The Akhund of Swat (Saidu Baba), c. 1794–1877

At a glance

• Abdul Ghafur (عبدالغفور), the Akhund (اخوند) of Swat, also called Saidu Baba, was the leading holy man of the Yusufzai country in the middle of the nineteenth century. [2, 4, 9]

• He was born about 1794 at Jabrai in Upper Swat and died in January 1877, aged 83 by Wylly's count. [2, 4]

• Sources differ on his family. Bellew in 1864 and Wylly say Gujar; Bellew in 1880 and Hay say Safi or Gandharai. [2–4, 7]

• He lived twelve years as a hermit on the Indus from about 1816, and settled at Saidu some years after 1835. [4, 6, 7, 9]

• After the British expedition of 1849 he suggested Sayyid Akbar of Sitana as king of Swat. [4]

• In 1863 he joined the Bunerwals at the Ambela pass with the Swat tribes. Wylly calls this out of character, because he had opposed the Hindustani colony the campaign was sent to destroy. [4, 5]

• His shrine at Saidu Sharif is one of the two greatest of the Swat region, and his grandson Miangul Abdul Wadud became the ruler of Swat. [7, 9]

Names

Wylly says the learned men of the day gave him the title Akhund once he was regarded as a saint. [4] Bellew's report of 1864 calls him "Akhun Sahib" and says he later added the title Buzurg, "in addition to that of Akhun". [2] Barth also gives his name as Saidu Baba; Saidu was the village where he lived. [9] Edward Lear's poem spells the title "Akond".

A herd-boy of Upper Swat

Bellew lived several years in the Yusufzai country and wrote his report in 1863 and 1864, while the Akhund was alive. He says Abdul Ghafur was born at Jabrai, "a small shepherd's hamlet in Bar Swat", about 1794. [2] His parents were poor and obscure. Bellew gives their caste as Gujar, and adds that according to his disciples they were of the "Tsapi caste, who are a branch of the Mian fraternity". "The former would appear to be the correct account," he concludes, because all agreed that Abdul Ghafur tended cattle in his youth. [2]

Later writers split. Wylly, whose history of the frontier tribes appeared in 1912, writes "probably Gujars". [4] The Imperial Gazetteer says "Gujar parents" and that he began life as a herd-boy. [6] Barth says he came from a subject ethnic group in Bajaur and was himself a goatherd. [9] Major W. R. Hay, writing in the Geographical Journal in 1934, says his father was "an ordinary Safi tribesman" who left his own country beyond Bajaur and settled at Jabrai. [7] Bellew in 1880 gives a different account. In The Races of Afghanistan he calls the "late celebrated Akhund of Swat" "Saint and King combined" and says he was a Gandharai, one of the converted people now divided into Safi and Gandhari, though he was generally called a Safai. [3]

Student, then hermit

At eighteen, in Bellew's telling, he decided that the world was wicked. He went to the village of Barangola and became the pupil of a priest, who taught him to read and write and the basics of his religion. [2] He then went out as a talib-ul-ilm, a seeker of knowledge, and became the disciple of Sahibzada Muhammad Shuaib, "at that time the most noted priest in these parts". Shuaib's own teacher was Hafizji Sahib of the Umarzai, and his teacher in turn was Bishaunai Sahib of Buner, a recluse known for four modes of devotion that his disciples performed in public. Of the four, Bellew says, Abdul Ghafur chose the Naqshbandi way, "a perfectly silent and motionless devotion", with the head bowed on the chest and the eyes on the ground. [2]

To practise it undisturbed he settled on the bank of the Indus. Bellew places the spot below the village of Baiki near Hund, where he built a hut of camel-thorn at the water's edge and stayed twelve years. [2] Wylly calls the place Beka, ten miles above Attock, and dates the settling to about 1816, when he was barely twenty. [4] Barth quotes a Pashtun author, Zabeeh (1954), for the same period: "he secluded himself continuously for twelve years and devotedly prayed to God night and day, taking only herbs." [9] Wylly says he was long remembered as "the Hermit of Beka". [4]

The hermitage ended with a quarrel that was not his. Bellew says the Akhund acted unfortunately in the dispute between Khadi Khan of Hund and Sayyid Ahmad, the Hindustani leader, and was forced to leave. [2] Elsewhere in the same report Bellew shows what the action was. The Sayyid pretended to want peace and, through the recluse Abdulghafur, "who by many years of a hermit's life had acquired great influence over the people", got the Khan to visit him. As soon as the Khan was away from his guards, the Sayyid had him seized and killed. [2] The Akhund wandered for some years, in Bellew's words "unknown and uncared for", until he settled at Gholaman and then Salim Khan in Yusufzai, where disciples spread his fame and the miracles attributed to him earned the title Buzurg. [2]

The Amir's camp, 1835

Wylly says the Akhund was drawn into taking up arms twice. [4] The first time was in 1835, when Dost Mohammad Khan, camped at the mouth of the Khyber against the Sikhs, invited him to join with his followers. [2] They came as a crowd of ghazis and students, "mostly, however, unarmed". [2] Both writers then tell of a rout. In Bellew the Amir's army ran back to Kabul before the battle. In Wylly the arrival of Ranjit Singh sent the Amir "flying precipitately through the Khyber". [2, 4] The Akhund fled to Bajaur in Bellew's account and to Buner in Wylly's, and later settled in the Ranizai hills at Kaldarra. [2, 4] For the Amir, see Dost Mohammad Khan.

Saidu

The Imperial Gazetteer says he "established himself in 1835 at Saidu in Upper Swat". [6] Bellew puts the move after "a few years' stay" at Kaldarra, Wylly says a few years later, and Hay says about 1845. [2, 4, 7] The people gave him land for himself and his disciples. He married a woman of the Akozai clan of the Yusufzai, and she bore him two sons and, according to Wylly, a daughter. [2, 4]

Bellew did not believe the miracle stories. It was said that the Akhund fed hundreds daily, cured the sick and granted requests without visible means; Bellew says he "takes no tithes or taxes from the country" and refuses the offerings of devotees. The bulk of the eastern Afghans believed him an "undoubted Buzurg". [2] Bellew did not think him a scholar: "by no means a man of letters, or learned in theology". Yet Sunnis around him consulted him in all religious disputes and accepted his decision as final, and his circular edicts on ceremonies and daily conduct were held by his followers to be as binding as the shariat. [2]

Barth collected the stories that still travelled in Swat in 1954. In one, given as the traditional account, a Babuzai chief called Malak Baba was besieged by the Jula Khel in a village above Odigram. He slipped out at night, crossed the mountains to Saidu and asked how to save his family. The Akhund prayed and said, in Barth's rendering: "You must slaughter a cow tomorrow (it being the day of the break of the Ramadan Fast), and fight on, and all will be well." Malak Baba went back and held out for six months. When his enemies ran out of food, he fed them, and after a day or two they asked why they should fight a man who gave them food, and made peace. [9]

Authority without office

What the Akhund held in Swat was authority with no office attached. Barth uses him as his example of a saint who acted as adviser to chiefs. "Almost all the political leaders who were successful in his generation were his followers," Barth writes. By committing himself publicly to one set of alliances, with prayers for his allies' success, he gained a strong position and finally complete control of the whole bloc. Through such ties he could even try to unite the area under a nominee of his own. [9]

Hay says "He never aspired to temporal power, but led a simple religious life at his mosque in Saidu, where he was visited by countless pilgrims". [7] The Imperial Gazetteer says that he "exercised an irresistible influence over the Yusufzai and their neighbours". [6] Wylly quotes the officer Oliver, who judged that his ascendancy over the Muslims of the border and eastern Afghanistan "was as great as that of Loyola in Rome or Luther in Saxony", and that he used it for good, supporting peace and morality and discouraging feuds and raiding. [4]

His teaching was moderate by the standards of the region. Bellew says he was opposed to the Mujahidin of the Mahaban hills, whom he had decreed to be Wahhabis or heretics, and describes the difference as that between the Akhund's "tolerant and liberal" doctrine and the "intolerant and puritanical" doctrine of the Hindustanis. [2] For the wider setting of saints and mullahs, see Religion among Pashtuns.

The king of Swat

Colonel Bradshaw's operations against the Sam Baizai in 1849, Wylly says, alerted the chiefs of Swat that the British might come into their own valley. They agreed to combine for defence under a king. There were many claimants, and the choice threatened to break the union it was meant to create. Wylly writes: "Finally the Akhund of Swat suggested the election of Saiyid Akbar of Sitana, a former follower and functionary of the famous Hindustani fanatic, Saiyid Ahmad of Bareilly, and he was accordingly installed." [4] Barth says the Akhund for a while supported Sayyid Akbar as secular leader of a confederacy of tribes. [9] Wylly gives no year for the installation; Bellew's "near seven years" for the reign puts it about 1850. [2, 4]

Sayyid Akbar died in May 1857. His son Mubarak Shah was dethroned and driven out within weeks by Swat tribes who had long resented his father. [2] Churchill, in 1898, wrote that at the time of the Mutiny the Akhund "succeeded to the temporal as well as the spiritual authority". [8] Bellew, Wylly and Hay do not support that. [2, 4, 7]

In the Mutiny the Akhund stayed out. When the mutineers of the 55th Native Infantry fled from Mardan before John Nicholson and crossed into Swat, Wylly says, he had them guided to the Indus and put across it. [4] The Imperial Gazetteer agrees that he refused them a refuge but says he did so "for reasons of local policy, not from love of the British Government". [6]

Ambela, 1863

In October 1863 the British Indian government sent a force of about 5,000 men under General Neville Chamberlain to destroy the Hindustani colony at Malka, on the north side of the Mahaban mountain. The column entered the Ambela (Umbeyla) pass on 20 October. [5] Colonel Taylor had expected that Buner would not take up the colony's cause, since the Bunerwals were the Akhund's spiritual followers and he had denounced the Hindustanis. [5]

On 25 October Chamberlain wrote that there was reason to believe the Bunerwals had applied to the Akhund for help. "The influence of the Akhoond of Swat over all the hill and plain tribes on the Peshawur frontier is very great," he wrote, "and towards them he fills a position which I can best illustrate by comparing it with that of the Pope of Rome." [5] By his despatch of 31 October the Akhund had joined them. Chamberlain counted upwards of a hundred standards from Swat, each, he guessed, representing 20 to 30 footmen, with about 120 horsemen, and described "a general combination of almost all the tribes, from the Indus to the boundary of Cabool". [5] Adye adds that the Akhund arrived in person with several thousand followers and took a position on the crest of the Buner hills overlooking Umbeyla. [5] The Imperial Gazetteer says he "was no longer able to stem the tide, and joined the enemy's camp", and Hay that the tribes took the field "under his lead". [6, 7] Barth says he was involved in a holy war this once. Wylly, who counts 1835 as the first occasion, says twice. [4, 9]

British officers tried to explain why. Wylly says the Akhund's conduct "seems difficult to explain", since he had always opposed the Hindustani colonies. Colonel Taylor believed, and so did those best placed to judge, that the Akhund feared that if he did not show sympathy with Buner his influence might pass to a more compliant leader. The pressure on him was, in Wylly's words, "practically irresistible": the Buner chiefs and people made passionate appeals, and all the mullahs of the country, with many of the women, were sent to beg him. [4] Major Hugh James, the civil commissioner, reported after 5 December that emissaries from Kabul and Jalalabad were with the Akhund. [5]

Writers from Swat and the neighbouring districts tell the start of it differently. Ishtiaq Ahmad, a historian at Jahanzeb College in Saidu Sharif, gathers their versions. Pir Gohar, Maulvi Inayatullah and Abdul Halim Asar Afghani say that the Bunerwals proclaimed jihad when British soldiers appeared at Surkawi and invited the Akhund, who left alone on 14 October, was joined by the Swatis on the way, and reached Ambela on 26 October with 4,000 men on foot and 120 horsemen. Muhammad Shafi Sabir and Faqir Muhammad Abbas say he warned a Friday congregation that he would leave Swat if the British took Buner and Swat. A Pashto tappa from Sultan-i-Rome's Tapay, in Ahmad's translation, greets his coming: "O English! If you want to escape, you have to run away; as the Akhund is mounting on his horse followed by the Akuzi". [10]

Ahmad does not accept the early-jihad version. The Buner chiefs' answer to the British proclamation objected only to the choice of the Ambela pass, and the Akhund reached the field seven days after the troops entered it, at the request of the tribes and the Hindustani Mujahidin. [10]

For more than a month, the Imperial Gazetteer says, the British force, raised by successive additions to more than 9,000 men, could do no more than hold its ground. [6] On 10 December the Buner chiefs came into camp and agreed to help destroy Malka, but warned that the Akhund and other leaders might not approve. On 14 December a messenger said the Bunerwals would still make peace but that the Akhund and others refused the British terms. [5] On 15 December General Garvock took the ridge at Laloo. Adye writes that the men of Bajaur and Dir fled and that "The Akhoond and his followers were no more to be seen". Buner then accepted the terms, and Buner men burned Malka in the presence of British officers on 22 December. [5]

Churchill says the old man made friends with the government and received "many tokens of respect". [8] Wylly says he went back to his former life, never took the field again, and did his best until his death to hold in check the wild spirits of the border. He was then already seventy. [4]

In Swat the memory of Ambela is carried by stories as much as by dates. Pir Gohar and others tell that the British commander looked through his binoculars for the Akhund's position, saw about 60,000 men on the hills where there were only bushes and stones, and asked for peace; others say hornets attacked the British at his post. Ahmad finds no record in any source of a British attempt to arrest him. He also finds no evidence for Sadiq Hussain's claim that the Akhund left the field with bags of gold, though he allows that the British paid other chiefs. Citing Sultan-i-Rome for an 1852 case, when the Akhund urged paying a fine that Sayyid Akbar wanted refused, he reads the Akhund's record as one of avoiding a fight with the British where he could. Ahmad's own verdict is that credit must be given to a man of about seventy who joined the tribes at their request, but that he must be treated "as a human being and not a supernatural being". [11]

Peace and the last years

In 1868 the Hindustanis, whom British writers called fanatics, moved to Buner, where they were joined by Firoz Shah, a son of the last king of Delhi. The Akhund found their presence abhorrent, Wylly says, and induced his co-religionists to agree to expel them; they were driven out with heavy losses. [4] On 9 December 1876 men of the Utman Khel killed a party of unarmed canal workers near Abazai, and Wylly says the crime brought the "virtual excommunication of the aged Akhund of Swat" on the tribe. [4]

He died in January 1877, according to Wylly, and the Imperial Gazetteer says early in 1877. [4, 6] Churchill dates his death to 1870, which does not match them. [8] Barth names two major shrines for the whole area: Pir Baba's at Pacha in Buner and the Akhund's at Saidu Sharif in Swat. [9] The Gazetteer of 1908 calls the shrine at Saidu "one of the most important in Northern India" and says offerings and subscriptions from followers gave his grandsons a considerable income. [6] In 1934 Hay noted that the capital of the Swat state was at Saidu, "where the tomb of the famous Akhund is situated". [7]

His sons and grandsons

Wylly says the Akhund left two rival factions in Swat: one led by Sherdil Khan, chief of the Ranizai, the other by his elder son Abdul Manan, called Mian Gul. [4] Hay spells the elder son Abdul Hanan and says the descendants of both sons took the title Miangul. Abdul Hanan wanted temporal power and never won it; the younger son, Abdul Khaliq, lived as a religious recluse. [7] The Imperial Gazetteer says the elder son's attempt to succeed his father was fiercely opposed by the Khan of Dir. [6] Abdul Manan died in 1887. Wylly puts Abdul Khalik's death in 1893 and Hay puts it in 1892. [4, 7]

The grandsons fought each other, and the elder line ended; Hay and Barth tell the killings differently. [7, 9] In 1915 the Swat tribes, wanting unity against the Nawab of Dir, again invited a king. They chose Abdul Jabar Shah, a Sayyid from Sitana whom Hay calls the grandson of that earlier king. In September 1917 they sent him away and asked the brothers Gulshahzada and Shirin, sons of Abdul Khaliq, to rule instead. After Shirin was killed in 1918, Gulshahzada ruled alone. [7] He is Miangul Abdul Wadud. Barth writes that the Akhund's temporary success "formed the charter for the claims of his grandson, who created the present State of Swat". [9]

The Akond in England

English readers met the Akhund through newspapers. Edward Lear's Laughable Lyrics, a fourth book of nonsense verse, includes "The Akond of Swat", which a note in the text says was first published in the Times of India, Bombay, in July 1874. [1] The poem asks questions about a man the writer knows nothing about:

Who, or why, or which, or what,

Is the Akond of SWAT?

Lear's own note reads: "For the existence of this potentate see Indian newspapers, passim." [1] The poem does not name Abdul Ghafur. It treats "Akond" as the title of a ruler and asks whether he sits on a stool, a sofa or a chair, wears a turban, a fez or a hat, and beats his wife with a gold-topped pipe. [1] Churchill, whose book on the Malakand field force appeared in 1898, writes that the Akhund was known "to English minds chiefly through the medium of the 'Bab Ballads'". [8]