Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/103

JADOONS. was as fierce as the onslaught. The mountain fanatics were driven back into their fastnesses, and pursued without mercy. This war of bitter retaliations continued until 1829, when the mountaineers, in unprecedented force, defeated the Sikh army, and Peshawur would have fallen but for timely reinforcement of the garrison by Runjeet Singh. By the close of 1830, however, Peshawur had fallen, and the fanatical power of the new prophet had reached its climax, for he had united all the tribes of the north-west frontier and their chiefs in a common cause. Had Runjeet Singh proved physically or morally weak, and allowed the Punjab to have been overrun, nothing could have stayed the march of the fanatics against the British power; but he proved equal to the great crisis. While powerful in the field, he contrived to sow dissension in the fanatic ranks; some of the tribes deserted Syud Ahmed en masse, and but few remained except his Hindostanee followers. Urged by his religious zeal, Syud Ahmed now attempted reform of some of the social customs of the mountain tribes in regard to marriage and concubinage, which completed the disaffection. He himself was attacked, and narrowly escaped with his life, and his followers were destroyed; finally, in 1831, he was surprised by a portion of the Sikh army and slain. Thus commenced the holy war against infidels, which, during successive years, never ceased to exist, sometimes assuming formidable dimensions, and again dwindling to occasional forays by mountain freebooters; but always with the same aim, the extension of Mahomedan power, and the destruction of its enemies. During the period which intervened between the outbreak of the frontier war and the British conquest of the Punjab, the fanatics had set up a king at Swat, in the mountains at the extreme north-west frontier, and had estabhshed then head-quarters at Sittana, where all Mahomedan fanatics and malcontents from the British provinces were received and maintained, chiefly by subscriptions which poured in from the disaffected Mahomedans of British India; and the eventual result was a war, the events of which will be sketched in another article.