Sublime

These were the jihadis of the underground mujahedin network, whose brotherhood, bound to fight the jihad by oaths of allegiance (or bayat) to a leader (or amir), now cast off their veil of secrecy and began to mass in Delhi, ready for the holy war they had so long dreamt of.*43 Before long the jihadis would become a significant force in the Delhi U

Dara was taken to Delhi, placed on a filthy elephant and to his humiliation, was paraded through the streets in chains. Aurangzeb then called a council which judged Dara to be a political threat and also guilty of apostasy. He was executed by four of Aurangzeb’s henchmen on the 30th August 1659. His severed head was taken to Aurangzeb for identific

Aurangzeb reneged on his promise and secretly had Murad arrested. After three years in prison the Prince was accused of murder and sentenced to death. He died at the age of 37, on the 14th December 1661.

Throughout the autumn and the early part of the winter of 1857, while the battle for Lucknow still raged in the eastern half of Hindustan, much of the effort of British administration in Delhi went into preparing for the historic trial of the man who was now clearly going to be the last of the Mughals.

At this point in the Uprising, Zafar seems to have succeeded in silencing the jihadis. But eight weeks later, when large numbers of “Wahhabi” mujahedin had collected in the city from all over northern India, it would prove far more difficult.

Just before 3 p.m., the judges retired to consider their verdict. A few minutes later, they returned to unanimously declare Zafar guilty “of all and every part of the charges preferred against him.” Normally, noted the president, such a verdict would have resulted “in the penalty of death as a traitor and a felon.” Thanks, however, to Hodson’s guar

One hundred and forty years later, it was out of Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan and Afghanistan that the Taliban emerged to create the most retrograde Islamic regime in modern history, a regime that in turn provided the crucible from which emerged al-Qaeda, and the most radical and powerful fundamentalist Islamic counter-attack the modern West has y

For the British after 1857, the Indian Muslim became an almost subhuman creature, to be classified in unembarrassedly racist imperial literature alongside such other despised and subject specimens, such as Irish Catholics or “the Wandering Jew.”