The Rohillas of Rohilkhand: Pashtuns in northern India

At a glance

• The Rohillas were Pashtuns who settled in Katehr, the country east of the Ganges, in the early eighteenth century. Katehr came to be called Rohilkhand after them, and the name comes from Roh (روه), the hill country of the Afghans. [2, 3, 5]

• Their state grew from the following of Ali Muhammad Khan, who held power from 1719 and was made a Nawab by the Mughal emperor in 1737. [3]

• After his death in 1749 Hafiz Rahmat Khan, a Barech Pashtun, ruled as regent for his sons until 1774. [1, 3]

• Rohilla horse fought beside Ahmad Shah Durrani and Najib ad-Daula at Panipat in 1761. [1, 3]

• On 23 April 1774 Hafiz Rahmat Khan was killed at Miranpur Katra, fighting the army of Shuja ud-Daula of Awadh, which a brigade of East India Company troops under Colonel Champion supported. [1, 2]

• Faizullah Khan, Ali Muhammad's son, kept Rampur by a treaty of October 1774, and his descendants ruled it into the twentieth century. [1, 3]

The name Rohilla

Raverty's Pashto dictionary lists Roh (روه) as a place name, the mountainous country of Afghanistan and part of Baluchistan, and rohilah (روهیله) as the name of the people of Roh, "at times erroneously applied to all Afghans". [5] In the 1780s Charles Hamilton, an officer of the East India Company who worked from a Persian manuscript written by a Rohilla, derived the name from reh, which he said meant mountainous country in the Pathan dialect. [2] The Rampur gazetteer of 1911 says it means "mountaineers or highlanders". [3]

Afghans had been moving into the Ganges plain for centuries. Hamilton's manuscript says that under Sher Shah Suri Afghans came from all parts to take service, and were given lands near Delhi. [2] The Rohillas of the eighteenth century were a later wave, from many tribes. At the 1901 census the Rampur state counted 49,280 Pathans, more than any British district in the province except Bareilly and Shahjahanpur. The gazetteer says they were mostly descendants of men who joined Ali Muhammad Khan, that the Yusufzai were the most numerous, and that there were also many Khattak, Bunerwal, Muhammadzai, Afridi, Barech and Bangash. [3] John Strachey, a British official who lived in Rohilkhand and wrote in 1892, took most of the Rohillas there to be of Yusufzai origin. [4]

Hafiz Rahmat Khan's own family were Barech. His son Mustajab Khan, who wrote his life, says the ancestor Sheikh Shahab ud-Din was born at Pishin in Shorawak, the old settlement of the Barech near Kandahar, and lived in the hill country of Chach Hazara near Attock. [1]

Daud Khan and Ali Muhammad Khan

The founder of the state is the most disputed figure in it. Three accounts survive.

Mustajab Khan's Gulistan-i-Rahmat says Daud was a slave in the household of Hafiz Rahmat's father, Shah Alam Khan. He went to Katehr after Bahadur Shah died in 1707 and entered the service of local landlords. In an attack on the village of Bankauli he took a boy of seven or eight, circumcised him and adopted him as Ali Muhammad Khan. The boy, Mustajab says, was a Jat by caste. On Mustajab's telling Daud later had Shah Alam murdered, when Hafiz was four. Daud himself was put to death by the Raja of Kumaon, and Ali Muhammad took over his men. [1]

The Persian manuscript behind Hamilton's book was written by a man in Faizullah Khan's service and says otherwise: Daud was Shah Alam's son and Hafiz Rahmat's brother, and Ali Muhammad was Daud's own son. Hamilton notes that other accounts call Ali Muhammad a Hindu by birth, and says his manuscript "positively" denies it. [2] The Rampur gazetteer gives a third version. Daud came from Tirah, and the boy he adopted was a Saiyid of a Barha family, Saiyid Muhammad Ali, renamed Ali Muhammad Khan. [3] Strachey saw why they differ. Hafiz Rahmat's friends gained from a low origin for Ali Muhammad, and Faizullah's servant gained from an honourable one. [4]

On what Ali Muhammad did the accounts agree. By the gazetteer's reckoning he held power from 1719, and in 1737 Muhammad Shah gave him the title of Nawab and a rank of five thousand. [3] In 1741 the Delhi governors Harnand and Abd un-Nabi marched on him from Moradabad with 50,000 men. Ali Muhammad met them at the Aril river with 12,000, and both governors were killed. [3] Mustajab says Hafiz Rahmat led the four thousand picked men in the advance. [1] The gazetteer adds that Ali Muhammad took Pilibhit and, in 1743, Kumaun. [3]

Mustajab records an exchange between the two men. When Hafiz Rahmat visited Owlah, Ali Muhammad laid his sword at his feet and said that if Hafiz wanted retaliation for his father's blood (qisas) he could take his life, and if blood-money (diyat) he would pay it. Hafiz replied that Ali Muhammad was not descended from Daud, so he could not claim retaliation from him, and that he held it beneath him to take the price of blood. [1]

About 1743 the emperor, urged on by Safdar Jang, the Nawab of Awadh, marched against Ali Muhammad, who gave himself up and was sent to govern Sirhind, leaving his sons Abdullah and Faizullah at Delhi. [2, 3] When Ahmad Shah Durrani invaded in 1748 he took both boys to Kandahar. Ali Muhammad went back to Katehr, recovered his land, and died on 3 Shawwal 1162 (1749). He was buried at Aonla. [3]

Hafiz Rahmat Khan and the regency

Before he died Ali Muhammad made a will before his chiefs. His third son, Saadullah, was to succeed until the two elder sons came back from Kandahar. Hafiz Rahmat was to be protector, Dunde Khan commander of the army, Fateh Khan steward and Sardar Khan paymaster. [3]

Hafiz Rahmat was about forty. He was born around 1707 or 1708 and began the Quran in his fifth year. [1, 6] A Turkish encyclopaedia says he was known among the people as Kuta Baba. [6] His son wrote that he abolished every tax on trade, supported the widows and sons of soldiers who fell in battle, and restored the rent-free lands that Ali Muhammad had taken back from scholars and the pious. [1] Elliott, the British civil servant who translated the book in 1831, warned that Mustajab's praise of his father would seem extravagant to most readers and that he had left much of it out. [1]

Others judged him harshly. The gazetteer says Hafiz and the other guardians divided the state among Ali Muhammad's sons in a way that set them against one another and let the guardians recover control. [3] Hamilton's manuscript says Hafiz seized part of the lands of Fateh Khan after his death and pressed the heirs of Dunde Khan for money, so that by 1774 he was "almost universally dreaded and disliked". [2] Hamilton's own view, as a British officer, was that the way Hafiz rose tarnished his great qualities. [2] Both sides agree on his courage and his piety.

Najib ad-Daula and Panipat

Najib Khan, later Najib ad-Daula, began in Hafiz Rahmat's camp. Mustajab says that when Hafiz turned back to Katehr at Hapur, the King's agents offered the chiefs money, and only Najib, who commanded a hundred horse, accepted. He took some two thousand men with him and was given Saharanpur after the battle of Kotela. [1] Hamilton calls him an Afghan of eminence who acted as minister at Delhi in the emperor's absence, and says Doondee Khan gave him his eldest daughter. [2]

In 1758 Hafiz Rahmat marched with Ahmad Shah Durrani against the Jats around Agra, and Hamilton records that Ahmad Shah gave districts to the Rohilla chiefs: Sikandra to Najib, Shikohabad to Faizullah, Jalesar and Firozabad to Saadullah, and Etawah to Hafiz Rahmat and Dunde Khan. [2] The gazetteer places the same grants after Panipat. [3]

When the Marathas came north under Sadashivrao Bhau, Mustajab lists the Muslim army: the Shah's Durrani horse, 30,000; Hafiz Rahmat's horse and foot, 30,000; Najib ad-Daula's contingent, 15,000; Shuja ud-Daula's 7,000; and 5,000 under Ahmad Khan Bangash. [1] Hafiz fell ill before the battle, and his cousin Doondee Khan and his son Enayit Khan commanded his men. They attacked the Maratha guns, were driven back, and held until Ahmad Khan Bangash and a body of horse sent by the Shah reached them. [1] The gazetteer says the Rohillas were the right wing and suffered severely at the first onset. [3] Hamilton's manuscript says a column of Rohilla horse charged under cover of dust and split the Maratha army, and Hamilton adds that this Rohilla account leaves out Shuja ud-Daula's part in the day. [2] The Shah gave Enayit Khan the rank of commander of seven thousand and the right to the great drum. [1] Najib stayed at Delhi as chief minister. [2]

Najib and Dunde Khan both died in 1770. The Marathas took Etah from Hafiz Rahmat and, in 1771, overran Bijnor, the country of Najib's son Zabita Khan. [3] Ahmad Shah died in 1772, and Timur Shah took the Durrani throne.

The treaty of 1772 and the agreement at Benares

With no Durrani army in the Doab, the chiefs turned to Shuja ud-Daula. In June 1772, with Sir Robert Barker of the Company's army as witness, Hafiz Rahmat agreed to pay forty lakhs of rupees, ten in cash and thirty over three years, if Shuja drove the Marathas from Rohilkhand. [3] Hafiz declined to pay, because Shuja had made no settlement with the Marathas. He wrote to Warren Hastings: "As our interests were equal, I therefore went and had an interview with the gentlemen, when an agreement was concluded between us". [3] Mustajab gives the same account. [1] Strachey, who wrote to defend Hastings, held that Barker's correspondence did not support it and that Mustajab's book was written to praise its subject. [4]

At the Benares conference of September 1773 Hastings and Shuja agreed that a Company brigade would join the Vizier at his cost, 210,000 rupees a month. The Vizier would keep the Rohilla country northeast of the Ganges and pay the Company forty lakhs if the expedition succeeded. The troops were not to cross the Ganges or march beyond the foot of the hills. [4]

Miranpur Katra, 23 April 1774

Hamilton says Hafiz Rahmat put off Shuja's envoy with an evasive answer. The allied army entered Rohilkhand on 13 April 1774 and burned the villages of those who refused to submit or had fled. [2] Hamilton says Faizullah Khan urged Hafiz to settle. [2] Mustajab says the diwan Pahar Singh offered to find thirty-five lakhs and to ask Colonel Champion for time, and that Hafiz answered that he had no money, that no chief would contribute, and that he "was prepared to die in defence of his country". Pahar Singh offered again to raise it from merchants. Hafiz refused, "observing that as he must die some time, he could not fall in a better cause". [1]

The chiefs were divided. Hamilton's manuscript says the paymaster and the steward stayed out of the fight and the sons of Dunde Khan came late, and traces the distrust to Hafiz's earlier demands on them. [2] Mustajab says the paymaster Ahmed Khan, already bought by Shuja, left the field in the middle of the day and others followed. [1]

Hamilton puts the Rohilla force at about 24,000 horse and foot with 4,000 rocket men and sixty guns, with Hafiz posted near Katra and a river at his back. [2] Strachey notes that Champion reported 40,000. [4] Mustajab puts the Vizier's army at 115,000, with 7,000 under Champion. [1] Hamilton says the fight was mostly a cannonade of two hours, that the Rohilla powder was poor, and that Hafiz got down from his elephant and took a horse to show his men he would not leave. Soon after, he fell. [2] Mustajab says his horse was shot under him, he rode into the enemy with what remained of his army, and a cannon shot struck him in the chest. A trooper named Sultan Khan cut off his head and carried it to Shuja, who had head and body put in a palanquin under shawls and sent to Bareilly, where the leading townsmen buried him. Mustajab gives his age as sixty-seven. [1] A Turkish encyclopaedia also says he was killed and his head taken to Shuja. [6] Hamilton puts the Rohilla dead and wounded at about two thousand, with little loss to the allies. [2]

After the battle

Faizullah Khan rode to Rampur, collected his family and went north to Laldhang in the hills, where Rohillas gathered to him. [2] Hamilton says local zamindars shut their forts and plundered those fleeing towards the hills. [2] Hafiz Rahmat's family was at Pilibhit. Mustajab says Shuja's men took the troops' horses and arms, took the women's ornaments and moved them to guarded tents while they searched for treasure, and that the family was sent to the fort at Allahabad on a hundred rupees a day, paid so late that they were sometimes short of food. [1] Hamilton agrees that the family was sent to Allahabad, adds that he found no document showing the ill treatment alleged against Shuja, and says the Company's troops treated the wounded well. [2] After Shuja died in January 1775 the Company's resident, Bristow, pressed for the release of the family. They reached Lucknow in 1775 with a pension of one lakh a year, 65,000 rupees for Hafiz's family and 35,000 for Dunde Khan's. [1]

At Laldhang Faizullah Khan negotiated through Colonel Champion. Hamilton shows him as the heir with the best claim and says the Calcutta Council declined to mediate. [2] Mustajab, who wrote for Hafiz's family, says Faizullah left them out of his terms and was rebuked for it by another chief. [1] The treaty, dated 25 October 1774, gave him land worth fifteen lakhs on paper and twenty-five in fact, including part of the holdings of Hafiz Rahmat and Dunde Khan, and bound him to bring his forces when the Vizier went to war. [1] The gazetteer's text has him swear to keep five thousand men and no more, and to deal with no one but the Vizier, except the English. [3] That was Rampur.

Burke, Fox and the argument in Britain

Hastings was attacked in Parliament for lending the brigade. Edmund Burke said the Vizier had been sold "the bravest, most honourable and generous nation upon earth". [4] Strachey says Burke spoke of the war as the destruction of a whole people for 400,000 pounds. [4] Hastings wrote that the Rohillas were "a tribe of Afghans or Pathans" who had conquered the country and lived on its revenue without mixing with its Hindu people. [4]

In 1786 the House of Commons rejected the first charge on the Rohilla war by 119 votes to 67, so it was not among the articles on which Hastings was later impeached. [4] Strachey wrote that those who voted for Hastings did so mostly on party grounds. [4] Hamilton held his book back until that vote. [4]

The books and the Pashto

In 1783 Burke called Hafiz Rahmat "famous throughout the East for the elegance of his literature and the spirit of his poetical compositions". Strachey says this rested on a confusion with the Persian poet Hafiz of Shiraz, which Hastings's counsel Law mocked. [4] Hamilton insisted in a footnote that Hafiz Rahmat was "neither a poet nor a man of letters" and that the title Hafiz was assumed from his office as protector. [2] Strachey judged that Hafiz Rahmat "was far from being ignorant and uneducated". [4] A Turkish encyclopaedia says he completed a genealogy of the Afghans in Persian, the Khulasat-ul-Ansab, in 1184 (1770). [6] Mustajab's book gives the title to an ancestor, Sheikh Kuta Baba, and Strachey held that Elliott's translation had the author wrong. [1, 4]

The Pashto side is thin but real. Strachey says that around 1770 Hafiz asked for an old Pashto history of the Yusufzai, written about 1622, to be recast in Persian in an easy style, a work known as the Tawarikh-i-Rahmat Khani. [4] Hafiz had also gathered Pashto manuscripts. The orientalist A. Sprenger, in a note printed in Raverty's dictionary, wrote that he had examined "the collection of Pushto MSS. which was made by Hafiz Rahmat Khan, and formerly preserved at Lucknow", and that in the siege of that city "all these works have probably been destroyed". [5] Strachey adds that Shuja took Hafiz's library to Lucknow after the battle, and that Sprenger's catalogue described it as holding "Pushtu works written with great care for the brave and learned Rohilla chief". [4]

Strachey also reports what the French scholar James Darmesteter told him after a visit to Rampur: a manuscript of poems by Rohilla chiefs that a Rohilla gave him included a Pashto poem by Hafiz Rahmat on "the hereditary enmity between the Afghans and the Moghals", and educated Afghans knew he had left a diwan. Strachey could not find it. [4] Darmesteter set Hafiz beside Ahmad Shah as Afghan rulers who wrote diwans (see Ahmad Shah's Pashto poems). [4] Two of Hafiz's sons wrote on Pashto: Ilahyar Khan compiled a Hindustani and Pashto dictionary with Persian explanations, and Muhabbat Khan wrote an Afghan grammar and dictionary. [4]

The poet Kazim Khan Shaida, a great-grandson of Khushal Khan Khattak, lived most of his life at Rampur. The Rampur Raza Library, which began with a collection Faizullah Khan put together, holds Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Turkish and Pashto manuscripts. [7]

Rampur and the Rohillas after 1774

Faizullah Khan, born in 1733, kept Rampur until his death on 18 July 1794. [1, 3] The gazetteer calls him a soldier, a statesman and an administrator with a name for piety, and says he encouraged scholars to settle at Rampur. [3] After his death his son Muhammad Ali Khan was deposed within weeks by his brother Ghulam Muhammad, and the Vizier and the Company refused to accept it. [1, 4] Strachey says the Rohillas fought a Company brigade at Bhitaura on 24 October 1794 and lost, and that Rampur, reduced in size, went to Muhammad Ali's infant son. [4] Rohilkhand outside Rampur passed to the Company in 1801. [4]

In 1857 the families took different sides. Strachey says Khan Bahadur, a grandson of Hafiz Rahmat who had served the Company as a judge, was proclaimed governor under the Mughal emperor at Bareilly. [4] The Nawab of Rampur, Yusuf Ali Khan, Faizullah's great-grandson, gave the British provisions and money, and the gazetteer quotes a British commissioner as saying that among other Pathans he was a common subject of "abusive or disdainful appellations". [3, 4] Rampur stayed a princely state under British protection, and in 1911 its ruler was Nawab Hamid Ali Khan. [3]