Dir

Dir lies in the Panjkora Valley, where the Panjkora River descends from the Hindu Kush and joins the Swat River near Chakdara. Swat lies east of the valley, while Chitral and Afghanistan close off the northern and western approaches. Almost the entire country is mountainous: peaks in the northeast rise to five thousand metres, and watershed ridges farther south still reach three thousand metres.

The valley floors offered the most practical routes through this high terrain. Settlement gathered along the Panjkora and the smaller side valleys, where passage toward Swat or Chitral required control of bridges and mountain tracks, so that local leaders could close or open routes across the mountains. The upper valleys were long the home of Kohistani, Dardic-speaking communities who herded and terraced the slopes. In the early sixteenth century Pashtun tribes of the Yusufzai moved in from the west and took the lands of Swat and the lower valleys, and the Panjkora country passed to Pashtun clans, while the older mountain peoples were pushed to the heights. Mountain valleys, not broad plains, defined both its trade routes and its political frontiers.