The earliest recorded history of Kohat traces its founder to a Buddhist king named Raja Kohat. Today, the only surviving traces of Kohat’s remote Buddhist past is a road carved into the hill to the north of the Muhammadzai village, about eight kilometres to the west of Kohat; that, and the ruined Adh-i-Samut fort named after another Buddhist king, Adh. After a lull of several centuries, we hear Kohat again, mentioned in barbarian Babur’s Baburnama. Like scores of similar alien Muslim invaders, he proudly mentions how he invaded, destroyed and plundered Kohat after first capturing Purushapura (Peshawar) in 1505 CE. The next significant mention of Kohat occurs in the mid 18th century when the short-lived but brutal Durrani Empire absorbed it.