Abdur Rahman's The last two dynasties of the Sahis is considered to be the best book over Shahis. But, I am not getting any confidence over this. Compare these two sets.
I am interested to know how knowledged this gentleman is, on Sanskrit original of Rajatarangini and other Hindu/Buddhist books on the topic.
One should be realistic enough. Pakistan has fought three wars with India and no Indian will have access to Chhota Lahore or Hund. All they can quote is from some other reference or from historic memory.
How is this a benchmark when whole industry is destroyed and the people fled across Khyber? This is slowly becoming more of a study of Mahmud of Ghazni and Arabs in Sistan and the study of Shahis in that context.
Another royal mess up. Are Hepathlites Huns or Turks? Or are both same?
Main lesson: The Muslim chronicles didn't have an effing clue as to who is who and who is where. The less we rely them to glean information, the better. Use them only for cold facts.
Seriously? How many ethnographies do we have that say Rajputs(not as a whole but a tribe) fled the Gokturks in Central Asia? And how were they accepted as Kshatriyas? Or is this pure Pakology in it's full glory?
May be A=B. Hence, proved that A=B🤦♀️
Mayurasarma's son was Kangavarma🥱 And looks like our dearie, even after mentioning Chach of Sind didn't notice the similarities of the story between Chach and Kallar.
Ah!! The neutrality of a historian is for all to see.
Just notice the bigotry. The language for Uthman is not seen for Ali because Shias trace his origin to him.
The outrage and ululation of an invader defeating a native!! Will have to wait and see what he writes over Bhimapala's Rawalpindi stand against the invading Mahmud of Ghazni.
And when the invader breaks the pact, let's just brush it away.
And here ends the historic value of the book. Abu Ubaidah was under the command of his brother Yazid who invaded Kabul. The army was destroyed, Yazid was killed and Abu captured. The relief army was completely routed and the prisoners had to be ransomed off.
Today I learnt that the first Caliph was succeeded by Caliph II as Caliph of Islam.
AFAIK there is no proof that Abdurrahman Ibn al-Ash’ath was surrendered by the Zunbil. Either I need to check the originals or present my accolades for this fertile imagination.
Again, we side the invaders for their subterfuge 😎
Is the Shahi clever or are the Arabs stupid? What do you call a kingdom which falls to the same trick again and again and never learns?
So, Phrom Kesar(739-745) fought and imposed tribute on donkeys? Or was that monkeys?
When a Muslim makes such a mistake, the mistake becomes gospel😎
Yes, we know of Arabs entering Wazirastan but there is no proof that they reached Indus. By the way, did they confuse Indus with some other like Kurram or Gomal?
So sad. We had to kill the Shahi before his time because we need to fit a new one into our chronology. And if you declared Lak is a tribe name and you have a Kamaluka-Toramana, what's the chance that Lak-Toramana is a name?
People complained to Kallar and Kallar arrested his master. And then, he got a change of mood and increased the sentence. What sort of tamasha is this🤦♀️
Pandeyji is wrong to count all names from coins but Al Beruni is wrong not to count all the names from coins.
Kalhana doesn't hint a change in dynasty but let's make Al Beruni's Kallar a beggar and then make him rich.
Ah!! The crooked Brahmin who toppled the king illegally and immorally. I am really surprised this Brahmin bashing came this late in the book - in page 90.
Now, because Kalhana is a Hindu, let's declare what he wrote is junk.
And the flowery imagination flies high
A coppersmith should be extolled for becoming a dacoit.
Yes. A band of 50 led by an ex-dacoit defeated an army of 40,000. We understand that is history.
Well, this book, Tarikh-i-Sistan is the main reference for Abdur Rahman 🤷♀️
How does it even matter? Is this a book on Shahis or is this an updated version of Tarikh-i-Sistan?
We don't know who he is. Let's make him a separate person and heap abuses on him.
A dacoit turned coppersmith is a legendary hero and a king in his own right is elevated from a joke to a legend.
An older tweet.
So, Phrom Kesar(739-745) fought and imposed tribute on donkeys? Or was that monkeys?
@khatvaanga - Check now. instead of screenshot, I selected the section and copied it. Anduke background transparent vachhindi.
Some issues with the thread and needed some cleaup. Anyways. Back to the game.
Next assumption game. Because we assumed Kallar's reign started in 843 and Lalliya's ended in 902, we can't say both are the same person.
I love these stories. All he need to do is to link Al Beruni's 60 generations with this and the Tochi Valley Inscriptions which he mentioned elsewhere. When Kuzala and Phromo can be used as titles, why not Toramana? Especially the last one, according to him is Lak-Toramana?
Let's assume Asata is Kamalavarman's brother. Now, let's invent a civil war between them.
Default assumption. Did anyone even think how Bhimadeva established a temple which gave Mahmud 3 crore Shahi Dirhams and the Shahi throne that distant from the core of Shahi territories? Being a Pakistani, he should have at least read some proper Pakistani research papers.
Last time, it was 50. This time it's 500.
I am sure this is one of the toughest pieces in the book easily. When Sabuktegin decides money is more important than Islam, what sort of monkey-balancing should our dearie indulge in?
Now, Abdur Rahman makes amends. 500 stays but 40000 becomes 100000
Again. 15000 with Mahmud and Jayapala with 45000 and he is still awaiting reinforcements. Can we safely assume Jayapala had no more than 4500? A parallel would be, can the British have Jhansi under siege and defeat 25000 troops led by Tatya Tope in less than a day with 1500 men?
Can the personal guard of the king be larger than that of the army? Mahmud sent 6000 and lost 6000, Trilochanapala sent 30000 and killed 5000, and Mahmud pushed back the 30000 and the main Shahi force with his personal guard? And in spite of that only 20000 died.
The title of the book should have been "How the Might of Islam crushed the Infidels of Afghanistan and Gandhara". This is more of a story of Sistan and Mahmud than that of Shahis. Shahis were just there to fill the gaps.
The puny infidel learns his lesson.
Just think about it. A Pakistani ululating at the defeats of the natives of Pakistan in the hands of an invader just because the invader has the same religion as his. When a highly educated scholar has his mindset, what mindset will an average Pakistani have?
See. How magnanimous the invader is. Why should a Pakistani be shameful when he gets such sort of a benefactor?
Another fantasy here. A temple is destroyed and Trilochanapala is in his rights to be angry. But no. He isn't. His ego is too much that he was offended by the criticism of the act and not the act. By the way, the stage is set to create a new villain here - Bhimapala.
And yes. Mahmud is bound to be angry because Trilochanapala is angry because of hurt ego.
How ashamed our dearie is, that an infidel stopped a Muslim, that too one as mighty as Mahmud for months, that too in Islamabad? No wonder he abhors the word Nidar Bhim and not once he used it.
Whoever this guy is, he is more considerate than Ussher who said Earth was formed in 4004 BC. This guy says earth formed in 6000 BC.
Another fantasy here. Notice, there are no references for this story.
We know Bhoja and Vidyadhara coordinated, but do we know whether they combined their armies? This is what happens when you blindly follow Muslim historians without doing a cross-check.
Again, there is no proof of this outside Muslim annals.
Why didn't the Shahis issue coins? Because they didn't understand the concept of sovereign currency 😎 And what proof have we got? Some usurers during Ghaznavid rule(not Shahi).
And guess what? Awfi was also writing stories. Because we can't accept he is writing stories, we need to attribute some sources to him.
And what justification does he give for that? Hindu hatred for Muslim iconography.
On the Shahi mint marks. Those careless and ignorant fools!! They don't even know how to cast a mark properly.
Circular logic. Let's assume A = B. Hence it is proven that B = A. All this monkey-balancing is because our invader lover can't digest the fact that a Hindu king can coronate himself in Kabul in 923.
All of this hinges on the point that Mahmud chased Anandapala till Sodra. Which fellow with common sense will take such a route to crush rebellion? All of this is due to Firishta's Lahore which people believe it to be on Indian border but is on the outskirts of Hund.
Recommendation: Don't read. Read some other book on this topic and have this as a gap filler. But, for a student of history, it's a must keep. goodreads.com/review/show/39…
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When the Rani of Jhansi realized that the fort is about to fall, there was absolute silence for some time. The outer corridor has already fallen while the Rani was holed up in the inner fort. One fine day, the main gates opened and bust out of it, the Rani in person with an escort of 500 mercenaries and the royal treasury on a state elephant amidst.
They charged directly into the cannons, destroying them and breaking away. She didn't jump out of a window in the night. She crashed through the main gate in pomp. The British took some time to realize what happened and the hunt started.
By then, the troops split the treasury and scattered(to join back again at a rendezvous). A considerable number of them weren't able to reach the rendezvous and the most prominent amongst them was a heavily injured Moropant Tambe, the Rani's father.
One geopolitical mess which no one bothers to look into, is North Myanmar. There is a near clean demarcation between Tai, Burmese and Chin. You can ignore Chin - even till 1900, they were primitive tribes. Real deal here is the Shan and their allied Kachin.
Now, if you expand the scope out of Myanmar, you will see that there are historically two Tai nodes - one in the West, including Tai Ahom and their parent state Mongkwang, and one in the East centred around Thailand. The eastern node is not our concern.
While the border between Ahom Kingdom and Mongkwang is loosely defined and there were clashes between the both some times(Mongkwang is not actually the parent state of Tai Ahom but it was the political successor of Mong Mao, the parent state for Ahoms), the relations were
So, was reading some book over Sangam Era history. Some important points. While I am not happy with the quality of scholarship, the book, however, reveals some interesting insights. 1. The earliest kingdom Tamils know is that of Nagas. Nagas ruled from Puhar and they were conquered by Cholas. The story is exactly identical to Pallava conquest of Chutu Naga Vaijayanti. This means that Tamils had no concept of a kingdom before 200-250 AD.
2. The historic trajectory is divided into two sets of tribes - the first wave is just tribes which mainstreamed themselves like the Vedar, Kurumbar and others. They just had raw valour unlike the next wave including Malavar, Kosar and others who were sophisticated militarily. In fact, Malavar is assumed to be first ones who used horses in the Tamil country.
3. There is not much clarity on the origin of tribes: They can be local, nomadic and pastoral, or they can be remnants of armies which marched from the North. For instance, around 250-300 AD or so, we start hearing of Kongans - is that a variant of the word Ganga, indicating Ganga armies?
People think as if Vasco Da Gama did a great thing by discovering a sea route to India. It's not so. He didn't do anything actually. Bartolomeu Dias already crossed the Cape of Good Hope and confirmed that the coast turns North East from there. He would oversee building of
Vasco da Gama's ships and would accompany him at least till Cape Verde. And da Gama, after a bout of piracy and clueless what to do, came across an Indian merchant in Mombassa who took him to Calicut. These European "explorers" didn't understand the concept of longitude and
when da Gama saw the ease with which Indians crossed the ocean, he simply threw his equipment away and replaced it with that of Indian. By the way, in 1511, these people came across a Majapahit map. Cape of Good Hope was already in that!!
Let me bite the bullet then. Anyone, feel free to pick the topic.
Kurwai: Kurwai troops led by it's crown prince Izzat Khan was a part of Holkar troop. He either rebelled on field or defected - Abdali felicitated him.
He died of injuries soon after and on the other hand, Holkar invaded Kurwai and severely chastised it's ruling line.
Punjab:
Here, Marathas were completely out of picture and the subsequent decades ended up as running fights between Afghans and the kingdoms supporting them in India, and the Sikhs.
The 600s Tang campaigns which genocided Agni and imposed Chinese rule on the Tarim Basin were the decisive blow for Indic influence and culture in Tarim Basin. The implication of it was not actually lost on the locals.
Led by Khotan, a kind of pacificst Buddhism was dominant in the area(its military power broken, and with Tibet and Arabs breathing down it's neck, there is only that much they can do).
A few centuries after the Chinese advances, an Uyghur Khan was asked why doesn't he convert to Buddhism. He replied, Buddhism teaches compassion and a king can never afford to be compassionate. His successors converted to Islam.