Project ------------ The goal of this project is to bring together a community of individuals who are interested in the history, genealogy and genetic profile of the Arain tribe, and shed light on how they are related to other populations in the Indian subcontinent and across the world. History of the Arain ------------------------------- Oral traditions propose that the nucleus of the Arain identity originated from migrations from the Levant (Al-Shām, الشَّام) to the Sindh, with the Islamic Umayyad conquest under Muhammad bin Qasim in the early 8th century A.D. The Arain slowly moved up the Indus river over the course of 12 centuries, settling in cities such as Multan and Uch Sharif, which were dominated by Sufism. By the Colonial Era, the Arain were described as an agricultural tribe that were settled in the Punjab region of British India. According to the 1921 Census of India by J T Marten, the Arain population numbered 1.1 million individuals, and represented just under 10% of the Muslim population of British Punjab. Colonial accounts suggest that members of the Arain tribe almost exclusively followed the Sunni Muslim tradition and adhered to the Hanafi madhab, although there were small populations who followed the Hindu or Sikh faiths. Endogamy was a defining characteristic of the Arain during colonial times, and they very rarely married outside of their own tribe. Following Indian independence and the partition in 1947, most members of the Arain community that lived in Eastern Punjab were uprooted from their villages, and scattered across the Punjabi canal colonies in the newly created nation of Pakistan to the West. The legacy of colonialism prompted many Punjabis to emigrate to Great Britain, its colonies in East Africa, other part of Europe and the Americas. In the present day, Arain have prospered in the fields spanning the military, law and business, and maintain close links with extended family networks across the world. Common surnames and titles used by the Arain include Chaudhry and Mian, although the tradition in Pakistani Punjab is to take the father’s first name as the family surname.