To avoid the Sikh territories of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the Punjab, the Amir and his Hindustanis marched from Tonk across the Thar desert into Sind and then across Baluchistan – a journey of about six hundred miles through some of the harshest terrain in the world, undertaken at the height of summer. Although both these last two regions were ruled by Muslim chiefs, neither offered any support. The jihadis then crossed over the Bolan Pass into Afghanistan. According to the hagiographies, they were welcomed in Kabul with open arms. However, the evidence suggests that they were asked to move on, for when the band of holy warriors finally emerged from the Khyber on to the Vale of Peshawar in November 1826, its numbers were greatly reduced. One text put them at no more than forty.
But at this point Amir Syed Ahmad’s luck turned. The Yusufzai and the other Pathan tribes in and around Peshawar were smarting from a defeat recently suffered at the hands of a Sikh punitive column. In consequence, the Amir and his Hindustanis were warmly received as potential allies against the Sikhs. Syed Ahmad was, after all, a descendant of the Prophet and a Hajji, and he had made it known that he had been charged by God to liberate the trans-Indus lands from the yoke of the infidel oppressor. The elders of a number of Yusufzai clans and sub-tribes gathered for a loya jirga and concluded this inter-tribal assembly by offering the Hindustanis their hospitality and their armed support.
The Hindustanis settled initially at Nowshera, twenty miles east of Peshawar, but soon afterwards their leader was offered a permanent home in the Mahabun massif, the great mountain promontory that bulges out southwards from the mountains of Buner. It was a secure fastness into which the Sikh columns had never penetrated. Here Syed Ahmad found himself among friends and admirers, for not only was this the tribal homeland of his former patron the Pindari freebooter turned nawab, Amir Khan of Tonk, but also the home of a hero with ambitions not so very different from his own. Generations earlier a Saiyyed saint named Pir Baba had established himself in these mountains and had been granted a patch of land in perpetuity at Sittana, on the eastern slopes overlooking the Indus valley. In 1823 one of the pir’s descendants, SAYYED AKBAR SHAH, had led the massed lashkars or tribal armies of the Yusufzai against the Sikhs. The battle, fought out in the plains near Nowshera, and the subsequent sacking of Peshawar had cost hundreds of Pathan lives but established Sayyed Akbar Shah as a champion of the Faith. He now invited Amir Syed Ahmad to make camp on his land in the Mahabun Mountain. Although it was some time before Sittana became established as the notorious ‘Fanatic Camp’ of the British, the Mahabun Mountain was even then (in Surgeon Henry Bellew’s words) ‘a noted nursery for saints, a perfect hot-bed of fanatics’. Now it became the movement’s spiritual fortress. This was to be the Wahhabis’ dar ul-Islam from which the jihad on India was to be launched and from which the King of the West and Imam-Mahdi would proclaim his long-awaited arrival. Sayyed Akbar Shah became Syed Ahmad’s local patron, and in recognition of his importance was appointed the movement’s treasurer.
Once established on the mountain, the Amir and his two closest disciples drew up a formal summons calling on all Muslims to join the holy war. In the late autumn of 1826 this document, passed from hand to hand and copied many times over, was carried to all the frontier tribes and to every corner of the Punjab where Muslim communities were to be found. Its call to arms must have made heady reading:
The Sikh nation have long held sway in Lahore and other places. Thousands of Muhammadans have they unjustly killed, and on thousands they have heaped disgrace. No longer do they allow the Call to Prayer from the mosques, and the killing of cows they have entirely prohibited. When at last their insulting tyranny could no more be endured, Hazrat [Honoured] Sayyid Ahmad (may his fortunes and blessings ever abide!), having for his single object the protection of the Faith, took with him a few Musulmans [Muslims], and, going in the direction of Cabul and Peshawar, succeeded in rousing Muhammadans from their slumber of indifference, and nerving their courage for action. Praise be to God, some thousands of believers came ready at his call to tread the path of God’s service; and on the 20th Zamadi-ul-Sani, 1242 AH [21 December 1826], the Jihad against the Infidel Sikhs begins.
Again the elders of the Pathan tribes who had first rallied to his standard met in grand council, this time joined by others who had previously held back. Amir Syed Ahmad was now formally chosen as the movement’s imam. In Arabia, the title signified religious leadership and little else, but in Hindustan it carried significantly more weight, due to the influence of Shia teaching which acknowledged the imam as a supreme religious authority whose judgements were considered infallible. But there were also other reasons for assuming the title: under the rules of Hanafi jurisprudence jihad could only proceed by order of an imam; and it was a further qualification required of the Imam-Mahdi. As Syed Ahmad himself acknowledged in a letter to a friend written at this time: ‘It was accordingly decided by all those present – faithful followers, Sayyids, learned doctors of law, nobles and generality of Muslims – that the successful establishment of jihad and the dispelling of belief and disorder could not be achieved without the election of an Imam.’
Syed Ahmad was also proclaimed Amir ul-Momineen, Commander of the Faithful. This echoed the titles of the early caliphs and amounted to a public declaration of his ambition to take the war of religious liberation a lot further than the Vale of Peshawar. Amir ul-Momineen Imam Syed Ahmad was now presented to the entire Muslim community on the Indian frontier as their long-awaited saviour.
The holy war began in earnest in the spring of 1827 with a massed attack on a Sikh column sent out from Peshawar. It was a disaster for the jihadis. According to Dr Henry Bellew’s informants, the Sikhs held their ground and counter-attacked: ‘In the first onset the Sayad’s undisciplined rabble were panic struck and were easily dispersed with great loss. The Sayad himself escaped with only a few attendants.’ All but their most loyal tribal allies deserted them and the Hindustanis were forced to flee to the safety of the Mahabun Mountain. Despite this near-annihilation, Syed Ahmad held to the hard line that characterised his vision of Islam, as demonstrated by his response when one of his most influential local allies, Khadi Khan of Hund, switched sides after suffering heavy losses among his tribesmen. To the Amir ul-Momineen Imam this was an act of apostasy. He immediately rallied his remaining friends and marched against Hund. After an untidy mêlée which neither side could claim as a victory, a much-loved Sufi hermit, revered on all sides as a saint, stepped in to act as an intermediary. This was a young man of humble origins named ABDUL GHAFFUR, known then as ‘Saidu Baba’ but later to achieve great eminence among the Pathans as the Akhund of Swat. Abdul Ghaffur duly interceded and persuaded Khadi Khan of Hund to come into the Hindustani camp under flag of truce, whereupon he was separated from his companions and had his throat cut – an act of treachery justified by Syed Ahmad on the grounds that under sharia the crime of apostasy was only punishable by death.
Because of his role in the affair, Abdul Ghaffur was driven from his hermitage into exile. Already alienated by the Amir’s attempts to impose the Wahhabi version of the law upon them, a number of villages in the plains now publicly expressed their disquiet. This, too, was interpreted as apostasy – the worst of all sins in the Wahhabi book – and orders went out for the twin villages of Hoti and Mardan to be looted and fired as an example to other waverers. A decade later, when Hoti Mardan was chosen as the base for the new border force to be known as the Guides, this outrage was still remembered. It helps to explain why the irregulars who joined the Guides Cavalry and Infantry in later years regarded the Hindustanis in the hills to the north as their inveterate enemies.