Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/253

 КНЕ 245 July with three Companies of Infantry, reached the rebels' position at mid- night, surprised and stormed their camp with trifling loss. The band fled, and the sepoys dispersed to collect the plunder. Unfortunately there was throughout this pargana, and every part of the Bangar, a confederacy for robbery which embraced all the able-bodied inhabitants of each village. This militia of banditti was prepared to help any member assailed, and to turn out on hearing a shot fired. It was called the gohár. The contin- gents from several villages rapidly assembled on hearing the firing; they were accompanied by the Pási bowmen, and assailed the dispersed sepoys from every side, firing upon them from behind the trees. They began to retire in disorder. The assailants were joined by a new band from every village they passed; all through the night they pressed upon the troops, and would have annihilated them had not a body of the special police of the Thuggee and Dacoitee Department, which was engaged on duty in the neighbourhood, heard the firing and came to the rescue. The assailants then drew off having inflicted a loss of fifteer killed and wounded, A few months afterwards the owner of this very village Ahrori, who bad bravely defended Bhagwant Singh on this occasion, invited him to his house, treacherously cut off his head, and sent it to the Governor Farid-ud- din with an apology, for having by mistake attacked Captain Hollings' detachment. The widow of Bhagwant Singh-he left no children-now lives in a little hut under the ruins of her husband's fort. She has been decreed by the English courts a right to the adjoining hamlet of Atwa, with about 100 acres of cultivated land; and this is the humble ending of the lofty line which asserts for itself a royal genealogy above 100 generations old; and that its first famous ancestor entertained the five Pándus at the dawn of oriental civilization, nearly 2,000 years before our era. The Sayyads—The great Sayyad family must now be treated of, although: in point of time their connexion with the pargana of Barwar and this dis- trict commenced long before the events last narrated. Alím-ud-dín, the eleventh son of Sayyad Kamál of Kaithal in Saharan- pur, is alleged to have settled in Kanauj in the reign of Alá-ud-din Ghori, More probably in the reign of Firoz Shah Khilji, or Muhammad Tughlaq. Shah, many of whose achievements have been popularly ascribed to Ala- ud-dín Ghori. See Khairigarh article. At any rate as only eight generations elapsed between Alím-ud-din and his descendant Abdul Ghaffár, a con- temporary of Humáyun's (1531-1554 A.D.), it is clear that the former could not have lived in Alå-ud-din Ghori's time, 1242-1246 A.D. We are told also that Alá-ud-din conquered Kanaaj. It is probable, therefore, that he accompanied the tyrant, Muhammad Tughlaq when he sacked Kanauj, 1342 A.D., a date with which the family-tree would correspond. For eight generations the Sayyad family held the post of qázi in Kanauj, and at the date of the battle of Bilgrám, near Kanauj, 1540A.D. Abdul Ghaffar was qazi. He had a younger brother Abdul Muqtad. After Humáyún was expelled by Sher Shah, and took refuge with Shai. Tuhmásp of Persia it is alleged that the latter called on Sher Shah to 32