Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/102

JADOONS. consists usually of a white turban, vest, and trousers, with a blue loongee, or scarf, with borders and ends of crimson silk and gold thread. The figures in the Photograph are not armed, but all carry arms, and the sword, with a broad shield, is, perhaps, the favourite weapon, though a proportion of the tribe are armed with the long matchlock of the mountain frontier.

During the possession of Peshawur by the Sikhs, the valley was the scene of frequent contention between them and the local Mahomedan tribes. When the Sikhs asserted and maintained their ascendancy in the Punjab, and on the decline and destruction of the Mahomedan empire of Delhi, became independent, they subjected the Mahomedans who remained in the Punjab to many humiliations. They were not permitted to use the Azan, or call to prayer, from their mosques, to walk in ceremonial processions, or to kill cows or bullocks for beef In short, they were treated like a conquered people, and with much fanatical severity during the whole period of the existence of the Sikh Government. Thus a spirit of national enmity was established, which, under the fanatical precepts on both sides, yielded bitter and bloody fruits for a long series of years. In 1824, Syud Ahmed, the most persistent, methodical, and able fanatical leader that the Mahomedan faith has ever produced in India, visited the Peshawur valley, and preached a "jehad," or holy war, against the Sikhs and all other infidels, among its ignorant, turbulent, and excitable population. The history of Syud Ahmed is strange and wild. Originally a soldier in the service of a native Indian prince, who was a notorious freebooter, he became affected by religious mania, and afterwards a pupil of a celebrated Mahomedan teacher at Delhi. Thence he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, as enjoined to all faithful Mahomedans, and while in Arabia became acquainted with the tenets of the Wahabees, or disciples of Abdool Wahab, whose profession was social reform of Mahomedanism, and check of all irregularities and vices. The Wahabees may, in some respects, be called the Puritans of Mahomedanism. Syud Ahmed, however, determined upon a more extended and ambitious scope of proceeding. India to him was peopled by idolatrous Hindoos, and governed by "Infidel" Christians, if possible, more hateful, who should be exterminated by a jehad, or holy war. On his return to India, he began to preach his mission; but he found few active converts until he reached the Punjab, where the depressed condition of the Mahomedan population incited a fierce ardour for their deliverance. The frontier tribes believed in his assertion of a divine revelation and mission, and the Syud's journey through their territories and into Afghanistan had the effect of leaguing them together in the desire for a religious crusade into India, and the re-establishment of the temporal power of Islamism. In 1826, the holy war began by an attack upon the Sikh possessions and garrisons all along the frontier; villages were burned, and their Hindoo inhabitants pitilessly massacred. But the retaliation