Timur Khan on invisible Indian writers in 18th century colonial travel writing
Students of British rule in South Asia are familiar with the style of colonial travel writing. Often, it is antiquated, tedious and supremely confident in British superiority. Take for instance this endless sentence by Lieutenant William Barr, in his account of the first Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842):
“I was much interested in their appearance and proceedings, as they formed a fair sample of the much-vaunted Affghan cavalry; and although, no doubt, excellent in their own country, and in contests with the hordes, they have hitherto encountered, a charge, on fair ground, from one regiment of European dragoons, would either annihilate them, or literally bear them off the field.”1
The study of pre- and early colonial Afghanistan, as well as adjoining parts of modern Pakistan, is deeply tied to a vast corpus of such British-authored texts. A range of books and articles have discussed how British geographers, commercial agents, ambassadors and soldiers wrote about and defined the region. In mapping and describing lands and peoples, these European voices profoundly shaped how we still think about Afghanistan and the wider area today.2
What is sometimes overlooked is the essential role of non-Europeans in assembling this body of knowledge. An impression that many colonial works want to offer is that the European observer describes societies precisely as they are, as more-or-less static, self-contained entities. On the ground, the reality was different. European knowledge production about north-west India and Afghanistan depended on an array of indigenous sources, all from dynamic societies and all with their own backgrounds and perspectives.
In fact, South Asia was home to a huge number of news-writers, spies, traders, officials and other travelers producing texts about lands and peoples. Especially as the power of the Mughal Empire waned, its successor states in the 18th century set about trying to gather written knowledge about their realms and subjects. For the rulers of these states, information-gathering and classification were part of legitimacy-building, and of good governance.3 The British East India Company’s state-building project incorporated this longstanding tradition of local knowledge production.
Indigenous-authored sources produced for British patrons, often including travelogues much like those written by Europeans, disturb the demarcation of ‘colonial’ and ‘native’ spheres. In this piece, I aim to highlight the difficulties and rewards of attempting to engage with two of these Indian voices directly.
Voiceless Indian sources in the colonial record
Many indigenous informants have gone wholly uncredited and unnamed, and are lost to history. Others are half-buried. In the 1888 volume Notes on Afghanistan and Part of Baluchistan we find an intriguing, but little-known example of Indian travel writers, only partly credited for their writing. The volume’s author and editor, Henry George Raverty, is frustratingly disorganized and opaque regarding his sources, mixing quotations from a variety of Persian texts.
In a section on the routes from Lahore to Kabul (in modern terms, from eastern Pakistan to eastern Afghanistan), Raverty’s main source appears to be the unimaginatively–named Sair ul-Bilad (Tour of the Country), a volume, completed around 1790-91 (1205 AH) by Mirza Mughal Beg on behalf of a Mr Wilford in Calcutta. Mirza Mughal Beg’s name suggests he was of Central Asian Turkic origin. Indeed in another work, Raverty most likely refers to him when he credits “a very intelligent native of India of foreign descent” as one of his sources. Mirza Beg’s work apparently offers few biographical details.4
Sair ul-Bilad’s primary purpose is to outline a vast array of routes around northern India, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan (today’s south-west Pakistan), only a fraction of which Raverty is interested in in Notes on Afghanistan. Moreover, in 1929 an editor of The Indian Antiquary pointed out that Raverty does not always translate well, and gives information not found in either of the Sair’s two manuscript copies.5 He does not name Mirza Mughal Beg once.
To complicate matters further, Raverty’s translations are peppered with his own asides, and other quotations from uncited sources. Indigenous authors are referred to simply as “the author” or “the writer,” often without even a manuscript name for further context. By contrast, his footnotes referring to individual British sources – including his own – readily offer names, titles, journals and page numbers.6 For all the colonial pretense of fastidiousness and completeness, such disregard for ‘native’ sources leads to absurd, amateurish gaps in proper citation and presentation of data. Indian knowledge is abridged, obfuscated, and combined to form a single English-language tome, presided over by a British translator and commentator.
One Indian author Raverty deigns to mention with some regularity is sayyid (i.e., one claiming descent from the Prophet of Islam) Ghulam Muhammad. Ghulam Muhammad traveled from India to the court of Timur Shah, the ruler of the Durrani empire based in Kabul, “on two or three occasions.” These trips were undertaken at the order of East India Company Governors-General Hastings and Cornwallis. His father appears to have made the same trip at least once in Company service, in 1782 (1196 AH), and was joined later by Ghulam Muhammad. The sayyid’s second journey took place in 1786 (1200-1201 AH).7
Raverty’s confused style can give the impression that his primary reference when discussing the Sair ul-Bilad is actually Ghulam Muhammad. At least one published study has made that assumption.8 In a recent article, I too mistakenly dated a quotation to 1786 which was most likely from Sair ul-Bilad to match the sayyid’s second journey to Kabul. However, in later sections of Notes on Afghanistan, Raverty is kind enough to clearly cite an entire section of Ghulam Muhammad’s work, and the difference in style with the Sair becomes clearer.
Disentangling these sources is worth the trouble. Both the Sair ul-Bilad and the sayyid’s accounts are invaluable sources on the politics, demographics, and geography of the 18th century in today’s north-western Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan. Beyond their informational value, the two sources also provide an insight into the nexus of travel literature and early ethnographic surveying, especially in the early colonial context.
Between travel literature and survey, indigenous and colonial
When discussing genre and style, we must be careful of Raverty’s translation. We have seen just how cavalier he was in identifying his sources, and we know his translations of Sair ul-Bilad are “not always accurate.”9 However, he did possess “rigorous grammatical precision” when it came to regional languages like Persian and Pashto, leading to palpable irritation at the spelling and other lexical errors committed by British mapmakers or administrators.10 While caution is needed, we can still venture some reflections on the style of the extracts.
“Six kuroh west of Akorah is the Kalaey of Sháh-báz Khán, a small village on the river’s bank. From Atak to this place the rule of the Khataks extends. They are subject and pay obedience to Tímúr Sháh […] Kalaey, in the Afghán language [i.e. Pashto – historically the term ‘Afghan,’ while complex, usually denoted people who are called Pashtunstoday], signifies a village with its lands; and, in the Turkí dialect, kalah, which must not be mistaken for it, means a village […] which, after having been ruined […] is again peopled […]”11
The above quotation nicely encapsulates the general tone of Mirza Mughal Beg’s work. It is precise, factual, and detached. Furthermore, it shows how different elements are brought together in the Sair ul-Bilad’s commentary. Mirza Beg offers more than a list of roads, cities and distances, he presents details of geography, politics, and language. In other places he estimates populations, discusses recent history and notes local landmarks.
When discussing the city of Peshawar (the subject of my research), he refers to the city’s bustling trade from both east and west. He even outlines the direction and revenue status of canals recently built by Timur Shah. At the town of Chamkani, just east of Peshawar, Mirza Beg notes the devotion of many people to a great Sufi of the town, Mian Muhammad Umar (whom he calls Mullah Muhammad-i Aziz). He also becomes slightly less aloof for a moment, saying:
“[Chamkani] looks a very pleasant and pretty place with the trees around it, as the traveller passes along.”12
Moments like these are rather rare, however. Unlike the typical early modern (or even modern) travel writer, Mirza Beg’s presence is barely felt at all. He does not appear to gawk at ‘exotic’ people, offer many opinions, or even write in first-person. While hardly the most engaging style, it can be rather refreshing after reading contemporary or 19th century travelogues, replete as they often are with sneering at the ‘natives.’
As an example: George Forster, traveling through the same regions in July 1783, has this to say of the people living near the Khyber Pass (a major mountain pass through the Hindu Kush, today between Afghanistan and Pakistan):
“This rude race of men have made so slow a progress in civilization that [they], like the storied Troglodites of old, dwell in caves […] Though professing the Mahometan religion, they are little more versed in it, than believing Mahomet to be their prophet […] and that the Persians, with the whole sect of Ali [i.e. Shiites], are a miscreant race of infidels.”13
Ghulam Muhammad does provide similar technical information on routes and distances, but his narrative is far more personal, written in first-person and clearly stating his own feelings and opinions. In that way, it resembles conventional, colorful travel literature of the era, especially in its condescension and contempt for others. In contrast to the above quotation from Mirza Mughal Beg, see the style of sayyid Ghulam Muhammad, when discussing the route he took from Dera Ismail Khan (today in north-central Pakistan) to Kabul:
“The people of the Dera’h of Ismá’íl Khán are very surly and morose, and they are also totally devoid of all shame or modesty; for the men and women all bathe together in a state of nudity. […] When I reached the town, I found, to my disappointment, that the season for proceeding to Kábul […] had passed […]”14
While the sayyid was on good terms with the Durrani Afghan elite, whose governors and notables received him well, he is less complementary of other Afghan-Pashtuns who live outside state control. On several occasions he notes that particular tribes are made up of “great [or “arrant”] thieves”; the mountain passes through which nomads travel between India and Afghanistan, he states, are peopled by “Afgháns […] who are great robbers.”15
Ghulam Muhammad levels more invectives at another mountain-dwelling people, this time to the north of Kabul around the modern province of Nuristan. These he refers to by widely used names at the time: “the Síá’h-Poshán [Persian, “black-clothed”] or Tor [Pashto, “black”] Káfirís.” As indicated by the term kafir (unbeliever), these people were a diverse population of non-Muslim polytheists. The sayyid describes the Siah-Posh with a travel writer’s sensationalist sensibility:
“The Síá’h-Poshán are in the habit of lying in ambush in these forests, and killing all Musalmáns who fall into their hands. It is a custom […] to allow a man who has killed as many as forty Musalmáns to fasten [forty] small bells around his waist […] The females of these people are red and white, and very handsome, but the males are plain and ill-looking.”16
Our author also notes the incessant fighting between Durrani troops, local Muslims, and the different polytheist communities, presaging later violence. In the mid-1890s these lands, known derisively as Kafiristan (land of the unbelievers) were invaded by the amir of Afghanistan, Abd al-Rahman. This episode of conquest and mass coerced conversion was capped by the amir renaming the region Nuristan, land of light, in 1896.17
For an Indian of Ghulam Muhammad’s status, many such groups in and around modern Afghanistan were seen as backward or barbaric. Forster’s derisive language towards the Khyberis would not have been wholly out of place. Indeed, the Briton’s views were probably informed partly by what Indians and other Afghans around him believed. Once the British conquered the region in 1849, similar prejudices became codified. By 1898, colonial officers like Winston Churchill could comfortably call the Pashtuns on India’s frontier: “the savages of the Stone Age”:
“Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence.”18
Accounts like Ghulam Muhammad’s confront us with the question of how local prejudices informed and coexisted with British ones in early colonial literature. They also raise the issue of how these early modern ethnographic accounts fit into non-European histories of empire and colonizing, such as the 19th century Afghan conquest of Nuristan.
In sum, both the Sair ul-Bilad and Ghulam Muhammad’s accounts are important parts of wider historical trends. They are early examples of the colonial knowledge network pushing into the Durrani lands, a dynamic normally associated with later history, especially the two Anglo-Afghan wars in the mid-to-late 19th century. They are emblematic of the interaction between Indian and British information networks, and the uneasy distinction between the colonial and the indigenous.
Mapping the Sair ul-Bilad from Lahore to Kabul
Given that the Sair ul-Bilad essentially forms a descriptive route map, it is worth mapping at least a section of it out. Unfortunately, large sections of the route are left out of Raverty’s translation. Although he acknowledges that the notes from Delhi westwards are interesting, he chooses to begin his translation at Burhan, not far from the Indus River. This, he argues, is where Afghanistan begins “according to fact, not theory.”19 However, he does at least provide the major waypoints as of Wazirabad, which lies some 110 kilometers northwest of Lahore.
Thankfully, the journey is fairly easy to map out. Each town or city is clearly mentioned, with distances and relative locations, taking a fairly conventional route largely along today’s Grand Trunk Road. There is also a great consistency in place names until the present day. The hundreds of kilometers, traversing the plains of Punjab, crossing great rivers like the Indus, and scaling the Khyber Pass, are quite easily traceable using Google Maps. With a bit of patience to adjust spellings and zoom in to find lesser-known towns, the Sair ul-Bilad remains relevant. Still, a number of towns, especially on the Afghan side, are harder to trace online. A later project, for better times, would be to fully map the Sair’s routes, to map Ghulam Muhammad’s route from Dera Ismail Khan to Kabul, and to follow these in person.
My map aims to showcase the main towns mentioned, and currently identifiable, on the Lahore-Kabul road, reclaiming part of the author’s Persianate literary background by using Persian labels, but combining these with English in recognition of his role in Company service (and, of course, for wider readability). Major sites I have further marked with illustrations, either of sites which would have been standing in the 1780s, or of roughly contemporary items which relate to some aspect of each place’s history. Some of these, like the Bala Hissar fortress of Kabul or the ancient Buddhist stupa at Mankiala (of which I drew a single column motif), are even referenced in the Sair itself.20
A final, personal reflection
Reading and re-reading Notes on Afghanistan was a deeply frustrating experience. In the process of writing this article, I had to change the scope and contours of my work to accommodate new uncertainties about just who Raverty was translating at any given point. I was also frustrated on behalf of the authors whose works were so carelessly chopped up and reassembled. I hope at some point to be able to consult the original manuscripts, still stored in the old imperial capital of London.
However, apart from their scholarly value, I found some personal value in these translations which made them worth the headache. When I first read Notes on Afghanistan, I found a reference to my family village, Gara Tajik, or simply Gara, which lies northwest of Peshawar city.
“Leaving the city of Pes’háwar and proceeding four kuroh to the north-west you reach Matharah Khel, and from thence go on another kuroh […] to Gárá or Gára’h, a village so called after a clan of the Khalíl Afgháns.”21
This quotation probably comes from the Sair ul-Bilad, but one cannot be completely sure based on Raverty’s volume. Nevertheless, the historical context given by the source clearly shows it was written around the 1780s. This makes it the oldest reference to Gara I have yet found, and a precious one. It shows me the longevity of that village name, and tells me something of its origins, something none of the British gazetteers and their revenue tables offer.
The accounts so haphazardly reproduced by Raverty can still offer people from Peshawar, Punjab or any number of places a detailed view of their homes from two and a half centuries ago. They also show that Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, now divided by international borders, were connected and traversable, and that their diverse people also had a great deal in common.
Mirza Mughal Beg and sayyid Ghulam Muhammad’s original writings deserve to be read in their original languages. More to the point, the authors themselves deserve more of a voice than Raverty gave them. Their place in the history of colonialism in South Asia is complicated and at times difficult to confront, but there is great value to be found in their footsteps.
References
1 William Barr, Journal of a March from Delhi to Peshawur, 2nd ed. Patiala: Director Language Department Punjab, 1970 (1844), 129-130
2 See some relatively recent studies: Charles W.J. Withers, “On Enlightenment’s margins: geography, imperialism and mapping in Central Asia, c. 1798 – c.1838.” Journal of Historical Geography, 39 (2013);
Martin J. Bayly, Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge, International Relations, and the Anglo-Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi (ed.), Mountstuart Elphinstone in South Asia: Pioneer of British Colonial Rule. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
3 A good discussion of this phenomenon can be found in: C.A. Bayly, Empire and information: Intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780-1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, see esp. pp. 33-36
4 Charles E.A.W. Oldham, “SAIR AL-BILAD,” in The Indian Antiquary: a Journal of Oriental Research, Vol. LVIII. Bombay: British India Press, 1929, p. 98.
5 ibid
6 H.G. Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan and Part of Baluchistan. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1888, see e.g. pp. 35-36, 38
7 ibid, pp. 36, 47, 504
8 Robert Nichols, Settling the Frontier: Land, Law and Society in the Peshawar Valley, 1500-1900, 2nd ed. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2017 (2001), see pp. 115-117 and p. 124, no. 34.
9 Oldham, “SAIR AL-BILAD,” p. 98
10 Nichols, Settling the Frontier, 124 no. 34
11 Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, p. 34
12 ibid, p. 35
13 George Forster, A Journey from Bengal to England, vol. II. London: R. Faulder & Son, 1808, pp. 65-66
14 Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, p. 505
15 ibid, pp. 43-44, 370, 379, 497
16 ibid, pp. 142-143
17 Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: a Cultural and Political History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, ch. 3 (eBook).
18 Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: an Episode of Frontier War. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1916 (1898), p. 23
19 Raverty, Notes on Afghanistan, p. 31
20 ibid, p. 36
21 ibid, pp. 120-121
References for map illustrations
Lahore: photo of the Mughal Badshahi Mosque
Wazirabad: photo of a sixteenth-century Sur-era postal station
Rohtas: photo of the Sur-era Rohtas Fort
Mankiala: photo of a column at the ancient Mankiala stupa
Hassan Abdal: photo of a Mughal-era tomb
Attock Fort: photo of a gate at the Mughal-era Attock Fort
Akora Khattak: photo of an eighteenth-century sword made at Peshawar
Peshawar: illustration of a mosque at Peshawar, c. 1825.
Jalalabad: illustration from the Mughal Akbarnama of execution by elephant; the Sair mentions that Timur Shah’s elephant stables are just west of Jalalabad; see p. 53 of Notes.
Kabul: photo of the Bala Hissar fortress, 1879
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