This means they are nomadic and their main occupations centre around providing services to the settled populations they travel among, like peddling particular goods or performing music.
In neighbouring South Asia, the term Jat refers to a large cluster of agriculture castes, some especially in the Balochistan are connected with camel breeding and herding.
Generally, what defines groups is a nomadic lifestyle, with their main occupation being the provision of services such as the manufacture and sale of agricultural implements, bangles, drums and winnowing trays as well as providing entertainment such as performing bears and monkeys, fortune-telling, singing.
Secondly, each Jat group specializes in a particular activity, for example the Ghorbat of western Afghanistan are sieve makers, shoe repairers and animal traders, while the Shadibaz peddle cloth, bangles and haberdashery.
This relationship came to an end with the droughts of the middle of the 1960s, the ensuing poverty reportedly driving them to prostitution and the provisions of entertainment, which were their chief occupations in the 1970s.
[10] The latter activity was at that time stigmatised and illegal, but unlike many prostitutes in the settled areas, the Baluch women did not try to conceal their identity in public and dressed and behaved in a way that made them immediately recognisable as such.
Women received clients in their summer camps, their husbands (or fathers if unmarried) setting the price and collecting the official earnings.
The Jalali and the Pikraj give successive droughts and famines as the reason for their migration, while the Shadibaz and the Vangawala state that their ancestors were fleeing from blood feuds ultimately triggered by the abduction of kinswomen.
Their name, literally meaning "monkey-players" in the local Persian variety, reflects their main occupation, which consisted in training monkeys and then using them for performances.
Comprising 3,000 people spread across five descent groups (Baluč, Čenār, Malek, Pešāwri, and Rati), they lived south of Hindukush and east of Helmand valley.
The women sold bangles, for which they were well known, while the men had various occupations: in some groups they engaged in small trade, in others they took up seasonal agricultural jobs, in others still they were smugglers, farmers, animal dealers, or performers specialising in juggling, magic or snake-charming.