07-10-2006, 08:03 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-26-2006, 04:40 AM by Hauma Hamiddha.)
<b>Randulla Khan's invasion of the South</b>
Muhammad who succeeded Ibrahim, as the Adil Shahi Sultan was a fanatic Jihadi who wanted to put the Hindus in their place and bring the whole of South India under the cresent banner. Muhammad gathered under his ace commander Randulla Khan several vigorous green holy warriors of the cresent who shared his vision - Mustafa Khan, Afzal Khan and Asad Khan were the chief of these. There was also the African warrior Siddi Jawhar fighting on their side. The Adil Shah ordered Randulla Khan to lead these forces into the Vijayanagaran territory and systematically attack Darwar, Lakshmeshvar, Penukonda, Vellore, Chandragiri, Shira, Ikkeri and Jinji and plunder the cities and destroy Hindu temples situated there. The renegade brahmin Murar Jagdev tried to negotiate with regards to the Hindus with the Sultan. He was murdered by Pathans sent by Mustafa Khan at night. Shahji who was forced to surrender after being starved in the siege of Mahuli, was asked to accompany the invasionary force with his surviving troops. The Moslem plan was simple but the utter strategic failure of the Vijayanagaran Nayakas and their armies allowed the Army of Islam to execute it. Every invasion they would leave immediately after monsoons and return just before the next monsoons to Bijapur.
In the first invasion (1637 CE) the ghazis of Randulla Khan stormed into Dharwar and Lakshmeshvar destroying and plundering the cities. They then attacked Ikkeri and besieged it. Virabhadra Nayaka exhausted his supplies in the Ikkeri fort in 2 months and was forced to surrender. He ran for life and hid in Bednur, while the Moslems devasted the city. It is claimed that they collected a staggering wealth of 1.8 million gold pieces from the plunder of Ikkeri. The houses of all Hindus were demolished and the males killed and women taken by the Moslems. In the next invasion Randulla Khan sent his deputy Afzal Khan a giant ghazi who was reputed to bend iron bars with his bare hands to destroy Kasturiranga, the prince of Shira. Kasturiranga put up brave fight but soon ran out resources and men in face of the streaming Islamic attacks from Bijapur. Afzal Khan promised to reach a settlement and asked Kasturiranga to meet him in private for the negotiations. When the prince came to meet the Khan, the latter stabbed him to death in course of the meeting. This incident left a profound impression on Shahji who kept as far as away as he could from the Adil Shahi general. Shahji got his chance to grab some land when he saw that Kempe Gauda the fort keeper of Bangalore was offguard. He promptly seized Bangalore and then forced the Wodeyar of Shrirangapattanam to vassalage. In Bangalore he ruled like an independent ruler paying only an occassional tribute to the Adil Shah and sending official messages pledging to be his vassal.
Ranadulla Khan then savaged Basavapattanam after killing Kenge Nayaka and then seized Tumkur, Balapur and Vellore. The Sultan was elated at these successes and had profitted over 40 million coins, with which he embellished Bijapur by erecting several specimens of Saracenic architecture. Shahji was a decent ruler of Bangalore and its surrounding regions--importantly he saved the Hindus in his territory by establishing a Hindu rule with Brahmin ministers rather than subjecting them to the Islamic courts.and soon added Balapur without rousing Adil Shahi suspicion to his territory. His son Sambhaji in his late teens proved his worth by slyly annexing Balapur to Shahji's territory without arousing the Moslems' suspicions. But the Adilshah noted the when Shriranga III came to the Vijayanagaran throne Shahji had opened contacts with him. Simultaneously, Shriranga started organizing a major counter-attack on the Moslems at Vellore and Shivappa Nayaka organizing a force in Bednur seized back Ikkeri from the Moslems.
Adilshah becoming suspicious asked Shahji to come over to Bijapur with his entire family and stay there for several months. Ranadulla Khan, who was generally lenient towards Shahji died around that time (1643), and his replacement Mustafa Khan asked the Sultan to take action on Shahji. Shahji ever aware of self-preservation agreed to toe the Moslem line. However, his young sons Sambhaji and Shivaji noticed this and were filled with the urge of independence. In the Peshve bakhar they are mentioned as explicitly saying that the devas were displeased with Shahji working with the Moslems who were uprooting Hindus and converting the whole country. Whatever the case, either due his young sons' independent thoughts or his own sub-current loyalty to his religion, he was seen my the Moslems as possibly involved secretly siding with the rebellions in Karnataka. So the Adil Shah severely reprimanded him in 1644, and sent Mustafa Khan to deal with the Hindus in the South.
<b>Mustafa Khan's invasions</b>
Shah Jahan called on Adil Shah and Qutb Shah to destroy the Hindus of the South and bring the whole of Hind under Islam. First, Mustafa Khan attacked the Vijayanagaran army lead by the Nayaka Shivappa who had liberated Ikkeri (1645). The Hindus fought with great fury and inflicted severe losses on the Moslems in the battle of Sagar. But Mustafa Khan who greatly hated the Hindus was strengthened by reserves and he fell back on Shivappa Nayaka and routed in the second battle of Ikkeri. But Shriranga III began his counter-operations right away and captured Vellore. The Moslems were alarmed and the Qutb Shah and Adil Shah made a common cause and dispatched a large army of Jihad against Shriranga. Shahji refused to join this army eventhough he was asked to. At that time his young son Shivaji in Maharashtra instead started making preparations to take a critical fort of Kondana near Pune from the Moslems. His other son Sambhaji started secret negotiations with Hindu Palegars to look upto Shahji and not side the Moslem invasionary force. Mustafa Khan struck rapidly and captured Vellore. But as soon as Mustafa Khan returned to Bijapur Shahji and Sambhaji secretly provided intelligence and help to Shriranga and he was able to defeat the Moslems and recapture Vellore. Furious, the Sultan sent Mustafa Khan along with Afzal Khan and Asad Khan to destroy Shiranga. Shahji was ordered to help the invasion and threatened with arrest if he sided with the Hindus. Shriranga contacted Shahji and asked him to open negotiations for peace with Mustafa. Shahji duely did so and was trying to buy time for the Vijayanagarans, when Shriranga thought he might succeed by launching a preemptive strike on the Moslems. However, he was mistaken-- while outwardly the Moslems seemed to be negotiating peace as per Shahji's moves, they were themselves preparing to strike. So Shriranga's element of surprise was completely blown off and the Moslems slaughtered his forces in the battle and seized Vellore. However, Shahji helped him escape with life. While the Adil Shahi army was tied with Shriranga, Shahji's son Shivaji captured the Kondana fort from the Moslems, while his elder son Sambhaji quite deposed a Moslem palegar in the Raichur Doab and was bringing territory under his control in contrivance with the local Hindu population.
The brahmins met at the Tirupati temple and bank-rolled a Hindu army using temple revenues under the surviving Nayakas to counter the Moslem depredations. Alarmed at the growing Hindu counter-attack the Sultans ordered a major offensive with two Jihadi armies under Mustafa Khan and Afzal Khan from Bijapur and the zealous Mir Jumla from Hyderabad. The Hindus at first fought the Moslem army at Virinchipuram, where despite their defeat staved of the Moslem army by inflict heavy losses on them. The surviving Nayaka, Rupa Nayaka went over to Jinji and from this excellent fort began operations against the Moslems with the Tirupati funds. He kept hitting the Moslem armies repeatedly and kept retreating to his fort. Sambhaji kept providing the Nayaka secretly with intelligence and was thus coming of his own in concieving a nationalist Hindu cause, much as his brother was in Maharashtra. The brahmins at the Tirupati meet also decided to take a second course of action and selected a set of expert tantriks to perform a series of abhicAra rites on the Sultan of Bijapur. The abhichAra had its due effect and the Sultan's limbs were paralyzed. Mustafa Khan and Mir Jumla enraged over the developments launched a major attack on Jinji. Shahji and Sambhaji were asked by Mustafa Khan to join him against the Nayaka at Jinji. Shahji proved an obstructionist and kept interfering by shielding various Nayakas and delaying encounters. Mustafa Khan furious over these actions had him arrested with the help of Shahji's treacherous relative Baji Ghorpade when the former was offguard due to a wild party. Shahji was put in chains by Afzal Khan and taken with him to Bijapur. Mustafa himself was targetted by a mAraNa prayoga laid by the brahmins and is said to have died in a week there after. But his successor Muhammad Khan continued the siege and finally killed Rupa Nayaka and captured Gingi.
Following Shahji's arrest his sons Sambhaji in Banglore and Shivaji in Pune started asserting theior independence against the Moslems. With the help of the Brahmin advisers they started acting as independent *Hindu* rulers and did not remit any tributes to the Adil Shah. The Sultan acted quickly and sent a force under Asad Khan from Jinji to take Bangalore from Sambhaji. Sambhaji gave a notable display of his valor by routing the Moslem force advancing towards Banglore by after intercepting it on the way to the city. Shivaji was in the mean time attacked in both Purandar and Kondana by two columns of the Sultan's army, but he too gave an ample taste of his valor by defeating both the Moslem armies. The action by Shahji's sons and their ability to punish the Moslem armies both in North and south made the Sultan wary of any action on Shahji. In the meantime the brothers tried an unusual political move by contacting a representative of the Mogol emperor to negotiate with the Sultan for their father's safety and possible release from captivity. Ahmad Khan the Moslem commandant agreed to negotiate his safe release provided his sons surrendered Kondana and Banglore. Shahji agreed to such a deal and was released. His sons on the surface agreed to do so but secretly harbored plans to seize back their territory from the Moslems.
Soon they had their chance when the two Moslem Sultans, the Sunni and Shia started fighting amongst themselves over their territorial possessions after the battle of Jinji. In course of this fight, Shahji and Sambhaji secured Banglore and went on take Kanakagiri for themselves. When Mir Jumla started driving the Adil Shahi troops, Shahji and Sambhaji intervened with their forces. To the Hindus they were protectors for Moslem depredations and for Adil Shah they were the only hope to survive Mir Jumla. They caught Mir Jumla in an ambush between their columns near Bangalore and defeated him soundly. They held him ransom for 900,000 gold pieces and with this victory became the most powerful force in South India. In Kanakagiri, Sambhaji saw the remnants of the past Hindu glory and the idea of founding an independent Hindu kingdom with this fort as a base came to his mind. Sambhaji accordingly dispossessed to local Moslem officials and appointed his Hindu ministers instead. Abba Khan the local Moslem Adil Shahi warlord was furious over these movements and raising a force of ghazis launched a fierce attack on Sambhaji. Shahji tried a political move by representing to the Adil Shah that he was holding the territory for the Sultan while Abba Khan was revolting against him. Afzal Khan was sent to settle affairs, and he long wanted to punish the Maharatta upstarts severely. He also had a grudge against Sambhaji due the defeat at his hands in the Bangalore encounter.
Afzal Khan laid a cunning plan. He sent a message to Sambhaji that he would help him against Abba Khan and asked the former to storm the defences of Abba. Sambhaji vigorously attacked and was in the thick of battle when the detachment of Afzal Khan which had supposedly come to help turned against him and surrounded him. He tried to cut his way out, but received several shots was killed. Thus at the age of 25, Sambhaji, the poorly known brother of the future Maharatta Raja died in front of Kanakagiri. His mother Jijabai bore a long-standing grudge against Afzal Khan after this event, and finally had her satisfaction, when Shivaji slew the Khan and restored the Hindu prestige.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>ENSLAVEMENT OF HINDUS BY ARAB AND TURKISH INVADERS</b>
Turks were not the first Muslims to invade India. Prior to the coming of Turks the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh in the early years of the eighth century. In conformity with the Muslim tradition, the Arabs captured and enslaved Indians in large numbers. Indeed from the days of Muhammad bin Qasim in the eighth century to those of Ahmad Shah Abdali in the eighteenth, enslavement, distribution, and sale of Hindu prisoners was systematically practised by Muslim invaders and rulers of India. It is but natural that the exertion of a thousand years of slave-taking can only be briefly recounted with a few salient features of the system highlighted.
<b>Enslavement by the Arabs </b>
During the Arab invasion of Sindh (712 C.E.), Muhammad bin Qasim first attacked Debal, a word derived from Deval meaning temple. It was situated on the sea-coast not far from modern Karachi. It was garrisoned by 4000 Kshatriya soldiers and served by 3000 Brahmans. All males of the age of seventeen and upwards were put to the sword and their women and children were enslaved.1 â700 beautiful females, who were under the protection of Budh (that is, had taken shelter in the temple), were all captured with their valuable ornaments, and clothes adorned with jewels.â2 Muhammad despatched one-fifth of the legal spoil to Hajjaj which included seventy-five damsels, the rest four-fifths were distributed among the soldiers.3 Thereafter whichever places he attacked like Rawar, Sehwan, Dhalila, Brahmanabad and Multan, Hindu soldiers and men with arms were slain, the common people fled, or, if flight was not possible, accepted Islam, or paid the poll tax, or died with their religion. Many women of the higher class immolated themselves in Jauhar, most others became prize of the victors. These women and children were enslaved and converted, and batches of them were des-patched to the Caliph in regular installments. For example, after Rawar was taken Muhammad Qasim âhalted there for three days during which he massacred 6000 (men). Their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoner.â Later on âthe slaves were counted, and their number came to 60, 000 (of both sexes?). Out of these, 30 were young ladies of the royal blood⦠Muhammad Qasim sent all these to Hajjajâ who forwarded them to Walid the Khalifa. âHe sold some of these female slaves of royal birth, and some he presented to others.â4 Selling of slaves was a common practice. âFrom the seventh century onwards and with a peak during Muhammad al-Qasimâs campaigns in 712-13â, writes Andre Wink, âa considerable number of Jats was captured as prisoners of war and deported to Iraq and elsewhere as slaves.â5 Jats here is obviously used as a general word for all Hindus. In Brahmanabad, âit is said that about six thousand fighting men were slain, but according to others sixteen thousand were killedâ, and their families enslaved.6 The garrison in the fort-city of Multan was put to the sword, and families of the chiefs and warriors of Multan, numbering about six thousand, were enslaved.
In Sindh female slaves captured after every campaign of the marching army, were converted and married to Arab soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. The standing instructions of Hajjaj to Muhammad bin Qasim were to âgive no quarter to infidels, but to cut their throatsâ, and take the women and children as captives.7 In the final stages of the conquest of Sindh, âwhen the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim⦠one-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside; they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number⦠(they belonged to high families) and veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiersâ.8 Obviously a few lakh women were enslaved in the course of Arab invasion of Sindh.
<b>Ghaznavid capture of Hindu slaves </b>
If such were the gains of the âmildâ Muhammad bin Qasim in enslaving kaniz wa ghulam in Sindh, the slaves captured by Mahmud of Ghazni, âthat ferocious and insatiable conquerorâ, of the century beginning with the year 1000 C.E. have of course to be counted in hundreds of thousands. Henry Elliot and John Dowson have sifted the available evidence from contemporary and later sources-from Utbiâs Tarikh-i-Yamini, Nizamuddin Ahmadâs Tabqat-i-Akbari, the Tarikh-i-Alai and the Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh to the researches of early European scholars. Mohammad Habib, Muhammad Nazim, Wolseley Haig and I myself have also studied these invasions in detail.9 All evidence points to the fact that during his seventeen invasions, Mahmud Ghaznavi enslaved a very large number of people in India. Although figures of captives for each and every campaign have not been provided by contemporary chroniclers, yet some known numbers and data about the slaves taken by Mahmud speak for themselves.
When Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked Waihind in 1001-02, he took 500,000 persons of both sexes as captive. This figure of Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud, is so mind-boggling that Elliot reduces it to 5000.10 The point to note is that taking of slaves was a matter of routine in every expedition. Only when the numbers were exceptionally large did they receive the notice of the chroniclers. So that in Mahmudâs attack on Ninduna in the Punjab (1014), Utbi says that âslaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap; and men of respectability in their native land (India) were degraded by becoming slaves of common shop-keepers (in Ghazni)â.11 His statement finds confirmation in later chronicles including Nizamuddin Ahmadâs Tabqat-i-Akbari which states that Mahmud âobtained great spoils and a large number of slavesâ. Next year from Thanesar, according to Farishtah, âthe Muhammadan army brought to Ghaznin 200,000 captives so that the capital appeared like an Indian city, for every soldier of the army had several slaves and slave girlsâ.12 Thereafter slaves were taken in Baran, Mahaban, Mathura, Kanauj, Asni etc. When Mahmud returned to Ghazni in 1019, the booty was found to consist of (besides huge wealth) 53,000 captives. Utbi says that âthe number of prisoners may be conceived from the fact that, each was sold for from two to ten dirhams. These were afterwards taken to Ghazna, and the merchants came from different cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Mawarau-un-Nahr, Iraq and Khurasan were filled with themâ. The Tarikh-i-Alfi adds that the fifth share due to the Saiyyads was 150,000 slaves, therefore the total number of captives comes to 750,000.13
Before proceeding further, let us try to answer two questions which arise out of the above study. First, how was it that people could be enslaved in such large numbers? Was there no resistance on their part? And second, what did the victors do with these crowds of captives?
During war it was not easy for the Muslim army to capture enemy troops. They were able-bodied men, strong and sometimes âdemon likeâ. It appears that capturing such male captives was a very specialised job. Special efforts were made by âexpertsâ to surround individuals or groups, hurl lasso or ropes around them, pin them down, and make them helpless by binding them with cords of hide, ropes of hessian and chains and shackles of iron. Non-combatant males, women and children of course could be taken comparatively easily after active soldiers had been killed in battle. The captives were made terror-stricken. It was a common practice to raise towers of skulls of the killed by piling up their heads in mounds. All captives were bound hand and foot and kept under strict surveillance of armed guards until their spirit was completely broken and they could be made slaves, converted, sold or made to serve on sundry duties.
In a letter Hajjaj instructed Muhammad bin Qasim on how to deal with the adversary. âThe way of granting pardon prescribed by law is that when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads⦠make a great slaughter among them⦠(Those that survive) bind them in bonds⦠grant pardon to no one of the enemy and spare none of themâ etc., etc.14 The lives of some prisoners could be spared, but they could not be released. That is how the Arab invaders of Sindh could enslave thousands of men and women at Debal, Rawar and Brahmanabad. At Brahmanabad, after many people were killed, âall prisoners of or under the age of 30 years were put in chains⦠All the other people capable of bearing arms were beheaded and their followers and dependents were made prisoners.â15
That is also how Mahmud of Ghazni could enslave 500,000 âbeautiful men and womenâ in Waihind after he had killed 15,000 fighting men in a âsplendid actionâ in November 1001 C.E. Utbi informs us that Jaipal, the Hindu Shahiya king of Kabul, âhis children and grandchildren, his nephews, and the chief men of his tribe, and his relatives, were taken prisoners, and being strongly bound with ropes, were carried before the Sultan (Mahmud) like common evil-doers⦠Some had their arms forcibly tied behind their backs, some were seized by the cheek, some were driven by blows on their neck.â16 In every campaign of Mahmud large-scale massacres preceded enslavement.
The sight of horrendous killing completely unnerved the captives. Not only were the captives physically tortured, they were also morally shattered. They were systematically humiliated and exposed to public ridicule. When prisoners from Sindh were sent to the Khalifa, âthe slaves, who were chiefly daughters of princes and Ranas, were made to stand in a line along with the menials (literally shoe-bearers)â.17 Hodivala gives details of the humiliation of Jaipal at the hands of Mahmud. He writes that Jaipal âwas publicly exposed at one of the slave-auctions in some market in Khurasan, just like the thousands of other Hindu captives⦠(He) was paraded about so that his sons and chieftains might see him in that condition of shame, bonds and disgrace⦠inflicting upon him the public indignity of âcommingling him in one common servitudeâ.18 No wonder that in the end Jaipal immolated himself, for such humiliation was inflicted deliberately to smash the morale of the captives. In short, once reduced to such straits, the prisoners, young or old, ugly or handsome, princes or commoners could be flogged, converted, sold for a tuppence or made to work as menials.
It may be argued that Mahmud of Ghazni could enslave people in hundreds of thousands because his raids were of a lightning nature when defence preparedness was not satisfactory. But even when the Muslim position was not that strong, say, during Mahmudâs son Ibrahimâs campaign in Hindustan when âa fierce struggle ensued, but Ibrahim at length gained victory, and slew many of them. Those who escaped fled into the jungles. Nearly 100,000 of their women and children were taken prisonersâ¦â19 In this statement lies the answer to our first problem. There was resistance and determined resistance so that all the people of a family or village or town resisted the invaders in unison. If they succeeded, they drove away the attackers. If not, they tried to escape into nearby forests.20 If they could not escape at all they were made captives but then all together. They did not separate from one another even in the darkest hour. Indeed adversity automatically bound them together. So they determined to swim or sink together.
Besides, right from the days of prophet Muhammad, and according to his instructions, writes Margoliouth, âparting of a captive mother from her child was forbidden⦠The parting of brothers when sold was similarly forbidden. On the other hand captive wife might at once become the concubine of the conqueror.â21 This precept of not separating the captives but keeping them together was motivated by no humanitarian consideration but it surely swelled their numbers to the advantage of the victors. Hence large numbers of people were enslaved.
And now our second question - what did the victors do with slaves captured in large crowds? In the days of the early invaders like Muhammad bin Qasim and Mahmud Ghaznavi, they were mostly sold in the Slave Markets that had come up throughout the Muslim dominated towns and cities. Lot of profit was made by selling slaves in foreign lands. Isami gives the correct position. Muhammad Nazim in an article has translated relevant lines of Isamiâs metrical composition.22 âHe (Mahmud) scattered the army of the Hindus in one attack and took Rai Jaipal prisoner. He carried him to the distant part of his kingdom of Ghazni and delivered him to an agent of the Slave Market (dalal-i-bazar). I heard that at the command of the king (Mahmud), the Brokers of the Market, (maqiman-i-bazar in the original) sold Jaipal as a slave for 80 Dinars and deposited the money realised by the sale in the Treasury.â23
When Muslim rule was established in India, the sale of captives became restricted. Large numbers of them were drafted for manning the establishments of kings and nobles, working as labourers in the construction of buildings, cutting jungles and making roads, and on so many other jobs. Still they were there, enough and to spare. Those who could be spared were sold in and outside the country, where slave markets, slave merchants and slave brokers did a flourishing business, and the rulers made profit out of their sale.
Mahmud of Ghazni had marched into Hindustan again and again to wage jihad and spread the Muhammadan religion, to lay hold of its wealth, to destroy its temples, to enslave its people, sell them abroad and thereby earn profit, and to add to Muslim numbers by converting the captives. He even desired to establish his rule in India.24 His activities were so multi-faceted that it is difficult to determine his priorities. But the large number of captives carried away by him indicates that taking of slaves surely occupied an anteriority in his scheme of things. He could obtain wealth by their sale and increase the Muslim population by their conversion.
Footnotes:
1 C.H.I., III, 3.
2 Al Kufi, Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 84.
3 C.H.I., III, 3.
4 Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 154. Raja Dahirâs daughters also were counted among slave girls, 196. E.D., I, 172-73 gives the number of captives as 30,000.
5 Andre Wink, Al Hind, 161.
6 Mohammad Habib, âThe Arab conquest of Sind.â in Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period, being Collected Works, of Habib, ed. K.A. Nizami, II, 1-35. Al Biladuri, 122, has 8000 to 26000.
7 Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 155; E.D.I, 173, 211.
8 Ibid., 163; E.D., I, 181.
9 Appendix D, âMahmudâs invasions of India,â in E.D., II, 434-478.
Habib, Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin, 23-59.
M. Nazim, The Life and Times of Mahmud of Ghazni, 42-122.
Lal, Growth of Muslim Population, 102-04, 211-16.
10 Tarikh-i-Yamini, E.D., II, 26; Elliotâs Appendix, 438; Farishtah, I, 24.
11 Utbi, E.D., II, 39.
12 Farishtah, I, 28.
13 Lai, Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, 211-13; also Utbi, E-.D., II, 50 and n. 1.
14 Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 155 and n.
15 Ibid., 83-86, 154, 159, 161 ff.
16 Utbi, E.D., II, 26. Minhaj, 607, n., 5. Al Utbi and other chroniclers refer to Jaipal on many occasions. H.G. Raverty suggests that âJaipal appears to be the title, not the actual name, of two or more personsâ, Minhaj, 81n.
17 Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 152.
18 Hodivala, 192-93.
19 Maulana Ahmad and others, Tarikh-i-Alfi, E.D., V, 163; Farishtah, I, 49.
20 Lai, Legacy, 263-68.
21 Margoliouth, Muhammad, 461; also Gibbon, II, 693.
22 In his article âHindu Shahiya kingdom of Ohindâ, in J.R.A.S., 1927.
23 Cited in Hodivala, 192-93.
24 C.E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 235.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<img src='http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/map.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
The Mughal Empire, 1526 to 1707
Source: F. Robinson, Atlas of the Islamic World since 1500 (Oxford, 19822), p.59.
Further Reading:
Habib, Irfan. The Agrarian System of Mughal India. London, 1963.
Habib, Irfan. An Atlas of the Mughal Empire. Delhi, 1982.
Qureshi, I. H. The Administration of the Mughal Empire. Karachi, 1966.
Richard, John F. The Mughal Empire. Vol. I, Part 5, of the New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Histo...ls/mughals.html
A new twist to the history of Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal Design
The Smiths of Agra and Delhi are a remarkable family. Between them they know more about the two Mughal capitals than anyone I know. Besides English they know Urdu, Persian and Hindi. RV Smithâs articles appear in many papers and tell you about quaint places, legends attached to them, and people who lived there. His latest offering is a collection of articles: The Taj: Myth & Reality (Hope India). Among the articles one is by Thomas Smith entitles Who designed the Taj? And the other The Foreign hand in the anatomy of the Taj which examines the claim of an Italian being its architect by Reverend H Hosten. One believes that the original design was made by Ustad Isa; <b>the other gives credit to an Italian Priest Veroneo of Venice who happened to be in Agra when it was being built</b>. I beg to differ with both in as much as I am convinced that later writers, mostly foreigners, could not believe that Indians were capable of building a monument as beautiful as the Taj Mahal. I am sure the original concept was that of Emperor Shah Jahan himself, his role model was the mausoleum of his grandfather, Emperor Humayun in Delhi. He meant it to be the final resting place of his favourite Queen, Arjmand Bano Begum who died giving birth to their 14th child. There is good reason to believe he planned to build another mausoleum for himself across the river. His son Aurangzeb dispensed the idea and buried his father alongside Arjmand Bano.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef_jindIkoI...related&search=
GROWTH OF MUGHAL EMPIRE
IT WAS DEAD ALREADY 1700
An Islamic Empire that ruled parts of Asia such as Pakistan, India, etc. for many centuries.
Although not as big as the other Islamic Empires! The Mughal Empire was still a great Islamic Empire!
This video shows the growth of the empire!
The empire suffered the blows of major Hindu revolts. The most serious of these was the Maratha uprising. Weakened by the Maratha wars, dynastic struggles, and invasions by Persian and Afghan rulers, the empire came to an effective end as the British established control of India in the late 18th and early 19th cent.
The Mughals did many great things for India, Pakistan, etc.! One such famous thing is the Taj Mahal!
The Mughal empire was founded by Babur. A Turkish chieftain! ... (more) (less)
They had never ruled completely, greater India at any time.
Time mag. archive
<b>"Oh Lovely Dawn</b>"
<i>Posted Monday, Aug. 25, 1947</i>
<b>Competitive Massacre</b>
<i>Posted Monday, Sep. 8, 1947</i><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->One-seventh of Lahore, capital of the Punjab, had been destroyed. Scores of nearby towns and villages had been razed. Warâor rather, competitive massacreâbetween Moslems and Sikhs had reached a pitch of horror that made the Indian Mutiny of 1857 look like a mere street brawl.<b> In two weeks, between 40,000 and 150,000 people had been killed in the Punjab. Most of the bodies were too hacked and charred to be recognized. At least a million were homeless.</b>
<b>"Never during two wars have I seen such sights as I have seen these last two days," said a middle-aged British colonel at Lahore airport. "All those atrocity yarns we used to hear, such as Germans cutting Belgian children's hands off and raping and then killing women, have suddenly come true in the Punjab during the last week."</b>
"The Joy of Fraternization." For months the Punjab's communal hatred had been boiling up into slaughter. A previous climax came last spring when hundreds were killed in riots there (TIME, March 17). <b>In mid-August the partition of the Punjab between India and Pakistan left 1.6 of the 3.8 million Sikhs in the province under Moslem rule; at least twice as many Moslems remained on the Indian side of the border in a new East Punjab state.</b>
<span style='color:red'>The Sikhs are an offshoot of the Hindu religion; they organized 300 years ago to resist militantly Moslem oppression. The British had used the warlike Sikhs extensively, giving them land and offices, especially in the fertile, predominantly Moslem West Punjab. In consequence, the Moslems hate Sikhs far more than they do Hindus.</span>
The rest of India was relatively quiet. In once turbulent Calcutta, Mohandas K. Gandhi, still striving for Hindu-Moslem unity, was able to write of the situation there: "One might almost say the joy of fraternization is leaping up from hour to hour."
There was no fraternization in the Punjab. <b>At Amritsar, on the Indian side of the border, organized gangs of Sikhs had exterminated or driven out the Moslem minority population (150,000). Moslems in Lahore and other Pakistan border regions retaliated against the Hindus and Sikhs there</b>.
Mohamed Ali Jinnah, who had conceived Pakistan in hatred and was now its president and undisputed boss, sent to the West Punjab as governor his faithful follower, the Khan of Momdot. The bland, moonfaced Khan had served four years in the Punjab Legislative Assembly without opening his mouth. When he got to the West Punjab, he acted. With his province literally in flames, the Khan of Momdot relaxed regulations that had restricted the carrying of firearms; he also decreed that every man could wear a sword, provided it was covered.
Some of his subordinates went further. The Moslem deputy commissioner of one of the Western Punjab districts mourned a son killed on the Indian side of the border. Said he to the young Moslems: "You have full liberty to go the limit.
Take revenge as you like, but if there is one Hindu or Sikh left alive in my district after you are through, I swear to kill them myself."
"At Lahore's Central Station, Sikh and Hindu refugees from North or West Punjab were mobbed on the platform, often stabbed to death and their few belongings looted.<b> A major incident involved a big convoy carrying perhaps 1,000 from Sialkot to Amritsar. The convoy was stopped and attacked at the Ravi River bridge. Hundreds were stabbed to death and other hundreds wounded.</b>
"<b>Refugees from Lyallpur in West Punjab say that so many Sikhs and Hindus were murdered and their bodies thrown into the canal that the canal actually had a pinkish color for a day after. Moslem refugees told how Sikhs stripped and paraded Moslem women through the streets, raped them and then killed them. British correspondents reported having seen dead, naked women lying about villages of the Amritsar district."</b>
A Look of Satisfaction. "Although railway administrations of both Dominions have doggedly tried to keep a skeleton schedule going, they have now given up.<b> For days on end no trains arrived in Delhi without having been attacked and looted practically all along the route.</b>
<b>"Near Jullundur, a band of Sikhs held up a train, methodically searched all compartments and pulled out 17 Moslems, whom they beheaded on the platform. Most amazing of all was the look of bland satisfaction on the faces of these young Sikh men, their hands dripping blood, their clothes smeared with blood, as they stood and grinned at their handiwork while the train finally pulled out. The only Moslems who escaped on this trip were two who were hidden by two British officers under their baggage.</b>
"A British correspondent traveling in the opposite direction through this territory saw half a dozen lying stabbed on the Lahore platform, slowly dying without any help being given.<b> Later that night, on a small siding south of Amritsar, a band of Sikhs entered his compartment and before his eyes beheaded a Moslem apparently trying to travel disguised as a Hindu. (For identification, both sides use the tried and true means of seeing whether there has been circumcision. Moslems always circumcize, the Hindus and Sikhs practically never.)</b>
"A member of the U.S. Embassy arrived in Lahore from Delhi with another tale of horror. Reaching the small station of Okara, near Montgomery, <b>he found the station platform utterly deserted except for several hundred dead Hindus and Sikhs lying around the platform, apparently slaughtered only a few hours before while waiting for the train to escape. All these people were workers in a textile mill which had been attacked by Moslems. Their bodies were mostly stripped and in several instances limbs had been torn from the bodies. The wife of a British textile factory manager told how a Moslem mob had attacked the Hindu and Sikh workers in another factory. When Moslems broke into the ground floor, the Sikhs slashed the throats of their own wives, and afterwards tried to fight through themselves. All were killed."</b>
Authorities were utterly unable to cope with the situation. I<b>n many cases both Sikh and Moslem police had participated in the riots. </b>British soldiers, present in the Punjab, were not allowed to interfere under the arrangements now in force for Indian independence.
No Plans. For the homeless, crippled refugees, no one had anticipated relief measures. In New Delhi a penniless Hindu woman from the West Punjab clutched her two children, told of her husband's murder by Moslems. "Don't ask her about her plans," cautioned a welfare official, "she hasn't any and neither have we."
The rioting was breaking down railroad traffic between parts of India and Pakistan. Unless it was soon restored, both nations, especially Pakistan, would be economically crippled. Fearing that the Punjab rioting would spread, millions of Hindus and Moslems prepared to cross borders in a transfer of population greater than Europe had ever seen.
In his new capital, Karachi, Jinnah preached that "restraint is necessary." However, the fires of communal hatred, which he had fanned for 20 years, were burning too brightly in the Punjab to be easily stifled. They might spread.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Time Archieve Posted Monday, Sep. 15, 1947
<b>Flowers for the Empress</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The old Mahatma magic had worked well in Calcutta. Just after 62 people had been killed, 400 injured, in 24 hours, Gandhi had announced that he would not eat until "sanity returned to Calcutta." (Aside he said: "As usual I shall permit myself to add salt and soda bicarbonate to the water I may wish to drink during the fast.") Anxious Calcuttans read about the Mahatma's pulse rate, his blood pressure (both diastolic and systolic) and the acetone and albumen in his urine; they stopped rioting.
At week's end, having warned Calcuttans that next time he would fast to death if they did not behave, Gandhi turned his pacifying powers to a far more difficult test. He headed for the Punjab, scene of the bloodiest communal killings of all India.
<b>Near Rohri in Pakistan several hundred Moslems stopped a train, hauled out 13 Sikhs, clubbed them to death with hockey sticks. An Indian Army courier told how, in the remote Shakirgarh district of Pakistan, <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>a small Hindu military force had found only 1,500 known survivors from a community of 120,000 Sikhs. He estimated that over 100,000 had been butchered, caught between a howling Moslem mob and the flooded Ravi river</span>.</b>
Famine and disease threatened to follow in the wake of the carnage. In the Punjab, traditionally India's granary, fields lay unharvested for hundreds of miles on either side of the border, as farmers ran away or hid. In Lahore only one or two banks stayed open because the clerks had gone back to Madras. <b>Throughout Pakistan there was little commercial activity. Hindu and Sikh merchants, engineers and mechanics had joined in the general exodus</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Time Archive Posted Monday, Oct. 6, 1947
<b>Vicious Circle</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In little more than a month of independence, India and Pakistan had slipped back 300 years. In both countries last week, rioting, slaughter, rapine, destruction continued. <b>More than 5,000,000 people had become refugees, uncounted thousands had been slain</b>.
Pakistan cried for outside help. To the rest of the British Commonwealth it addressed a plea for aid in ending violence. To the U.N. it proposed that six observers be sent to Pakistan and India. Pakistan's appeal made India shriek.
Cried Congress Party President Acharya Kripalani: "The real solution of the whole ill lies with Pakistan itself." In calling itself an Islamic state, he said, Pakistan had incited Moslems against Sikhs and Hindus, thus drawing reprisals upon Moslems in India. "[We must] base citizenship on a territorial basis and forget . . . that two-nation theory which started the whole vicious circle."
Worse than Death. The venom of communal bitterness had been thickened by the record flare-up of an old frontier practiceâthe abduction of tens of thousands of women. <b>From one train arriving at Amritsar last week, 150 young girls had been taken. In Bikaner State, an official estimated that Sikhs fleeing there from Pakistan had lost 40 of their women. So grave had woman-stealing become that Pakistan's Prime Minister Lia-quat Ali Khan and India's Jawaharlal Nehru held special discussions about it last week; both Governments agreed to hunt out and return abducted women. It would not be easy. The women were scattered far & wide; those taken by Moslems were veiled in purdah. Harder still was the problem of persuading devout Sikhs and Hindus to take their violated women back.</b>
<b>A new threat to peace arose in the heart of Western India. His Highness the Nawab Saheb of Junagadh, a Moslem ruling a predominantly Hindu state, decided to join Pakistan. One of his sub-chiefs, the ruler of Babariawad, applied for admission to India. The Nawab rushed troops to Babariawad. Some 60,000 of his subjects fled to India.</b>
At a Bombay mass meeting, a "revolutionary government" was formed which declared war on the Nawab. The "revolutionary" Premier: Samaldas Laxmidas Gandhi; portly nephew of Mohandas K. Gandhi.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Posted Monday, Oct. 27, 1947
Time Archive
<b>The Trial of Kali</b>
Posted Monday, Nov. 10, 1947
<b>Death in the Vale</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->From the Magazine | Foreign News
Death in the Vale
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR
Posted Monday, Nov. 10, 1947
"Kashmir without an equalâKashmir, equal to paradise!" generations of Indian pilgrims have chanted. But the destruction that wasted India did not spare Kashmir. Last week Kashmir, the paradisal valley, smoked with two kinds of hellish fury: war and its blinder brother, massacre.
"Free Kashmir." <span style='color:red'>All through the summer, Kashmir's waddling, toss-purse Hindu Maharaja Sir Hari Singh had twisted & turned between India and Pakistan. When armed tribesmen from Pakistan's northwest invaded last month, Sir Hari at last threw out his be jeweled arms to India</span>.
<b>In Moslem Karachi, Pakistan Governor General Mohamed Ali Jinnah raged at the news. He ordered Pakistan troops, under British Lieut. General D. D. Gracey, into Kashmir. The order was not carried out, for in New Delhi British Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck threatened to withdraw British officers from Pakistan's Army.</b>
The raiders from Pakistan were amazingly well equipped. They used automatic guns, mortars,. 3.7-in. field guns, and even light tanks and flamethrowers. Troops of the Indian Dominion, flown in to hold the Maharaja's capital at Srinagar, the down-at-heel "Venice of the Orient," tried strafing the invaders from Spitfires of the Indian Air Force. But the raiders were through the outlying passes now and inside the lovely Vale of Kashmir itself. They pressed closer on Srinagar, and, on the march, proclaimed Azad KashmirâFree Kashmir.
"Is Pakistan Too Weak?" Even more ominous were the reports that the blind butchery of neighbor by neighbor had reached Kashmir. <b>Pakistan heard that 50,000 Moslems had been slaughtered by Hindus. British officials said that 100,000 fleeing refugees from Kashmir and nearby Jammu had crowded south into the still reeking Punjab.</b>
Heretofore, British and Europeans had been fairly safe. But they were no longer safe in Kashmir. <b>Mahsud tribesmen burst into a hospital at Baramulla last week, killed a British officer, his wife and two nuns</b>.
<b>Rather late, the Maharaja of Kashmir took measures to prop up his throne. He released from 15-month imprisonment the revered leader of the Kashmir Congress (India) Party, 6 ft. 4 in. tall Sheik Mohamed Abdullah, a Moslem but a follower of India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.</b>
<b>The Maharaja made Abdullah his prime minister, promised to be a constitutional ruler in future; then the Maharaja lit out for the relative safety of his other princely state, Jammu. In New Delhi this week Prime Minister Nehru called for a U.N. plebiscite, shouted: "Is the Pakistan Government too weak to prevent armies from marching across its territory to invade another country?" </b>
Sex & Christianity. Britons in Kashmir began to pack. At the Srinagar Club there were tea dancing and dinner jackets as usual, but the residents were signing up for planes and road convoys that would take them south, <b>like Sir Hari Singh. One trouble was the pet dogs, the Lhassa terriers, Afghan hounds and Pomeranians. Transportation was short, and, it turned out, there were more dogs than Britons on the evacuation list.</b>
At the club, the tension unavoidably brought out personality. A somewhat thyroid spinster from Lahore passed around the manuscript of a sex novel she had been working on. One handlebar-mustached old colonel, who had spent 40 seasons in Kashmir, refused to leave. Said he: "Good God, no! I'll just pull my houseboat over another mile or so and forget the trouble." The Hindu pianist who played an Indian version of boogie woogie at the houseboat-cabaret Bluebird had a different solution. <b>He bought a new, heavy, imported Scotch tweed suit with heavy overcoat and tweed cap. Asked if he were not afraid of the approaching Moslem tribesmen, he giggled loudly, exclaimed: "Lord, no! I have become a Christian</b>."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-acharya+Dec 25 2005, 02:00 AM-->QUOTE(acharya @ Dec 25 2005, 02:00 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Quote"
The Kalakcharya- kathnaka states that their kings were known as `Sahi'. Some of these `Sahis' were said to have been induced by a Jain teacher to proceed to Suratta( Surastra) Vishaya ( Country) and Ujjain in the HINDUKADESHA ( India) where they overthrew some local chiefs, and ruled for four years until they were themselves ousted in 58 BC."
Source: Political History of India" Hemchandra Raychaudhuri, 1996
Oxford University press, New Delhi. ISBN 0 19 5643763
[right][snapback]43746[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Here is a pre-Arab/Islamic reference to India being called Hindukadesha prior to 58 BC. So what is the controversey about India being named by Arabs?
<b>Unpickled</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Posted Monday, Dec. 29, 1947
Leather-tough old Vallabhbhai Patel, Minister in Charge of States Affairs, last week saw a chance to get rid of some of the princely states that pimple India. In little Nilgiri, near the east coast, Hindu Congress Party members who live in towns on the plains have been trying to get rid of their maharaja and join the Dominion.<b> But most of his subjects are broad-faced, pug-nosed aborigines, who fled to the eastern hills nearly 40 centuries ago when Aryans invaded India</b>. These near-naked tribesmen came down from the hills on the warpath (at the maharaja's prompting, said Congress supporters).
They swarmed about isolated Hindu towns, brandishing the four-foot bamboo bows and bamboo arrows, winged with vulture feathers, which they still use for hunting and war. The townsmen called for help. Patel ordered Orissa Province to take over the administration of Nilgiri. Police armed with rifles marched in from Orissa and scattered the aborigines. Then Patel took a train to Cuttack, capital of Orissa.
There he summoned the rulers of some two dozen eastern states who had so far not joined India. All but one (the tribesman ruler of Ranpur) are Hindus; their states are peopled largely by the aborigines. Patel ordered the princes to surrender all their powers. In return they could keep their titles, personal property, and get a tax-free pension (7½ to 15% of their states' incomes). More than a dozen, in a midnight ceremony, signed Patel's terms. Next morning, Patel got on a train for Nagpur, capital of the Central Provinces. But Patel's secretary did not turn up. The train waited an hour. A search party sent by Patel found the secretary signing up the remaining maharajas who had balked the night before.
Next day in Nagpur, Patel got reluctant signatures from a dozen more maharajas. <b>He returned to Delhi from his whirlwind trip within 96 hours from the time he set out, with eight million more people and 56,000 more square miles of territory (about the size of Illinois) for India</b>.
<b>The States Ministry hinted that about 340 other rulers would soon be converted into remittance men. "There are in India," said Patel ominously, "about 500 small states*âmore than the total number of independent states in the world. Former alien rulers of our land preserved them like pickles, but now paramountcy has gone and India has become free." When one ruler asked whether India would guarantee that his new pension would be permanent, Patel answered, "Nobody can provide for all times." </b>
*Of the 525 remaining princely states in India, fewer than 50 have more than half a million people. All the princely states except big Hyderabad (16,000,000) have surrendered control of their defense, communications and transport to the central government.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
|
