God's Terrorists

by Charles Allen

  A second and less successful eruption of Mahdism had occurred in Syed Ahmad’s own lifetime, in western India in January 1810, when a Muslim named Abdul Rahman proclaimed himself the Imam-Mahdi, collected a band of followers of the Bohra sect of Sunnis and seized the fort of Mandvi in Eastern Surat. The insurgents had then marched on the nearest town, calling on all Hindus to embrace the faith or be killed. The British political agent at Surat had been sent a written demand calling on him to convert, and had responded by summoning troops from Bombay. Four companies of infantry and two troops of cavalry were landed on 19 January and a one-sided encounter followed in which the aspiring Imam-Mahdi and some two hundred insurgents were killed, after which the uprising fizzled out.

  There was thus a well-established predisposition among all sections of the Muslim community in India to respond to the call of the true Imam-Mahdi in a time of religious crisis, and this now became an established part of Amir Syed Ahmad’s Wahhabi platform in India: the belief that the end of days was drawing nigh and with it the imminent return of the Hidden Imam-Mahdi, the King of the West.

  From Bombay Syed Ahmad and the other hajjis sailed on round the coast to Calcutta, where they finally disembarked.

  The Hindustan to which Syed Ahmad returned was fast being reshaped on British terms. The last of the Pindari freebooters had been destroyed, the wings of the Maratha warlords clipped, and the Jat ruler of Bharatpore, holed up in his great mud fortress near Agra with eighty thousand men, was in the process of being brought to heel. Except for the Punjab, where the Sikhs still held sway, all Hindustan was now under direct or indirect East India Company control. So it was not surprising that Syed Ahmad and his twin messages of Islamic revival and armed struggle against the infidel were received with an enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. And nowhere was this enthusiasm more marked than at Patna, the seat of his most loyal supporters, headed by the three families of Fatah Ali, Elahi Bux, and Syed Muhammad Hussain.

  Syed Ahmad’s second stay in Patna marked a turning point in the progress of his movement. Word had spread through all sections of the Muslim community that the Hajji had returned to restore India, if not the world, to a domain of Faith under Islamic sharia. His first two disciples were now likened to the Prophet’s two closest Companions, and Syed Ahmad himself was seen by his followers as travelling in the footsteps of the Prophet as His messenger. He was proclaimed amir of his movement, and each day hundreds came forward to be blessed by him and to swear allegiance to him by taking the oath of baiat. He ordained Syed Muhammad Husain, head of one of the three families, as his first vice-regent, set up a five-man council in Patna also drawn from the three families, and appointed a number of his leading supporters to be regional caliphs and collectors of religious taxes. Once this machinery was in place a highly sophisticated campaign was launched to promote Syed Ahmad’s theology, which he himself named the Path of Muhammad (Tariqa-i-Muhammadia). From an account of his mission left by Shah Muhammad Ismail we know that Syed Ahmad’s first disciple was only one of many preachers who were now sent out to spread Syed Ahmad’s gospel. Shah Muhammad Ismail writes of journeying ‘from town to town preaching the sermon of jihad. Emissaries were likewise sent into the interior to prepare the minds of the Muhammadens for a religious war. Such was the powerful force of the orations of Maulvie Ismail [Shah Muhammad Ismail] that in less than two years the majority of respectable Muhammadans were in his favour.’

  The theology preached by Syed Ahmad and his missionaries was based on five articles of faith. As summarised by T. E. Ravenshaw, these were:

  reliance on one Supreme Being [the doctrine of tawhid];

  repudiation of all forms, ceremonies, and observances of the modern Mahomedan religion, retaining only such as are considered the pure doctrines of the Koran [bidat];

  the duty of Jehad or holy war for the faith against infidels generally;

  blind and implicit obedience to their spiritual guides or Peers [pirs];

  expectation of an Imam who will lead all true believers to victory over infidels.

  The first four of these articles fell comfortably within the tenets of revivalist Sunni Islam as promoted by Al-Wahhab in Nejd and Shah Abdal Aziz in Delhi, but the last was a quintessential Shia belief, albeit deeply entrenched in Sunni tradition in India. There can be no doubt that both Al-Wahhab and Shah Abdal Aziz would have considered it heretical. Its inclusion as a basic article of faith appears to have been a deliberate bid by Syed Ahmad to raise the stakes by taking advantage of a belief widespread in all sections of the Muslim community in India. It has also enabled later commentators to argue, with some cause, that Syed Ahmad’s ‘Path of Muhammad’ had little in common with Al-Wahhab’s Wahhabism.

  The fact is that Syed Ahmad and his first disciple Shah Muhammad Ismail arrived in Mecca predisposed to accept Al-Wahhab’s vision of tawhid through their spiritual apprenticeship at Delhi’s Madrassah-i-Rahimiya – which reflected in large part the teaching acquired by Shah Waliullah in Mecca almost a century earlier. When Syed Ahmad returned to India he took with him a distinctly more hard-line, less tolerant and more aggressive Islam, directly inspired by the Wahhabi model, than he had imbibed at the feet of his first master Shah Abdul Aziz of Delhi. But because he was backed by several widely respected members of Shah Abdul Aziz’s family, and because he carried out all religious ceremonies and observances according to the rules of the Hanafis, Syed Ahmad could present himself as the natural heir to this distinguished line of Hanafi reformers.

  Due account must also be taken of the nature of the bonds that developed between Naqshbandi Sufi teachers in India and their students, bonds that demanded absolute devotion and loyalty. It will be remembered that Syed Ahmad’s two closest disciples were respectively the nephew and son-in-law of his first master. With Shah Abdul Aziz’s death in 1823 leadership had passed to his eldest son, SHAH MUHAMMAD ISHAQ, and he too appears to have been personally devoted to Syed Ahmad, if not to his cause. In consequence, Amir Syed Ahmad’s teaching seems initially to have been embraced with enthusiasm by all the followers of the school of Shah Waliullah. Very soon, however, differences began to surface, probably disputes over matters of interpretation and emphasis, in which petty rivalries and jealousies must also have played a part. The outcome of these differences was the dividing of Syed Ahmad’s Way of Muhammad movement into two factions held together only by the strength of personality of their leader. These two parties could well be termed the ‘Delhi-ites’ and the ‘Patnaites’: the former made up of those such as the two first disciples who conformed to Sunni custom as already pushed to the limits by Shah Waliullah and Shah Abdul Aziz; the latter led by younger men such as Wilayat Ali of Patna who saw themselves as Wahhabis in all but name – and as committed jihadis. Syed Ahmad’s first disciple Shah Muhammad Ismail appears to have started out as a ‘Delhi-ite’ before his more extreme position forced him into the Patna camp. By his own account, he preached in Delhi’s great Jamma Masjid every Friday and Tuesday, as a consequence of which thousands were reclaimed from ‘the darkness of blasphemy in which they were plunged’. But his success attracted the jealousy of his contemporary divines, and a public debate was held to determine whether his preaching was in accordance with sharia. It broke up in disorder and Shah Muhammad Ismail was subsequently prohibited by the city authorities from public speaking. From that time Amir Syed Ahmad and his followers were proclaimed ‘Wahabees’. According to an observer, ‘The followers of the reformers are nicknamed “Wahabees” by their opponents, while the latter are called [by their opponents] “Mushriks”, or associates of others with God.’

  In December 1825 the mighty walls of Bharatpore were finally breached by British artillery and the fortress taken with great slaughter. It was a further demonstration of the ascendancy of the Nazarenes. Syed Ahmad now wrote to a friend in Hyderabad about his plans for holy war: ‘During the last few years fate has been so kind to the accursed Christians and the mischievous polytheists that they have started oppressing people. Athe
istic and polytheistic practices are being openly practised while the Islamic observances have disappeared. This unhappy state of affairs fills my heart with sorrow and I am anxious to perform hijrat. My heart is filled with shame at this religious degradation and my head contains but one thought, how to organise jihad.’

  It had become clear to Amir Syed Ahmad that the time had come to emulate the Prophet, who had begun his conquest in the name of Islam by leaving the domain of enmity of Mecca and migrating to the dar ul-Islam of Medina: it was now incumbent on Syed Ahmad to follow suit, and to leave British territory for a secure base in God-fearing territory from which to wage jihad. There were also good military reasons for making this hijra or withdrawal. What had worked so well in the Arabian deserts, where the Wahhabi movement had expanded from a secure, isolated base at the centre, could not be applied in India. Patna’s destiny would be to serve as his movement’s recruiting base, a clandestine clearing-house through which funds, supplies, men and arms would be despatched to the front line. But the jihad itself had to be waged from secure territory on the periphery. For a while it seemed that the Muslim principality of Tonk in Rajasthan might serve, but a visit to Syed Ahmad’s old patron Nawab Amir Khan quickly put paid to that idea; not only was Tonk surrounded by hostile Hindu rulers who had good reason to remain on friendly terms with the British, but the Nawab was himself under pressure from the British authorities to toe the line or risk losing his ruling privileges. He was prepared to support the movement secretly with funds and volunteers, but no further. The only safe option was the Afghan border area – perhaps the mountain region where Nawab Amir Khan had himself originated: the mountains of Buner. No doubt Syed Ahmad also had at the back of his mind the old belief that the Imam-Mahdi would make his first appearance from the west as the King of the West.

  Various qualifications were required of the Imam-Mahdi. He would be an imam and a caliph, bear the name Muhammad, be a descendant of the Prophet through his daughter Fatima, arise in Arabia and be forty years old at the time of his emergence. Syed Ahmad fulfilled the most important of these qualifications: he was a Saiyyed, had been raised as ‘Muhammad’ (of which ‘Ahmad’ was a diminutive), and he became forty in 1826. In January of that year he began his hijra accompanied by a band of some four hundred armed and committed jihadis. These included members of his own family, his two leading disciples and others from the family of the late Shah Abdul Aziz of Delhi, and several members of the three Patna families, among them three of the four sons of Elahi Bux. Their retreat took them first to the Maratha state of Gwalior in central India, where Syed Ahmad hoped to win support for his jihad from its Hindu ruler, Daulat Rao Scindia. ‘It is obvious to your exalted self’, he wrote to the maharaja’s brother, ‘the alien people from distant lands have become the rulers of territories and times . . . They have destroyed the dominions of the big grandees and the estates of the nobles of illustrious ranks, and their honour and authority have been completely set at nought.’

  Scindia of Gwalior had recently been forced to surrender a large slice of hard-won territory to the East India Company. He was now assured that if he joined Syed Ahmad in the forthcoming struggle against the British he would regain his lost lands ‘as soon as the land of Hindustan is cleared of the alien enemies’. This remarkable letter has been cited as evidence that Syed Ahmad was an Indian nationalist at heart, happy to work in alliance with Hindus to throw off the British yoke. But it has to be set against half a dozen other surviving letters from Syed Ahmad, written to Muslim rulers such as the Emir of Bokhara, all making it plain that his ultimate goal was nothing less than the restoration of pure Islam throughout the whole of India. Syed Ahmad was indeed reacting to British and Sikh imperialism, but he was equally and unashamedly bent on Islamic imperialism – as were a number of alleged freedom fighters who came after him. No one can fault Syed Ahmad’s courage, but the freedom he sought was that of a fundamentalist sect from India’s Muslim minority to impose its religious will on the Hindu, Sikh and Jain majority.

  In the event, the ruler of Gwalior ignored Syed Ahmad’s overtures and his letter was buried in the state’s archives. The jihadis then moved on to the Muslim state of Tonk, where they were warmly received by the Nawab and his heir apparent, Mohammad Wazir Khan. The latter became an enthusiastic convert to Syed Ahmad’s cause and the two subsequently began a correspondence that continued to the time of Syed Ahmad’s death. ‘My motive in accepting the leadership’, wrote Amir Syed Ahmad in one of the earliest of these letters, ‘is nothing more than that of arraying forces of jihad and maintaining discipline among the army of the Muslims. There are no other ulterior selfish motives . . . To my mind the value of the crown of Faridoon [a prophet of ancient Persia] and the throne of Alexander [the Great] is tantamount to a grain of barley. The kingdoms of Kasra [a ruler in the Persian epic Shahnamah] and Caesar are immaterial and insignificant to my eyes. I do, however, aspire to promulgate the orders of the Creator of the worlds called the principles of Faith among the entire humanity of the world without any subversion.’ As a first step in this world conquest he would establish himself in a country of Faith west of the Indus. Once he had purged it of ‘the impurities of polytheism and the filth of dissonance’ he would then launch his main jihad: ‘Then I will set out with my followers for India with a view to purifying the country from polytheism and infidelity, because my real motive is to launch an attack over India.’

  To avoid the Sikh territories of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the Punjab, the Amir and his Hindustanis marched from Tonk across the Thar desert into Sind and then across Baluchistan – a journey of about six hundred miles through some of the harshest terrain in the world, undertaken at the height of summer. Although both these last two regions were ruled by Muslim chiefs, neither offered any support. The jihadis then crossed over the Bolan Pass into Afghanistan. According to the hagiographies, they were welcomed in Kabul with open arms. However, the evidence suggests that they were asked to move on, for when the band of holy warriors finally emerged from the Khyber on to the Vale of Peshawar in November 1826, its numbers were greatly reduced. One text put them at no more than forty.

  But at this point Amir Syed Ahmad’s luck turned. The Yusufzai and the other Pathan tribes in and around Peshawar were smarting from a defeat recently suffered at the hands of a Sikh punitive column. In consequence, the Amir and his Hindustanis were warmly received as potential allies against the Sikhs. Syed Ahmad was, after all, a descendant of the Prophet and a Hajji, and he had made it known that he had been charged by God to liberate the trans-Indus lands from the yoke of the infidel oppressor. The elders of a number of Yusufzai clans and sub-tribes gathered for a loya jirga and concluded this inter-tribal assembly by offering the Hindustanis their hospitality and their armed support.

  The Hindustanis settled initially at Nowshera, twenty miles east of Peshawar, but soon afterwards their leader was offered a permanent home in the Mahabun massif, the great mountain promontory that bulges out southwards from the mountains of Buner. It was a secure fastness into which the Sikh columns had never penetrated. Here Syed Ahmad found himself among friends and admirers, for not only was this the tribal homeland of his former patron the Pindari freebooter turned nawab, Amir Khan of Tonk, but also the home of a hero with ambitions not so very different from his own. Generations earlier a Saiyyed saint named Pir Baba had established himself in these mountains and had been granted a patch of land in perpetuity at Sittana, on the eastern slopes overlooking the Indus valley. In 1823 one of the pir’s descendants, SAYYED AKBAR SHAH, had led the massed lashkars or tribal armies of the Yusufzai against the Sikhs. The battle, fought out in the plains near Nowshera, and the subsequent sacking of Peshawar had cost hundreds of Pathan lives but established Sayyed Akbar Shah as a champion of the Faith. He now invited Amir Syed Ahmad to make camp on his land in the Mahabun Mountain. Although it was some time before Sittana became established as the notorious ‘Fanatic Camp’ of the British, the Mahabun Mountain was even then (in Surgeon Hen
ry Bellew’s words) ‘a noted nursery for saints, a perfect hot-bed of fanatics’. Now it became the movement’s spiritual fortress. This was to be the Wahhabis’ dar ul-Islam from which the jihad on India was to be launched and from which the King of the West and Imam-Mahdi would proclaim his long-awaited arrival. Sayyed Akbar Shah became Syed Ahmad’s local patron, and in recognition of his importance was appointed the movement’s treasurer.

  Once established on the mountain, the Amir and his two closest disciples drew up a formal summons calling on all Muslims to join the holy war. In the late autumn of 1826 this document, passed from hand to hand and copied many times over, was carried to all the frontier tribes and to every corner of the Punjab where Muslim communities were to be found. Its call to arms must have made heady reading:

  The Sikh nation have long held sway in Lahore and other places. Thousands of Muhammadans have they unjustly killed, and on thousands they have heaped disgrace. No longer do they allow the Call to Prayer from the mosques, and the killing of cows they have entirely prohibited. When at last their insulting tyranny could no more be endured, Hazrat [Honoured] Sayyid Ahmad (may his fortunes and blessings ever abide!), having for his single object the protection of the Faith, took with him a few Musulmans [Muslims], and, going in the direction of Cabul and Peshawar, succeeded in rousing Muhammadans from their slumber of indifference, and nerving their courage for action. Praise be to God, some thousands of believers came ready at his call to tread the path of God’s service; and on the 20th Zamadi-ul-Sani, 1242 AH [21 December 1826], the Jihad against the Infidel Sikhs begins.