The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (6 page)

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 either 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.

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 all 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.

Mahmud was in Khurasan at the time of his father’s death, and from there he wrote a conciliatory letter to Ismail suggesting that he should leave the crown to him (Mahmud) and accept the governorship of Balk and Khurasan,
a substantial portion of the kingdom. Ismail rejected the offer. Mahmud then advanced on Ghazni with his army, routed Ismail in a battle, and imprisoned him for life, but generously provided him with all material comforts. Mahmud, aged twenty-seven, then ascended the throne.

Mahmud’s accession to the throne was then legitimised by the Caliph by sending to him a robe of investiture and by conferring on him the title Yamin-ud-Daulah (Right-hand-of-the-empire), so his dynasty thereafter came to be known as the Yamini dynasty. Mahmud responded to the Caliphate honour by taking a solemn vow, at the formal ceremony of receiving the laurels, to undertake jihad, holy war, every year against the idolaters of India.

MAHMUD COULD NOT keep his vow to the letter, because of his several military engagements in Central Asia, but he did lead more than twelve campaigns into India, perhaps as many as seventeen campaigns, during his thirty-two-year reign. The avowed objective of Mahmud’s Indian campaigns, according to Al-Utbi, was ‘to exalt the standard of religion, to widen the plain of right, to illuminate the words of truth, and to strengthen the power of justice.’ Mahmud, adds Ferishta, wanted to ‘root out the worship of idols from the face of all India.’

Mahmud did indeed ‘convert as many as a thousand idol temples into mosques,’ according to Siraj. But the passion for plunder was an equally strong motive, or perhaps an even stronger motive, in Mahmud—he fought for god as well as for mammon, but quite probably more for mammon than for god. These were however interconnected motives, each reinforcing and energising the other.

India was the ideal land for Mahmud to glut both his passions simultaneously, for Hindu temples were depositories of immense treasures, so sacking them earned him great religious merit as well as vast treasures. There was also an important morale boosting military advantage in demolishing temples and smashing their idols, for these were, in the eyes of Ghaznavid soldiers, convincing demonstrations of the invincible power of their god, and the utter powerlessness of Hindu gods. Sometimes the fragments of the smashed idols were sent to Ghazni for embedding them in thoroughfares there, for people to tread on and desecrate them.

Muslim rulers were by convention required to offer three options to their infidel adversaries: become Muslims and be privileged citizens, or live as zimmis (protected non-Muslims: second class citizens), or be killed. But the invaders in the frenzy of battle almost never paused to offer their foes those choices. The religious fervour of Mahmud’s army expressed itself primarily in slaughter, plunder and destruction, but hardly ever in active pursuit of proselytisation. Even the small number of conversions that Mahmud made were done at the
point of the sword—it was Islam or death for the vanquished. There was no serious attempt by him to propagandise Islam. Consequently, many of those who became Muslims to save their lives and properties, apostatised when the tide of Ghaznavid invasion receded. Mahmud’s campaigns had hardly any enduring religious effect in India.

There was clearly a strong element of self-serving opportunism in Mahmud’s posture of religious fervour, for he had no hesitation in inducting a large number of Hindus into his army under their own commanders, or even in deploying them in battles against rival Muslim kingdoms in Central Asia. According to Al-Utbi an army he once deployed in Central Asia consisted of ‘Turks, Indians, Khaljis, Afghans and Ghaznavids.’ It is significant that Mahmud was as ruthless in his fight against Muslims of the ‘heretic’ Ismaili sect as he was in his fight against Hindus, and he had no qualms whatever about destroying the centuries-old Muslim kingdom of Multan, massacring a large number of Ismailis there, desecrating their mosques, and, as Al-Utbi reports, in levying from them ‘20,000,000 dirhams with which to alleviate their sins.’

Religious fervour evidently subserved Mahmud’s temporal goals of amassing booty and expanding his power. As for his soldiers, the prospect of booty was undoubtedly their primary motive, though it was religious frenzy and bloodlust that galvanized them. Often, in a single raid into India, they obtained several times more wealth than they could have ever dreamed of acquiring in a whole lifetime of mundane toil. Apart from material treasures, the Turks also seized a large number of people in India—men, women and children—for serving them as slaves, or for selling them to slave traders back home.