Among the Believers (23 page)

It happens one day that the queen, normally secluded in the private
apartments of the palace, sees the handsome Brahmin prime minister. She falls in love with him and makes a declaration to him. He is nervous. He tells the queen that there are four things men should never trust or take for granted—a king, fire, wind, and water. But the queen pleads; she asks only to be allowed to look at Chach once a day. And in the end she has her way. Chach, the Brahmin ascetic, becomes the queen’s lover, and his power in the kingdom of Sind is second only to that of the king.

Some years pass. The king falls ill and then is near to death. The queen, who has no children, fears that she will now be displaced and degraded by the king’s relations. Through Chach she orders fifty sets of chains to be secretly brought to the palace. The king dies; the news is not given out; the physicians are detained. All the claimants to the throne are summoned to the palace in the king’s name. As they arrive they are fettered and imprisoned. Then the king’s poor relations are summoned. They have grievances; each poor relation has his particular enemy among the claimants, and now he is given the chance, as though on the king’s order, to cut off the head of his enemy and take possession of his property.

When all the claimants are killed, it is announced that the king has appointed Chach as his regent; then it is announced that the king has died. Gifts are made to powerful nobles; the queen places the crown on Chach’s head; and the people acclaim Chach. The dead king’s brother (a ruler himself in a neighbouring state) disapproves. He marches into Sind, claims the throne for himself, and challenges Chach to single combat. Chach says, “I am a Brahmin. Brahmins do not fight on horseback.” The dead king’s brother dismounts. Chach jumps on a horse and cuts off his challenger’s head. And that is that.

Power is power; a king’s first duty is to keep himself in power. There are no rules. A king, as Chach now is, has constantly to pacify his subjects, high and low, baron or outcaste. And in this pacification any means is permissible. “Among the rules of conduct prescribed for kings, one is that an enemy should be reduced to submission by tricks and deceit.” A king has to be on the move; his presence must be felt in every corner of his kingdom. People must never get the “haughty notion in their heads … that there is no one to exact revenue from them.” Kings need revenue, because the day may come when an enemy is too strong to be fought off and peace will have to be bargained for.

“Remember it is for a day like this that kings collect treasures and
bury them underground, for by means of gold troops are collected … and war is carried on … in which they sacrifice their lives for the sake of their country and their good name. In other ways also by means of gold an enemy can easily be made to retreat. With the help of gold a man can settle all the affairs of this world satisfactorily, repulse an enemy, and satisfy his vengeance. At the same time, with its help, he can make the necessary provision for his journey to the next world.”

Chach—the queen soon disappears from the story—rules for forty years. It is Chach who repulses the first Arab attack, a sea attack on the port of Debal (which might be Banbhore). On Chach’s death the kingdom passes to Chach’s brother, and then to Chach’s son, Dahar.

Dahar is told one day of a wonderful Brahmin astrologer. And since it is good for a king to consult wise Brahmins, Dahar gets on his elephant and visits the astrologer. For Dahar himself the astrologer predicts nothing but good fortune; but this is clouded by what the astrologer says about Dahar’s sister. The man Dahar’s sister marries, the astrologer says, will rule the kingdom. Dahar is perplexed. His prime minister (who is a Buddhist) has a solution: since a king’s first duty is to his throne, Dahar should go through a form of marriage with his sister. There are five things, the prime minister says, that “have a sorry look” when they lose their proper place: a king who has lost his kingdom, a minister who has lost his post, a holy man who has lost his disciples, hair and teeth when they drop out, a woman’s breasts when they droop with age.

Dahar is shocked by his prime minister’s advice. The prime minister goes home, takes a sheep, scatters earth and mustard seed in its wool, waters it. After some days the mustard seed sprouts, the sheep turns green. The sheep is then driven about the town and people rush to see it. But after three days the wonder abates; the green sheep is taken for granted. The prime minister says, “O king, whatever happens, whether good or evil, the people’s tongues wag about it for three days. Thereafter no one remembers whether it was good or evil.” So Dahar goes through a marriage ceremony with his sister.

Much is made of this incident, though it has no important sequel. It serves only—in this Persian-Arab narrative—to stress that the kingdom of Sind is morally blighted, and the cause of the dynasty of Chach cannot prosper.

Attention shifts now to the Arabs. The narrative alters, becomes
more historical, begins to depend on the narrator-chains of Arab history (“It is related by Hazli, who heard it from Tibui son of Musa, who again heard it from his father …”). We are at once in a more organized, more disciplined, and less arbitrary world, a world of law, where men, however anxious for power, fame, and wealth, also serve a cause above themselves. The soldier obeys the general, the general the governor, the governor the caliph; and all serve the Prophet, Islam, and God.

After the failure of the first two expeditions against Sind, the third caliph, Osman or Uthman (644–56), orders a detailed report on the affairs of “Hind and Sind”—its rules of war, its strategy, the nature of its government, the structure of its society. The order goes to Abdullah, and Abdullah passes it on to Hakim; and Abdullah is so impressed by what Hakim has to say that he sends Hakim direct to the caliph.

“O Hakim,” the caliph says, “have you seen Hindustan and learnt all about it?”

“Yes, O commander of the faithful.”

“Give us a description of it.”

“Its water is dark and dirty. Its fruit is bitter and poisonous. Its land is stony and its earth is salt. A small army will soon be annihilated there, and a large one will soon die of hunger.”

“How are the people? Are they faithful, or violators of their word?”

“They are treacherous and deceitful.”

The caliph takes fright at this last piece of information and forbids the invasion of Sind.

But under the later caliphs the idea comes up again and again. The seventh expedition is led by Sinan, whose distinction now—time is passing—is that he was born in the lifetime of the Prophet and had been given his name by the Prophet. There was a tradition that the Prophet had said to Sinan’s father, Salmah: “O Salmah, I congratulate you on the birth of a son.” But though the Prophet appears to him in a dream, Sinan is killed in Sind. And two expeditions after that also end badly.

Towards the end of the seventh century Hajjaj becomes governor of “Iraq, Sind and Hind.” Hajjaj has first to deal with religious-racial disaffection in Kufa and Iraq. Then he, too, sends an army to Sind: King Dahar of Sind has been encouraging Muslim rebels.

Hajjaj’s army is defeated by King Dahar’s son. The Arab commander is killed, and Arabs are taken prisoner. The reigning caliph wants to hear no more of Sind. The country is too far away, he writes Hajjaj;
the people are too cunning, the expeditions are too expensive, and too many Muslims are being killed. But Hajjaj asks for another chance; he promises to pay back to the royal treasury double the sum spent on a new invasion. The caliph agrees; he gives a written order for the invasion of Sind. Hajjaj selects six thousand experienced soldiers from Syria, appoints as general his seventeen-year-old son-in-law, Mohammed Bin Qasim, and superintends every detail of the preparations.

The army—with a full complement of pack-camels and camelmen (one camel for every four soldiers)—is to go by land. The siege supplies—including naphtha arrows, coats of mail, battering rams, and a special catapult that requires five hundred men to operate it—are to go by sea. Bin Qasim is to do nothing without the authority of Hajjaj; a system of runners ensures that letters get from Sind to Kufa in seven days. In his letters Hajjaj constantly mixes military instructions with religious exhortations. “Dig a ditch around your camp.… Be awake for the greater part of the night; and let those of you who can read the Koran be busy reading it.…” The army must always camp in open ground; at times of battle the army must always be divided into five sections: centre, vanguard, rear guard, left wing, right wing, with cavalry on the wings.

Bin Qasim arrives at the port of Debal. The supplies sent by sea arrive the same day. But Hajjaj doesn’t give the order to engage in battle until the eighth day. At the end of that day a Brahmin comes out of the town. He tells the Arabs that the town is guarded by a talisman: the four long flags of green silk that hang down from the arms of the flagstaff on the dome of the great temple of Debal. While the flagstaff stands, the Brahmin says, the people of Debal will fight.

It is the first of the betrayals that will assist the Arab conquest. But they are not betrayals, really. They are no more than the actions of people who understand only that power is power, and believe they are only changing rulers; they cannot conceive that a new way is about to come.

Bin Qasim asks his catapult engineer, Jaubat, whether he can knock down the flagstaff.

Jaubat says, “If we remove two ramrods from the big catapult, with three stones I will blow off the flag and the pole and break the dome of the temple.”

“Ten thousand dirams for you if you do that,” Bin Qasim says. “But if you fail? And if you spoil the caliph’s catapult?”

Jaubat says, “Let the hands of Jaubat be cut off.”

That is the compact (but it has to be ratified by Hajjaj). And on the next day, while the Arabs attack the town from four directions, the big catapult is placed where Jaubat says, the five hundred catapult men pull on the ropes, and the stones are shot off and the flagstaff and the dome are shattered. And it is then as the Brahmin said: the defenders of Debal open their gates and ask for mercy. But Hajjaj has issued precise instructions for this first victory: the residents of Debal are not to be spared. The Arab army has to slaughter for three days: this is what Bin Qasim tells the people of Debal.

After the slaughter, the booty: the treasure and the slaves. One-fifth, the royal fifth, is set aside for the caliph, “in obedience to the religious law”; Hajjaj’s treasurer takes charge of that. (And it is odd to reflect that the Spanish royal fifth, set aside by Columbus and Cortés and others in the New World, should have had its origin in the religious laws of the Arabs.) The rest of the booty of Debal is distributed fairly, according to Arab practice: a cavalryman getting twice as much as a camelman or a foot soldier.

The war is far from over. Sind is big, and has many fortified towns. But Debal sets the pattern: the siege, the betrayal by nobles or Brahmins or Buddhist priests who do not believe in killing; the entry by the Arabs; the killing; the checking and distribution of the booty, after the caliph’s fifth has been deducted (and in one place the sharing out of the booty takes as long as the killing).

It is in the district of Siwistan that the people get to understand the nature of the invader. A spy from the Chanas tribe sees the Arabs at prayer in their camp: the whole army standing up, a picture of equality, unity, and union, the general leading his men in prayer, but at one with them. The effect on the Chanas people is immediate. They go in a body to the Arabs—who are now having supper—and surrender. (Pakistanis today who have seen the Chinese soldiers building the Sinkiang–Pakistan Silk Road in the far north are similarly awed by the discipline and unity of the Chinese.)

After the massacre at Debal the killing is more selective. Traders, artisans, and peasants are allowed to continue in their occupations and practise their religion; Brahmins continue to be administrators. All that is required of unbelievers is the tribute and the special tax. But Hajjaj insists on the killing of the warrior class and the enslaving of their
dependents. When he gets Dahar’s head and Bin Qasim’s report of victory he writes sternly: “My dear cousin, I have received your life-augmenting letter. On its receipt my gladness and joy knew no bounds.… But the way of granting pardon prescribed by the law is different from the one adopted by you.… The Great God says in the Koran: ‘O true believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads.’ The above command of the Great God is a great command and must be respected and followed.… Concluded with compliments. Written by Nafia in the year 93.” And he returns to this point even later in the campaign. “My distinct orders are that all those who are fighting men should be assassinated, and their sons and daughters imprisoned and retained as hostages.”

So at the big town of Brahminabad, after his entry, Bin Qasim “next came to the place of execution and in his presence ordered all the men belonging to the military classes to be beheaded with swords. It is said that about six thousand fighting men were massacred on this occasion; some say sixteen thousand.”

And King Dahar never understood the nature of the war, never understood that more than his throne was at stake. There was for him, in war, an element of chivalry and deadly play. He could have prevented Bin Qasim from crossing the Indus River; it was what he was advised to do. But he thought that undignified. He could have retreated even then, and left the desert to deal with the invaders; it was again what he was advised to do. But again he thought that undignified. He died in battle. Naphtha arrows set the litter on his elephant alight. There were two women servants in the litter, one preparing betel leaves for the king to chew, one passing him arrows; there was also a Brahmin. The elephant, frightened by the fire on its back, plunged into the shallow lake beside the Indus; and mounted Arab archers killed King Dahar while he was still in the litter. Like a warrior, Dahar had gone into battle prepared for death and the funeral pyre. His body, when it was found (betrayed by the Brahmin who had been in the litter), smelled of musk and attar of roses. The women servants were captured; they later identified the king’s severed head for Bin Qasim.