Invasion of Sindh

[HASEEB ANSARI]

Invasion of Sindh
By Salman Rashid

The Chachnama tells us that in the year 632, during the reign of Caliph Omar (RA), Mughera surnamed Abul Aas, then stationed at Bahrain, led the first assault, a naval expedition, on Debal. He died fighting outside the city’s walls. When Abu Musa Ashari, the governor of Iraq, received news of this debacle, he wrote to the caliph that “he should think no more of Hind”.
In the caliphate of Hazrat Usman (RA) one Hakim bin Hailah Abdi, a poet and orator, was sent out to reconnoitre the approaches to Sindh. From him came this report: “Its water is dark; its fruit is bitter and poisonous; its land is stony and its earth is saltish. A small army will soon be annihilated there, and a large army will soon die of hunger.”
Now, Makran and Gandava (below the Bolan Pass) were already under tenuous control of the Arabs. However, Abdullah bin Amir, the governor of these regions, was advised against an attack on Sindh by the caliph after the reconnaissance report had been received. And so, years were to pass until the next attempt was made during the caliphate of Hazrat Ali (RA) in 660. Coming by way of Panjgur, the Arab force was successful at Kalat, but news of the assassination of the caliph resulted in withdrawal without the expedition reaching its logical end.
The third attack took place during the reign of Muawiya in 664. A force under Abdullah bin Sawad comprising 4,000 men attacked Kalat. The battle was long and hard, which went this way and that between the two sides until the mountaineers of Kalat routed the Arabs who fled to Makran.
Rashid bin Omar leading the fourth attack in an unnamed year (probably 668) also came against Kalat. Once again the contest was hard. The commander fell in battle and the invaders were routed with great loss of life. So far as Sindh was concerned, 12 peaceful years ensued. In 680, the commander of the army in Makran, one Manzir bin Harud, was sent by the caliph on plundering sorties against Sindh to make good the expenses of the failed expeditions.
This unfortunate commander succumbed to diseases, dying in a town named Burabi by the Chachnama. The book does not mention the locale of this place making identification difficult.
In the reign of caliph Walid bin Abdul Malik and governorship in Iraq of Hujaj bin Yusuf, the fifth expedition was undertaken against Sindh. The commander, Buzail bin Tahfa, led a small force by sea and, we read, marched to Nerun (Hyderabad). At this time, the country was firmly in the hands of Raja Dahar and this inland march is clearly an inconsistency. Particularly so because we later read that Buzail died in combat outside the walls of Debal where he had been joined by 4,000 troops from Makran sent by governor Mohammad bin Haroon.
While Ahmad Bilazri (Futuh ul Baladan) confirms this expedition, he tells us in addition of another attack not mentioned by the Chachnama. This being the expedition led by Obaidullah bin Nabhan and his death in battle causing the invaders to withdraw.
Now, as a result of these various battles, while many Arabs had been killed, many more languished in Sindhi captivity. Consequently, appointing Mohammad bin Qasim (MbQ) the general, Hujaj petitioned caliph Walid that it was necessary to free these prisoners. Walid demurred, however, saying that there had already been too many casualties and that the expedition was bound to be ‘a source of great anxiety’. There was, besides, the consideration of the large outlay.
Hujaj wrote back, “I undertake to pay back into the royal treasury double the amount spent on provisions and other items of expenditure for the army (in Iraq)”. The rest, as they say, is history.
Aside: There was a large body of Arabs already in the pay of Raja Dahar. These were the Alafis who, having fallen out with Hujaj, had rebelled and fled some time before. They fought with desperate courage against the Arabs under MbQ. Desperate surely they were because they knew if Dahar fell there was no returning for them to the west where only execution awaited them at the hands of Hujaj and his kinsfolk.
So, who were the Alafis?

Published in The Express Tribune, February 2nd, 2013.

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The Alafis in Sindh
By Salman Rashid

The Alafi tribe of western Hejaz were among the earlier converts to Islam. Since before 680 CE, a large body of them frequently travelled back and forth between their country and Makran. Now, Makran at that time seems to have been very much like modern day Fata. Though part of the kingdom of Sindh under Raja Chach, it appears to have been only loosely held with a substantial foreign element running wild in the country.

In 684, when Abdul Malik bin Marwan took over as caliph, his deputy in Iraq, Hujaj bin Yusuf, appointed one Saeed of the family Kilabi to Makran. The man was entrusted with collecting money from this country as well as neighbouring regions wherever he could exercise pressure.

Somewhere in Kirman on his way east, Saeed met with one Safahwi Hamami. The Chachnama is not explicit about this man, but gives the understanding that while he had “no army under (him)”, he was nevertheless a man of significant social standing. The man may, therefore, have been a merchant.

Armed as he was with caliphal fiat, Saeed ordered Safahwi to join him in his raids. Upon the latter’s refusal, an altercation ensued in which Safahwi rebuked Saeed: “I will not obey your command; I consider it below my dignity to do so.”

An incensed Saeed killed the man. Then he had the body skinned and beheaded, sending the two trophies to Hujaj in Iraq. We hear echoes of this activity today in Fata where beheadings are commonly exercised by foreign ‘guests’. Thereafter, arriving in Makran, Saeed established himself and began his plundering raids.

One day on his travels, he was perchance met by a party of Alafis. Now, these people, distantly related to the Hamamis, harboured a grudge against Saeed for killing their kinsman. What began as a squabble quickly degenerated into a full-blooded melee in which Saeed was killed and his cortege repulsed to Iraq.

Hujaj was infuriated at the loss of a trusted lieutenant. More so, when his party, fearful of punishment, expressed ignorance about Saeed’s fate. Hujaj, well-known for his ruthless cruelty and predilection for torture and murder to elicit information, beheaded a few of the men, upon which the remainder told him of the clash with the Alafis. In retaliation, the governor executed one Suleman Alafi, a local resident who had nothing to do with the affair other than belonging to the same clan as Saeed’s killers.

Hujaj now passed a decree to persecute the Alafis. When he appointed Mohammad bin Haroon as overseer of Makran, he expressly instructed him: “Find out the Alafis, and try your best to secure them, and exact the vengeance due to Saeed from them.” This was the year 704.

With Arab hold consolidated on Makran, the Alafis fled east to Sindh, where their leader Mohammad bin Haris became a close and trusted confidante of Raja Dahar’s. Seven years later, in 711, when the Arabs finally came calling to stay for good, this man became the king’s advisor on all matters concerning the invading army.

So great was the trust reposed in the Alafi that when Dahar placed the man under his son Jaisiah’s command, he instructed the prince to follow every advice forthcoming from the Arab “whether it be (for) an advance, or a retreat”. Living up to this trust, the Alafis gave a fairly good account of themselves in the final battle for Alor (east of Rohri). However, one of their number betrayed the castle in the end: as Jaisiah abandoned the fight and stole away from the fortified city, an unnamed Alafi tied a note to an arrow saying the castle was undefended and shot it into Arab lines.

The Alafi leader with a large number of followers, however, had already fled to Kashmir where he petitioned the ruler for asylum. This seems to have been granted because we read from the Chachnama that the Alafi built many mosques in Kashmir and that he was highly respected in the court.

Now, between 684 when the Alafis murdered Saeed Kilabi and 704 when they fled Makran for Sindh, they would surely have known they were marked. And so, they built themselves a safe haven secreted away in the dusty brown gorges of the Kech Bund.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9th, 2013.

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The Alafis’ refuge
By Salman Rashid

The Kech Bund hills run in a dusty, jagged east-west line just north of the Kech Valley. Here, the Nihing River coming down from the west and the Kech from the east join to flow south as the Dasht River. The town of Turbat sits 30 kilometres east of this junction.
Just north of the junction of the two rivers, the small village of Shekhan is where one leaves the Turbat-Mand high road and goes north along the dry bed of the Shorma stream. The country is wild and desolate and possessed of a savage beauty. Views to the north are limited by the bleak, treeless crags of the Kech Bund that nowhere rise higher than 1,166 metres above the sea; to the east and west, the valley is fairly wide and dotted with trees and bushes that grow only in arid conditions.
But once one enters the folds of the Kech Bund, the sense of claustrophobia is overpowering. At some point, one’s guide will leave his motorcycle and lead one into a narrow chasm. Climbing upward through this dry water channel, one notices ruined stone turrets positioned at short intervals.
About an hour after leaving the transport and grinding ever upward through a confined and dusty gully, one heaves oneself over the lip of the hill and into a bowl-shaped depression. This is not just any old mountaintop; this is Kussui Kalat — the Castle of Kussu — perhaps, a long forgotten Baloch chieftain.
The entire bowl, about 50 acres, is strewn with baked bricks and dressed stone that mark past dwellings. The bricks measure 23 centimetres square and are well fired: they were carted in from afar because there are no trees in the Kech Bund to fire baking kilns. The blocks of stone are of variable sizes. Here are walls and foundations of houses; a mosque that simply cannot be mistaken because of its mehrab in the western wall.
Though there are some 15 to 20 distinct buildings (besides those that have crumbled to dust), there are two remarkable ones: one, for its huge size, which probably was home to the chief of this citadel; the other, for its dramatic setting at the very edge of a sheer fall with clear views in every direction. This latter was very likely the house and office of the chief of security, who needed to keep an eye on the surrounding country at all times.
There is yet another interesting remnant: a water channel that receives run-off after it is slowed by two stone piers. It apparently trained the water into a tank, now lost beneath the debris near the mosque.
Sometime in the mid-1990s, a team of French archaeologists carried out a cursory investigation here. From the meagre surface collection, they concluded that this site dated to the early Muslim period.
I believe, this was the safe haven of the Alafi fugitives, fleeing the unbridled wrath of Hujaj bin Yusuf for having killed his representative Saeed Kilabi in Makran. The Alafis had been hiding in Makran since 684, when the Kilabi incident occurred and they needed a haven. Remote and accessible from only one side, Kussui Kalat was it.
As the security chief saw the cloud of dust rising in the Shorma stream, heralding the approach of imperial troops, he alerted his outposts in the gorge leading to the castle. The attackers were caught unawares as they rode in and were beaten back with much loss. This is an action we do not read in any history, but surely, this would have occurred.
And then one day in the year 704 CE, when Mohammad bin Haroon was appointed governor of Makran with a large army under his command, the Alafis in the citadel would have known they were outnumbered. There may have been resistance initially, but then one day, they quietly melted away into the intractable folds of Kech Bund.
Taking the old high road east, they eventually ended up at the court of Sindh. There they found employment under Raja Dahir. And so, it was that seven years later, when Mohammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh, a large body of Alafis was in the pay of the king of Sindh for whom they fought with great courage and loyalty.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16th, 2013.