The Kohja or Kauja are Jat gotra

Gotra

In the Hindu society, the term Gotra broadly refers to people who are descendants in an unbroken male line from a common male ancestor. Panini defines gotra for grammatical purposes as apatyam pautraprabhrti gotram , which means "the word gotra denotes the progeny beginning with the son's son"...

 (clan), now found mainly in Jhang

Jhang

- Demographics :According to 1981 census of Pakistan population of Jhang was 1,970,944 with the 434,495 housing units in Jhang. In 1998 census, population of Jhang was 2,834,545, whose annually growth rate was 2.16%. Male population was 1,474,099 and female population was 1,360,446...

 and Faisalabad

Faisalabad

Faisalabad , formerly known as Lyallpur, is the third largest metropolis in Pakistan, the second largest in the province of Punjab after Lahore, and a major industrial center in the heart of Pakistan. Before the foundation of the city in 1880, the area was very thinly populated. The population has...

 districts, of Punjab

Punjab (Pakistan)

Punjab is the most populous province of Pakistan, with approximately 45% of the country's total population. Forming most of the Punjab region, the province is bordered by Kashmir to the north-east, the Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan to the east, the Pakistani province of Sindh to the...

, Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

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History and origin

The Kauja were originally settled in Jalandhar District

Jalandhar District

Jalandhar district , Jalandhar Zilā) is one of the 22 districts in the state of Punjab in North-West Republic of India. The capital is Jalandhar City...

, in what is now Punjab

Punjab (India)

Punjab ) is a state in the northwest of the Republic of India, forming part of the larger Punjab region. The state is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the east, Haryana to the south and southeast and Rajasthan to the southwest as well as the Pakistani province of Punjab to the...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. They occupied the five villages of Kauja, Dhurial, Nangal Fida, Alamgirpur

Alamgirpur

Alamgirpur is an archeological site of the Indus Valley Civilization that thrived along Indus River from the Harappan-Bara period, located in Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is the eastern most site of the civilization....

 and Kotla Kauja in north of Jalandhar Tehsil where the Kingra Cho stream enters the district.

According to their traditions, their ancestor was a giant, who accompanied Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna in one of his invasions of India, and settled down in the region. His name was Ali Mohammad, or Manju, and he was nicknamed Kohcha or little mountain, on account of his size. His descendants contracted marriages with Jats of the neighbourhood, and as such became Jat. The Kohja were the only exclusively Muslim Jat clan in Jalandhar.

After the partition of India, they like, other Muslims of the Jalandhar District, moved to Pakistan, settling mainly in Jhang District

Jhang District

Jhang District is a district of the Punjab province of Pakistan. The city of Jhang is the district's capital. According to the 1998 census of Pakistan, the district's population was 2.8 million, of which 23 percent lived in urban areas. By 2008, according to estimates, the population had...

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