The Haji Sahib of Turangzai (Fazl-i-Wahid), reformer and Mohmand leader

At a glance

• Fazl-i-Wahid, the Haji Sahib of Turangzai, came from a family of Sayyid religious leaders in Turangzai, a village in the Charsadda area of the Peshawar valley. [2, 5]

• Altaf Qadir and the British "Who's Who" of Afghanistan give his birth year as 1859; a 2020 newspaper profile says 1858. He died on 14 December 1937. [5, 7]

• He was a disciple of the Hadda Mulla, met the Deobandi teacher Mahmud-ul-Hasan, and from about 1910 ran a network of village schools with Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Bacha Khan) and others. [1, 5]

• In 1915 he left British territory and settled at Lakarai in Mohmand country, in a place he named Ghaziabad. He raised lashkars there until the Mohmand fighting of 1935. [2, 3, 5]

• Indian government publications called him "hostile" and "a perpetual threat". Qadir calls him a reformer and a resister of colonial rule. In 1915 the Chief Commissioner, Roos-Keppel, thought him "probably more respected and trusted than any other mulla". [4–6]

A Sayyid family from Turangzai

Fazl-i-Wahid's father, Fazl-i-Ahmad, belonged to a Sayyid family of Turangzai, and his mother was a Kakakhel from Nowshera. [5] Family sources, as Qadir gives them, trace the line to Baba Wali Qandahari, whose son Sayyid Baha-ud-Din settled in the Peshawar valley on land the chiefs gave him and was known as Pir Bodlai. [5] The British Who's Who of Afghanistan, which Ludwig Adamec compiled from the secret political biographies of British India, lists him instead as a "Haji Khel Mohmand", son of a pirzada of Umarzai. [2] Both give the father's name and 1859 as the year of birth. Qadir takes that year from a police intelligence record of 1916 and notes that Pashto writers place his birth earlier. [2, 5]

As a boy he learned the Quran at the village mosque from Maulvi Hamid-ud-Din, and at about fourteen went to the madrasa at Tahkal, near Peshawar, where he stayed six years. [5] He married Bibi Hawa, daughter of Khalid Bacha, and farmed. [5] He went to Hadda, south of Jalalabad, and became a disciple of Najm-ud-Din, the Hadda Mulla, whom Qadir calls one of the most formidable foes of British rule. The Hadda Mulla made him a khalifa, a spiritual successor. [5] The Who's Who calls him "an influential man among the followers of the Mulla of Hadda". [2]

Qadir adds the Deobandi link. The Haji travelled to the seminary at Deoband, where he met Mahmud-ul-Hasan, later called Shaikh-ul-Hind, and went on pilgrimage with ulama of that circle, among them Rashid Ahmad Gangohi and Muhammad Qasim Nanautavi. [5] The sources differ on the dates of his pilgrimages. The News on Sunday says he performed Hajj in 1877 and again in 1908, and that at Mecca he pledged allegiance to Haji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki. [7] Qadir cites a source that places the start of his reform work before a second pilgrimage in 1898. [5] On the schools, Ghulam Rasul Mihr says Mahmud-ul-Hasan told the Haji to open them and Abdul Khaliq Khaleeq says Maulvi Abdul Aziz urged him to; Qadir notes the official record confirms neither. [5] On pirs and mullas, see religion among Pashtuns.

Preaching tours and marriages

Near Umarzai a landowner gave him land, and he built a mosque there; the place was called Hajiabad. [5] Qadir says he toured villages, beginning with Lund Khwar, instead of waiting for people to come. He asked that mahr, the bride's dower, be fixed by Islamic law, that women receive their inheritance, and that families give up lavish wedding spending, hired dancers and eunuchs at births and circumcisions. Qadir says forty weddings might be held on one occasion. [5]

The British said much the same in 1915. Sir George Roos-Keppel, Chief Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province, wrote that the Haji had "for years steadfastly refused to take any part in politics" and had confined himself to education, settling disputes out of court and arranging marriages for the daughters of poor men. [6] His reputation for "unselfish benevolence" had grown, Roos-Keppel added, and "he is probably more respected and trusted than any other mulla". [6]

The schools and the courts

His best-known work in the settled districts was a string of private schools. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who later led the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, says that he and his friends found "a great and valuable helper in Haji Saheb of Tarangzai", whom he calls "a real patriot and a great saint". [1] Under the Haji's guardianship they founded a dar-ul-ilm at Gadar, with Maulvi Taj Muhammad in charge, and in 1910 Ghaffar Khan and Maulvi Abdul Aziz opened a national Islamic school at Utmanzai. [1] For his later career, see Bacha Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgar.

Qadir adds the structure. A council of ulama ran the schools, Taj Muhammad, a graduate of Aligarh, examined them, and the syllabus joined Arabic, Persian, Pashto and religious subjects to English, mathematics, geography, history and physics. Most schools sat in mosques, which Qadir explains by lack of money and a wish to avoid open conflict with the government. [5] The number is uncertain. Official sources speak of thirty closed after 1915, Qadir elsewhere says about forty, and The Tribune of Delhi said on 18 December 1937 that the network had spread to "hundreds". [5]

Qadir also credits him with reviving the jirga as a rival to the British courts, with a jirga of elders in almost every town of the Peshawar district. [5] The British acted in 1908. Qadir and the Who's Who agree that he was arrested for seditious preaching and freed when ten leading maliks stood security that he would not preach in an inflammatory style or leave the district without permission. [2, 5]

Leaving British territory in 1915

His security bond lapsed in March 1915. [2, 5] William Barton, a retired British Indian official who wrote a book on the frontier in 1939, says the renewal was missed through "an oversight in the District Magistrate's office" and that the Haji took the chance to cross the border. [3] Roos-Keppel told the Government of India that the move came "as a great surprise", and that according to his information intriguers had frightened the Haji with repeated messages that his arrest was ordered. [6] Qadir gives another cause. Maulvi Saif-ur-Rahman, sent by Mahmud-ul-Hasan, asked the Haji to migrate, the Deputy Commissioner of Peshawar issued an arrest order, and a disciple in government service warned him. The Haji announced alms for his late mother, gathered friends at Turangzai, and left that night with two sons, Fazli Akbar and Fazal Shah. [5]

The sources date the departure differently: the end of April (Roos-Keppel), June (the Who's Who), or, in Qadir's account, 13 July 1915, when he reached Dagai in Buner. [2, 5, 6]

In Buner he preached jihad. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who followed him there in secret, says local mullas and elders resented his arrival and asked "What has he come here for? To wage war against the British, or to feather his own nest?", and that he himself advised against fighting then, because "the people are not yet ready to face the British". [1] The Haji did not take the advice. [1] On 17 August 1915 about 4,000 tribesmen attacked the British at Rustam. Qadir gives the tribal dead as twenty, the official estimate as fifty dead and forty wounded, and British losses as one sepoy killed and two wounded. [5] The Bunerwals then asked the Haji to leave, and he went to Swat with about 120 families. With Sandakai Mulla he tried to raise a force there and in Kohistan, without success. [5] Ghaffar Khan says the Haji "found out the plot in time", an effort in Buner to hand him to the British, and left at midnight for Mohmand. [1] Ghaffar Khan says the schools he left were shut and their teachers taken to jail at Dera Ismail Khan. [1] For the war these events belonged to, see the Anglo-Afghan wars.

Lakarai and Ghaziabad

Qadir says the Haji named his settlement at Sur Kamar, near Lakarai in Qandahari Mohmand country, Ghaziabad, the place of the ghazi, the fighter for the faith. [5] The Who's Who says he moved first to Bagh and later lived at Lakarai. [2] Barton says he gained control of the Safi and Kandahari clans by promising to protect them against their overlord, the Khan of Khar, and that "a considerable body of Peshawar outlaws" joined him. [3] In his first years, Qadir writes, he served as deputy to Babara Mulla, a Bajaur mulla who took part in the attack on Shabqadar fort in 1915, and kept a free kitchen (langar) at a mosque at Bagh. [5]

His life there combined preaching and force. Qadir says the first jirga at Ghaziabad condemned raiders as enemies of Islam and told the Kamali and Pindiali Mohmand to free Hindus kidnapped from the Peshawar district. [5] He sent agents (mazoons) to arrange truces and fined tribes that broke them. When a man named Gulai killed two men after a truce, the Haji raised a lashkar of Baezai, burned Gulai's houses and fined him Rs. 7,500 in Afghan currency. [5] He told the maliks not to take the government allowance called majib, and the houses of those who did were burned. His son Badshah Gul, leading a lashkar of 600, burned ten houses in Pipal Dawezai. [5]

The British saw the same acts as intrigue. Barton says the lower Mohmands, who would not break their agreements, were "denounced as Kafirs or infidels by the fanatical priest". [3] Those tribes, called the "assured" tribes, drew allowances, and Qadir says they were his constant opponents. [5] The Who's Who adds that he "acted as Afghan agent for the distribution of allowances, and largely alienated the Mohmands by his display of favouritism". [2] Qadir says instead that he asked the Safi to pay ushr and zakat, the tithe and the alms tax, into a treasury for the families of those fighting the British, and that they declined. [5] He opened only two schools in the tribal area, at Ghaziabad and Gandab. [5]

On 15 November 1916 the Haji gathered about 6,000 Mohmands in the hills west of Shabqadar, and, according to Lal Baha, aeroplanes scattered them the same morning, the first use of warplanes in India. [6] A blockade of the Mohmand, begun in October 1916, lasted until July 1917. [6] Baha also says the Haji issued "a series of rousing Jihad leaflets" from a press, and Barton says he "used to publish a newspaper appropriately styled The Flame". [3, 6]

Kabul and the Third Afghan War

Qadir says that in 1915 he and Ni'amatullah, leader of the Hindustani Mujahidin, sent a delegation asking Amir Habibullah to fix a date for a holy war. Habibullah, who had promised the Viceroy neutrality, did not, and the people were told a jihad without the consent of a Muslim ruler was unlawful. [5] The Haji and Chaknawar Mulla tried to persuade the Amir "but without success". [5]

After Habibullah's death in 1919 Amanullah went to war with the British in May. Qadir says the Haji sent Mohmands under Badshah Gul to the front at Dakka, where they helped keep the British from Jalalabad, and that he himself wanted to attack Shabqadar but the lower Mohmands refused. [5] The Who's Who says only that he "took a prominent part against the Indian Government in the Third Afghan War". [2] Qadir shows the Haji acting in other years too. In July 1920 he promised the Khilafat Committee of Peshawar safe passage through Mohmand country for those leaving India for Afghanistan. [5] When the Mangals of Khost rose against Amanullah in 1924, the Haji and Badshah Gul set out for Jalalabad with about 170 men, and the Who's Who records that he "went to Afghanistan for service against the Mangals". [2, 5] For Waziristan's own mulla-led resistance, see the Faqir of Ipi.

From 1927 to the air raids of 1935

In 1927 a rival appeared. The Faqir of Alingar proclaimed jihad and attacked toward Shabqadar, and the sources differ on the Haji's part. Qadir says the Haji followed a lashkar of about three thousand against Pindiali on 5 June; aeroplanes bombed it on 7 June and thirty men were killed. [5] The Who's Who says the Haji, "aided by his son, Badshah Gul, and by the Faqir of Alingar", roused the Mohmands to attack posts near Shabqadar. [2] Barton says the Haji, "jealous of a new rival, refused his co-operation". [3]

In 1930, after the Qissa Khwani firing in Peshawar, Qadir says the Haji tried to bring out a lashkar, but the tribes pleaded harvest and Eid. [5] On 11 March 1932 British aircraft bombed his village. Barton says it was the Haji's fort, and Qadir says the family had left the house beforehand. [2, 3, 5]

In 1933 the government began a road into Mohmand country, and the Haji sent Badshah Gul against it. Qadir says a truce followed, with the road stopping at Gandab. [5] Barton says that within two years, at Badshah Gul's urging, the upper Mohmands broke the agreement. [3] In August 1935, Qadir says, a lashkar under Badshah Gul destroyed the road, reinforcements reached Karappa on 16 August, the air force bombed Burhan Khel, Essa Khel and other Mohmand lands for four days, and Lakarai was bombed on 23 August, when the Haji's family took shelter in the hills. [5] The Who's Who says that he and his three sons took an active part and that in 1936 the government classed him an "outlaw". [2] Barton, who wrote of an "invasion in force of Mohmand territory", says the Haji feared a road through upper Mohmand country that would turn his flank, and advised the Mohmands to make peace. [3]

Illness, death and burial

Qadir says the Haji had been partly paralysed since 1926 and was fully paralysed by late 1936. He was taken to Kabul, where the king looked after him, and then brought back to Mohmand country. He died on 14 December 1937 and was buried at Ghaziabad. [5] The News on Sunday gives the same date and says he was buried at the Ghazi mosque by his own wish. [7] Barton says only that he died "towards the end of 1937". [3] Qadir reports that business stopped as a mark of respect in Shankargarh, Akora Khattak, Kohat, Mardan and Takhtbhai, and that Peshawar held a partial hartal. [5] A note in Qadir's book adds that militants occupied the tomb in 2007. [5]

His sons

Qadir names Fazli Akbar, called Badshah Gul, and Fazal Shah as the sons who left with him in 1915. [5] The Who's Who calls Badshah Gul the eldest. [2] Barton, in 1939, says Badshah Gul succeeded his father and "wields most of his influence", and calls him "hopelessly anti-British". [3]

Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who respected the father, wrote harshly of the son. In his account, when a Khudai Khidmatgar delegation reached Bajaur, Badshah Gul spread the rumour that the Red Shirts were Hindus and that God would reward whoever killed them, "at the instigation of Hasham Khan", then Prime Minister of Afghanistan. [1] He adds that "Badshah Gul's father, Haji Saheb of Tarangzai, was a very nice man, and a true friend and colleague of mine", while "lust for power and greed for money" drove the son. [1]

Friend of Bacha Khan, enemy of the Raj

In a note on the Haji, Abdul Ghaffar Khan quotes an unnamed Englishman as saying that "to have let Haji Saheb of Tarangzai slip through our fingers was the first and the greatest blunder we made in India". [1] Yet he thought the Haji's war in Buner premature. [1] Qadir says they stayed in touch and that the Haji helped Ghaffar Khan's associates cross into Afghanistan through Mohmand country. [5] Barton called Ghaffar Khan the Haji's brother-in-law, a claim Qadir does not repeat. [3, 5] For Ghaffar Khan's brother, see Dr Khan Sahib.

How he is remembered

British writers of the time called him a "stormy petrel" and an "outlaw priest", and an official statement of 1923–24 spoke of "the sinister influence of the hostile Hajji of Turangzai, whose presence constitutes a perpetual threat to the tranquility of this portion of the border". [3, 4] Qadir's book says he introduced non-cooperation earlier than Gandhi and that Abdul Ghaffar Khan and other disciples carried his work on. [5] A seminar on him at Ghalanai in Mohmand on 11 April 2007 heard speakers call him a mystic and an early fighter for freedom. [8] Qadir adds one caution: a tribal people's resistance to colonial rule may not fall under the strict meaning of jihad, since such societies "may give any name to their resistance". [5]