Ghilzai

“ Nott sent a detachment to occupy the fortress of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, between Candahar and Ghuznee, thus rendering the communications more secure; and later, Macnaghten bribed the chiefs by an annual subsidy of £600 to abstain from infesting the highways. The terms were cheap, for the Ghilzai tribes mustered some 40,000 fighting men.
Shah Soojah and the Envoy returned from Jellalabad to Cabul in April 1840. A couple of regiments had wintered not uncomfortably in the Balla Hissar. ”

“ South of Ghazni we shall have to trust mostly to our own foraging parties, and we shall doubtless be on half-rations before Khelat-i-Ghilzai is reached. Sir Donald Stewart on the march to Cabul had at times difficulty 453in collecting supplies, as the villages on the road were deserted, and if the peasants have not since returned to look after their crops the country will not furnish much food. However, our own resources will carry us over half the distance at least, and a few double marches will make Khelat-i-Ghilzai seem not so far off after all. ”

“ An unfortunate collision with the tribes of Ghilzais formed a painful episode in the Afghan war. The Cabul Pass is a long defile, through which the road runs from Cabul to Jelalabad, which it was therefore necessary to keep open for the purpose of safe intercourse between Cabul and British India. The Indian Government thought that the most desirable mode of effecting this object was to pay the Ghilzai chiefs a yearly sum from the Cabul treasury, in order that our troops might not be molested. ”

“ With the advance rode several Afghan chiefs, whose followers, by their command, shouted to the Ghilzais lining the heights to hold their fire, but the tribesmen gave no heed to the mandate. Lady Sale rode with the chiefs. The Ghilzai fire at fifty yards was close and deadly. The men of the advance fell fast. Lady Sale had a bullet in her arm, and three more through her dress. But the weight of the hostile fire fell on the main column, the baggage escort, and the rear-guard. Some of the ladies, who mostly were on camels which were led with the column, had strange adventures. ”

“ The Ghilzais are agriculturists, shepherds, and robbers; they are constantly engaged in internal feuds; they are jealous of their wild independence, and through the centuries have abated little of their untamed ferocity. They had rejected Macnaghten's advances, and had attacked Shah Soojah's camp on the day before the fall of Ghuznee. Outram, in reprisal, had promptly raided part of their country. ”

“ The question was whether so large a force would be able to subsist on the road and, in order to assist them to do so, he sent orders to all the tribes along the line of march to aid the column, in every way. In consequence, no difficulties were met with; and scarce a shot was fired on the way down.
In seven days after starting Ghuzni was reached, and in fifteen Khelat-I-Ghilzai--where Colonel Tanner, with a small garrison, had been besieged by the local tribes since the advance of Ayoub. ”

“ They were supreme in Afghanistan at the beginning of the 18th century, and for a time possessed the throne of Ispahan. The following paragraph occurs in the article Afghanistan, in the 9th ed. of the Encyc. Britan., 1874 (i. 235) , written by one of the authors of this book:—
"It is remarkable that the old Arab geographers of the 10th and 11th centuries place in the Ghilzai country" (i.e. the country now occupied by the Ghilzais, or nearly so) "a people called Khilijis, whom they call a tribe of Turks, to whom belonged a famous family of Delhi Kings. ”

“ The local clans would have felt that, if a powerful combination, such as that which had gathered about the Ghazni priest, had failed to drive back the British army, they themselves were powerless to do so. But once the vast host of 50,000 men had occupied Cabul and the Bala Hissar, and had made it impossible for the garrison of Sherpur to move beyond its defences, the Ghilzais felt that the appeal to their fanaticism was a safe lead to follow, and they began to muster in strength. ”

“ On the hills around a considerable number of sheep were seen grazing; but the natives did not care about selling these which, indeed, belonged for the most part, not to the Turis--the tribe which inhabit the valley--but to nomad Ghilzais who, like the Swiss shepherds, move about with their charges among the mountains, wherever fodder is to be obtained.
Khuram valley, itself, is bare and monotonous. With the exception of fruit trees planted round the villages, scarce a tree is to be found ”

“ All the accounts of the Ghilzais indicate great differences between them and the other tribes of Afghanistan; whilst there seems nothing impossible, or even unlikely, in the partial assimilation of a Turki tribe in the course of centuries to the Afghans who surround them, and the consequent assumption of a quasi-Afghan genealogy. We do not find that Mr. Elphinstone makes any explicit reference to the question now before us. But two of the notes to his History (5th ed. p. 322 and 384) seem to indicate that it was in his mind. ”

“ The most important tribe in Afghanistan is undoubtedly the Ghilzais. The Andaris, one of the most important of the southern sections of the tribe, are entirely in favour of Abdur Rahman, as are a great majority of the Tarakis. The northern Ghilzais are very much under the control of their chiefs, the most important of whom is Asmatullah Khan, of Hisarak and Lughman. He, it has just been announced, has addressed Mr. Griffin, and expressed his entire willingness to accept the Amir chosen by the English, even if this should be Abdur Rahman. ”

“ On the edges of this whirlpool of death the fell Ghilzais were stabbing and hacking with the ferocious industry inspired by thirst for blood and lust for plunder. It is among the characteristics of our diverse-natured race to die game, and even to thrill with a strange fierce joy when hope of escape from death has all but passed away and there remains only to sell life at the highest possible premium of exchange. Among our people, face to face with death on the rocky Jugdulluk, officers and soldiers alike fought with cool deadly rancour. ”

“ Had the British troops been beaten, the inhabitants of the Logan valley were prepared to rise, to a man. The Ghilzais and other hill tribes would have swept down upon the line of retreat; and few, if any, of the British force would have returned to tell the tale.
The next day Baker's division had the post of honor, and made a short march to Chaurasia. Beyond this village, the enemy had taken up their position. Three miles beyond the village the valley ends--a mass of hills shutting it in, with only a narrow defile leading, through them, to the plain of Cabul beyond. ”

“ Distant hills extend in low ranges of bare rock. The country skirting them is a waste of stone and scrub, in the possession of wandering Ghilzais whose flocks of goats, sheep and camels share the pastures with wild deer, wolves, foxes and hares. The black-hair tents of these nomads of the desert, pitched in the sheltered hollows of its surface for protection from the keen westerly wind, impart to the scene its sole sign of human habitation. ”

“ During the first Afghan war he was present as aide-de-camp to Sir Willoughby Cotton at the capture of Ghazni, on the 23rd of July 1839, and at the occupation of Kabul. After a short absence in Bengal to secure the publication of his Memoirs of the Afghan Campaign, he returned to Kabul in charge of recruits, and became interpreter to General Elphinstone. In 1840, being attached to Sir Robert Sale’s force, he took part in the Khurd-Kabul fight, in the celebrated passage of the defiles of the Ghilzais (1841) and in the fighting from Tezeen to Jalalabad. ”

“ The gentle friar, as my grandfather often told, stood for some time astounded at this speech, and then he said,—
"I dreamt not, Gilhaize, that beneath a countenance so calm and comely, the zealous fires of a warrior's bravery could have been kindled to so vehement a heat. But I will vex you with no questions. Heaven is on your side, and may its redeeming promptings never allow its ministers to rest till the fetters are broken and the slaves are set free." ”

“ It needed not the warning of Soojah to remind the English that they were no longer in Hindostan. Two young officers, Inverarity, of the 16th Lancers, and Wilmer, were attacked at a short distance from camp; Inverarity was murdered, and his companion escaped with difficulty. The Ghilzyes, a fierce and lawless tribe, the original lords of the soil, alike rejecting British gold and British promises, began, too, to give early promise of the stern opposition that was hereafter to be experienced from them. ”

“ They are brave and warlike, but have a sternness of disposition amounting to ferocity.... Some of the inferior Ghiljís are so violent in their intercourse with strangers that they can scarcely be considered in the light of human beings, while no language can describe the terrors of a transit through their country, or the indignities which have to be endured.... The Ghiljis, although considered, and calling themselves, Afghâns, and moreover employing the Pashto, or Afghân dialect, are undoubtedly a mixed race. ”

“ The tribesmen viewed the work with hostility, and assembled in larger numbers, and Nott sent a force against them under Colonel Winder, with four hundred British troops, a Sepoy battalion, a battery of horse artillery, and a small body of cavalry. The Ghilzyes advanced to the attack in great force. The battle was long and desperate, but the volleys of grape from the guns, and the steady fire from the infantry, at last turned the scale, and after five hours' fighting the Ghilzyes retired. The Dooranees were again in arms, and three thousand men were assembled under their chief at Girishk. ”

“ At these words the Earl and Sir Hugh Campbell bowed, and, retiring, went to the lodging of the Earl of Monteith, where they were minded to pass the night, but when they had consulted with that nobleman, my grandfather was ordered to provide himself with a fresh horse from Monteith's stable, and to set out for Edinburgh with letters for the Lord James Stuart.
"Gilhaize," said his master, as he delivered them, "I foresee we must buckle on our armour; but the cause of the Truth does not require that the first blow should come from our side. ”

“ And when he had called her, and she stood before him,
13 He said to his servant: Say to her Behold thou hast diligently served us in all things, what wilt thou have me to do for thee? hast thou any business, and wilt thou that I speak to the king, or to the general of the army? And she answered: I dwell in the midst of my own people.
14 And he said: What will she then that I do for her? And Giezi said: Do not ask, for she hath no son, and her husband is old. ”

“ We cannot be certain whether the “strong man, the unique hero” who addresses some one (lines 115–117) is Enkidu or Gish or some other personage, but presumably Gish is meant. In the Assyrian version, Tablet I, 3, 2 and 29, we find Gilgamesh described as the “unique hero” and in l. 234 of the Pennsylvania tablet Gish is called “unique,” while again, in the Assyrian version, Tablet I, 2, 15 and 26, he is designated as gašru as in our text. ”

“ Once, with the young commercial traveler in vests and pants—three years before an officer in the Great War—we walked to lonely districts where the Indian cavalry had pitched their camps beyond the city and when in a little Turkish coffee shop, remote and solitary, some wild Gypsy women in tattered robes of many colors, through which could be seen their bare brown limbs, danced and sang. No need to ask the origin of the Gypsy folk after seeing these. They were people of the Far East, and their songs had the harsh and ancient melody of Oriental nomads. ”

“ Bell Gilhaize, my brother's only daughter, was the lightest-hearted maiden in all our parish. It had long been a pleasure both to her father and me to observe a mingling of affections between her and Michael, and the year following had been fixt for their marriage.
"The time of weeping, Michael," said I, "is past, and the time of warring will soon come. It is not in man to bear always aggression, nor can it be required of him ever to endure contumely." ”

“ It happened, however, that there was among those valiant traders and craftsmen of Glasgow one Thomas Sword, the deacon of the hammermen, and he having the command of those stationed at the gate, overheard what was passing with my grandfather, and coming out of the wardroom, inquired his name, which when he heard, and that he was son to Michael Gilhaize, the Lithgow ferrier, he advised to let him in, saying he knew his father well, and that they had worked together, when young men, in the King's armoury at Stirling ”

“ He deposed the sultan in a most summary manner, placed the sultan's brother on the throne, secured the cession of the island of Banca to the British, and returned to Java. Finding a confederacy of Javanese chiefs had taken up a position at D'joejocarta (Yodhyakarta) , a powerful stockaded fort defended by one hundred guns and thirty thousand men, Gillespie promptly attacked and carried it with fifteen hundred troops, thereby, in all probability, saving the lives of all the Europeans in the island. ”

“ On this point may be adduced the judicious observation of Grellmann: “If the Gypsey knows not how to make use of the faculties with which nature has intrusted him, let the State teach him, and keep him in leading strings till the end is attained. Care being taken to improve their understandings, and to amend their hearts, they might become useful citizens; for observe them at whatever employment you may, there always appear sparks of genius.” ”

“ He then put a list of several well-known friends of the Reformation ayont the frith into my grandfather's hands, adding, "I need not say that it is not fitting now to trust to paper, and therefore much will depend on yourself. The confidence that my friend the Earl, your master, has in you, makes me deal thus openly with you; and I may add, that if there is deceit in you, Gilhaize, I will never again believe the physiognomy of man—so go your ways ”