Mohmands

“ Of the independent Mohmands very few enlist in the Indian Army, but there are a good many in the regiments of the Amir of Afghanistan and in the contingents of the local Khans. The physique of the tribe is generally good, and a rough estimate of the fighting strength of the Bar Mohmands places it at 19,000 men, of whom the Baizais supply almost half. They have gained for themselves of more recent years a reputation as brave fighters as well as troublesome raiders, but are thoroughly mistrusted and detested by their neighbours, who accuse them of the grossest treachery. ”

“ At Matta and Shabkadar, and towards the Mohmands generally, General Willcocks, commanding at Peshawar, occupied, according to instructions, a purely defensive advanced position, the object being to prevent any collision and to offer no possible ground for Mohmand attack. It was, however, abundantly clear that the fanatical feeling against us was spreading, that ghaza was being preached, and that men were flocking to the standards of the mullahs from Bajaur, Utman Khel territory, Asmar, Kohistan and Kunar, while grain, ammunition and money were being sent down to the Mohmands from Ningrahar. ”

“ To be considered in connection with the independent Mohmands are three affiliated clans living on the northern outskirts of the Mohmand country, and also three vassal clans.
The three first mentioned are the Dawezais, of whom some live permanently in the Upper Ambahar Valley and others leave their families in the winter in Ningrahar, migrating during the summer to the neighbourhood of the Unai Pass and the Upper Helmand River; the Utmanzais, who live in Bar and Kuz Yakhdand; and the Kukkozais, whose settlements are in Ningrahar. ”

“ A portion of the lands they cultivated themselves, farming out the remainder to other tribes of the plains as tenants. Many of their clansmen dwelt in the plains of Michni, and some in the neighbouring hills, and they traded largely in the Peshawar Valley. The Halimzai Mohmands also held Panjpao in British Doaba as a fief, chiefly cultivated by tenants. A few of their men lived in the plains, but the majority in the hills, and these also traded in the valley. The Pandiali Mohmands at a former period had held a similar jaghir in the Doaba, but not since British rule. ”

“ The Shabkadar garrison was reinforced from Peshawar, and the Mohmands again advancing on the 7th from the shelter of the hills, were again forced to retire. Nauroz Khan now, however, joined his brother, and, supported by the priesthood, the two managed, by the beginning of the new year, to collect a miscellaneous assemblage of close upon 6000 armed men—mostly Mohmands and mainly represented by men from the Halimzai and Khwaezai clans—and with 236these it was now proposed to meet the British troops stationed at Shabkadar. ”

“ Pathans, sub-divided into Mamunds, Isazai, and Ismailzai, numbering together with a few Mohmands, Utmauzais, &c., about 100,000. To the south of Bajour is the wild mountain district of the Mohmands, a Pathan race. ”

“ There were outbreaks and raids upon villages close to our frontier and within the territories of tribes which had come under our protection; and it was very apparent that the Indian Government could exercise but little more than a nominal authority over any of the clans of the Mohmand tribe. Still, some advance had been made, and when in 1906 an extension of the railway was commenced from Peshawar to the Afghan frontier through Shilman, the Mohmands did not offer any really serious opposition to the undertaking. ”

“ The Mullah had been gathering forces together for an attack on Peshawar, a strong British fort. To make his attempt successful he needed more men than he had under his command; he therefore ordered a tribe called the Mohmands to join him, and marched toward Peshawar, expecting to meet them on the way. ”

“ The Mohmands, moreover, are very vindictive, frequently exhuming and burning the bodies of enemies, even of their own faith; they often, too, refuse permission to relatives to remove their dead for proper burial after a war. At one time the Mohmand fighting men did not possess many modern 224rifles, but latterly it is said that they have received several large consignments of arms from the Persian Gulf via Kabul, and have also purchased numbers of rifles from the Adam Khel factories in the Kohat Pass. ”

“ In June the climate of the Gandab Valley is detestable. The excessive heat is intensified by radiation. The narrow glen acts as a funnel for the scorching wind, which blows hard for days on end. No tent can stand against the storm, and I have seen half a camp collapse when struck by a sudden blast. Dust and even small pebbles are blown about with great violence.”
The Mohmand People Oliver says of the Mohmands that “in physique, though there are among them fine men, they are as a rule inferior to many of the surrounding Pathans ”

“ The tribe are Afghans by descent, and are more akin to the Yusafzais than any of their neighbours. The aspect of the Mohmand hills is exceedingly dreary, and the eye is everywhere met by dry ravines between long rows of rocky hills and crags, scantily clothed with coarse grass, scrubwood and the dwarf palm. In summer great want of water is felt, and the desert tracts radiate an intolerable heat. ”

“ The Mohammedans have begun to feel that they can share in the ancient glory of India without an outrage to their Mohammedanism. The Hindus have come to realise that after all the Mohammedan rule in India was not so bad or tyrannical and oppressive as they were told it was by interested historians. The Mohammedans feel that they can be as proud of the Hindu heroes, Rama and Krishna, of the Hindu Epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharta, of Hindu science and Hindu philosophy, as the Hindus themselves are, without being false to their religion or to their community. ”

“ South of the Vindhya mountains, in the Dekhan and farther south, there were several other Muhammadan schools, marked by a strong individuality, which, like those of the north, were derived from the pre-existing Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Kulbarga, Bidar, Golkonda, Ahmadnagar, and Aurangabad—the capitals of different Muhammadan kingdoms of the Dekhan from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries—were laid out by the Indian craftsmen in the service of Muhammadan Sultans as magnificently as the ancient cities of India which the armies of Islam destroyed or used as Gaur was used. ”

“ Under the regime thus established the civilization of India assumed a Persian type; and the term "Moghul" in the present day, in India signifies rather a Persian than a Turkman or Tartar. They add the word "Beg" to their names, and are usually of the Shiah denomination; as also are the descendants of the Persian Saiyids. The Saiyids of Arab origin take the title of "Mir;" the Pathans are commonly known by the affix "Khan." All but the offspring of converted Hindus represent foreign invasions by races more warlike than the people of India. ”

“ If the Buddhist can appeal to the successes of centuries, that proves, I should say, that there is some element of genuine truth in his religion; if the Mohammedan points to conversions, in India and elsewhere, far more rapid than those made by Christianity and not dependent on "the victorious sword," that also proves that in some important respects—for example in the practical recognition of the equality of all believers without respect to rank or race—Mohammedans have been far more faithful to their teacher than we have been to ours. ”

“ In later days came hordes of Turks and Mongols (Tartars as they are generically though inaccurately called by Europeans) , the people of Janghiz and of Timur, terrible us the locusts of prophecy the land before them like the garden of Eden, and behind them a desolate wilderness.
To these, again, succeeded many Persians, chiefly Saiyids, or so-called descendants of the Prophet; a later race of Afghans, also called Pathans, and a fresh inroad of Tartars (converted to Islam) who finally founded the Moghul Empire. ”

“ I believe the stricter Muhammadans are of pure Mogul and Pathan descent, while the more lax are the many who at different times have been drawn or forced into Islam. Our Muhammadan servants speak continually of their caste, have many Hindu notions, and follow many Hindu practices. Low-caste Hindus, on the other hand, are prominent in some Muhammadan processions. Both Muhammadans and Hindus, as a rule, are satisfied with their respective position, as assigned to them by Allah or Fate, have no repugnance to each other, and no wish to disturb each other. ”

“ Muhammadanism is a proselytizing religion as well as Christianity. During my Indian career I have heard of a convert now and then from Hinduism in the North-West, and very occasionally one from Christianity; but these accessions have been very few. In Bengal, on the other hand, it appears that during the last thirty or forty years a great number of low-caste people have been drawn into the Muhammadan ranks, many of them small farmers, who think that by belonging to a large and influential community they can the better contend with the landlords. ”

“ The religion of the country throughout is Mahommedan. Next to Turkey, Afghanistan is the most powerful Mahommedan kingdom in existence. The vast majority of Afghans are of the Sunni sect; but there are, in their midst, such powerful communities of Shiahs as the Hazaras of the central districts, the Kizilbashes of Kabul and the Turis of the Kurram border, nor is there between them that bitterness of sectarian animosity which is so marked a feature in India. The Kafirs of the mountainous region of Kafiristan alone are non-Mahommedan. ”

“ Others demanded that the army should advance. Two tribes returned to Mecca, the rest marched onwards; but it is not fair to allege that Mohammad had set forth to attack the caravan. Had he any such intention, the people of Medina, who had pledged themselves only to defend him against personal attack, would not have accompanied him. The presence of a large number of the Ansárs, the people of Medina, more than double that of the Mohajirins, the refugees, is a strong proof that they had come out only in their defence. ”

“ The Hindu crouches in a shadow to escape the attention of his god, while the Mohammedan publicly prays to his five times a day in the nearest mosque, and if no mosque is near he kneels where he stands, and takes full satisfaction in a religion of hope instead of fear.
From the political standpoint the Mohammedans are a very important factor in the situation in India. They are more independent than the Hindus; they occupy a more influential position than their numbers entitle them to ”

“ The Lord your God is one Lord.”
Mohammad’s position at Medina was totally different from that he occupied at Mekka. Instead of a struggling reformer, despised and ridiculed by almost every man he met, he was a king, ruling a large city with despotic power, and needing every resource of statecraft to maintain order among its contentious elements. There was a large party, known in the Korān as the “Disaffected” or “Hypocrites,” who found it politic to profess Islām, but were ready to avail themselves of any propitious occasion to overturn or injure it. ”

“ The Jinn, the Afreets, and the other beings of the air and water, have not done much harm to the Mohammadan mind; and they have given so many a delightful fable to the West, that we must feel a certain grateful respect for them. The realistic pictures of paradise and hell have exercised a more serious influence. The minute details of these infernal and celestial pictures must move alternately the disgust and the contemptuous amusement of a Western reader; yet these same things were very real facts to Moḥammad, and have been of the utmost importance to generation after generation of Muslims. ”

“ There is only one instance of intolerance, i.e., making converts at the point of sword, which Sir W. Muir, so zealous in accusing Mohammad of religious persecution during the Medina period, has succeeded in finding out during the ten eventful years of Mohammad's sojourn in Medina. I refer to the story of Khalid's mission in the beginning of the tenth year A.H., to Bani Haris, a Christian tribe at Najran, whose people had entered into a covenant of peace with Mohammad, and to whom an ample pledge had been guaranteed to follow their own faith. ”

“ The Mohamadans were beaten down almost everywhere except in Bengal before the British appeared upon the scene; Bengal they would not have been able to hold, and the name of the "Mahratta Ditch" of Calcutta shows how near even the British there were to extirpation by India's new masters. Had the British not won the battles of Plassey and Buxar, the whole Empire would ere now have become the fighting ground of Sikhs, Rajputs, and Mahrattas. Except the Nizam of the Deccan there was not a vigorous Musalman ruler in India after the firman of Farokhsiar in 1716 ”

“ Mangles tells us, that the Mohommedan population sympathize strongly with the Affghans, and revere the memory of Mahmoud. If that be the case, it would have been difficult to bring any trophy home, or to imprint any mark of the superiority of our arms, without displeasing this sect. But, in that view, who are the parties responsible for thus placing our essential interests, and the safety of India generally, in contrast with the feelings of Mohommedan subjects? Those certainly who, regardless of all justice, made a wanton aggression on a Mahommedan power. ”

“ As the men of Medina come to know Moḥammad, they too will devote themselves to him body and soul; and the enthusiasm will catch fire and spread among the tribes till all Arabia is at the feet of the Prophet of the One God. ‘No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of His own clouting.’ He had the gift of influencing men, and he had the nobility only to influence them for good.
We have now to see Moḥammad as king. Though he came as a fugitive, rejected as an impostor by his own citizens, yet it was not long before his word was supreme in his adopted city. ”