Heritage: Rajah Dahar of Sindh

[Nadeem Jamali <jamali@CS.UIUC.EDU>]

From Dawn ( http://www.dawn.com )

Rajah Dahar of Sindh

By Khurram Ali Shafique

This is the second in a series of three articles on Queen Suhandi, her
son Raja Dahar and the Arab conqueror Muhammad bin Qasim

"Whoever marries your sister will become the ruler of Sindh," the
astrologers told Dahar, the Rajah of Sindh. Dahar was the eldest son
of Chach, the founder of the Brahmin Dynasty in Sindh, and he had
inherited lower Sindh. His younger brother, Daharsingh was ruling
upper Sindh, and both of them were born of Suhandi, the ambitious wife
of Chach. Bai, their sister whose horoscope posed a dilemma for Dahar,
was born of a Jatt mother.

"The administration of a large kingdom is a delicate matter," said the
grand vizier Budhiman to Dahar. "For the sake of their kingdom, kings
bring death upon their brothers and relatives or banish them from
their country. You should marry your sister, and seat her with you on
the throne though you will never consummate the marriage. As she will
be called your wedded wife the kingdom will remain with you, according
to the astrologers' prediction." When this argument didn't convince
Dahar, the grand vizier made a practical demonstration about the
so-called collective memory of the people. He laid mud on the back of
a sheep, and grew plants on it. When the sheep was paraded through the
streets of Aror, it caught everyone's attention. But only for three
days! Afterward, the sheep would roam around in the streets and no one
would pay heed to it. That much is man' attention span.

Much has been said about Dahar's marriage to his sister, but as far as
we can gather from recorded history it was a nominal marriage and
never consummated. Yet, it earned Dahar a bad reputation, so that his
name became proverbial and synonymous with "big mistake" in the Sindhi
language. His younger brother, Daharsingh, who was ruling the northern
areas of the empire, rose in rebellion, although death overtook him
before a decisive battle could settle the affairs between the
brothers. The true casualty of this whole affair goes mostly unnoticed
by the historians of all schools. The saddest part of the story was
perhaps the fact that a young woman was condemned to a life that she
did not deserve.

Apart from his "big mistake," Dahar certainly possessed some
remarkable characteristics. He was exceptionally brave and
fearless. There is even a story about how, when a ferocious lion once
attacked Dahar's hunting retinue, Dahar wrapped his scarf on his left
arm and thrust that arm into the lion's mouth while killing the beast
with his right arm. Even if we don't believe this story, we have
witnesses to his other acts of bravery, and such witnesses are found
even among his enemies, the Arab invaders. As described by the ancient
historians, Rajah Dahar is the tragedy of a man who set out to take
lessons in being a king. His flaw was his willingness to place his
faith in the external factors stars, destiny, enemies and friends. By
the time Dahar learnt his lessons, it was too late for him to live
like a king. The only option left before him by then was to die like
one.

Dahar had the opportunity to rule for a long period over his kingdom -
almost forty years (c. 668 - 712 AD). Over that period his major
achievement was to secure law and order in his land by routing the
bandits and banishing them to the seas. His major weakness was his
foreign policy, specially towards the western borders of his empire
where the threat of an Arab invasion was increasing everyday since the
Arab occupation of Persia in 635 AD.

It seems that Dahar was nostalgically looking back towards the days of
the pre-Islamic Persia when the glorious Sassanid Dynasty ruled over
that vast empire with great pomp and show. It was difficult for him to
accept that the ancient glory of Iran had gone forever, and he could
never make up his mind to deal with the Bedouins of the Arab Deserts
as successors of the great Persian Emperors.

The Arabs, at the same time, displayed no desire for establishing
friendly relations with the other powers of their time. Specially in
the case of Sindh, the Arabs had always been speaking in terms of
whether it was difficult or easy to annex this state, and never in
terms of whether or not the Sind his have given them a cause for
invasion. We must remember that "world peace" is a very modern term
and has its origin in the Romantic Movement of the 18th and 19th
Century. Even so it wasn't until after the World War I in the 20th
Century that the concept of world peace became a reality in the
foreign policies of the states.

The modern Muslim historians, more than anyone else, are guilty of
anachronism when they try to perceive of the early Arab colonialism in
terms of the 20th Century notions of democracy and world peace.

Dahar, it seems, didn't display any personal aversion to the Muslims
or their religion. He welcomed the Arab talent at his court, and was a
great admirer of the Arab military genius. Unfortunately, the Arabs
who found refuge at Dahar's court were the Allafi adversaries of the
Umayyad Caliphate. It is said that one of their relatives, a dignitary
of the Allafi tribe, was beheaded in Mekran by a deputy of Hajjaj bin
Yousuf as he refused to pay proper honour to that deputy. His skin was
taken off and his head sent to Basra.

In true Arab spirit some of the tribesmen of the victim took their
revenge upon the deputy, who had by that time become the governor of
Mekran, and then fled to the court of Dahar.

We cannot be certain how far the famous story about the plunder of
eight Arab ships at Debal is true. It has been recorded in most
histories that the King of Sarandeep had sent some gifts to the
Umayyad Caliph Walid bin Abdul Malik, and the caravan of eight ships
also carried the orphaned daughters of deceased Arab merchants.

These ships were forced by rough weather to take refuge on the coasts
of Sindh, possibly Debal, and there they were looted by some of the
outlandish tribes. The story even relates that one of the women called
upon Hajjaj when she was being captured, and this message was conveyed
to Hajjaj by one of the survivors. Hajjaj sent a letter to Dahar
asking him to release the women, and we are told by historians that,
"in that letter he couched many threats in very strong terms." If that
was the case then Dahar must be praised for his patience in replying
only, "This is the work of a band of robbers over whom I do not have
power."

Mainly two facts make this story doubtful. Firstly, Chachnameh, the
primary source of these events, narrates that when Muhammad bin Qasim
later conquered Debal he found all the women in the castle prison. Why
would those women be kept in the prison? Women captured in this manner
were usually treated as slave girls and distributed among the captors
for their pleasures, as Mohammad Bin Qasim reportedly did at the time
of his capture of Sindh.

Secondly, the Chachnameh states again in the events of a year later
that after the Arabs had conquered almost all of Sindh, the Hindu
vizier Siyakar brought those Muslim women prisoners to Muhammad bin
Qasim. How could they be freed now, if they had been already freed and
sent home from Debal? Indeed, it seems that the story had become a
folk tale and there were many versions of it. We can't be sure of the
version that has come down to us was closest to reality.

In the light of what we know, it is more plausible to believe that
some ships were most probably looted but that was an act of the
robbers whom Dahar had banished from his lands with great difficulty
and now didn't want to provoke by challenging their hold over the
seas. Dahar's personal involvement in the events, as well as the
captives' release from the prisons of Debal and (or) Alore, seems to
be a fabrication by the later storytellers for obvious reasons.

The events of Muhammad bin Qasim's invasion of Sindh are well
known. What isn't so well known to most students of history is the
manner in which Raja Dahar met his death. It is said that when the
Arab conqueror had captured most of Sindh, and Dahar's countrymen had
changed their sides to join the Arabs, Dahar called his Arab friends,
the Allafi rebels.

In a way they were the cause of Dahar's misfortune because it was by
giving them refuge that Dahar had first annoyed the dreadful Hajjaj
bin Yousuf. "O Allafi!" Dahar said to his Arab friend, "It was for
such an emergency that we patronized you. You are best acquainted with
the ways of the Arab army, and it is advisable that you should go with
my forces in advance." The Allafi replied, "O King! We are grateful to
you, but we cannot draw our swords against the army of Islam. If we
are killed by them we will earn a bad name, and if we kill them we
will burn in hell. We agree that in return for the favours you have
shown us, we must at least give you some advice on how to fight these
invaders even if we do not draw our swords against them. But if we
give you advice, then again, this army will never forgive us. Please
be kind to us and allow us to depart quietly." In a magnanimous
gesture of royal grace, Dahar allowed these dubious characters to
leave his camps in safety.

Sometime before the final battle, Dahar's vizier approached him and
suggested that Dahar should take refuge with one of the friendly kings
of India. "You should say to them, 'I am a wall between you and the
Arab army. If I fall, nothing will stop your destruction at their
hands.'" If that wasn't acceptable to Dahar, said the vizier, then he
should at least send away his family to some safe point in
India. Dahar refused to do either. "I cannot send away my family to
security while the families of my thakurs and nobles remain here. And
I consider it shameful as well that I should go to the door of another
prince and await his permission to see him." Vizier Budhiman then
asked Dahar what did he intend to do. To this Dahar gave a very
dramatic reply, which was recorded faithfully by the early Arab
historians despite their hostility to the unfortunate infidel.

"I am going to meet the Arabs in the open battle, and fight them as
best as I can. If I crush them, my kingdom will then be put on a firm
footing. But if I am killed honorably, the event will be recorded in
the books of Arabia and India, and will be talked of by great men. It
will be heard by other kings in the world, and it will be said that
Rajah Dahar of Sindh sacrificed his precious life for the sake of his
country, in fighting with the enemy."

After Dahar was killed in the Battle of Aror on the banks of the River
Indus, his head was cut off from his body and sent to Hajjaj bin
Yousuf. His queens burnt themselves to death in the tradition set by
the Rajput heroines. These included Bai, the unfortunate sister of
Dahar. Other ladies of the royal household, who remained alive, were
captured by the Arab conquerors along with other women of Sindh, and
sold into slavery. Thus ended the dynasty that had sprung out of the
ambitions of Queen Suhandi and Chach the Brahmin.