Harking Back: How Lahore changed forever 1,000 years ago

One thousand years ago foreign invaders approached Lahore with the intention of plundering and killing all its inhabitants. Their eyes were on 200,000 slaves and everything of value like gold, silver and even pots and pans. The collapse of the Punjab was to be final.

The rulers of Lahore were the Rajput Hindu Shahi, whose famous Raja Jayapala had 20 years earlier committed ‘Johar’, a Rajput ritual of self-immolation, outside Lahore’s Mori Gate, which then was the south-western corner of the mud-walled city and on the River Ravi flowing outside. He poured ‘ghee’ on himself and set himself alight, calling on the gods of the Ravi to one day avenge the plunder of his land and people. At that time the Turk-Afghan invader Mahmud of Ghazni had won the Battle of Peshawar and put an end to Hindu domination west of the Indus.

As this Turk-Afghan conqueror continued, one sees the honourable Rajput rulers of the land started to battle the invaders at every point. After the fall of Bhatia, the ruler Raja Baji Rai was surrounded on the grassy patches of the Indus, and instead of surrendering the ruler plunged his dagger in his heart, shouting on the gods of the rivers to avenge the cruel invaders.

So on the road from Taxila to Lahore was a series of battles with the Hindu Shahi rulers of Lahore, at every stage fighting valiantly, suffering huge losses. Town after town the forces of Mahmud started surrounding them, killing everyone in sight and taking away all the gold, jewels and healthy human being for selling as slaves in the Middle East and Central Asian markets. By then he had started off smashing idols as a display of his Islamic credence.

As each new conquest yielded a lot of wealth and slaves, according to ‘Tarikh-e-Farishta’ as well as ‘Utbi’s ‘Tarikh-e-Yamini’, each new battle brought more and more wealth.

Farishta says: “It is apparent that Mahmud grew more and hungrier for more”. To justify this greed his smashing of idols was to show his urge to spread Islam.

The natural death of Raja Anandapala led to Raja Trilochanpal battling it out. His son Bhimpala fought a battle at Margala Pass but had to flee towards Kashmir. By this time the Raja withdrew to his capital Lahore. The final battle was now set up. According to an estimate given in ‘Tarikh-e-Farishta’: “In the battle for Thanesar alone over 200,000 slaves were sent to Ghazni for sale. The entire Punjab was being emptied of its gold, silver and treasures and pots and pans and, obviously, slaves. Never before had more treasures ever been collected.”

Given this greed for wealth, which just seemed to grow with every conquest, the major prize of Lahore awaited. The 25-year period of conquests and the smashing of idols and defeat of the Hindushahi armies under four different rajas of Lahore had depressed the entire population.

Al-Biruni was to write about this dismay with the remark: “The Hindu Shahiya dynasty is now extinct. There is no trace that they ever existed. But one must say that they never slackened in their desire to do what was good and right. They were men to noble sentiment and bearing”.

Here a bit about the people of Punjab. Geographically part of the Indian sub-continent, it bore the brunt of every invasion from the west. With the coming of the nomads from Central Asia it was repeatedly repopulated. The vast majority of invaders settled in Punjab. Hence ethnologically it increasingly became more allied with Central Asia. With the coming of the Muslims this new restocked Punjab, and Lahore as its capital, tended to further separate itself from Brahmin-dominated Hinduism.

The collapse of Buddhism, and then the defeat of the Hindu Shahi, painted a completely different population structure. Once the Tartars and Turks tended towards Islam, they headed as eastwards as ‘janissaries’. Even the bravery of the Ghakkars could not stop, who decided it was better to join the invaders.

In Lahore we see Mahmud try to show his Islamic strength. He knocked every wall that stood, killing every soul in sight except those who could be sold as slaves. The collapse of Lahore saw the end of the Hindu Shahi rule. The entire wealth of the city was removed, “right down to the last nail” as Al-Biruni was to write. His slave Ayaz and three other generals were left behind with a small army.

Ayaz was assigned the task of rebuilding the Lahore Fort and the city walls. Muslim rule of Lahore had started, and 1,000 years of this rule was disturbed only by Sikh and British rule, which makes up about 140 years. So Muslim majority domination of Lahore in the year 2022 could be said to be 1,000 years in terms of population, but 860 years in terms of rulers. These figures could be faulted in terms of totals, but in 1022 the city was being rebuilt and a new Lahore was to emerge, only to be decimated time and again by Muslims themselves.

How does one see the city now? If we look at the Walled City of Lahore, it might alarm many who never go there that in the year 2022 the Afghan population in terms of ethnicity make up about 65 per cent of the total. This is the result of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the continued American intervention, which gave rise to religious extremism. These traits grow inside the walled city.

There are some glaring signs of this. For example you will find more Afghani ‘tandoors’ than old Lahori ‘tandoors’ there. In the shops we see a new set of owners, all of them Afghans. Among the traders who have virtually destroyed old Lahore, the workers are almost all Afghans.

One can argue that this is a historic process as the influence from the western mountains dominate life in Lahore. Today the ‘karahi’ culture grows and old Lahori food of the finest quality is difficult to find. But then cultural invasions take crude forms. Take the ‘Lal Khoo’ where Guru Arjan the fifth Sikh guru was imprisoned. That famous tree has been taken over by an Afghan ‘maulvi’ and converted into an Islamic shrine that merely collects funds for business under the guise of it being for a mosque.

One can go on and on about how our very way of life has been damaged beyond belief. The very change of culture and the religiosity that it brings halts all challenges. No one has the guts to observe the ‘Johar’ of our heroic Raja Jayapala, or the murder of the Georgian slave by his military commanders who buried him far from the city walls. What can one say except: “It is time to rethink our culture and religiosity”, but let scholars do it, not priests.