Khwas Khan
07 October 2016
Just inside the Khwas Khani or north gate of Rohtas, as one enters, there is a rather smallish grave with a green-domed roof. The sign on the wall says, ‘Hazrat Syed Sakhi Khwas Khan Shah’. Legend has it, this holy man, known never to have refused whatever was demanded of him (hence ‘sakhi’), struggled against the Sikhs. When finally overcome, he got into some silly wager with his antagonists. “Ask and you shall have your demand”, he is said to have challenged.
The Sikh was craftier. He said he wanted the sakhi’s head. And so the reputedly large-hearted saint chopped off his own head and handed it to the Sikh. Then his headless torso, so the story goes, went airborne and disappeared into the wild blue yonder. The version I heard did not have the Sikhs converting en masse to the ‘one and only true faith’, but we do have someone burying the head just inside the gateway which became a shrine for the superstitious. The northern entrance to Rohtas thence came to be known after this man of god.
Read more »Labels: People, Punjab, Rohtas Fort
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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A Tale of three Castles
20 July 2013
On February 17, 1519 Babur, who was later to found the Mughal empire, crossed the Sindhu for the first time with his eyes on the rich and fertile lands of the district of Bhera on the east bank of the Jhelum. Two days later, he dismounted on the bank of the Soan River where Langar Khan of the Salt Range Janjuas brought him a message of peace from his uncle Malik Hast (Asad), the chief of the territory that Babur was camping in. The emissary was well received and on the Mughal’s bidding, he galloped off to fetch the Janjua chieftain who arrived with a gift of a horse in mail. And so friendship between a Janjua of the Soan River valley and a Mughal of Ferghana was forged.
The next afternoon (February 20th), Babur tarried beside ‘densely growing corn’ in the vicinity of Kallar Kahar Lake and promptly fell in love with this ‘charming place with good air’. The lake, he writes in his memoir, fed by run-off from the hills and a spring on its western side, was ‘some six miles round’. On its shores he laid out the foundations of the first ever Mughal garden of the subcontinent: the Bagh-e-Safa. Promising to give out more details concerning this garden further on in the memoirs, Babur somehow forgot to return to the subject. Therefore, and also because no trace of any construction remains, it is not known what civil works, if any, were undertaken. The fruit trees along the southwestern shore of the lake still mark Babur’s Bagh-e-Safa, and a rough stone pedestal with a prepared surface even today goes by the name of ‘Takht-e-Babri’ - the Throne of Babur.
Labels: History, jhelum: City of the Vitasta, Punjab, Rohtas Fort
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Monument of Wasted Labour
22 May 2013
Babur, a most remarkable man, founder of the Mughal dynasty of India, poet, diarist and soldier extraordinary, passed through Jhelum. Thus the various references to Jhelum in his diary show us. On the occasion of taking Bhera he tells of his departure from Kallar Kahar (Chakwal district) on 21 February 1519. Babur and his army crossed the river that same evening very likely by the ferry of Ahmadabad, a few kilometres downstream of Pind Dadan Khan. Having flown his banners on Bhera, Babur spent a few restful days there. Among other things, he tells us of his galas on longboats on the Jhelum River. As the waves of the river gently rocked the boat, much strong spirit (arak) and a confection of opium (ma'jun) was consumed to the accompaniment of the lute.
But the Mughal empire was not yet to be. Babur withdrew to Afghanistan and returned again in November 1523. The part of his diary dealing with this expedition being missing, it can only be conjectured that he crossed either at Jhelum or at a ferry below the town. Two years later, in December 1525, the day before Christmas, Babur was ferried across the 'Behat water at a ford below Jhelum [town].' This time his route is known. It lay through the country of the Gakkhars, down by that branch of the Rajapatha that our G. T.
Read more »Labels: History, jhelum: City of the Vitasta, Punjab, Rohtas Fort
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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