Girkis

The Girkis were Hunza's earlier royal line, remembered in Burusho tradition as the dynasty before the Ayasho. One account recorded by the nineteenth-century British officer John Biddulph says that Girkis and Moghlot were twin sons of Mayroo Khan, the first Muslim thum of Nagar, by a daughter of the Trakhan raja of Gilgit. Because the brothers were hostile from birth, their father divided his state, giving Girkis the northern bank of the river, which became Hunza, and Moghlot the southern bank, which became Nagar.

The Hunza royal chronicle instead calls the founder Sahib Khan, surnamed Girkis, a great-grandson of the legendary Persian prince Azar Jamshid, and dates the succeeding Ayasho house to 874. Later British writers linked the title Girkis with the Kirghiz nomads of the Pamir steppes.