Disputes of every sort were brought to him for settlement. Troubles of all kinds were brought to him to be made right. Hundreds of miracles were performed by him every day. The sick were made well in an instant.
A man would come, lamenting that his horse was lost, and would find it the next moment at the door of the mosque. A carpenter was bewailing that a beam was three feet too short for the needed purpose, and in a twinkling it grew to exactly the length required.
A visitor in the city wished to return speedily to his home in Constantinople, thousands of miles away. He was bade to close his eyes, and the next moment opened them in his home.
To tell the people of Swat that these things were not so, would have been equivalent to telling them that light was darkness. No wonder, then, that the Akhoond was a power in the land, and that Ameer after Ameer sought his assistance.
Shere Ali was the last. When he began his last struggle with the British, he begged the Akhoond to lead his armies as of old. But death stepped in, and the Akhoond passed into history.
Yet still his virtues abide. The mosque in which he taught is the holiest place in all Swat, and miracles are daily wrought there. The Akhoond’s son does not succeed him as a teacher, but he inherits the worldly possessions of the Akhoond, and these are enough to make him the richest man in all Swat.
[ [This Story began in No.44.]