The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative

by Sir Thomas Hungerford Holdich

Exceptionally, out of this banded system arises some great mountain block forming a separate feature, such as is the massive crag-crowned cliff-lined block of Malan, west of one of the most important rivers of Makran (the Hingol), to which reference has already been made. From it an arm stretches southwards to the sea, and forms a square-headed obstruction to traffic along the coast, which almost defeated the efforts of the Indo-Persian telegraph constructors when they essayed to carry a line across it, and did entirely defeat the intentions of Alexander the Great to conduct his army within sight of his Indus-built fleet. It is within the folds of this mountain group that lies hidden that most ancient shrine of Indo-Persian worship, to which we have already referred in the story of Alexander's retreat.

It is the possibilities of Makran as an intervening link in the route from Europe to India which renders that country interesting at the present time, and it is therefore with a practical as well as historical interest that we take up the story of frontier exploration from the time when we first recognize the great commercial movements of the Arab races, centuries after the disappearance of the last remnants of ancient explorations by Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks. It is extraordinary how deep a veil of forgetfulness was drawn over Southern Baluchistan during this unrecorded interval. For a thousand years, from the withdrawal of Alexander's attenuated force to the rise and spread of Islam, we hear nothing of Makran, and we are left to the traditions of the Baluch tribes to fill up the gap in history. What the Arabs made of mediæval Makran as a gate of India may be briefly told. Recent surveys have revealed their tracks, although we have no clear record of their earliest movements. We know, however, that there was an Arab governor of Makran long previous to the historical invasion of India in A.D. 712, and that there must have been strong commercial interest and considerable traffic before his time. Arabia, indeed, had always been interested in Makran, and amongst other relics of a long dead past are those huge stone constructions for water-storage purposes to which we have referred, and which must have been of very early Arab (possibly Himyaritic) building, as well as a host of legends and traditions, all pointing to successive waves of early tribal emigration, extending from the Persian frontier to the lower Arabius—the Purali of our time.

Hajjaj, the governor of Irak, under the Kalif Walid I., projected three simultaneous expeditions into Asia for the advancement of the true faith. One was directed towards Samarkand, one against the King of Kabul, and the third was to operate directly on India through the heart of Makran. The Makran field force was organised in the first instance for the purpose of punishing certain Karak and Med pirates, who had plundered a valuable convoy sent by the ruler of Ceylon to Hajjaj and to the Kalif. These Karaks probably gave their names to the Krokala of Nearkhos, and the Karachi of to-day, and have disappeared. The Meds still exist. The expedition, which was placed under the command of an enterprising young general aged seventeen, named Mahomed Kasim, not only swept through Makran easily and successfully, but ended by establishing Mahomedan supremacy in the Indus valley, and originated a form of government which, under various phases, lasted till Mahmud of Ghazni put an end to a degenerated form of it by ousting the Karmatian rulers of Multan in A.D. 1005. The original force which invaded Sind under Mahomed Kasim, and which was drawn chiefly from Syria and Irak, consisted of 6000 camel-riders and 3000 infantry. In Makran the Arab governor (it is important to note that there was an Arab governor of Makran before that country became the high-road to India) added further reinforcements, and there was also a naval squadron, which conveyed catapults and ammunition by sea to the Indus valley port of Debal. It was with this small force that one of the most surprising invasions of India ever attempted was successfully carried through Makran—a country hitherto deemed impracticable, and associated in previous history with nothing but tales of disaster. For long, however, we find that Mahomed Kasim had both the piratical Meds, and the hardly less tractable Jats (a Skythic people still existing in the Indus valley) in his train, and the news of his successes carried to Damascus brought crowds of Arab adventurers to follow his fortunes. When he left Multan for the north, he is said to have had 50,000 men under his command. His subsequent career and tragic end are all matters of history.

The points chiefly to note in this remarkable invasion are that the Arab soldiers first engaged were chiefly recruited from Syria; that, contrary to their usual custom, they brought none of their women with them; and that none of them probably ever returned to their country again. Elliott tells us of the message sent them by the savage Kalif Suliman: "Sow and sweat, for none of you will ever see Syria again." What, then, became of all these first Arab conquerors of Western India? They must have taken Persian-speaking wives of the stock of Makran and Baluchistan, and their children, speaking their mother-tongue, lost all knowledge of their fathers' language in the course of a few generations. There are many such instances of the rapid disappearance of a language in the East. For three centuries, then, whilst a people of Arab descent ruled in Sind, there existed through Makran one of the great highways of the world, a link between West and East such as has never existed elsewhere on the Indian border, save, perhaps, through the valley of the Kabul River and its affluents. Along this highway flowed the greater part of the mighty trade of India, a trade which has never failed to give commercial predominance to that country which held the golden key to it, whether that key has been in the hands of Arab, Turk, Venetian, Portuguese, or Englishman. And though there are traces of a rapid decline in the mediæval prosperity of Makran after the commencement of the eleventh century, yet its comparative remoteness in geographical position saved it subsequently from the ruthless destruction inflicted by Turk and Tartar in more accessible regions, and left to it cities worth despoiling even in the days of Portuguese supremacy.

It is only lately that Makran has lapsed again into a mere geographical expression. Twenty years ago our maps told us nothing about it. It might have been, and was, for all practical purposes, as unexplored and unknown as the forests of Africa. Now, however, we have found that Makran is a country of great topographical interest as well as of stirring history. And when we come to the days of Arab ascendency, when Arab merchants settled in the country; when good roads with well-marked stages were established; when, fortunately for geography, certain Western commercial travellers, following, longo intervallo, the example of the Chinese pilgrims—men such as Ibn Haukal of Baghdad, or Istakhri of Persepolis—first set to work to reduce geographical discovery to systematic compilation, we can take their books and maps in our hands, and verify their statements as we read. It is true that they copied a good deal from each other, and that their manner of writing geographical names was obscure, and leaves a good deal to be desired—a fault, by the way, from which the maps of to-day are not entirely free—yet they are on the whole as much more accurate than the early Greek geographers as the area of their observations is more restricted. We may say that Makran and Sind are perhaps more fully treated of by Arab geographers than any other portion of the globe by the geographers who preceded them; and as their details are more perfect, so, for the most part, is the identification of those details rendered comparatively easy by the nature of the country and its physical characteristics. With the exception of the coast-line the topography of Makran to-day is the topography of Makran in Alexandrian days. This is very different indeed from the uncertain character of the Indus valley mediæval geography. There the extraordinary hydrographical changes that have taken place; the shifting of the great river itself from east to west, dependent on certain recognized natural laws; the drying up and total disappearance of ancient channels and river-beds; the formation of a delta, and the ever-varying alterations in the coast-line (due greatly to monsoon influences), leave large tracts almost unrecognizable as described in mediæval literature. Makran is, for the most part, a country of hills. Its valleys are narrow and sharply defined; its mountains only passable at certain well-known points, which must have been as definite before the Christian era as they are to-day; and it is consequently comparatively easy to follow up a clue to any main route passing through that country.

Makran is, in short, a country full of long narrow valleys running east and west, the longest and most important being the valley of Kej. The main drainage of the country reaches the sea by a series of main channels running south, which, inasmuch as they are driven almost at right angles across the general run of the watersheds, necessarily pass through a series of gorges of most magnificent proportions, which are far more impressive as spectacles than they are convenient for practical road-making. Thus Makran is very much easier to traverse from east to west than it is from north to south.

I have, perhaps, said enough to indicate that the old highways through Makran, however much they may have assisted trade and traffic between East and West, could only have been confined to very narrow limits indeed. It is, in fact, almost a one-road country. Given the key, then, to open the gates of such channels of communication as exist, there is no difficulty in following them up, and the identification of successive stages becomes merely a matter of local search. We know where the old Arab cities must have been, and we have but to look about to find their ruins. The best key, perhaps, to this mediæval system is to be found in a map given by the Baghdad traveller, Ibn Haukal, who wrote his account of Makran early in the tenth century, and though this map leaves much to be desired in clearness and accuracy, it is quite sufficient to give us the clue we require at first starting. In the written geographical accounts of the country, we labour under the disadvantage of possessing no comparative standard of distance. The Arab of mediæval days described the distance to be traversed between one point and another much as the Bedou describes it now. It is so many days' journey. Occasionally, indeed, we find a compiler of more than usual precision modifying his description of a stage as a long day's journey, or a short one. But such instances are rare, and a day's journey appears to be literally just so much as could conveniently be included in a day's work, with due regard to the character of the route traversed. Across an open desert a day's journey may be as much as 80 miles. Between the cities of a well-populated district it may be much less. Taking an average from all known distances, it is between 40 and 50 miles. Nor is it always explained whether the day's journey is by land or sea, the unit "a day's journey" being the distance traversed independent of the means of transit.

In Ibn Haukal's map, although we have very little indication of comparative distance, we have a rough idea of bearings, and the invaluable datum of a fixed starting-point that can be identified beyond doubt. The great Arab port on the Makran coast, sometimes even called the capital of Makran, was Tiz; and Tiz is a well-known coast village to this day. About 100 miles west of the port of Gwadur there is a convenient and sheltered harbour for coast shipping, and on the shores of it there was a telegraph station of the Persian Gulf line called Charbar. The telegraph station occupied the extremity of the eastern horn of the bay, and was separated inland by some few miles of sandy waste from a low band of coarse conglomerate hills, which conceal amongst them a narrow valley, containing all that is left of the ancient port of Tiz. If you take a boat from Charbar point, and, coasting up the bay, land at the mouth of this valley, you will first of all be confronted by a picturesque little Persian fort perched on the rocks on either hand, and absolutely blocking the entrance to the valley. This fort was built, or at least renewed, in the days of General Sir F. Goldsmid's Seistan mission, to emphasize the fact that the Persian Government claimed that valley for its own. About a mile above the fort there exists a squalid little fishing village, the inhabitants of which spend their spare moments (and they have many of them) in making those palm mats which enter so largely into the house architecture of the coast villages, as they sit beneath the shade of one or two remarkably fine "banian" trees. The valley is narrow and close, and the ruins of Tiz, extending on both sides the village, are packed close together in enormous heaps of debris, so covered with broken pottery as to suggest the idea that the inhabitants of old Tiz must have once devoted themselves entirely to the production of ceramic art ware. Every heavy shower of rain washes out fragments of new curiosities in glass and china. Here may be found large quantities of an antique form of glass, the secret of the manufacture of which has (according to Venetian experts) long passed away, only to be lately rediscovered. It takes the shape of bangles chiefly, and in this form may be dug up in almost any of the recognized sites of ancient coast towns along the Makran and Persian coasts. It is apparently of Egyptian origin, and was brought to the coast in Arab ships. Here also is to be found much of a special class of pottery, of very fine texture, and usually finished with a light sage-green glaze, which appears to me to be peculiarly Arabic, but of which I have yet to learn the full history. It is well known in Afghanistan, where it is said to possess the property of detecting poison by cracking under it, but even there it is no modern importation. This is the celadon to which reference has already been made. The rocky cliffs on either side the valley are honey-combed with Mahomedan tombs, and the face of every flat-spaced eminence is scarred with them. A hundred generations of Moslems are buried there. The rocky declivities which hedge in this remarkable site may give some clue to the yet more ancient name of Talara which this place once bore. Talar in Baluchi bears the signification of a rocky band of cliffs or hills.

The obvious reason why the port of Tiz was chosen for the point of debarkation for India is that, in addition to the general convenience of the harbour, the monsoon winds do not affect the coast so far west. At seasons when the Indus delta and the port of Debal were rendered unapproachable, Tiz was an easy port to gain. There must have been a considerable local trade, too, between the coast and the highly cultivated, if restricted, valleys of Northern Makran, and it is more than probable that Tiz was the port for the commerce of Seistan in its most palmy days.

From Tiz to Kiz (or Kej, which is reckoned as the first big city on the road to India in mediæval geography) was, according to Istakhri and Idrisi, a five-days' journey. Kiz is doubtless synonymous with Kej, but the long straight valley of that name which leads eastwards towards India has no town now which exactly corresponds to the name of the valley. The distance between Tiz and the Kej district is from 160 to 170 miles. No actual ruined site can be pointed out as yet marking the position of Kiz, or (as Idrisi writes it) Kirusi, but it must have been in the close neighbourhood of Kalatak, where, indeed, there is ample room for further close investigation amongst surrounding ruins. About the city, we may note from Idrisi that it was nearly as large as Multan, and was the largest city in Makran. "Palm trees are plentiful, and there is a large trade," says our author, who adds that it is two long days' journey west of the city of Firabuz. From all the varied forms which Arab geographical names can assume owing to omission of diacritical marks in writing, this place, Firabuz, has perhaps suffered most. The most correct reading of it would probably be Kanazbun, and this is the form adopted by Elliott, who conjectures that Kanazbun was situated near the modern Panjgur. From Kej to Panjgur is not less than 110 miles, a very long two-days' journey. Yet Istakhri supports Idrisi (if, indeed, he is not the original author of the statement) that it is two days' journey from Kiz to Kanazbun. This would lead one to place Kanazbun elsewhere than in the Panjgur district, more especially as that district lies well to the north of the direct road to India, were it not for local evidence that the fertile and flourishing Panjgur valley must certainly be included somehow in the mediæval geographical system, and that the conditions of khafila traffic in mediæval times were such as to preclude the possibility of the more direct route being utilized. To explain this fully would demand a full explanation also of the physical geography of Eastern Makran. I have no doubt whatever that Sir H. Elliott is right in his conjecture, and that amongst the many relics of ancient civilization which are to be found in Panjgur is the site of Kanazbun. Kanazbun was in existence long before the Arab invasion of Sind. The modern fort of Kudabandan probably represents the site of that more ancient fort which was built by the usurper Chach of Sind, when he marched through Makran to fix its further boundaries about the beginning of the Mahomedan era. Kanazbun was a very large city indeed. "It is a town," says Idrisi, "of which the inhabitants are rich. They carry on a great trade. They are men of their word, enemies of fraud, and they are generous and hospitable." Panjgur, I may add, is a delightfully green spot amongst many other green spots in Makran. It is not long ago that we had a small force cantoned there to preserve law and order in that lawless land. There appeared to be but one verdict on the part of the officers who lived there, and that verdict was all in its favour. In this particular, Panjgur is probably unique amongst frontier outposts.