four Khans: Mohammed Awzel Khan, Taj Mohammed Khan, Amir Khan and Biha Malak’ (ibid., p.71). Some of these Khans (or as in the case of Nalkot Pacha, ‘Saints’) were personal acquaintances of Barth during his field-work and presumably his ‘respondents’. Thus ‘the Nalkot Pacha, my sometime host’ (ibid., p.99), and ‘one of my acquaintances among the more prominent chiefs had an approximate income of 50,000 Pakistan rupees (then about £5,000) from the sale of grain’ (ibid., p.79).
