Abstract
This article reconstructs the precolonial history of the Kalat Khanate, a Baluchistan chiefdom peripheral to the empires of Safavid Persia and Mughul India. Imperial politics gave rise to large‐scale migrations to Baluchistan, fostering uneven tribal development, aggressive leadership, and tributary domination. The martial origin of Kalat produced a paramount ruler and a tribal order with powerful chiefs. I argue that Kalat was shaped by the interplay of class and descent processes: descent group alliances produced a tribal order both resistant and accommodating to the forces of political centralization and class formation, forces growing out of a system of tributary domination. Encounters with regional polities also played an important role in the development of Kalat. [Pakistan, political economy, tribal organization, class formation]
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