Stories from Islamic History (11 page)

The loss of Spain for the Muslims was more
than mere change of real estate overlordship. Spain and Portugal
was, for more than five centuries, a treasure-house of knowledge
and technology, much superior to other parts of Europe. The
conquest enabled the new masters to acquire this treasure
readymade, and this went on to trigger renaissance and mercantilism
in the Western world that culminated in the quest for more and more
fortunes from distant lands. Vasco da Gama used the advanced
navigational knowledge bequeathed by the Moors to round the Cape of
Good Hope, bypassing
dar-us-Islam
for a direct trade route
to rich India.

Chaos would be an understatement to describe
the political situation of India at this time. The pan-Indian
kingdom of Allaudin Khilji had broken up into several small
principalities. The sultan of Gujarat was the dominant power in the
Western Coast. The Adil Shahi sultan of Bijapur controlled the
Konkan coast and the small principalities of Cochin and Zamorin
together with their vassals held sway deep-south.

Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 903 AH (1498
CE). The Zamorin
raja
there, eager to attract trade welcomed
him. It, however took only two years for the Zamorin to understand
that the damage caused by the perfidy and insolence of the
Portuguese would far outweigh any prosperity trade would bring, and
as such promptly expelled them.

The Portuguese immediately set up shop at
next door Cochin, whose
raja
was a rival of Zamorin. What
followed was the standard pattern that colonialists would
thereafter adopt – escalate rivalry between native
raja
s,
pit one against the other, offer assistance to one
raja
at a
time and finally, when the assistance reach a level of obligation
that would take some doing to recompense, establish hegemony over
both.

Having settled down at Fort Cochin, the
Portuguese started harassing the Muslims of Cochin. If religious
hatred that followed the conquest of Spain and Portuguese from the
Moors were not enough, the Muslims were the prominent traders of
Cochin and Calicut, the position the Portuguese eyed.

Mohammed Kunjali was both a Muslim and a
prominent trader of Cochin. It was thus only a matter of time
before the Portuguese came for him. On seeing the unpleasant face
of the enemy, he remembered the proverb “There are a thousand lands
but only one soul” and as such hastened to Calicut.

The Zamorin, in the meantime, anticipating
trouble from the Portuguese built a fort in Ponnani. He was now
head-hunting for a capable head of operations, which apart from
being a distinguished boatman also needed to show sufficient zeal
and motivation not to be lured by the Portuguese promise of gold,
wine and women.

It now transpired that Mohammed Kunjali, the
trader, was also a distinguished boatman. It was thus only a matter
of time before he made common cause with the Zamorin and
established himself as master of fort Ponnani. It was still sooner
that he rose in esteem to become leader of Zamorin’s naval force,
and organized the first naval defense of the Indian coast against
imperial forces.

The flattered Zamorin gave Kunjali the title
“Marakkar,” derived from the Malayalam word marakkalam meaning
‘boat,’ and kar, a termination, showing possession, and henceforth
Mohammed Kunjali came to be known as the first Kunjali
Marakkar.

Peace was short-lived. Very soon, the
Portuguese succeeded in taking Goa from the Adil Shah sultan of
Bijapur. The Zamorin made common cause with the Kothari
Raja
of Kannur, the Sultan of Gujarat and the Sultan of Egypt – all
threatened by the growing hegemony of Portuguese in the Arabian
Sea. Their combined navy crushed the Portuguese at Chaul in 913 AH
(1508 CE). The Portuguese however settled scores the next year at
Diu, resulting in the withdrawal of Egyptian navy from Indian
waters.

Calicut was a maritime state and depended on
the seas for its survival. In 918 AH (1513 CE), unable to withstand
Portuguese dominance of the seas, the Zamorin sued for peace. The
Portuguese secured trade monopolies and constructed forts at
Calicut and Chailyam.

Kunjali Markkar suddenly found himself on his
own. He was now the only resistance against the Portuguese in
India. He nevertheless remained on good terms with the Zamorin, who
persuaded the Portuguese from attacking Ponnani in 931 AH (1525
CE). However, in 956 AH (1550 CE) the Portuguese did attack,
pillage and plunder Ponnani.

The Zamorin’s alliance with Portuguese was an
alliance of desperation, and he was on the lookout to get rid of
them at the earliest possible opportunity. The defeat of
Vijayanagar, a staunch ally of the Portuguese in 972 AH (1565 CE)
by the five Deccan sultanates gave Zamorin the impetus. Hostilities
were resumed and Kunjali Marakkar was only too happy to evict the
Portuguese from Calicut and Chaliyam.

Mohammed Kunjali passed away and his
successor Kunjali II enjoyed only a brief reign. In 1573 CE Kunjali
III donned the mantle of the Marakkar.

Though the Portuguese were driven out of
Calicut, they still controlled the Indian seas. The loss of
Vijayanagar did nothing to change the power balance as the Zamorin
had hoped, and he still needed free navigation to the ports of
Gujarat, Persia and Arabia if he were to survive long. So he went
to the Portuguese again, and this time he gave them permission to
build a factory at Ponnani.

Kunjali Marakkar was not amused. He shifted
his base to Kottakal and started hostilities with both the Zamorin
and the Portuguese.

***

It was a typical moonless night in the South
Malabar Coast of 994 AH (1586 CE), with the hot and humid air
compounded by the total absence of any sea breeze. At dawn, soon
after the azan called people to prayer, the chirping of a million
birds would be heard and the endless line of coconut groves would
be visible to the naked eye. But shortly before this, a sharp
shrill whistle interrupted the stillness of the night, and almost
instantly, though unassertively, the war-paroe drifted out of the
small creek. The thirty odd souls in the boat could not see each
other. The only light in the horizon was a faint glimmer of
petro-max in distant Ponnani.

If one had the power of night vision and live
feed satellite imagery, he could see the spectacular sight of
hundreds of such small canoes emancipating from obsolete creeks,
all over the Malabar Coast, zeroing in on the Portuguese frigate on
the way from Goa to Cochin.

The war-paroe was a small craft devised by
the Kunjalis, which, manned by just thirty to forty men each could
be rowed through lagoons and narrow waters. Several such crafts
were deployed at small creeks and inconspicuous estuaries. They
would suddenly come out and attack the Portuguese ships at will,
inflicting heavy damage and causalities before returning to the
safety of shallow waters.

Such guerilla raids met with instant success,
and surprisingly it stayed that way. The key cause for that was the
Kunjali’s solid intelligence network all over the coast, even in
Zamorin’s Calicut and Portuguese Cochin. The Portuguese ships were
marked for doom even before it had entered Kunjali land – the two
hundred kilometer stretch between Calicut and Cochin. The time for
attack was invariably just before dawn, when the powers of the
enemy, after an arduous night vigil was at its lowest ebb.

The maundering mob would execute the job with
precision and depart in equal haste. There was no desire for
worldly booty, no sadistic or human carving to torture the infidel
men and lust the women on board. They would do their job, which was
to scuttle the ship and carry away the armaments, and depart. Those
in the ship were left to their fate, which was by any standards,
drowning.

Using such tactics, the Kunjali had succeeded
in decimating the Portuguese fleet within a matter of three
years.

***

“Untie him” Kunjali Marakkar ordered.

No sooner had the ropes been cut the noble
from the Zamorin’s court began screaming

“Kunjali, you will pay dearly for this. First
you defy your overlord – the Zamorin, and then you cut off the tail
of his elephant.”

“There is no overlord but Allah.” came the
reply.

As an afterthought Kunjali added “And as for
the elephant’s tail, it was cut by my lieutenant Siddhu. Ever since
the Portuguese raped his wife and burned his two infants in front
of his eyes during their conquest of Goa, he never misses even the
slightest opportunity to defy the Portuguese or anyone associated
with them”

The noble started to speak but was cut shot
by a piece of dirtball smocked in his face by someone standing
nearby. Without uttering any word, he left in a rage. “Let him go”
The Marakkar ordered as troops were about to spike him down with
their spears. This was a mistake.

***

The expedition came sooner than expected, but
Kunjali was waiting. The Zamroin’s elephants fell into the booby
traps on the forests enroute to Kotakkal. The Portuguese war ships
never got chance to wage battle. No sooner had they arrived from
Goa than they were mercilessly shot down by Kunjali’s efficient
canoes and slingshots.

For the next two years, Kunjali Marakkar ran
a virtually independent kingdom, continuing his policy of harassing
the Portuguese on the seas and their friends on land.

But if David won against Goliath every time,
then the event would never have been celebrated. The Zamorin
enforced an economic blockade. The Portuguese and the Zamorin
controlled the ports at Calicut and Cochin, and even if someone
were to sneak by, the Portuguese still controlled the seas.

In 1008 AH (1600 CE), the stage was set for
the end-game. The Zamorin attacked from land with an army of six
thousand and the Portuguese bombarded from the sea. Left with no
choice, the Kunjali surrendered to Zamorin on a solemn promise of
pardon.

The next thing Kunjali knew was being dragged
by chains, his body bleeding porously from the beatings. Screams
and wails of women and children could be heard in the background,
but Kunjali and his band of trusted followers were oblivious – it
was not as if they could do something about it. Some were already
dead and the others were half dead. In Goa, the Portuguese first
nurtured Kunjali to full strength. Then the screams could be heard
all over Goa as he was dismembered piece by piece, starting from
leg upward. Later the body pieces of Kunjali and his followers were
mixed and hung around in different places, - a lesson for those who
dare defy the imperial order.

The
majlis
of Mohammed Ahmed, the
self-proclaimed Mahdi at Ombdurmann was in striking contrast to the
grandeur of the residency building across the river at Khartoum.
This room was bare of any decoration and devoid of any furniture
barring a few cots.

There were already some twenty odd people
cramped in this small room when the Mahdi entered. He wore the same
green
jibba
and same white turban like the others. It was
only when the Abdullahi, who accompanied the Mahdi screamed “Make
room for the Mahdi to sit” people recognized the Mahdi.

People began to stand up for the Mahdi, who
promptly asked them to remain seated, saying “Whoever wishes that a
person may stand up for him reserves his place in the fire of
hell.” The Mahdi took a place amongst the others.

“
Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem
” In the
name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. Let us begin”

The small boy was sobbing. “That evil Gordon,
may Allah feed him the
zhukm
and enclose him in the hutmah”
he killed my father in front of my mother, my sister and me. My
young sister starved to death, and my mother….” He burst into tears
and could not complete.

The Mahdi himself was in tears now. He
started pondering over the misery that had befallen the people of
Sudan over the past years. The white man had come, promising trade,
development and liberation. By trade he meant scrounging the
countryside of its substance that resulted in famine. By
development he meant supremacy of trade and interest based
financers over tribal chieftains, and by liberation he meant
pushing the Quran and its commandments indoors and brining women
outdoors. Imperial domination had promised better administration.
But what the people got was unspoken corruption and cruelty. The
native population was oppressed by extortionate taxes, half of
which went to the personal coffers of the tax collector. Bayonets
and kurbash ruled the land and the only creativity consisted of
devising new ways of savage torture.

Mohammed Ahmed was born to a family of
ulema
, and was inculcated with the teachings of Islam from
childhood. This made him acquire the art of hating this life and
longing for the next. As soon as he grew up, he based himself at
Abbas Island, south of the Nile from Ombdurmann, and in the midst
of injustice and oppression started providing relief in the form of
zakat, justice and knowledge. Very soon people - poor, rich and
powerful alike began to flock to him. One such person, with whom
Mohammed Ahmed held a bond until his death was Abdullahi, son of
another
ulema
.

Abdullahi shared the same values in life as
Mohammed Ahmed did, and he had a sharp mind and excellent
organizational skills to boot. He let Mohammed Ahmed do the
preaching while he concerned himself in putting such preaching into
practice. Very soon, the tax collectors were attacked and people
began to consider Mohammed Ahmed as their saviour.

Until this time Mohammed Ahmed was at best a
nuisance – in fact it even served the imperial administration to
funnel resentment to an opposition that barked but did not bite.
But physical attacks were a strict no-no.