CHAPTER I. They perform sacrifices resembling the passover and scape-goat. They punish blasphemers by stoning. They divide the lands by lot amongst the families of a tribe after the manner described in the book of Numbers. They are much given to worship on high places.22 Conquest of cution and The conquest of Scinde is the first recorded collision between Mussulmans and Hindús.23 The Arabs had traded with India from a remote antiquity; they brought away cottons, spices, jewels, and female slaves. The war originated in a dispute about an Arab ship which had been detained in Scinde, and which the Raja refused to restore. The Arabs began to make reprisals, and the war soon took a religious form. Kásim, the general of the Arabs, offered the usual alternative, Islam or tribute. Both were refused, and the Arabs spent their rage upon the idolaters. Kásim circumcised many Bráhmans by force, but they still refused to accept Islam. He was so enraged at their obstinacy that he put to physiognomy is a type of Saul, the son of Kish, whom the Afghans generally claim as their ancestor. 22 The evidences of the Jewish origin of the Afghans have been collected by Dr Bellew, and will be found in the second chapter of his Journal of a Political Mission to Afghanistan in 1857. London, 1862. The Afghans are said to have descended from the Ten Tribes who were carried away by the king of Assyria, and placed amongst the cities of the Medes. But they are different men from the Jews of Arabia who had rejected Muhammad. The Jews of Arabia were orthodox colonists from Judæa and Jerusalem, who were expecting a Messiah of the house of David, and refused to accept a son of Ishmael, like Muhammad, as their Messiah. The Ten Tribes were a turbulent people, who had revolted from the house of David and knew nothing of a Messiah. Such men would become easy converts to Islam. 23 See especially the Fatúhul Buldán and Chach-náma translated in Elliot's History of India, edited by Professor Dowson, vol. i. Other histories of Scinde are to be found in the same collection. 24 The route taken by Kásim is somewhat obscure. It probably lay along the coast of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean in an easterly direction towards the Indus. death all who were more than seventeen, and he en- CHAPTER I. slaved all who were under seventeen. The Raja of Scinde advanced against him with a great army, but was defeated and slain by the Arabs. Two daughters of the Raja were taken captive, and sent as a present to the Khalif of Damascus.25 The widow of the Raja made a last stand at the city of Bráhmanábád. The Rajpoot garrison was reduced to extremity, and performed the rite of Johur; 26 the women burnt themselves alive with their children, whilst the men rushed out and perished sword in hand. After a while the Hindús came to an understanding with the Arabs. They agreed to pay tribute; but a nice question of toleration was raised. The temples had been destroyed, worship had been forbidden, and the lands and money allowances of the Brahmans had been confiscated. Did the payment of the tribute warrant the restoration of idolatry? The question was decided in favour of toleration ; and the people were permitted to rebuild their temples, and restore the worship of the gods; whilst the Brahmans recovered their lands and allowances. Rajpoot prin Under this tolerant rule Kásim made friends story of the two with neighbouring Rajas, and projected an invasion cesses. of Hindustan. But his career was suddenly brought to a close. The two Rajpoot princesses had reached Damascus; their beauty had touched the heart of the Khalif; but they accused Kásim of having dishonoured them. The Khalif was furious. He issued orders that Kásim should be sewn up in a raw hide and sent to Damascus.27 Kásim perished 25 The invasion of Scinde took place in the reign of Walid the First, the sixth Khalif of the Omeyad dynasty. 26 See ante, vol. iii., chap. vii. 27 This mode of execution was one of the studied forms of torture which are CHAPTER I. on the way, but his remains were carried to the Khalif. The princesses were told of his death, and then said that he was innocent; they confessed that they had told a lie in order to be revenged on their father's murderer. They were put to a horrible death, but they had avenged the death of their father.28 Khalifs of Bag dad, 750-1258: híd and Al Mamun,786-833. The Khalifs of Bagdad superseded the Khalifs Harán al Ras of Damascus in 750 A.D. During the first century of their dominion they dazzled the eyes of Europe as well as of Asia. The reigns of Harún al Rashid and Al Mamún lasted from 786 to 833; they form the golden period of Arab dominion. The two Khalifs were heroes of the Arabian Nights; the contemporaries of Ecgberht and Charles the Great. They dwelt in palaces, gardens, and pavilions, surrounded by poets, wits, story-tellers, musicians, and beautiful women. They studied the sciences; they patronized astronomers, chemists, mathematicians, philosophers, and historians. Every mosque had its school, and almost every town had its college or university.29 peculiar to oriental nations. During the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, who reigned over Persia towards the close of the sixteenth century, a refractory general suffered in like manner. He was sewn up in a raw ox-hide, and daily fed, until the hide began to shrink from the heat of the sun, and he died in agony. Olearius's Travels in Persia, Book vi., page 263. See 28 According to some histories the two girls were walled round with brick and left to starve to death. According to others they were dragged to death at the tails of horses. There is a conflict of authorities as to the length of the period during which the Arabs occupied Scinde after the death of Kásim. See Elliot's History of India, by Professor Dowson, vol. i. 29 The reign of Harún al Rashíd is perhaps the culminating point of Arab grandeur. His sovereignty, temporal as well as spiritual, was acknowledged from the Mediterranean to the Indus, from the northern steppes to the Indian Ocean. He defeated the armies of Rome, captured the island of Cyprus, and compelled the Emperor Nicephorus to pay him tribute. He sent an embassy to Charles the Great; amongst the presents was a water-clock, which excited the wonder of Europe. His patronage of learning has made him famous for all time. He never Arabic over Persian revolt, All this while the Arab language dominated over CHAPTER I. the Persian. It was the language of the Koran, and Tyranny of spread abroad with the Koran. It was the only lan- Persian: the guage taught in the schools. Greek books were translated, not into Persian, but into Arabic. The Arab yoke pressed heavily upon the Persians, and signs of revolt began to appear. False prophets disturbed the minds of the masses. Mokanna, the "veiled prophet of Khorassan," and other fanatical preachers of the same type, opposed the prophet of the Arabs, and were followed by multitudes. Military adventurers, half hero and half brigand, were joined by lawless bands, and conquered whole provinces. In 870, a man of this stamp, known as Yakúb the brazier, became king of Persia, and set the Khalif of Bagdad at defiance. After twenty years he marched against Bagdad to dethrone the Arab Khalif, but perished on the way.30 Other ephemeral dynasties sprang into existence, and then disappeared. Arab Khalifat. Meanwhile the Khalifs were helpless; their tem- Collapse of the poral power withered away; they dwindled into built a mosque without adding a school to it. He was known to Christendom as "Aaron the sage." But amidst all this outward pomp and splendour there were skeletons in the court at Bagdad. Plots, intrigues, and treachery were ever at work. One day a viceroy might be in rebellion; on the morrow one of his own followers might carry his bleeding head to the Khalif. One day a minister might be treated as a confidential friend; on the morrow he might be put to death with all his family. One day a favourite mistress might be flattered, caressed, and indulged in every whim; on the morrow she might be sewn in a sack weighted with stones, and dropped in the Tigris. The tales of the Arabian Nights make frequent reference to illicit love and cruel murder; they are but the reflex of the depravity which prevailed in the pavilions and gardens of Bagdad. 30 The career of Yakúb, the brazier of Seistan, is very obscure. In some respects it bears a strange resemblance to that of Kaveh the blacksmith, the hero of the Shah Námeh, who overthrew Zohák the Arab usurper and placed Feridun upon the throne of Persia. The point will be brought under review hereafter. See Appendix I., Shah Námeh. CHAPTER I. pontiffs, grasping at the shadow of authority when its substance was wanting. They affected to treat the new rulers as viceroys under the Khalifat; sent them dresses of honour and insignia of investiture; instigated them to make war upon each other; and waited vainly for the time when they could depose these rebellious vassals, and recover their temporal sovereignty. Persian revival under the Sámáni, 900-1000. Turkish uprising slaves be 31 Towards the end of the ninth century the Persian revival was associated with the Sámáni empire of Bokhara. The history of this empire is obscure, but significant. Ismail Sámáni, the founder of the dynasty, was a Persian by birth and Mussulman by religion. He established his authority over Bokhara; after the death of Yakúb, he extended it over Khorassan, and other Persian territories to the westward. The Sámáni dynasty lasted throughout the whole of the tenth century. During that period the Persian language was driving back the Arabic. It took the place of Arabic in the colleges and schools. Poets and other literati composed their works in Persian. Even theologians, who reverenced Arabic as the language of the Koran, began to write their commentaries in Persian. From that day to this the Arabic has never regained its hold on Persian territory.32 Meantime there was a new element at work in came masters. Central Asia; it was destined to overwhelm Persian and Arab, and extend its dominion to East 31 The Sámánis were not Shíahs, but Sunnís. The Shíah religion seems to have been in great disfavour at this period. All the military leaders that came to the front were professed Sunnís. Firdusi the poet was a Sunní, although he was strongly suspected of Shiah tendencies. 32 Vambery has discussed the Persian revival at considerable length in his History of Bokhara. |