The frontier rising of 1897: Malakand, Shabqadar, the Khyber and Tirah

At a glance

• What: a chain of risings along the frontier between Malakand and Waziristan in 1897, on the British side of the Durand Line. Wazir, Swati, Bunerwal, Mohmand, Afridi and Orakzai fighters took part. [3, 4]

• When: from the attack at Maizar in the Tochi valley on 10 June, through Malakand and Chakdara (26 July to 2 August), Shabqadar (7 August) and the Khyber and Samana posts (from 23 August), to the settlements of winter and spring 1898. [3]

• Leaders: the Sartor Faqir (Saadullah, also called Mulla Mastan) in Swat, the Hadda Mulla among the Mohmand, and Mulla Sayyid Akbar among the Afridi and Orakzai. [3, 6]

• Cause given by the tribes: forts, roads and a boundary that put their country under British authority. British officers gave further causes. [2, 3, 5]

• Outcome: the British were not driven out. The army's answer lasted into 1898, and the policy of advance was set aside after 1899. [3, 4]

A frontier being closed

In 1893 Amir Abdur Rahman and Sir Mortimer Durand agreed the line that bears Durand's name (see the Durand Line). Sultan-i-Rome, a Pakistani historian of the Frontier, calls the Durand mission and the demarcation that followed the root cause of the rising of 1897, because the line divided the tribes and brought most of them into the British sphere. [3] H. C. Nevill, a British officer who wrote the history of these campaigns, agreed that the tribesmen, "considering the matter from their own point of view", foresaw nothing in the agreement "but the eventual loss of their jealously guarded independence". [3]

Roads and posts followed. In 1895 a British force marched through Swat and Dir to relieve Chitral, after a proclamation that no territory would be occupied, and the people of Swat fought it at Malakand. The government then kept a garrison at Chitral and decided on a road to it through Swat, so Malakand and Chakdara stayed garrisoned. [3] Winston Churchill, who came to the frontier in 1897 as a war correspondent, wrote that the tribes did not call the road a breach of faith: "What they do regard it as, is a menace to their independence, and a prelude to annexation. Nor are they wrong." [1] Collin Davies, a later British historian, wrote that to the border Pashtun the forts, white roads and boundary pillars of the 1890s looked like "a great mailed fist" closing round him, and judged that the disturbances of 1897 were mainly the result of those advances. [3] The provincial government's report for 1901 to 1903 says that the extension of British influence and garrisons "excited" the tribes' suspicion and that the demarcation "was regarded as a step to annexation". [3]

British writers list local grievances as well: a rise in the duty on Kohat rock salt from eight annas to two rupees a maund, the refusal to send back Afridi women who had fled to the settled districts (a matter of honour), the British presence as far as the Akhund's tomb in Swat, and the fear that the Afridi would have to build a military road through the Khyber. [3] The Orakzai resented the new forts on the Samana ridge. [3]

Officials at the time disagreed about the cause. Some thought the outbreaks were planned together, some thought them spontaneous, some blamed religious fanaticism, and, in the American historian James Spain's words, "the more far-sighted saw them as a reaction to the British forward movement". [3]

The leaders and their message

The Sartor Faqir, Saadullah Khan, is also called Faqir Baba and Mulla Mastan (ملامستان). [6] The Pashto scholar Ihsanullah Yousufzai of the University of Peshawar, drawing on the Pashto writer Muhammad Ali Dinakhel, places his birth in the village of Rega in Buner, between 1820 and 1830. [6] Yousufzai quotes Sultan-i-Rome for his early life: religious study in Ajmer, travel in Central Asia, about ten years at Mazar-i-Sharif, then Kabul, and a return to Buner in 1895. [6] His piety brought him a following. In 1897, Yousufzai says, citing Shahbaz Muhammad's history of the Malakand battles, he toured Bajaur and the Utman Khel country and called people to jihad against the British. [6]

The Hadda Mulla, Najmuddin, was a disciple of the Akhund of Swat who had settled among the Mohmand (see the Hadda Mulla). Mulla Sayyid Akbar of the Aka Khel was the voice of the rising in Tirah. [3, 5] Robert Warburton, who served eighteen years as British political officer in the Khyber, wrote that Sayyid Akbar was in touch with the other two through June, July and most of August. [5] Warburton also wrote that there was no proof of a plan to raise the whole border at once: the Sartor Faqir struck first, and when he could not succeed he asked the Hadda Mulla for help, who asked Sayyid Akbar for a diversion. [3] Two British officials, A. H. McMahon and A. D. G. Ramsay, wrote instead that the rising was planned from Kabul and India to start everywhere together, and that the Faqir "precipitated matters". [3] The two British accounts do not agree.

The leaders' message was that the foreigner was taking the country and that defence was a duty of faith. The Chamkani, answering the British commander Sir William Lockhart's terms, wrote that "whatever orders we may receive from the Fakir Sahib of Swat, the Mulla Sahib of Hadda or the Aka Khel Mulla, and from all Islam, we cannot refuse to obey them". [3] Asked afterwards by Warburton why they had attacked the posts, Afridis answered that the mullas had forced them and were too powerful to refuse. [3]

The amir's part

Whether Abdur Rahman had a hand in it is disputed. A British officer's reading of his book on jihad, Taqwim-ud-din, and of the gathering of religious leaders at his court was that they were a signal. [3] McMahon and Ramsay said his commander at Asmar, Ghulam Haidar Khan, a friend of the Hadda Mulla, wrote to the Sartor Faqir on 20 July promising help. [3] Many British officers blamed the amir, but the Viceroy, Lord Elgin, was not convinced, because there was no concrete proof. [4] Abdur Rahman denied sympathy with the tribes and ordered his subjects to give them neither help nor shelter. [3] Javed Iqbal cites a letter from an Afridi deputation in Kabul saying that the amir had advised the Afridi not to fight and had offered to carry their complaints to the British government. [5]

After the Khyber forts fell, a deputation of eighteen Afridi maliks and ulama took a petition to the amir. It said the British had "erected forts at various points within our borders", that the Afridi had complained to Kabul many times without an answer, and that "being helpless, and having regard to Islam" they had "opened the door of jehad". It went on: "We will never consent to tender our allegiance to the British Government, and become their subjects." They offered their allegiance to "the King of Islam". Abdur Rahman answered that they had said nothing when Durand's mission passed through, and that "silence indicates consent". [2] Tirah's own story is told in its article.

Maizar, 10 June

The first blow fell in the Tochi valley, in the Madda Khel Wazir country. On 10 June 1897 H. A. Gee, the British political officer, came to Maizar with a large escort. According to Nevill and H. W. Mills, two British writers on the campaign, he came to choose a site for a levy post and to settle a fine of 2,000 rupees laid on the tribes for the murder of a Hindu clerk, which the people of Maizar objected to paying. [3] The day passed quietly until, as the regimental pipers played to the villagers, a man waved a sword from a tower and the shooting began. Mills's figures are 26 killed on the British side, three of them officers, and about 100 on the tribal side. [3]

Mills wrote that the attack had been planned and that the headmen were party to it. Spain wrote that the tribesmen broke their own code by attacking guests they had welcomed and fed (see melmastia). [3] Mills also records that the Khiddar Khel Wazirs brought water to the British wounded and brought in the dead. [3] The government sent the Tochi Field Force, which spent weeks destroying towers and hamlets near Maizar, and the Madda Khel came to terms on 15 November 1897. [3] The Mahsud did not join the rising of 1897. Caroe, quoted by Sultan-i-Rome, thought that the early outbreak let troops in the Tochi screen them from Tirah. They rose the next year under Mullah Powindah, of the Mahsud and Wazir country. [3]

Malakand and Chakdara, 26 July to 2 August

In July the Sartor Faqir settled at Landakay in upper Swat and announced that his mission was to turn the British out of Malakand and Peshawar. The British and their local allies took him for a madman and paid him little attention. [3] Churchill writes that a movement in upper Swat was noticed in early July but its importance was underrated. [1] Reports to the British of the Faqir's own claims include an invisible army from heaven, bullets turned to water, and stones thrown into the Swat river that would work like guns. [3] Yousufzai lists the baseless claims among the reasons the rising failed. [6]

On 26 July the Faqir came down from Landakay with a few followers, one of them a boy he proclaimed king of Delhi. By nightfall a body of fighters was moving on Malakand (ملاکنډ) and another on the bridge fort at Chakdara. [3, 6] McMahon and Ramsay and the Gazetteer, as quoted by Sultan-i-Rome, put the number at barely 1,000 on the first night and at some 12,000 at Malakand and more than 8,000 at Chakdara afterwards, from upper Swat, Buner and the Utman Khel country. [3] Fighting went on night and day for a week. The garrisons held, reinforcements came from Mardan and elsewhere, and the two places were relieved on 1 and 2 August. [3] Nevill wrote that the attacks showed "the same reckless impulse" that sent the Sudanese Mahdists against British squares "for the sake of a martyr's crown". [3] Sultan-i-Rome answers that the tribesmen showed courage that even Mills and Churchill acknowledge. [3] Thomas Holdich, a British officer, wrote of the Swatis: "They fought like the Arab races of the Sudan-like Zulus-like Afridis." [4]

Yousufzai says the Faqir was himself wounded on the last night at Malakand. He quotes Shahbaz Muhammad on the British advance of 2 August, with killing and destruction in the villages below Malakand, Batkhela among them. [6] Yousufzai calls the ghazis (غازیان) who died at Malakand and Chakdara "martyrs of the ghaza of 1897" (shahidan). [6] That is his phrase.

Shabqadar, 7 August

On the afternoon of 7 August about four or five thousand Mohmands led by the Hadda Mulla crossed into Peshawar district, 18 miles from the city. They burned Shankargarh, a village of Hindus and Sikhs that had mostly emptied, and attacked Shabqadar fort, where forty Border Police held out for twelve hours until a relief column came from Peshawar. [3] The Mohmand side is told in the Mohmand, and the later leader of the same teaching line in the Haji Sahib of Turangzai.

The Khyber and the Samana

The Afridi and Orakzai rose in the last week of August. On 23 August, according to Nevill, the Afridi took Ali Masjid and Fort Maude and held the Khyber from Ali Masjid to Landi Kotal. [3] Iqbal writes that the Khyber Rifles' British commandant, Captain Barton, had been ordered back to Jamrud, and that the men at Landi Kotal under Subadar Mursil Khan held the fort for a day and a night. They were Zakha Khel and Malikdin Khel Afridi, Shinwari and Mullagori. Mursil Khan had two sons among the attackers and one beside him. On 25 August the gate was opened from inside and the fort was looted and burned. [5] The Orakzai took the Ublan pass and attacked the Samana posts, and Saragarhi fell on 12 September. [3] Mills called the loss of the Khyber the worst blow to British prestige on the frontier. [3]

The army's answer

The Government of India raised a column for each front. The Malakand Field Force, sanctioned on 30 July under Sir Bindon Blood, went up the Swat valley. [3] The Mohmand submitted, and the Mamund of Bajaur fought on until a settlement on 18 October. [3] The Bunerwals held their passes against a force that moved on them on 2 January 1898 and submitted on 17 January. [3] The Tirah Field Force of two divisions under Lockhart had, by Salman Bangash's count, 34,506 troops with 19,858 followers and 34,000 transport animals. [4]

Nevill explained the method: breaking down the means of defence would take too long, so "the destruction of villages and personal property" had "always been the only effective way of dealing with the elusive tribesmen". [3] In Tirah that meant burning the fortified houses of the Maidan. [2] Fines, rifles and agreements from jirgas followed. Spain counted more than 75,000 troops used over more than three years, counting the Mahsud war of 1898. [3] British officers wrote of the tribes' skill. Lockhart said his force faced "perhaps the best skirmishers and best natural rifle-shots in the world". Holdich wrote that the war taught "the lesson of respect for the people who fought well for their independence". [3, 4]

Why it did not succeed

Yousufzai gives seven reasons. The Faqir and his companions had no plan for a long war and no experience of regular fighting. The British had every kind of weapon and a trained army, and the tribes did not. The Nawab of Dir, Sharif Khan, and the Miangul family were, in his words, loyal to the British. The amir of Afghanistan's promises came to nothing. And the Faqir's claims were baseless. [6]

Sultan-i-Rome adds that the risings were not simultaneous. Maizar came first, then Swat, the Mohmand and Tirah, so the British met each in turn. He quotes the Pioneer's report that if the Hadda Mulla had struck Shabqadar on the day of the attack on Malakand, uneasiness would have spread along the whole Peshawar border. [3]

What followed

Lord Curzon, Viceroy from 1899, withdrew regular troops behind the administrative border by 1902, and Spain's summary of the whole sequence is "a return to the status quo". [3] Bangash records the creation of the North-West Frontier Province in 1901, with a separate administration for the tribal areas. [4]

The Sartor Faqir lived on. In November 1898, Yousufzai says, he led a force against the Nawab of Dir at the request of tribes on the Swat river, and failed. Shahbaz Muhammad writes that in 1900 he made peace with the British. A descendant, Humayun Khan, told Yousufzai in 2012 that the British also offered him the kingship of Swat and that he refused. He died in 1917 (1336 AH) and was buried at Fatehpur in Swat. [6] For Swat after the Faqir, see Swat. The wider wars are in the Anglo-Afghan wars and Abdur Rahman Khan.

Fanaticism or resistance

British accounts at the time put religious frenzy first. Bangash lists the answers: General J. G. Elliot said that not all who joined backed the mullas on religious grounds, Arnold Fletcher that the major cause was "a desire to preserve their old tribal independence", and S. S. Thorburn that the tribesmen had seen "us giving bribes to their leaders, marching troops through their countries, surveying and mapping their hills, and erecting cairns of stone along the Afghan side". [4] The historian Robert Nichols, quoted by Bangash, wrote that the charge of fanaticism became "justification for conquest, repression, and, often, the indiscriminate destruction of villages and communities". [4] Sultan-i-Rome quotes the Cambridge History of India: officers "have ever been ready to confuse fanaticism with the natural desire of the tribesmen for independence". [3] Bangash concludes that the rising was a social and political event that used the common religious language. [4]

Churchill's is the best-known English account. Sultan-i-Rome notes that he was not present in Swat during the fighting there and that his account of it contains factual errors. [3]