Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit - H. T. Sorley

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SHAH ABDUL LATIF OF BHITHIS POETRY, LIFE AND TIMES

In Three Books:

I. History

I I . Literature and Criticism

I I I . The Risalo of Shah Abdul Lat if


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SHAH ABDUL LATIFOF BHIT:

HIS POETRY, LIFE AND TIMES

A Study of Literary, Social and Economic Conditions inEighteenth Century Sind

BY

H. T. SORLEY, D.Litt., C.I.E.Indian Civil Sel vice

O X F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD1940


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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

AMEN HOUSE, LONDON, E.C.4Edinburgh Glasgow BombayCalcutta Madras MelbourneNew York Toronto Capetown

HUMPHREY MILFORD

PUBLISHER TO THE

UNIVERSITY

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY HEADLEY BROTHERS

109 KINGSWA Y, LONDON, W.C.2 ; AND ASHFORD, KENT


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DEDICATED TO THE PEOPLE OF SIND

O friendly folk, with whom I've lived

And felt the beat of violent sun,And heard sharp argument and seenHow Indus waters errant run,No chronicle of kings and warsYour lowly hamlet bard unfolds :The wonder of his melodiesEnthralled a rustic people holds.

Gone are the days when tempered bladeAnd matchlocks' fire laid waste your fields.The drums of peacefulness are struck :Your land a full abundance yields.So now, to contemplative mindIs Sayid-lore a nobler keyFor opening wide the door of GodThat leads to God's great mystery.

No might is here of Riimi's verse.No Jaml's soul-wrapt music swingsNo high-tuned note of Ilafiz' witWithin your humble minstrel rings.And yet!strange paradox it be,That not less searching is the calm,

The simple magic of his laysThan wise, deep utterance of Islam.


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PREFACE

T H E collection of myst ical poems known as the Risalo of ShahAbdul Latif of Bhit is the only classic which the language of Sindhas yet produced in the realm of deeply imaginative literature.The poems were composed in the first half of the eighteenth century.They are the work of a natural poet of Sufi leanings. Their poeticalexcellence is as remarkable as the depth of the philosophy andreligion which they display. It is the misfortune of Shah Abdu lLatif that his poetry has remained a closed book to all but thoseacquainted wi th the Sindhi language. In Sind his poems are heldin such universal and popular esteem as is accorded only to poetrywhich has successfully interpreted the most intimate thoughts andthe sincerest feelings of a people. In some form or other the versesare known to all classes. They have still the advantage, lost inthese practical days by all the poetry of the Western world, that

they have not yet been divorced from their origin in spontaneousmusic and natural recitative.The object of the present work is twofold, first to introduce

English readers to the achievement of Shah Abdul Latif, and second,to explain, by reference to the historical and social environmentof the age in which the poems were composed, something of themessage and meaning they convey. Except for a few scatteredextracts no English translation of the Risalo has yet been attempted.The present work has occupied much of my leisure time for the last

twelve years and has not been lightly undertaken. It has beenpartly carried out in the fascinating land of Sind itself.I have translated not the complete Risalo but the abridgement

known as the Muntakhab collected by Kazi Ahmad Shah. Thisabridgement is probably the best known and the most popularcollection of Shah Abdul Lati f's verse. For permission to translatethe Muntakhab I am indebted to the kindness of Messrs. Pokardas& Sons, the well-known publishers of Shikarpur, Sind, who holdthe copyright. They have done much to encourage and popularize

the output of modern Sindhi literature. I am grateful to them forallowing me to use the text.

There are many formidable difficulties in translating poetryso abstruse as the Risalo. Not only are the poems wri tten in aform of Sindhi that is no longer the current spoken and writtenlanguage but syntax and vocabulary alike present many exceedinglyhard puzzles for grammarians and scholars. Furthermore, the

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viii PREFACE

expression is often as highly concise, elliptical and allusive as thatof Pindar and Persius, to cite two well-known and recondite classicalauthors. The thought is also everywhere permeated with the deep

subtleties of Sufi philosophy. The images and metaphors commonlyemployed are hard to explain satisfactorily to persons brought upin the understanding of the very different cultural heritage ofWestern Europe. I do not pretend that my rendering is free fromerror. Indeed in many passages I am doubtful of the meaningwhich the poet wished to convey. I have, however, taken thegreatest care to ensure that the translation, while remaining closeenough to the text to satisfy scholars of language, shall be a literary

and not a literal translation, so as to be capable of being read forits own sake without reference to the Sindhi original.In Part II of this work the meaning of much that may seem

obscure in the translation wi l l , I hope, be clarified. The subjectsdiscussed in Part II ought, in conjunction with the historical accountof the Moghul and the Kalhoro age in Sind which forms Part I, toprove useful to all who may at some future time wish to improveupon my work. I have gratefully to acknowledge the permissiongranted me by the Government of Bombay to examine the wealthof historical material in the Bombay Record Office. I have usedmany extracts from the Government records in Part I and I believethat this is the first occasion on which most of the extracts relatingto the East India Company's Factory in Sind in the eighteenthcentury have been published. For the benefit of students interestedin the subject matter of this book I have compiled select bibliographies of the more important works which I have consulted orto which I have referred. I have also found much assistance in

the excellent library of the Bombay Branch of the Royal AsiaticSociety.

It remains for me only to add that writing this book has beena labour of love. I dedicate it gratefully to the people of Sindfrom whom, during the years I lived amongst them, I have experienced nothing but kindness and consideration. If my work helpsscholars outside Sind to obtain some idea of the true thought andfeeling of the people who dwell in the Lower Indus valley I shall

believe myself more than handsomely repaid for all my labour.Haec olim meminisse iuvabit!

H. T. SORLEY

Bombay

March 31s/, 1938

{Revised for publication 1939)


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LIST OF SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I acknowledge with thanks the permission kindly accorded me by thepublishers shown below to quote passages from the books in this list, whichgives the names of the authors, translators or editors as well as of the publishersconcerned :

JOHN MURRAY, LONDON

A Pepys of Mogul India : Niccolao Manned, by W. Irvine.

The Persian Mystics : J ami (' Wisdom of the East ' Series). Translatedby F. Had land Davis.

JOHN MURRAY, LONDON, THE INDIA OFFICE, AND THE HIGH COMMISSIONER

FOR INDIA

Stovia do Mogor, by Memucci. Translated by W. Irv ine .

MA C MIL L A N & Co., LTD., LONDON

India at the Death of Ahbar, by W. IL Moreland.From Akbar to Aurangzeb, by W. H. Moreland.

THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY, LONDON

The 'Travels of Frey Sebastian Manrique. Edited by Lt. -Col. C. EckfordLuard and Father H. Hosten.

THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON

Akbar the Great Mogul, by V. A. Smith.Early Travels in India (1583-1019). Edited by W. W. Foster, 1921.The English Factories in India. Edited by W. W. Foster.

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON

// Literary History of Persia, by E. G. Browne.Pevsian Literature in Modem Times, by E. G. Browne.

KKGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., LTD., LONDONM asnawt-i-M anawiSpiritual Couplets, by Maulana Jalal-ud-dln

Mahomed Ruml . Translated by E. H. Whinheld.History of India as told by its own Historians, by Sir H. M. Elliot and

Professor John Dowson.

THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY, LONDON

The Popular Poetry of the Baloches, by M. Longworth Dames.

THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL, CALCUTTA

' A Canal Act of the Emperor Akbar, with some notes and remarks on the

History of the Western Jumna Canals', by Lieut. Yule (J.A.S.B.,Vol. XV, 1846, pp. 213et seq.).' The Mihran of Sind and its Tributaries : a Geographical and Historical

Study', by Major H. G. Raverty (J.A.S .B., Vol . L X I , Ft. I, 1892,pp. 155et seq.).

THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, LONDON

' Emotional Religion in Islam as affected by Music and Singing '. Translated by D. 13. Macdonald (published in J.R.A.S., 1901, pp. 195et seq.).


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PRONUNCIATION OF VOWEL SOUNDS IN SINDHI,PERSIAN AND ARABI C WORDS

a as in ' China ' 6 as in ' owe 'a as in ' father ' u as in ' put 'e like ay in ' may ' u like oo in ' foodi as in ' pi t ' n nasal as in French ' bon 'i like ee in ' meet '

ABBREVIATIONS

S.I.L.B.Secretariat Inward Letter-BookE.F.I.English Factories in IndiaP.V.D.Public Department DiaryS.P.D.Secret and Political Department

J.R.A.S.Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society


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BOOK I

HISTORY

' Time, like an ever rolling stream,Bears all its sons away :

Thej' ily forgotten as a dreamDies at the opening day.'

IS A A C W A TTS .

' The days have vanished, tone and tint,And yet perhaps the hoarding senseGives out at times (he knows not whence)

A little Hash, a mystic hint.'

' We pass : the pat h th at each man tr odIs dim and w i l l be dim w i t h weeds :What fame is left for human deeds

In endless age ? '

T E N N Y S O N ' I n M e mo r ia m ' .


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4 SHAH ABD UL L A T I F OF BHIT

C H A P T E R I V . The Gove r nm e n t a nd the Gove r ne d

i . Th e change i n emphasis

2. Revenue and ta xa t i on3. The adm ini st r at ion of just ice

C H A P T E R V. The Privi l eged Classes

The working of privi lege

(a) The landed classes

(b) The rel igious hie rar chy

(c) The change f r om Mo gh ul to Kal ho ro regimes

C H A P T E R V I . A Poet and Hi s People

1. Th e idols of the mar ke t place

2. The l ife of Shah A b d u l L a t i f

A P P E N D I C E S

1. Bib l iography

I . H i s t o r i ca l

I I . L i t e r ar y , Cr i t i ca l and Misce ll aneous

2. Sta tem ent sho win g the st re ng th an d ar ma me nt of vesselsemployed in the East India Company's t rade during the t ime

of the Second Sind Factory3. Tab le sho win g the len gt h, br ea dt h and de pt h of the Canals in

the Chandookah Purgunnah

4. Tab le sho wing the est i mate d re lat ive produ ce of cer tai n cropsto the cul t ivator

Statement showing the cul t ivat ion of the principal grainsin the Chandookah Purgunnah taken from the returns of thespring, middle and autumn crops for the years 1255 and1256 A . H

5. Synopsis of im p or ta n t events useful for an un der sta ndi ngof the his torical part of this work

6. No te on the spel l ing and t ra nsl i te ra t io n of Ori ent al word s

7. N o t e on th e references to Si nd ( seve nteen th an d ei gh te en thcenturies) in the Bombay Government Records in the BombayRecord Office

P A G E

141

141

144150

154

154

154

157

161

163

103

170

177

179

179

182

187

189

190

190

191

194

195

I N D E X TO P AR TS I A N D I I . . . . . . . . 423-432


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SHAH ABDUL LATIF OF BHIT 7

government was essential for dealing with the rising importance ofmany localities of India consequent on the narrowing of the worldbrought about by better sea communications, more effective

finance and the rivalry of those countries which sought to drawIndia into the economic unity of the eighteenth century world.To a problem of this kind the Moghul Empire was completelyunable to provide any satisfactory solution. The pride of Akbarand the splendour of Shah Jahan had prevailed only because neitherAkbar nor Shah Jahan had been faced with the difficulties which,setting in about the commencement of Aurangzeb's reign, becamemore and more insistent as the seventeenth century drew to a

close. In the end these difficulties became so compelling that nopolitical authority of the kind which the Moghul Empire offeredcould possibly have met them successfully. In 1746, eleven yearsbefore the battle of Plassey, a shrewd European adventurer who hadlived in India for twenty years foresaw clearly the coming end.ColonelJamesMil lin that year said, 'The whole country of Hindustanor the empire of the Great Moghul is and ever has been in a state sofeeble and defenceless that it is almost a miracle that no princeof Europe with a maritime power at command has as yet thoughtof making such acquisitions there as at one stroke would put himand his subjects in possession of infinite wealth. The policy of theMoghul is bad, his military worse and as to a maritime power tocommand and protect his coasts he has none at all. The provinceof Bengal though not to be reduced by the power of the Moghul isequally indefensible with the rest of Hindustan on the side of theocean and consequently may be forced out of the rebels' hand withal l its wealth which is incredibly vast. ' This sagacious prediction

was completely fulfilled within twenty years on the battlefields ofPlassey, Panipat, Wandiwash and Buxar. In fact the MoghulEmpire fell for two predominant reasons neither of which had anyconnexion with the competence or incompetence of the occupantof the throne of Delhi or the lack of qual ity in the feudal aristocracy.These two reasons may be stated simply as the military defenceless-ness of the Empire and its inability owing to over-centralization tocontrol the keen new world that was st ir ring to life everywhere w i ththe development of world trade and commerce. The futi l i ty of thefeudal aristocracy was the natural result of years of abused powerand self-indulgence suffered to continue because there had been nopower able and willing to stop it.1" It is not surprising, therefore,

1 ' The i r ' (i.e. the East India Company's) 'earliest victories were overtroops that were no better than a rabble of hired soldiers without coherenceor loyalty. An Indian army of th at period was usually an agglomeration ofmercenaries collected by captains of companies who supplied men able topay for them having enlisted them at random out of the swarm of moving


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S H A H A B D U L L A T I F O F B H I T 9

flood. The Indian people were becoming a masterless multitudeswaying to and fro in the political storm and clinging to any power,natural or supernatural, that seemed likely to protect them.'1

This was a sad ending to the pageant of power and glory displayedin the Ain-i-Akbari, to the opulence of Jahangir's court, to the royalmagnificence of Shah Jahan, the builder of the world's finest gem ofornate and artistic architecture, and to the unbending vigilance ofthe tyrannical and ascetic Aurangzeb.

Such are the main features of the period with which in thiswork I am chiefly concerned. The decline of Moghul power isonly incidental to my purpose, which is to trace how Sind fared

during this time of rapid and far-reaching change, and to reconstruct,so far as the available evidence will allow, the social life of Sindduring those vanished days. Scanty and inadequate though thecontemporary historical material be, it is not easily intelligibleunless the greater happenings outside Sind are seen in true proport ion. Sind was added to the Moghul Empire by Akbar in 1592.I t remained an integral part of the Empire t i l l the disastrous adventof Nadir Shah in 1737 when it fell first under Persian and then in1747 under Afghan dominance. In the th i r ty odd years betweenthe death of Aurangzeb and the invasion of Nadir Shah, Sindpresents the spectacle of the growing weakness of the Moghulauthority, of a weakness manifesting itself in the increasing independence of the predominant local dynasty of the Kalhora, whichfollowed the typical oriental plan of seizing what it could andholding what it seized in the belief that Delhi was too far away tomatter. Thus the Moghul governors appointed from Hindustangave place to Sindhi governors bowing the knee as little as they

dared to Moghul, Persian and Afghan in turn. By 1760 the ru lingdynasty of the Kalhora was almost in fact but not at all in theoryindependent. The success wi th which the Kalhora strengthenedtheir authority and enhanced their importance is no great tributeto them. It was the inevitable result of the increasing helplessnessor imbecili ty of the holders of the Delhi throne. The Sindhigovernors thus precariously became rulers themselves but they werealways ready to retreat at any sign of serious assault and were

forced to pay varying amounts of tribute to their suzerains from timeto time. The Kalhora in their turn fell for the same reason that theMoghul Empire itself fellweakness in the field before a superiormilitary power. But even the Talpurs who succeeded them, asthe Mayors of the Palace succeeded the Merovingians, were neverin fact completely independent of their Afghan overlords t i l l thefirst decade of the nineteenth century. The combined efforts of the

1 Lyall : History of India, VIII, p. 78.


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i o S H A H A B D U L L A T I F O F B H I T

Kalhora and Talpurs together for one hundred years did, however,succeed in establishing in Sind a petty Muslim state which preserved,up t i l l the time of the British conquest in 1843, the characteristic

features of Moghul administration and added to that a peculiarbrand of Islamic quasi-theocracy, a kind of political power determined to retain its individuality as far as it could and uphold apolicy of splendid isolation. By the time of Sir Charles Napierthis isolation refused to blend harmoniously with the general trendof Indian poli ty in the mid-nineteenth century. Thus Sind exhibi tsin a way peculiar to itself the deterioration of the Moghul administrative machine, with life prolonged artificially by the circumstances

of the semi-independence that grew with the decline of the Moghulpower. Neither the Kalhora nor the Talpurs did much to alterthe polit ical and social system which they found. It is for thisreason that the battles of MianI and Duabo in 1843 brought underBritish dominion an oriental state run largely on the broad lines ofthe Moghul Empire, albeit weakened and debilitated from thestandard of its best days. While, therefore, the absence of reliablecontemporary record for the period 1690-1760 in Sind makes directevidence of the social conditions in which the people lived impossible,there is little reason to doubt that the peoples of Sind in the firsthalf of the eighteenth century lived more or less in the way in whichSir Charles Napier found them living in 1843. There is amplerecord of the social conditions in Sind at the time of the Britishconquest and for ten years before that . There is also copiousinformation on social and political conditions in Sind for aboutthirty years ending 1662, when the Moghul Empire was at itsstrongest. It is thus possible by means of reasoned deduction and

critical judgement to complete the gap that lies between theseventeenth and the nineteenth century. To do this is the objectof this book in order that we, the creatures of another day inspiredby different ideals, may understand in some measure the countrysidein which was composed the beautiful mystical poetry of Shah AbdulLatif of Bhitthe only classic work in the Sindhi languageandmay learn what sort of beings were the people for whom these songswere written and by whom they were sung.

I I . Sind and some characteristic features of its history

Sind is difficult country for the historian. The reason why thisshould be so is plain enough. Despite the fact that Sind is anarea where an advanced civilization found early lodgement in Indiathe terrain is, except for certain scattered periods, woefully devoidof informative historical monuments, inscriptions and all thosephysical aids which enable archaeology to supply the blanks of a


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S H A H A B D U L L A T I F O F B H I T 1 3

and they from their k i ng ' . In 1540 in the civi l war betweenHumayun and Sher Shah, Humayun was driven from his kingdomand wandered as a fugitive. For a time he took refuge in Sind and

in 1542 at Umarkot a famous child was born, later to be Akbar theGreat Moghul. Sind figures afterwards in the civil war betweenDara Shikoh and Aurangzeb who, himself a Governor of Multanduring 1648-50, had resided in Sind for part of the time of hisGovernorship. In 1658 Dara. Shikoh was pursued by Aurangzeb'sgenerals through Sind down the Indus from Bakhar to Tatta, butmanaged successfully to run the gauntlet of the Imperial army andfort at Sehwan in a skilful river-war, only to be pursued back out

of Gujarat, captured at last on the borders of Sind, and sacrificedto the ambition of his younger brother. The siege of Bakhar, atwhich Manucci served as an artilleryman, is one of the most vividepisodes in the memoirs of that versatile Itali an adventurer. Noevent of prime importance graced the annals of Sind between 1659and 1758, when the East India Company established its second,short-lived factory on the Indus delta. In 1843 Sind providedthe East India Company with one of its last conquests in India.By that time the position which Sind occupied territorially hadmade it an important factor in the complicated political game inwhich Afghanistan, the Sikhs and the Company were deeplyengaged, and Sind suffered the penalty of annexation for what theBritish government of the day considered the intransigeance ofthe ruling house of Talpur. These picturesque events apart, thehistory of Sind has been strangely monotonous, self-contained andof li tt le interest to the outside world. The most characteristicfeature is in fact its isolation. It has had a fu ll and vivid life of its

own, as this book will disclose, for one period of the eighteenthcentury, but this life has had few contacts with any but the country'snearest neighbours. To explain the isolation presents no difficulty.There are two main reasons for it, first, the nature of the countrywith its fortresses of desert and barren land on all sides and itsclimate which confines active campaigning to a period of a fewmonths annually, and second, the comparative unattractiveness ofa river valley, capable of yielding crops of wonderful fertility butsubject to the caprice of an incalculable river that did enormousdamage by flooding before irrigation works had reached their presentstage of sure efficiency. Thus the wandering hordes which pouredover the frontier barriers of the north-west, until these were for everclosed by the growth of the kingdom of Afghanistan in the mid-eighteenth century and the rise of the Sikhs, passed rapidly to themore promising fields of the Punjab rivers and the Gangetic plainin their assaults on the peninsular land of Hindustan. In al l the


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seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, which forms the chiefevidence of the nature of the land, its government and the sociallife of its people during the period 1690-1760 with which this book

is chiefly concerned.

I I I . The historical sources and their inadequacy

The historical sources on which reliance must be placed for areconstruction of the period 1690-1760 fa ll into five classes : first,there are the works of the native historians dealing especially withSind : second, there are the works of the nat ive writers dealingwith the Moghul Empire or aspects of it during this period or previous

to this period but containing few references to Sind in detail:third, there are the records of the East India Company during twostages of its career when it maintained a factory in Sind (a) 1635-62,(b) 1758-75 : four th, there are the accounts given by Europeantravellers who visited Sind in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies : fi fth, there is the evidence provided by the Brit ishoccupation of Sind, consisting of a vast mass of papers, administrative and private, dealing with most aspects of the state of thecountry immediately prior to and immediately subsequent to thedate of annexation. Of secondary authorities the number ofreliable books dealing with social life in the days of Akbar, Jahangir,Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb and his successors is immense but thereare few which make more than brief and superficial reference to theSind of the period with which I am concerned here.

What is the value of these various classes of historical material ?The native historians dealing especially with Sind are of little helpfor the times of Shah Abdul Latif, which cover the period 1690-1760.

One reason for their inadequacy is fortuitous, that, with oneexception, they do not describe the particular period with whichI am concerned, but, with this one exception, are all devoted tothe recounting of events that did not extend beyond the reign ofJahangir. There are five important native histories of Sind, theTarikh-i-Masumi, the Tarlkh-i-Tahiri, the Beqlamama, theTarkhan-nama and the Tuhfat-al-Kiram. These books are al lwritten in Persian, which was the Court language of the ruling

houses of the country up to the days of the British conquest. TheTarikh-i-Sind was written by Mir Muhammad Masum of Bakharand is the most copious account of Sind history. But it does notgo beyond the defeat of the then ruling house of Sind by Akbarin 1592 and the capitulation of Mirza Jani Beg of Tatt a. Muhammad Masum was the son of Sarfrazi Hussaini of Kerman and wasborn at Bakhar. He belonged to a priestly Sayid family. Hewrote his history of Sind in 1600 for the improvement of his son's


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previous to the period I wish to describe, is of much value. Otherworks, which are numerous, make little or no reference to Sindbecause of that characteristic of isolation already explained. This

type of work is useful merely for throwing light on conditions in theMoghul Empire between the days of Jahangfr and its decline in themid-eighteenth century. Most of the materials are available incertain excellent secondary authorities, such as Moreland's India atthe Death of A kbar and From A kbar to A urangzeb, Sarkar's carefulstudies of the later Moghul period, Irvine's monographs on variousaspects of later Moghul administration, Vincent Smith's Akbar theGreat Moghul, Lane-Poole's Aurangzeb, and Faruki's work on the

reign of Aurangzeb. The bibliography in this last book gives someidea of the authorities most valuable for a study of Sind between1600 and 1750 in the form either of contemporary historical worksor of modern secondary authorities based upon them. Much usefulinformation on medieval Sind is found in the writings of the earlierArabic and Persian historians and chroniclers, some mention ofwhom is made in the bibliography attached to this volume.

Before leaving the subject of the native historians some remarkupon their deficiencies is necessary. No one is better qualified to

make this remark than Sir H. M. Elliot whose monumental work onthe History of India as told by its own Historians is indispensable.Elliot has remarked on this type of writing in general ' of domestichistory we have in our Indian annalists absolutely nothing, and thesame may be remarked of nearly all Muhammadan historians exceptIbn Khaldun. By them society is never contemplated, either inits conventional usages or recognized privileges, its constituentelements or mutual relations, in its established classes or popular

institutions, in its private recesses or habitual intercourses. Innotices of commerce, agriculture, internal police and local judicaturethey are equally deficient. A fact, an anecdote, a speech, a remarkwhich will illustrate the condition of the common people or of anyrank subordinate to the highest is considered too insignificant to besuffered to intrude upon a relation which concerns only grandeesand ministers, thrones and imperial powers.'1 Most of the nativeannalists wrote as Court flatterers, or chroniclers of the achievements of some rul ing house. They are not interested in the lives

of the poor, the mean and the downtrodden. They did not speculateon or describe the economic structure of the feudal society in whichthey lived and which they did not in fact understand. This defectis true of all histories written before modern scientific researchbecame a serious subject of study dependent on the correlation ofal l aspects of a people's culture and their state of civi lization. The

1 Elliot: Original Preface, pp. xix-xx.


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1 8 SH AH AB DU L L A T I F O F B H I T

defects are particularly evident in the native historians of medievaland Moghul India whose success depended largely on the favourof an autocrat usually intolerant of anything that displayed his

arrogance, his stupidity, or his lack of interest in what did notreflect his own self-importance. The study of social history is infact a very modern development which was possible only when theattention of serious-minded writers was deflected from the narrowfield of the classical writers of antiquity and when the importanceof economic factors in the development of mankind's mission wasat last realized. Such a form of study depends upon an examinationof all forms of evidence, in which the temporary triumphs of a

potentate or mi li ta ry adventurer play a very minor part. Eveneighteenth century England, where intellectual curiosity wasdirected on numberless subjects of recondite and uncommoncharacter, shows the same tendency to neglect the details of economicand domestic history. The point has been very well pu t in thepreface to Johnson's England.1 Therein it is remarked ' To presentat all a living picture of the life of a past age in all its varied aspectsis always a difficult task. . . . What is known as social history isnowadays generally found more attractive than political history,but it is a fallacy to suppose tha t it is easier. People commonlyfind the politics of their own day extremely interesting and thereforerelate them fully and comment upon them lavishly however dullthey may appear to be to a later generation : while upon the otherhand the details of their everyday existence which pique thecuriosity seem to them too trivial and are too much taken forgranted to be recorded.' It is for this reason that the labours ofsuch important social historians as Vincent Smith, Lane-Poole,

Moreland and Sarkar are so invaluable for an understanding of thesocial condition of India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Though none of these writers makes more than passing reference tothe Sind of the period 1690-1760, the domestic and social historyof Sind in those days would be nearly unintelligible without theirthoroughly efficient and painstaking correlation of all the usefulauthorities. A study of the bibliography on which the wri tingsof these historians have been based is itself an invaluable complement to their own writings. The nat ive historians and annaliststaken as a whole must therefore be classed as thoroughly inadequateand unsatisfactory, and without the supplementing which is possiblefrom outside evidence they would be of very little value for thepurpose of this book.

When, however, we consider this other outside evidence we findourselves at once on firmer ground and in a world which unwill ingly

1 Johnson's England. Preface, p. v i i . Edited by A. S. Turbervi lle .


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begins to yield up its secrets to posterity. There are many blanksin the record to be completed by the use of historical judgementand cri tical deduction founded on sound principles. It is un

fortunate that even this outside evidence is sadly deficient in respectof Sind during the period of 1690-1760. I trust, however, that thiswork will show by the scientific use of the available material, brokenand fragmentary though it be, how the breaks in the continuity ofthe record can be reasonably repaired.

It is now necessary to examine the nature of this outsideevidence which consists of(a) the records of the East India Companyin Sind in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a complete

break between the years 1662 and 1758 ; (b) the evidence ofEuropean travellers in Sind and in India during the last hundredand fifty years of the Moghul Empire; (c) the evidence ofcontemporaries, available in the official records of the Britishannexation of Sind and the journals of travellers and observerswho saw for themselves the remains in Sind of the Moghul systemof administration surviv ing from 1800 to 1850. By the properuse of these materials many of the deficiencies in the native record

can be satisfactorily made good.The East India Company maintained a factory in Sind from1636 to 1662 and again from 1758 to 1775. The records of thesetwo factories are invaluable direct evidence of the condition of thecountry, at least to the extent to which traders of the type sentout by the Company were interested enough and able to describe it.Actually some of the official letters of the Company's servants tothe head office in Surat, and later in Bombay, present a most vividpicture of the events of the time. The evidence is part ly in the

Bombay Record Office and partly in the library of the India Office.To the latter the careful research of Sir Will iam Foster has providedan admirable guide for the seventeenth century factory. Thereare many blanks in the Bombay Government records, but enoughmaterial has been preserved to enable the historian to form aconsistent plan. The records in the Bombay Record Office for theeighteenth century factory are more complete and are indispensablefor a full understanding of the troubled condition in Sind when the

Moghul Empire was breaking up, when the Kalhora were strugglingtowards independence, and the Sikhs, the Pathans and the Marathaswere all poli tical rivals for a share in the power that could be filchedfrom the Delhi Empire. It is, however, exceedingly unfortunatethat the period covered by the life of Shah Abdul Latif (1689-1752)is to tally devoid of any reference to Sind in the East India Company'srecords. The position is that there is evidence of the generationbefore the poet's birth, and there is evidence of the events that


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2 0 SHAH ABDUL LATIF OF BHIT

happened within a decade after his death, but I have been able totrace in the Bombay Record Office only one reference1 to any eventin Sind occurring during the life of the poet and that event is a

trivial one.Exactly the same blanks in the record are characteristic of the

evidence of European travellers. The number of European travellerswho visited India up to the end of the seventeenth century was verylarge, though most of them were confined to certain periods. Theforties, fifties and sixties of the seventeenth century were part icular lyrich in foreign travellers who have left a record of their impressionsbehind. Again towards the end of the same century many Europeans

came to India and left their impressions of the working of thefactories they saw and the social and economic condition of theIndian peoples. Sind has of course shared only to a small extentin this wealth of reminiscence, but it was not entirely neglected.Though Bernier, Tavernier and Thevenot did not visit Sind andhave next to nothing to say about it, there were Nicholas Withing-ton, the victim of a strange misadventure in 1616, Father Manriquein 1640, Niccolao Manucci who served as an art il leryman at the siege

of Bakhar in 1655, and Captain Alexander Hamilton in 1699, all ofwhom have left behind them unforgettable pictures of this terraincognita. The last of these four is the only one who has recordedhis impressions of Sind during the period of Shah Abdul Latif'slifetime. The record of conditions generally in the Moghul Empireduring the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is, however, so full ,and the evidence we possess of the form of the Empire as witnessedin Sind during select portions of the seventeenth and select portionsof the eighteenth centuries is so voluminous that there is no

insuperable difficulty in filling the blanks which exist between 1699and 1758, when historical material became copious.

With the British annexation of Sind in 1843 there becameavailable a vast mass of historical material of every sort concernedwith the social condition of the country as found at the time of theBr it ish conquest. But even prior to this, Sind had attracted someattent ion from officials and travellers of various kinds. In 1799a Mr Nathan Crowe wrote a valuable account of the history of the

Kalhora after personal experience of the country. In 1809 a Britishmission led by Mr Hankey Smith visited Hyderabad and some fouryears later political officers like Colonel Pottinger and LieutenantDel Hoste recorded invaluable impressions. In 1826 an Americantraveller named Masson told of an adventurous journey throughAfghanistan, Baluchistan and Sind. In 1828 Dr Burnes visitedthe Court of the Amirs and wrote a book which is full of the kind

1 S.I.L.B., No. 4 of 1743-4, p. 191.


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of facts poster ity wishes to know. In the thirties of the nineteenthcentury numerous observers wrote accounts of Sind, some of themspecially valuable, like those of Postans and officers of the Royal

Nav y employed in surveying the Indus. In the forties, owing tothe war with Afghanistan, Sind became ' news' and was visitedby hosts of travellers as a place to see. The annexation broughtst il l more. To it we owe the magnificent works of Bu rton , full ofminute information which only a man with his peculiar brand ofcuriosity and linguistic skill could have obtained.

A careful collation of these varied sources enables the historian,despite the paucity of direct contemporary evidence, to draw a

fairly reliable picture of social life in Sind during the first half ofthe eighteenth century. Conclusions based on such collation neednot be regarded as inadequate. The reason is that while it is nottrue to say that conditions in Sind did not differ in 1730 from whatthey were in 1699 (for which direct evidence is available) nor againwere exactly similar to conditions in 1758 (when direct evidencebecomes available once more) it is not untrue to say that the natureof conditions prevailing between 1700 and 1758 can be readilyinferred from the previous and later evidence. Substantiation forthis statement exists in the fact that the main administrativestructure of the government remained largely unaltered from thedays of Shah Jahan to the days of Sir Charles Napier. The economicfoundation was not greatly changed despite the rise, towards thesecond half of the eighteenth century, of the four large towns ofmodern Sind, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Shikarpur, whichdisplaced Tatta, Nasarpur, Rohri, Sehwan, Kandiaro and a host ofsmall places in the economic scheme, and despite the fact also that

the social structure of the classes of society was made static in amanner possible only by the isolation of Sind from the rest of Indiaand the clearly intelligible policy of both Kalhora and Talpurs tomaintain Sind as an individual Muslim state holding little conversewith the rest of the world. The internal construction of thisMuslim state was plainly revealed by the Brit is h conquest. Muchof the bitter controversy which that event occasioned has led toan undue disparagement of the character of the native governments

which preceded the Brit is h occupation. It can be readily provedthat many of the criticisms of Victorian writers are unjust and havetheir basis in an exaggerated form of the ethical, self-righteoussuperiority which characterized that part of the Victorian epochand was particularly liable to obtrude itself when annexation washeld to be just ified on the grounds of its civi lizing effects. Ac tual lythe government of both Kalhora and Talpurs carried on the systemof the Moghuls adapted to more modern conditions and had a solid


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22 S H A H A B D U L L A T I F O F B H I T

justification in the conditions of the time and the ideas whichactuated the majori ty of the population. This was a point of viewwhich escaped the searching eyes of men like Sir Charles Napier

and Burton , both of whom attached excessive importance to thestupidities, cruelties and crudities which the Kalhora and theTalpurs had, for their own reasons, no particular desire to eradicate.Thus the Sind of Sir Charles Napier's day, which we can view withthe precision of a microscope, was not very different in essentialsfrom the Sind of Ghulam Shah Kalhoro, the prince who reignedabout the end of the lifetime of Shah Abdul Latif, and the Sind ofGhulam Shah Kalhoro in its turn did not differ, except in the slight

improvements of an unprogressive age passing on in years, fromthe Sind of Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. I t willbe the object of later chapters in this book to make this assertiongood. The sources wi l l be quoted for the judgements given, and thebibliography w i l l enable students and scholars to verify forthemselves the validity of the judgements.

I V . The first half of the eighteenth century in Sind, showing the

passing of power from Moghul to KalhoroFor a proper understanding of the history of the Kalhora it is

necessary to make clear what exactly their relation is to the Moghuladministration which, after half a century, they succeeded indisplacing and how they in turn yielded their power to theirsuccessors the Talpurs. When Sind was conquered by Akbar in1592 by the defeat of Mirza Jani Beg, a Tarkhan of the CentralAsian tribe of Arghuns, Sind was in the ordinary course added to

the domains of the Moghul Empire. It was provided wi th theadministrative machinery employed elsewhere in the Moghuldominions. From the Ai n- i-Akb ar l we know the essential featuresof the system and also some of the details of its application to Sind.The extent to which Sind, after the Moghul annexation of i t , wasa unified area of government is not clearly known. 1 But it seemsunlikely that Sind was a compact unit completely under the controlof its rulers. What is certain is that Upper and Lower Sind werenever definitely united till a much later day. I n fact even t i l l theend of the Talpur rule in 1843 Sind may be held to have been verydoubtfully unified. The peculiarity of the rule of the Amirs wasthat the government was in the hands of three distinct personswho had separate areas of authority but managed somehow toconduct the administration without much quarrel amongst themselvesa feature of the Amfrs' rule which has always impressed

1 See Ray : Dynastic History of Northern India, passim.


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historians as an unusual and noteworthy achievement. The pointis, however, that even as late as 1843 it can quite definitely beasserted with truth that unification between Upper and Lower

Sind was not complete. When Sind was annexed to the Moghuldominions by Akbar the country as a whole was made part of theSiibah of Multan and sarkars were established in two places, Bakharin the north and Tat ta in the Indus deltaic region. These twosarkars were under separate governors, and the extent of theiractual author ity is not clearly known. For a whole century thegovernors of Bakhar and Tatta were appointed first from theTarkhan dynasty and later from Hindustan by the Moghul Emperor

and were members of the feudal bureaucracy which controlled theadministrat ion. From the time of Shah Jahan t i l l the first decadeof the eighteenth century the actual wielders of the Moghul'sauthority in Sind were officials sent from other parts of the Empireand might only by chance be occasionally natives of Sind. Theimportance of the Kalh5ra is that from the time they became apowerful political force the system was changed and the representative of the Emperor was a native of Sind. The process wasthat the Kalhora began as petty feudal chiefs, became strong enoughto be appointed governors of sarkars, and in the end succeeded ingetting the control of both Upper and Lower Sind with headquarters at Bakhar and Tatta t i l l , about the time of Nadir Shah'sinvasion in 1737, they reached a position of virtual independence.The independence was virtual only because Delhi was too preoccupied to be able to check petty aggrandizements so far away.In theory, however, the Kalhora continued to be responsible to theEmperor. They were supposed to collect the revenue, remit what

was necessary to Delhi, and mainta in law and order. But evenas late as the final establishment about 1760 of Ghulam ShahKalh5ro as Prince of Sind (as he is called in the East IndiaCompany's letters) there were elements ready to resist a unificationof power. This is evident in the reference, in the East IndiaCompany's records, to the Kalhora's struggles against a Jam inLower Sind, doubtless a Sammo of the Sindhi tribe of Samma whohad been rulers of Lower Sind previous to the entry of the CentralAsian dynasties finally defeated by Akbar in 1592.

The policy of the Moghuls had always been to make the utmostconvenient use of existing institutions and employ the local feudalchiefs as minor dignitaries with a certain amount of their personalauthor ity retained. This was in fact the only way in which afeudal society i l l provided wi t h a competent and disciplined standingarmy could hope to maintain itself and preserve order in distantparts. The system is sound in itself granted cer tain conditions, of


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which the chief are the obedience of the local chiefs to the imperialgovernors and the due collection of the imperial revenue. Orderhad of course to be maintained to assure the latter and the Moghul

practice was to allow a great deal of freedom in minor and localaffairs provided these two great ends were served. It was theweakness of the system that it provided no real check on illicitexactions by pe tty chiefs and by governors up to tha t l imit of excesswhich could not be overstepped.1 The result of the weakness wasa continual conflict between the revenue demands of local andimper ial interests. The history of the Moghul occupation of Sindis fu ll of examples of conflict of this kind . It was part icularly the

exactions of the local authorities which troubled the English traderswho had come to Sind for commercial purposes only. The EastIndia Company's records present a very complete picture of thisinherent clash of interest usually resulting in the oppression ofindividuals, arbitrary acts of despotism, financial instability andadministrative unsettlement of more or less serious import.

Vincent Smith has described this weakness of the Moghuladministration very adequately. ' The whole framework of thegovernment ', he says, ' was milit ary. The only considerableofficials who did not take rank as army officers were charged withpurely ecclesiastical and civil legal duties, such as the Sadars andthe Kazis. Each of the more considerable Mansabdars was vestedas such wi th civi l administrat ive powers practically unlimited. Alocal governor was not bound by any rules of either substantive lawor procedure unless in so far as his conscience required him to followthe Koranic precepts. He was the representative of the imperialautocrat and as such could do as he pleased within his jurisdiction

subject to the risk of being recalled to court and punished ifcomplaints reached the ears of his sovereign.'2 He states further :' The Government in short was carried on by a vast multitude ofpetty local despotisms kept in order to a certain extent by anoverpowering autocracy at the top. ' ' The whole administration ',he adds, ' was absolutely personal and despotic, directed to thestringent collection of a heavy assessment, the provision of numerousmilitary forces and the maintenance of imperfect public order in a

rough and ready fashion under the sanction of ferocious punishments1 ' To my mind the correct inference is that in levies of all kinds whether

imposed on classes or individuals, officials had to avoid such a scandal asmight provoke interference from above, but that short of this limit they hadvery large opportunities of raising money by methods which would not betolerated by public opinion at the present day and which were undoubtedlyinjurious from the economist's point of view. ' Moreland : From Akbar toAurangzeb, p. 295.

2 Akbar the Great Moghul, pp. 368-9.


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inflicted arbitrarily by local despots.'1 It is not a pr et ty nor anatt ractive picture. It w i l l , however, be a mistake to judge itsdeficiencies by the standards of modern administration with its

awakened public conscience and ideals of absolute equality oftreatment for all . Nor, indeed, was any other system practicablein a loosely-knit empire held together by imperfect loyalties andmaintained as a machine for collecting revenue for an extravagantcourt, and as a weapon for waging aggressive wars. The in ternalhistory of Sind for one hundred and fifty years after its annexationby Akbar shows as clearly as any other part of the Moghul dominionsthese characteristic deficiencies of Moghul government.

V. The Kalhoro power in the eighteenth century

The Kalhora* as a dynastic force rose very gradually to predominance. They did not disappear in a sudden debacle. Thenature of their vague and indeterminate rise will be obvious to thestudent who considers the general features of the Moghul period

just described. As a ruling house the Kalhora may be said to datefrom 1736, but members of the tribe had been prominent in Sind

affairs for at least half a century before that date. Similarly theKalhora were not swept away in 1778 by a coup d'etatof Mir BijarKhan Talpur, resulting in the defeat and death of Ghulam NabIKalhoro. They continued to survive as a disturbing influence t i l lthe very end of the eighteenth century. The confused politics ofSind, Kelat, Afghanistan, d i t c h , Jodhpur and Bahawalpur were afertile breeding ground of the turmo il which succeeded the depositionof Abdul NabI Kalhoro and this commotion had hardly subsided

before 1803 by which time the Talpurs were firmly established as thefamily in power. There is no adequate history of the Kalhora.The best account of them was in 1799 written by Nathan Crowe, anEnglishman who knew by personal experience conditions in Sindat the end of the eighteenth century, and this account is amongstthe records of the Bombay Government. Postans writ ing in 1843took over, almost verbatim and without acknowledgement, much ofwhat Crowe had written ; and the substance of Crowe's account

1 Akbar the Great Moghul, p. 383.2 ' The Kalhora were originally Channo Sindhis and therefore converted

Hindus . When the family rose to dist inct ion it asserted a right to be calledBeni Abbas, but their Shajaro or genealogical tree was pronounced by thelearned to be a complete fai lure. Upon this they sent a messenger to copythe documents in the possession of the holy men of Sehrah Khatibah and whenthe latter offered some objection, the Kalhoro confiscated their feofs, attackedand destroyed their villages, carried off the copper plates upon which theShajaro was delineated and then became undoubted descendants from Abbasand Murshlds.' Burton : History of Sindh, p. 410.


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wil l be found in Postans' Observations on Sind. The object ofthis book is not to describe in detail the history of the Kalhoro powerbut merely to indicate its salient characteristics with reference to

the social history of Sind during the period 1690-1760. The chiefstages in the life of the Kalhoro power may be briefly summarized.There are five such stages, first, the acceptance by the MoghulEmperor of members of the Kalhoro tribe as Viceroys or Governorsin Sinda period which began in 1701 ; second, the extension andconsolidation of the localpower of the Kalhoro Governors t i l lDelhihad by 1736 recognized them as semi-independent rulers of thecountry ; th ird , after the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1739, the

transfer of theoretical suzerainty over Sind from the Moghul Empireto the Persian kingdom, which resulted in the Kalhora becomingsubordinate to the Persian monarch and liable to pay tribute tohim ; four th , about 1747, the transference of this suzerainty fromthe Persian king to the Pathan kingdom at Kabul consequent uponthe military successes of Ahmad Shah DuranI, the founder of modernAfghanistan, by which change the Kalhora became feudatories ofKabul and had to pay tribute to that power ; fifth, the struggle

between Kalhora and Talpurs which began in 1778 and lasted moreorless continuously t i l l the end of the century, a period ofcivilwarin which the Talpurs, with the aid of the Baluchls, then settled inSind in considerable numbers, were at last able to destroy thefailing powers of the Sindhi ruling family. Throughout the wholeperiod from 1737 onwards the Kalhora were never actually fullmasters in their own house. They were required to pay an annualtr ibute and usually did their utmost to avoid doing so. They wereso far successful in that , by their obstructiveness and local influence,

coupled with the fact that Sind was difficult campaigning countryfor a power resident at Kabul and that the Afghan kingdom itselfafter the death of Ahmad Shah in 1773 showed the usual signs ofweakness typical of oriental autocracy, the tribute was graduallyreduced in amount and was usually very much in arrears. In thisway a gradual but uncertain independence was with difficultyestablished to such an extent that, when Britain appeared in Sindin the first decade of the nineteenth century in a character other

than that of a commercial people bent mostly on the profits offoreign trade, the ruling house of the Talpurs had become virtuallyindependent of control. Sind was then to al l intents and purposesa sovereign and petty Muslim state, which was its condition whenSir Charles Napier added it to the East India Company's possessionsin 1843. The aim of al l Sind policy from 1701 onwards was to makeSind independent of Moghul, Persian and Pathan, to diminish thepayment of tribute to the suzerain authority, to preserve the land


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as a closed terrain into which no foreigners of any sort were allowedentrance except wi th the utmost difficul ty. These facts adequatelyexplain the remarkable phenomenon that, despite the presence of

East India Company factories in Sind in both seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, in the beginning of the nineteenth century thecountry was to Europeans a terra incognita to such an extent asto evoke the flood of descriptive works on the country which pouredupon the world in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Kalhora themselves showed no special genius for government except that they followed a consistent policy of determinedisolation and recognized the importance of ir rigation works. They

were a Sindhi tribe of obscure origin of the type that is now classedas Jamot,1 that is, non-Balueh original inhabitants of the Indusvalley, settled in a portion of Upper Sind in the area that now formspart of the Larkana and Sukkur districts. They were the firstSindhi dynasty to wield permanent power since the fall of theSamma, the builders of Tatta, who had ruled Sind for two hundredand thirty years before the advent of the Arghuns and the Tarkhansfrom Central Asia. Their rule had therefore some elements ofpopulari ty in the countryside. This popularity was strengthenedby the peculiar character of their reputation as holy men, descendants of a sainted mendicant, a kind of being who has always madea very vivid appeal to the Muslim inhabitants of the Lower Indusvalley. The reign of the Kalhora was interrupted by three acutespasms of civil war, the first on the death of Nur MuhammadKalhoro in 1754, the second on the deposition of Sarfaraz KhanKalhoro in 1775, and the third and fatal internecine conflict thatresulted in the supersession of Kalhoro by Talpfir. Apart from

these periods of commotion and unrest in the country itself therewere continual threats of invasion of Sind occasioned by theintransigeance of the Kalhora in the payment of tribute to theirsuzerains of Persia and Afghanistan. I t wi l l therefore be readilyrealized that Lieutenant James is not very far from the truth whenhe says in his interesting account of the Chandookah pargana :' Chandookah in common with the rest of Sind has been the sceneof many a bloody conflict, its fields of corn trampled under by theinvading horde and its plains saturated with the blood of hundredsshed in civil strife or in contests with the vicegerents of the DelhiEmpire. In earlier ages it is true we may feel interested in thebold struggle of the country for its freedom but as each succeedingdynasty ascended the throne and retained the throne solely by thesword we can subsequently see in Sind but one continued battlefield, the scene of usurpation, tyranny and bloodshed. The steel

1 See Census of India : 1931, Vol. V I I I , pp. 495-sqq.


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by name Nasir Muhammad, realizing that discretion was the betterpart of valour, went some years later to Multan, pleaded for forgiveness and obtained the royal mercy and an amnesty. This was

about the very end of the seventeenth century, and about thebeginning of the period with which this book is concerned. Theson of Nasir Muhammad Kalhoro was Yar Muhammad Kalhoro, whomay be regarded as the real founder of the Kalhoro dynasty. About1701 Yar Muhammad succeeded in wresting Shikarpur from theDaudpotras, a weaver tribe who had founded it in 1616 after aconflict with the numerous tribe of Mahars then powerful in UpperSind and still represented in the ruling house of Bahawalpur.

Yar Muhammad made Shikarpur his court and obtained fromAurangzeb a grant of the tract between the Indus and the Naraand the right to call himself Khuda Yar Khan. He was not, however,content with this aggrandizement, for by 1711 he had overrun theKandiaro and Larkana tracts in addition to the country roundSukkur, so that he had claims to being the really effective power inUpper Sind. Yar Muhammad Kalhoro died in 1719 and was succeeded by his son Nur Muhammad Kalhoro who increased his father'sdominion by adding the Shikarpur country of the Daudpotras,having first taken the precaution to make his obeisance to theEmperor Muhammad Shah from whom he received, like his father,the title of Khuda Yar Khan, and the province of Sewistan in 1719.1

The chief of Kelat, the Brahui Mir Abdullah Khan, had in themeantime attacked the Kalhora and been ignominiously defeated,losing his own life in the fighting. This st il l further increased thepower of Nur Muhammad and when a vacancy occurred in thegovernment of Tatta, the Moghul Emperor, following the traditional

course of giving authority to persons of local importance, appointedhim as Governor of Tatta, by which act Nur Muhammad becamevirtually the ruler of Sind, Upper and Lower, from the deserts ofthe east to the rocky hills of the west. It is significant, however, asshowing the curiously incomplete nature of this sovereignty thatthe fort of Bakhar, the strongest place of defence in Sind, did notcome into the possession of the Kalhora t i l l 1736. The invasionof Nadir Shah, however, in 1739 put an entirely different complexion upon things and removed from Nur Muhamm id's mind thefear of Delhi, which hitherto he had hesitatingly acknowledged.2

1 See Imperial GazetteerSind.2 ' Upper Sind at the period of the invasion of Hindustan and the sack

of Delhi by Nadir Shah formed part of the Subah of Multan . On the dismemberment of the empire of Delhi the portion named Moghulee, comprisingSukkur, Bukkar and Shikarpur and its dependencies was annexed to theDurani kingdom by Ahmad Shah Abdali whose capital was Kabul. TheAfghan possessions in Sind extended on the north-east to Kashmore on the


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forty years and that within the limits of their administrative idealstheir government was neither inefficient nor contemptible. It hasto be remembered that the Kalhora and Talpurs between them

succeeded in keeping Sind shut to the influences of the outside worldfor a hundred and fi fty years. Thus in 1843 Sir Charles Napierwas able to see in being a survival of Moghul administration unaffected by the softening and civilizing influences which, working infull force in other parts of India for a century, had changed men'sideas of how a government should behave if it is to deserve therespect and will ing obedience of its subjects. The first ar riva l ofthe Talpurs in Sind has been graphically described in a famouspassage by Bu rton. ' Mian Mir Mahomed, the first prince of tha t(Kalhoro) dynasty made the fatal mistake of sending to the Baluchicountry and inducing by offers and promises of feofs and favour,two of his mountaineer Murids, Mirs Aludo and Masudo, to emigratefrom their barren hil ls and settle in the low country. The entranceof the barbarians is thus described by the native annalists ' when theBalochis arrived within fifteen miles of Khudabad the prince sentout several of his ministers and nobles with presents of clothes andhorses with gold saddles to receive and escort his distinguished guests

to the capital . As the procession advanced, it met a troop ofbeggarly shepherds followed by their flocks, and women mountedon asses. The ministers enquired for Mir Aludo, and were muchastonished when told that the ragged wayfarer with the "dheri" inhis hand and the "kamb5" on his shoulders was the personage whomthey were sent to conduct with such ceremony.'1 Li tt le indeeddid the Kalhoro of that moment realize that in this beggarly procession of h i l l shepherds lay the force that would one day drive hisdescendants from their proud throne, and that the autocracy of

saints would fall in a welter of blood before the shepherds with theirspinning whorls and their slings in which they carried lambs acrosstheir backs.

1 Burton : History of Sindh, p. 235.


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whose business or love of excitement induced them to visit Sind inthe seventeenth century. These adventurous beings were NicholasWithington (1614), Frey Sebastian Manrique (1640), and Nicolai

Manucci (1655). These annals are of first-rate value because thewri ters were al l persons of unusual intelligence, and reliable observersof events and places that were within their personal knowledge.Without the record of the East India Company, however, Withington, Manrique, Manucci and Hamilton would be but poor materialfor a period extending over a century and a half during which timeSind, India and the East India Company itself suffered vast internalchanges. Not one of the outstanding commentators of the Moghul

Empire visited Sind and few of them make more than cursorymention of i t . Tavernier, Bernier, Thevenot are alike of li t tlevalue for social conditions in Sind. The same is true of thehost of minor travellers and commentators like Terry, Fryer,Ovington, Mandelslo, Montserrate, Herbert, de Laet, Barbosa,della Valle, Linschoten, Mundy, Ives, Bartolemeo, Luiller, Grose,Hedges and Stavorinus, though their works are valuable foran understanding of the general tendencies of the time and

the condition of India during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies.The first Europeans to gain personal experience of Sind were

the Portuguese, the pioneers in the sea exploitation of the Indiancoasts. The Portuguese had had acquaintance wi th Sind for atleast sixty years before the first appearance of the English in 1612.In fact as long previously as 1555, in the civil war between theArghuns and the Tarkhans, the Portuguese had been engaged asmercenaries and had served their Arghun employer, Shah Hassan

Arghun, very badly. During his absence from Ta tta in hostilitiesagainst Mirza Isa Beg they actually sacked and burnt Tatta, a factwhich is chronicled in the Tar ikh-i-Tahir i. When the English intheir quest of sea-trade endeavoured to find a footing at Laribunderand Tatta, they discovered the Portuguese already well establishedwith a practical monopoly of the carrying trade to the Persian Gulf,Gujarat and Goa and possessing a church at the port. Morelandhas wr itten : ' Local shipowners were few and most of the trade

was carried in Portuguese coasting vessels, known at this time asfrigates. At the beginning of our period the Portuguese dominatedthe commerce of the region and their influence with the Moghulauthorities sufficed to defeat the first English attempt made in theyear 1613 to obtain a footing in the port . Their arguments were notin this case based on their naval and military power, but theythreatened to desert the port if the English were admitted and theGovernor who held the farm of the customs could not face the risk


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of the resulting loss ' (Moreland, From Akbar to Aurangzeb, p. 41).The interests of the Dutch lay farther afield in the East Indies whereafter the ' massacre of Amboina ' they retained complete hold of

the important spices trade. They did , however, att empt to opentrade in Sind in 1631, but did not take the business up seriously.They returned a few years later and from 1652 onwards were regularlyengaged in the trade, but only on a quite inconsiderable scale,Sind being clearly from the Dutch point of view a very minor partof their trading activities in the East.1 Apa rt from these meetingswith the people of the West, Sind remained throughout the seventeenth century an area of li tt le contact. The English factory at

Tatta during 1635-62 constituted a remarkable enterprise whichit is necessary to describe more fully as its records give the onlycontinuous picture of what Sind was like during the time of ShahJahan and the opening years of Aurangzeb's reign. This periodwas contemporaneous wi th the lifetime of Shah Abdul Lati f' s grandfather, and coincided with the epoch of the Moghul's greatestmagnificence.

I I . General features of the East India Company's career in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries with reference to SindThe first venture of the East India Company in Sind was

launched in 1635. There were two reasons why this time wasselected. The first was that not t i l l Methwold had negotiated anagreement between the English and the Portuguese to preservepeace with each other had the Company any chance of doingsuccessful business at Laribunder, the port of the Indus delta, andTatta, the capital of Sind and a very rich and imposing emporium

of commerce in the seventeenth century. The second was that theEast India Company had succeeded in catching the fancy of theLondon market with Indian cotton piece-goods, the demand forwhich appeared insatiable at the time, and since the famine of1630 Gujarat, then the largest source of supply, had been quiteunable to cope wi th the demand. There were, of course, otherreasons, not the least of which was the surprising success of theseparate voyages of the Company in the days of Charles I, before

the financial needs of that misunderstood and rather ill-treatedmonarch led him to support a rival and short-lived organizationfinanced and managed by Sir William Courteen, a Flemish silkmerchant settled in London, Sir Paul Pindcr, another Londonmerchant, and Endymion Porter, ' groom of the bed-chamber and

1 It is in these circumstances highly unlikely that the records oi theDutch Company would do much to supplement the evidence available in theEnglish Company's records.


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his master's factotum for secret affairs '. The profits of the EastIndian trade at this period were very considerable. It was notsurprising that interlopers should wish to share in the wealth, and

that the King should use their keenness as a means of filling his owndepleted pr ivy purse. The settlement which Methwold concludedin 1635 with the Portuguese overcame the objection the Moghulgovernors had hitherto offered against the English, namely, that ifthey came the Portuguese would threaten to go and their departurewould leave no efficient carrying organization for the export of thecloth and leatherwork of Sind.

Thus the East India Company found itself presented with

a very promising commercial opportunity of which it was notslow to take advantage. The Company entered actually in tothe Sind trade with three objectives, to keep up the supply ofcotton cloth for the London market, to obtain indigo, and to getas much as it could of the profits of the carrying trade to thePersian Gulf and down the western coast of Ind ia. The Companywas engaged in the buying and selling of commodities and was alsoin fact looking for freights and sought to play the part played bythe mercantile marine of later generations. About this period theCompany showed a surprising amount of enterprise, as is evidencedfrom the number of trading stations it established, though not allwere long-lived. In 1633 Hariharpur in Orissa, on the delta of theMahanadi,had been opened. Dabhol was opened in 1635, the sameyear as Sind, Rajapiir in 1637, Armagon in the territory of the Rajaof the Carnatic in 1639 and in 1640 that factory was removed toMadraspatam, where the castle called Fort St. George was built.The troublous times that followed the organization of Courteen's

Association and the difficulties of the Civil War in England broughtgreat embarrassment but somehow or other the Company managedto survive its anxieties, though in respect of some of its factoriesit suffered casualty. During this troubled time ' voyages werediscontinued and in 1649 a resolution was passed to close the factoriesin the East, recall the Agents of the Company and wind up itsbusiness. Happily this resolution was not carried out, the Agentsremained mostly at their posts and maintained themselves by

private trade t i l l the troubles at home were over. When in 1657Cromwell renewed the charter, the Company absorbed Courteen'sbankrupt Association and resumed its monopoly.'1 Dur ing al l thistime the Sind factory at Tatta and its outpost at Laribundercontinued to flourish in a modest way. When the factory wasdisbanded in 1662, the cause of the winding up of its affairs wasthe lack of profits in trading due to the unsettlement and turmoil

1 The English in India, p. 61.


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S H A H A B D U L L A T I F O F B H I T . 3 7

in the Moghul dominions during the unrest that coincided with thefirst five years of Aurangzeb's reign.1

In 1758 the East India Company again entered the field of

Sind commerce. Conditions then were very different from whatthey had been in 1635 and 1662. Sind no less than the rest of Indiawas in confusion. The Kalhoro brothers were fighting amongstthemselves for a supremacy which fell at length to Ghulam ShahKalhoro, and Afghans, Sikhs and Marathas were at each other'sthroats in the plains of the Punjab. The lure which drew theCompany to Sind in the midst of this turmoil was the chance ofobtaining a monopoly in saltpetre, with two minor objectives, one

to sell woollen goods to the armies of Afghanistan, the peoples ofCentral Asia and residents of the northern plains of India, and theother to transport some of the excellent cattle of Sind to Bombayfor sale. The instructions given by the Court of Directors atBombay Castle on 18th December 1758 to George Bourchier,charged with the duty of opening trade in Sind, are very clear.2

Postans has described the opening of the trade relations betweenthe Company and the ruler of Sind. ' The connection ', he states,* of the Bri ti sh Indian government wi th Sindh had its origin inA.D. 1758 when Ghulam Shah Kalhora on the 22nd September ofthat year granted a perwannah or order to Mr Sumption of theCompany's service for the establishment of a factory in the Sindhianterritories, with a view to the encouragement of trade between theIndian territories and Sindh : and added to this permission certain

1 Thus the Sind factory was shut down just as the East India Companyitself was entering upon a period of great prosperity. But Sind did nothingto contr ibute to the result. Ma rr io tt has stated, ' The dividends averaged

25 per cent during the years 1657-91 and during the decade 1672-82 wereso much higher that in T683 the market price of the ^100 share was ^500/The English in India, p. 66.

2 See Bombay Government Records. Selections, 1802. ' Hav ingappointed you Resident for establishing a factory at Scindy we shall giveyou the following instructions for the better transacting and managing theHon'ble Company's affairs there . . . We are in the first place to acquaintyou that our Hon'ble masters' principal motive for settling at Scindy is tosecure to themselves the whole produce of saltpetre in that country whichyou wi l l observe is made to them alone in the accompanying translate of thePhirmaund obtained from the Prince. You are therefore carefully to attend

to the engrossing of this important article on their account at the most reasonable rate and exert yourself in getting it refined as well as possible for whichpurpose we deliver you such calterons as can be spared and shall indent toEngland for others by the first ship (ordered also to make inquiry aboutchints and cloth made in Sind and send musters) . . . There now beingan open trade through Candahar into Persia we have hopes you w i l l be ableto dispose of woolen and other staple goods through that channel which youare to encourage all in your power . . . As your supplying us wi th hornedcattle will always be an acceptable service and more particularly at this

juncture . . . we would have you provide as many as you can. BombayCastle 18th December 1758.'


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' The nearest adjoyneing citty unto this of Tuttah is Nassurpore beingthe chiefest place for clotheing in these parts. Report saies near upon 3000families of weavers inhabite there. The ci t ty itself is as bigg if not greaterthan this, about 30 course distant from this placce and scituated on the river

so that comeinge downe with the current charges of transportacion must bevery little. The baftaes there made called joories are in length 17 covedsTuttah and in breadth coveds (covado, cubit, was the Portuguese equivalentfor the Indian gaz). The cloth is very substantial;!, thredd even spunne andwell woven.'

1

Sehwan was noted for being the centre of the indigo growingdistrict, but it was also noted as a weaving centre.

' Seahwaun is a cittie seated also on this river and in distance from thisplace 60 course by land. The chiefest commodity there made and in theadjacent townes is indicoe in forme like to that of Byana yet nothing so good

because in the making they are accustomed to mingle sand with itAbout2000 maunds are yearely made ; the wieght there 36 pice per seare thoughin Tuttha at resale it be weighed at 40 pice per seare. About 1000 householdsof weavers live there also who make a very good sort of baftaes, shorter thenthose of Nassurpore 3 Tuttah coveds yet larger i\ inches . . . Bu tt erand oyle is brought thence hether in great abundance. Ophium is also madethere in great quantities. And the greatest part of these commodities isbrought hether for sale per via river, which arrive thence commonly in 10daies.'2

Tat ta was the chief centre of production and emporium of trade

and is thus described :' Tuttah distant from Bunder Laharce about 28 course by land hath in

itself alxmt 3000 families of weavers ; yet the greatest part of them make notother than divers sorts of checkered alejaes vendible in Persia and Turkeywhether they are in great quantities transported by the merchants of thisplace to the ports of Congo and Bussara. Others weave diapher clotheingand very few baftaes and those verv line, most part for the citty use, thegreate bulke of clotheing coming from the places prementioned. Heere alsois a course sort of ginghams which they call seriaes, made for purpose of sailesof double thredd containing in length about 20 coveds Guzzarat and 19 tussaesGuzzarat broadThe saltpetre made here is very good but very dear, viz 6

rupees per maund. Cot ton yarn also (its qual ity considered) is 30 or 40 percent dearer here than in Surat at Ahmedabad and this is due to the factthat the only cot ton wool procurable is that brought from Cutch. Themerchants of this place that constantly trade to Congo (i.e. Kangun in Persia)and Bussara doe (and that necessarily) provide themselves of indicoe and sugarfrom AgraTheir custome is to hire carts from Agra to Multantherethey imbarquc it and with all charges of customes included costs them notabove one rupee per maund from thence to Tuttah.

Frcrnlen's proposals for the Sind factory were for an establishment of five :

1 the chief at Tuttah : one at Nassurpore : one at Seahwaun : one penman and cashier and one packer and keeper of petty cxpences.*

The complexity of the customs system annoyed and confusedthe English merchants.

' Heere are also divers petty customes which the merchants in generalpay to the Governour of this citty as on all provisions one quarter pice per

1 /:./-'./ ., 1034-6, pp. 128-0. 3 ibid., pp. 130-1.2 ibid., p. 120. 4 ib id ., p. 132.


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rupee and one seare of the sort invested upon each corwar (kharwar : ass-load);on all sorts of cloth brought from other places and sould in this ci t ty the buyerpaies | pies per rupy and the seller pice and many the like, which though wedenied to pay and opposing it as much as might bee, yet they to maintayne

their customes would not remi tt it . '1

Sind piecegoods were very popular at this period. In 1636Fremlen reported to the Company : ' For of al l Indian goods noneare in such request as those of Synda nor finde more reddie vendas being in regaarde of their substance and coullers most require-able.' Interesting incidents recorded are that the Surgeon of theCompany, William Walgrave, was left in Sind to cure the Governorof an in firmity : that there was weekly correspondence by land

between Sind and Ahmedabad and that the businesslike arrangements at Laribunder met w i th much favour. ' For there the prizesare knowne and sett downe in a ratebooke, not to bee innovatedor altered at every covetous or unjust Governor's will.'

In 1639 Henry Bornford made a journey from Agra to Tatta.It seems to have been largely a commercial reconnaissance. Butsome of his observations are interesting. He mentions the indigoof Bubak and Sann and calculated that the quantity transported

to Tatta did not exceed ' 1000 greate maens '. He mentions thecustoms charges, 4 rupees to the Governor per maen, 1 rupee to thetown, and freight to Tat ta J rupee. The Sameja between Sehwanand old Hala are described as a source of danger to traders for theirrobbing proclivities so that the country is not passable ' without astrong guard '. Moreover the Sameja were at that time (1640)apparently in rebellion against the Moghul Governor to the dis turbance of the peace of central Sind. Bornford says that the usualtransport of goods down the Indus ' is in flat bottomed boats of a

1000 or 2000 maunds ', and he recommended as the cheapest methodof transport that of buying at Lahore a 1000 maund boat and sellingit at Tatta at the end of the journey for 250 rupees. Bornfordmentions also that the Tatta merchants purchased sugar andsugar candy at Lahore and that narrow joories were made atDarbelo of lengths similar to those of Nasarpur.

In 1640 Fremlen noted the adulteration of indigo with sand andearth. The presence of the interlopers (Sir Will iam Courteen's

ships) is referred to in a letter dated 5 February 1640, where itis stated that the ' newcome English ' have an intention ' to havefive or seven ships sent yearly to employ in trade at Gombroon,Scinda, Mocha, Messliputtun and other ports of commerce and theydoubt not but that their King w i l l comply wi th their desires.'2

About this time (1641 onwards) complaints began to bemade about the inferior qual ity of the Sind c loth. Several

1 E.F.I., 1634-6, pp. 132-3. 2 ibid., 1637-41, p. 237.


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letters deal with this question and give the reason for thedeterioration.

' The Sind calicoes were also disappointing in quality and the factors

there should be charged to look carefully into the matter and not to trusttheir brokers. The washers too should be warned not to tatter the clothor put so much starch into it . Of Sewwan joories 200 pieces may be forwardedevery year while those from Nusarpiir will also sell to advantage.'1 (Letterfrom Company in London to President and Council at Surat, 29 November1641.)

' Cannot recommend the Nursapoore joories from Sind : they are thincloths onlie made fayre to the eye by overmuch starching, slicking andbeating.They are neither goodcloth,norfullsize. Muchprefer the Dorbellosort which conies also from Sind ; of these four or five thousand pieceswouldsell. So would some of them also made in Sevensteere (Sehwan) and the

indico of that place would also find vent here if well bought and carefullychosen.'

2 (Letter from the Company to the PresidentandCouncil at Surat,

27 November 1643.)

' The make of all sorts of cloth in that place doth much degeneratefrom former times and yearly declines by reason of the ready vend it findsat Bussora which occations many buyers in so much that narrow baftaesof all sorts are lately risen 5 and 6 rupees per corge and yet made worse thanever, the Derbella and Ckandara cloth being now no better than theNusserpore.'3

In 1644 John Spiller spent the hot weather in Upper Sind in an

attempt to find how much indigo could be obtained. The lettergives a vivid picture of a poverty-stricken countryside :

' whereof Mr. Spiller hath had this year some experience he havingby our order spent the passed rains from May to September in those uppercountries of Sehwan or Seuestan and the adjacent places ; whither he wassent chiefly to make a fulldiscovery of what indico thesepartsmay produceas also to buy 200 f(ardles) if they had been procurable ; but the people areso exceedingly opprest and kept so miserably poor that notwithstandingthe soil is fertile and propper and would produce large quantities of goodindicoes theyhavenether the willnormeansto manure and sow the ground.

Yet there were no buyers (for the indigo actually bought) than the Tuttahdyers which paid 41^ rupees besides 3 rupees per maund other charges,Spiller bought therefore but a trifling quantity.'4

In this year there was an exchange of courtesy between thePresident of the Sind factory and Prince Dara Shikoh,' who hathalso expressed how acceptably he esteemed what given him inwriting a courteous letter to your President and retributing a jewelof dyamonds and rubies valued at 1000 rupees '.5

Kandiaro and Darbelo were places favoured by the Company's

agents in the purchase of cotton goods. The diff icultirs of trade inUpper Sind apparently as regards financing transactions were,however, greater than in Lower Sind. It is stated that Nasarpur' lies very convenient for to supply it uppon all occations ; whereasunto Khandierah wee must carry as much as wee intend to invest

1 E.F.I., 1637-41, p. 312.

4 ibid.

2 ib id ., 1642-5, p. 123. 5 ib id ., p. 215.3 ibid., p. 203.


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44 SH AH ABDUL LATIF O F BH IT

with us, the wayes being so obnoxious to dainger : and that too innew rupees, which many times are not heere to be gott, which,allthough so, when come there w i l l not pass unt i l l translated into

pice, which last yeare much hindered us.'1 (21 February 1646.)In 1647 there was much unsettlement in Upper Sind owing to aconflict of au thority between Murad Buksh, Sayid Khan and Kh anAzad Khan; for while the customs had been allotted to one of them,local jurisdiction had been given to another. This occasionedcomplaint in the factors' letters because of the uncertainty over thepayment of the transport du

Documents

Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit - H. T. Sorley