After Ambeyla the Hindustanis had been driven from refuge to refuge as pressure from their now implacable enemy, the Akhund of Swat, had forced one reluctant host after another to send them on their way. In 1868, as mentioned earlier, they had been reported on by that shadowy police officer J. H. Reily. That same winter Alfred Wilde, now a lieutenant-general, had led the Hazara Field Force into the Black Mountains, where the Hindustanis had found shelter, but could do little more than drive them from one mountain hideout to another.
In 1873 Abdullah Ali’s youngest brother in Patna, Muhammad Hasan, appealed to the Government of India for an official pardon that would allow the Hindustanis to return to their homes. His request was turned down, on the grounds that since the Fanatics’ support had withered away they would eventually be forced to give up. But the authorities, as so often before, were wrong. The Hindustanis clung on, kept alive by irregular and grudging handouts from the hill tribes, and still strong enough to play supporting roles in three further tribal uprisings into the Black Mountains in 1881, 1888 and 1891.
After the last of these had been suppressed Abdullah Ali appealed to SAYYED FIROZE SHAH, grandson of the Hindustani Fanatics’ first patron Sayyed Akbar Shah and now leader of the Sayyeds of Sittana, to be allowed to recross the Indus, together with his brother and his three sons. After much argument the elders of the local Amazai gave permission for the remnants of the Hindustanis to return to their old haunts on the eastern slopes of the Mahabun Mountain in the village of Tilwai, scarcely a stone’s throw from their original camp at Sittana. They now found themselves caught up in the ongoing power struggles between their patron Sayyed Firoze Shah and the male heirs of Abdul Ghaffur, late Akhund of Swat.
And yet when a British journalist from Lahore came to write about the North-West Frontier at this time, he noted that the Hindustanis were still widely admired among the tribes for their ‘fierce fanaticism’. Their colony was celebrated locally as the Kila Mujahidin (Fortress of the Holy Warriors), wherein they ‘devoted their time to drill, giving the words of command in Arabic, firing salutes with cannon made of leather, and blustering about the destruction of the infidel power of the British’. It was said that they were still awaiting the return of Syed Ahmad, their Hidden Imam.
It is unlikely that Abdullah Ali or any of his mujahedeen attended Amir Abdur Rahman’s theological conference held in Kabul in the spring of 1897. Nor is it likely that the attendees included a sixty-year-old Bunerwal named MULLAH SADULLAH, also known as the Mastun Mullah (Ecstasy Mullah), or the Sartor Fakir (Bare-headed Saint), but who became best known to the British as the ‘Mad Fakir’ or the ‘Mad Mullah’. After many years’ absence from Buner Mullah Sadullah reappeared quite suddenly in his homeland in the midsummer of 1897, proclaiming that he had been visited by a number of saints who included both the late Akhund of Swat and Syed Ahmad, and had been ordered by them to turn the British out of Swat and the Peshawar vale. God had granted the British an allotted term of sixty years as rulers in Peshawar, and that term was now over. Those who joined him in this jihad need have no fears, for the saints had also informed him that the bullets of the British would turn to water and the barrels of their guns would melt. Furthermore, he was reinforced by a heavenly host, massed but hidden from human sight on the summit of the nine-thousand-foot sacred peak of Ilam Ghar, which overlooks the Swat valley. As for supplies, the single pot of rice he had with him was quite sufficient to feed a multitude.
The Mad Fakir’s message spread like a bush-fire through the mountains of Swat and Buner. ‘As July advanced,’ wrote Churchill, ‘the bazaar at Malakand became full of tales of the Mad Fakir. A great day for Islam was at hand. A mighty man had arisen to lead them. The English would be swept away.’ To cap it all, Mullah Sadullah had with him a thirteen-year-old boy by the name of Shah Sikander (Alexander) who was the rightful heir to the throne of Delhi and would rule over India once it had been restored to a dar ul-Islam. The identity of this young pretender remains a mystery, but it will be remembered that in 1868 the fugitive Mughal prince Firoze Shah, cousin of the last emperor, had joined the Hindustanis briefly in the Mahabun Mountain before moving on by stages to Kabul, Bokhara and Constantinople. This Mughal Bonnie Prince Charlie died in lonely exile in Mecca in 1897, and his widow promptly applied for and was granted a pension by the Government of India. Officially Prince Firoze Shah died without an heir, but it is just conceivable that thirteen-year-old Shah Sikander’s father or mother was the fruit of a union contracted during the Mughal prince’s sojourn in the Hindustani camp back in 1868.
In mid-July 1897 Mullah Sadullah raised his green banner in the Swat valley and summoned the surrounding tribes to arms, much to the anger of the heirs of the late Akhund of Swat, who tried and failed to have him expelled. Little is known about Sadullah’s theological antecedents but he was supported by Sayyed Firoze Shah, head of the Sayyid clan, in pursuit of his bid to have himself proclaimed Padshah of the Swatis like his grandfather before him. The nickname of ‘bare-headed’ given to Sadullah disqualifies him as a Wahhabi, since the latters’ theology required the head to be covered at all times. But the Mad Fakir’s association with a pretender to the throne of Delhi does suggest links with the Hindustani Fanatics. That he had the support of a significant faction of the Hindustanis at Sittana is beyond question, even though their leader Abdullah Ali refused initially to join in Sadullah’s crusade. Many young mujahedeen from the Hindustani camp, easily identified by their distinctive black waistcoats and dark-blue robes, were spotted among the Fakir’s ranks. Their presence prompts the question whence Mullah Sadullah drew his inspiration if not from the legacy of jihad initiated by the first Hindustani Fanatic, Syed Ahmad.
As part of their policy of renewed intervention the British authorities had in 1895 bullied the Swatis into allowing two military forts to be built in their territory, ostensibly to guard the road linking Peshawar with Dir to the north. One outpost stood at a crossing-point of the Swat River at Chakdara, and the second a few miles to the south at Malakand, on the crest of the mountain range overlooking the Vale of Peshawar. The presence of these two forts, manned not by local tribal levies but by regular Indian Army troops with British officers, was regarded by the Swatis as a direct encroachment on their much-vaunted independence – and, no less seriously, as a desecration of Swat as a dar ul-Islam. Consequently, when the Mad Fakir issued his summons thousands of Swatis ignored the advice of their khans and flocked to join his banner. On 21 July 1897 Mullah Sadullah prophesied that by the rising of the new moon in ten days’ time the British would have been driven out of Malakand. Five days later two lashkars (tribal armies) marched on the forts of Chakdara and Malakand.
At Malakand the last chukka of an afternoon of polo was being played when the grooms attending the officers’ ponies were warned by watching Pathans to get off home as there was to be a fight. Shortly afterwards Lieutenant Harry Rattray was riding back from the polo ground to Chakdara, where the regiment raised by his father was on garrison duty, when he met two cavalry troopers galloping the other way. They told him that a tribal army was advancing on Malakand down the left bank of the Swat River with banners flying and drums beating. Rattray put spurs to his horse and rode right through them to reach his post at Chakdara, from where he sent a telegram to Major Harold Deane, the political agent at Malakand, warning him of the danger.