The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

by Abraham Eraly

  MUHAMMAD’S FAR-SIGHTED AND conciliatory policy towards Sindhis paid good dividends, for many local chieftains, as well as the gentry and the common people, responded to it by peacefully submitting to him. And several of them, including some chieftains, even a son of Dahar, became Muslims, and took Arab names—mainly, we may assume, to retain their power or to gain other temporal advantages, though some probably had a genuine change of faith. There does not seem to have been any large number of forced conversions by Muhammad. According to Chach-nama, the good conduct of Muhammad ‘dispelled the fear of the Arab army from the minds of those who offered allegiance, and brought those to submission who were inimically disposed.’

  Another major reason for the easy submission of Sindhis to Arabs was their general belief, based on an ancient astrological prediction, that it would be futile for them to resist Arabs, for they (Arabs) were destined to be victorious. ‘In the books of the Buddhists it is predicted, upon astrological calculations, that Hindustan shall be captured by Muhammadans … It is the will of god,’ stated a local chieftain to his clansmen as he prepared to surrender to Muhammad.

  Yet another factor that facilitated the easy advance of Muhammad in Sind was that a good number of the people there at this time were Buddhists, and they, notes Chach-nama, peacefully surrendered to Muhammad, telling him, ‘Our religion is one of peace and quiet; fighting and slaying, as well as all blood-shedding are prohibited to us.’ This pacific attitude of Buddhists was motivated, apart from their anxiety to prevent carnage, by their desire to protect their business interests, for they were the dominant commercial community in Sind, and antagonising Arabs would have seriously harmed their business.

  It was on the whole a smooth passage for Muhammad in Sind. But during his northward thrust to confront Dahar he was delayed for some months on the western bank of the Indus, as a number of his soldiers were there afflicted with scurvy, and many of his horses died of some disease. Hajjaj then sent him medicines and reinforcements, and eventually, in June 712, Muhammad crossed the river and advanced on the fortress of Brahmanabad, where Dahar was stationed.

  As Muhammad approached the fortress, he was confronted (according to an evidently exaggerated account) by Dahar with a huge army consisting of 50,000 cavalry. He even had 500 Arabs in his army, according to Chach-nama. ‘A dreadful conflict ensued, such as had never been heard of,’ comments Al-Biladuri. Dahar, as was usual among Indian kings, led his army mounted on a huge elephant. His high visibility was meant to inspire his army, but it also made him an easy target for enemy sharpshooters. And, as it happened, an Arab soldier ‘shot his naphtha arrow into Dahar’s howdah and set it on fire,’ reports Chach-nama. Dahar then, according to Al-Biladuri, ‘dismounted and fought valiantly, but was killed towards the evening. The idolaters then fled, and Musulmans glutted themselves with massacre.’ Dahar’s head was severed and sent to the Caliph as a trophy, along with his share of the booty taken in the campaign.

  As the Arabs charged into the fortress, one of Dahar’s queens committed sati, but another, Rani Ladi, surrendered and eventually married Muhammad. Two of Dahar’s maiden daughters, Suryadevi and Parmaldevi, who were found in the fort, were sent by Muhammad to the Caliph, as a part of the homage due to him.

  After capturing Brahmanabad, Muhammad spent some time there, organising the administration of the conquered territories. He then continued his northward advance, fighting several battles along the way, and captured the city of Multan.

  It had been a brilliant campaign by Muhammad all along. But presently he was overtaken by a dreadful misfortune, which ended his career while it was still in full bloom.

  THE CAUSE OF Muhammad’s tragic end is given variously in contemporary chronicles. According to Chach-nama, this was a vengeance wreaked on him by the two Sind princesses he had sent to the Caliph’s harem. The story, as told in Chach-nama, is that one night some days after the princesses arrived, the Caliph had the older princess, Suryadevi, brought to him. When he made her sit down, ‘and she uncovered her face … [he] was enamoured of her surpassing beauty and charms. Her powerful glances robbed his heart of patience, and he laid his hand upon her and drew her towards him.’ But she shrank away from his touch and stood up, and said that she was not worthy of him, for Muhammad had violated her before sending her to him. This so enraged the Caliph that he right away, without any enquiry whatever, despatched an imperative order to Muhammad that he should, directly on receipt of the order, ‘suffer himself to be sewed up in a hide and sent to the capital.’

  Muhammad obeyed immediately, as expected of a loyal Arab officer. He was then tightly sewed up in a hide and sent to Baghdad in a locked chest. Predictably he died of suffocation on the way. When the chest arrived at the Caliph’s palace, he showed the corpse to Suryadevi, to impress her with his power. ‘The virtuous … [princess then] put off the veil from her face, placed her head on the ground,’ and told the Caliph that he had made a dreadful mistake in punishing Muhammad. ‘It is proper that a king should test with the touchstone of reason and weigh in his mind whatever he hears from friend or foe,’ she told him. ‘And when it is found to be true and indubitable, then orders compatible with justice should be given … Your gracious mind is wanting in reason and judgement. Muhammad Qasim respected our honour, and behaved like a brother or son to us, and he never touched us … with a licentious hand. But he had killed the king of Hind and Sind, he had destroyed the dominion of our forefathers, and he had degraded us from the dignity of royalty to a state of slavery. Therefore, to retaliate and to revenge these injuries, we uttered a falsehood before the Caliph … Through this fabrication and deceit we have taken our revenge.’ The Caliph then, overcome with remorse and wrath, ‘bit the back of his hand’ and immediately ordered the princesses to be entombed alive, thus inflicting on them a fate similar to that suffered by Muhammad.

  This tragic tale is usually discounted by historians as mere romance, but the story is no more incredible than many other similar historical accounts of royal vengeance, though some of the detail in it—the words spoken by the princess, for instance—are obviously frills added to it by its raconteur. The plausibility of the Chach-nama story is also indicated by the fact that this work was written not long after the Arab invasion of Sind, so the writer could not have deviated too far from the actual events without exposing himself to ridicule. The other account of Muhammad’s end—that he was tortured and put to death by the Caliph due to family enmity—is of a later period, though it is possible that family enmity was also a factor in the Caliph’s ill-treatment of Muhammad. Whatever it was that actually happened, it is certain that Muhammad’s life ended tragically. He had been in Sind for only about three years, but during that short period he had won the affection of the people there by his prudence and benevolence so that, according to Al-Biladuri, ‘the people of Hind wept for him’ on hearing his tragic end.

  The history of Arabs in Sind after the departure of Muhammad is obscure. Presently the Arab power declined everywhere in Eurasia, and Turks seized from them the political and military leadership in the Muslim world. Although the Arab state in Sind endured for some three centuries, it made no major gains in territory or power during this period. The successors of Muhammad did at one time, in the second quarter of the eighth century, overrun a good part of Rajasthan and Gujarat, and advanced as far as Ujjain, but these gains were transitory, for Arabs were presently pushed back into Sind by Chalukyas of northern Deccan and Pratiharas of Malwa. The Arab expansion northward towards Kashmir and Kanauj was also repulsed, by Lalitaditya of Kashmir and Yasovarman of Kanauj.

  The Arab power in India was thus mostly confined to Sind, but there it endured till the early eleventh century. And it was finally extinguished, ironically, not by any Indian king, but by another Muslim invader, Mahmud Ghazni. On the whole, the occupation of Sind by Arabs, though it is a fascinating story, was an event of little consequence in Indian history. It was an isolated, peripheral event, which had no connection at all with eithe
r the Indian raids of Mahmud Ghazni three centuries later, in the early eleventh century, or the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate yet another two centuries later, in the early thirteenth century, events which would radically transform the very texture and pattern of Indian history.

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  For God and Mammon

  After the Arab conquest of Sind, India had a respite from invasions for nearly three centuries, till the Ghaznavid invasion in the early eleventh century. In the meantime, by the second decade of the ninth century, the far-flung Arab empire had begun to crack up like a clay field in high summer, and several of its provinces became virtually independent kingdoms, even though Muslim rulers everywhere generally acknowledged the nominal overlordship of the Caliph.

  One of the major kingdoms that emerged out of the splintered Arab empire was the Samanid kingdom of Central Asia, spread over Khurasan and Transoxiana, and had Bukhara as its capital. In time the Samanid kingdom too splintered into several independent states. In 963 Alptigin, a Turkic slave who had risen to high office under the Samanids and served them as their governor in Khurasan, rebelled against his king, seized the city of Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan, and established an independent kingdom there. Ghazni, states Mughal emperor Babur in his autobiography, was at that time ‘a very humble place’. But it had a grand historical destiny. And it would play a decisive role in the history of medieval India.

  Alptigin died soon after founding the kingdom, and was succeeded by three rulers in quick succession: a son, a son-in-law, and a royal slave. The slave, Pirai—whom medieval chronicler Siraj describes as ‘a very depraved man’—was overthrown by the nobles of Ghazni in 977, and they raised Sabuktigin, a favourite slave and son-in-law of Alptigin, to the throne.

  The nobles favoured Sabuktigin because he was a man of proven ability, and had also taken care to win their support. According to Khondamir, an early-sixteenth-century chronicler, ‘the chief men of Ghazni saw the signs of greatness and nobility, and the fires of felicity and prosperity on the forehead of Sabuktigin, who widely spread out the carpet of justice, and rooted out injury and oppression, and who, by conferring different favours on them, had made friends of the nobles, the soldiers, and the leading men of the state.’

  Apart from having these laudable personal qualities, Sabuktigin also claimed royal pedigree—he traced his lineage to the last Persian monarch, whose descendants had, during the Arab invasion of Persia, fled to Turkistan, where they, having intermarried with the local people, eventually came to be considered as Turks. When Sabuktigin was around twelve years old, he was captured by a rival tribe, and was later taken to Bukhara by a slave trader. There he was bought by Alptigin, under whose favour he rapidly rose in rank, and in time achieved renown as a general.

  Ghazni was a tiny kingdom at the time of Alptigin’s death, and was confined to just the city and its environs. Sabuktigin greatly expanded the kingdom, extending its frontiers up to the Amu Darya in the north, the Caspian Sea in the west, and eastward across the mountains up to the upper Indus Valley. According to Al-Biruni, Sabuktigin had chosen ‘the holy war as his calling,’ and this led him to launch several campaigns against King Jayapala of the Hindu Shahi dynasty of Punjab. There is however no evidence of any great religious zeal in the campaigns of the sultan. His invasion of Punjab was in any case inevitable, given his expansionist ambitions, and the normal hostile posture of kings against their immediate neighbours.

  Jayapala ruled over an extensive kingdom stretching from western Punjab to eastern Afghanistan, but he, according to medieval Arab historian Al-Utbi, found ‘his land grow narrow under his feet’ because of Sabuktigin’s aggressions. Jayapala then, following the classic dictum that offence is the best form of defence, advanced against Sabuktigin with his army—‘he rose with his relations, generals and vassals, and hastened with his huge elephants to wreak his revenge upon Sabuktigin,’ states Al-Utbi.

  THE ENSUING BATTLE went on for several days, but still remained inconclusive, and was not going too well for the Ghaznavids. What saved them was a miracle. There was, according to Al-Utbi, a ravine close to the Hindu camp, and in it a lake of absolute purity and miraculous properties. ‘If any filth was thrown into it, black clouds collected, whirlwinds arose, the summits of mountains became black, rain fell, and the neighbourhood was filled with cold blasts until red death supervened.’ Sabuktigin, baffled in the battlefield, decided to invoke the supernatural, and had some filth thrown into the lake. Suddenly, ‘the horrors of the day of resurrection rose up before wicked infidels, and fire fell from heaven on them.’ A fierce hailstorm accompanied by loud claps of thunder then swept through the valley, and ‘thick black vapours’ enveloped the Indian army, so they could not even ‘see the road by which they could flee.’1

  Jayapala, faced with this strange adversity, then pleaded for peace. Sabuktigin was inclined to grant it, but his belligerent son Mahmud wanted total victory. Hearing of this, Jayapala warned Sabuktigin: ‘You have seen the impetuosity of Hindus and their indifference to death … If, therefore, you refuse to grant peace in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and prisoners, then there is no alternative for us but to mount the horse of stern determination, destroy our property, take out the eyes of our elephants, cast our children into fire, and rush on each other with sword and spear, so that all that will be left to you are stones and dirt, and dead bodies and scattered bones.’ Sabuktigin knew that this was not a hollow threat, so he granted peace to the raja on his promise of paying tribute and ceding some territories.

  Jayapala reneged on that promise, and, according to Mughal chronicler Ferishta, organised a confederacy of several North Indian rajas against Sabuktigin. It was a matter of survival for him, as the very existence of his kingdom was being threatened by the rapidly expanding Ghaznavid sultanate. But the ensuing battle was once again won by Sabuktigin, despite the vast army that Jayapala deployed. This time his victory was due to the innovative battle tactic he adopted, after carefully reconnoitring the enemy deployment. Sabuktigin, according Al-Utbi, ‘ascended a lofty hill from which he could see the whole army of the infidels, which resembled scattered ants and locusts, and he felt like a wolf about to attack a flock of sheep.’ Returning to his camp, Sabuktigin divided his army into several contingents of 500 soldiers each and sent them in relays against the Indian army, to attack and retreat, attack and retreat, so that the Indian soldiers became utterly exhausted as the battle progressed while the bulk of the Turkish army remained fresh. At that stage Sabuktigin sent his entire army charging into battle in a fierce onslaught, and routed the Indian army, which ‘fled, leaving behind them their property, utensils, arms, provisions, elephants, and horses.’ Following the victory, Sabuktigin annexed the western part of the Hindu Shahi kingdom, up to Peshawar.

  The crucial factor that led to Sabuktigin’s victory—apart from the ingenious battle tactic he used—was that the Indian cavalry, according to Ferishta, was far inferior to the Turkish cavalry using Central Asian bloodstock. Moreover, the Central Asian soldiers of the sultan were very much hardier than Indian soldiers. The ‘greatest pleasure [of the Ghaznavid cavalrymen] was to be in saddle, which they regarded as if it were a throne,’ claims Al-Utbi. The Ghaznavids also had a psychological advantage over the Indian soldiers, in that they were valorous unto death, in the absolute certainty that if they died fighting infidels they would straightaway go to heaven and enjoy eternal bliss there. Their weapons too were superior to those of Indians, in that they used the composite bow—made of two pieces of wood joined together with a metal band—which, as Sarkar describes it, was ‘the most dreaded weapon of antiquity’.

  Sabuktigin was an exceptionally successful monarch, and in every field of government his achievements were substantial. ‘Amir Sabuktigin,’ states Siraj, ‘was a wise, just, brave and religious man, faithful to his agreements, truthful in his words and not avaricious for wealth. He was kind and just to his subjects.’ He was also a prudent and cautious monarch, and he, despite al
l his military successes, took care to acknowledge the overlordship of the Samanid rulers of Bukhara, and he aided them in their battles against rebels. For those services he was rewarded by the Samanid sultan with the governorship of the province of Khurasan. And Sabuktigin in turn conferred that governorship on Mahmud, his eldest son.

  SABUKTIGIN DIED IN 997, after an eventful reign of twenty years, and was succeeded by his son Mahmud, after a brief war of succession. Mahmud was not Sabuktigin’s chosen successor—his preference was for Ismail, his younger son. But that choice was an expression of his sentiment, not of his judgement, for Ismail was a weakling compared to Mahmud. Mahmud seems to have been the son of a concubine of the sultan, and that also probably weighed against him in the eyes of Sabuktigin, even though in Islamic law all one’s children, whether born of a wedded wife or a mistress, are equally legitimate. In any case, the sword was the final arbiter of princely destinies, so a dead king’s will was no barrier to an ambitious prince in his pursuit of power.

  Sabuktigin seems to have had a presentiment about Mahmud’s future greatness even at the very time of his birth. ‘A moment before his birth, Amir Sabuktigin saw in a dream that a tree had sprung from the fireplace in his house, and grew so high that it covered the whole world with its shadow,’ writes Siraj. ‘Waking up startled from his dream, he began to reflect upon the import of it. At that very moment a messenger came, bringing the tidings that the Almighty had given him a son. Sabuktigin was greatly delighted by the news, and he said, “I name the child Mahmud”. On the same night he was born, an idol temple in India, in the vicinity of Peshawar, on the banks of the Sind, collapsed,’ portending the iconoclastic zeal that Mahmud would come to have as sultan.