The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple

Author:William Dalrymple
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780307267399
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2006-06-07T22:00:00+00:00

THE SPEED OF BAKHT KHAN’S fall was exacerbated by his hard-line “Wahhabi” views. There were suggestions that he did not “supply the wants” of high-caste Hindus, who duly applied to the King asking whether they could be transferred to the command of Mirza Mughal.101 Later, contrary to the King’s express wishes, he gathered all the ‘ulama of the city and dragooned them into signing a Fatwa of Jihad, declaring it mandatory for all Muslims to arm and fight the religious war under the command of the head of the jihadis, Maulvi Sarfaraz Ali; several maulvis, including Ghalib’s friend Mufti Sadruddin Azurda, afterwards said they had been forced into signing against their will, and that they had been threatened that if they refused “their families would be destroyed and ruined.”102

Embolded by this fatwa, towards the end of July the jihadis made the most serious breach in the common front that had been so successfully maintained by both Hindus and Muslims. The feast of Bakr ‘Id was approaching; to the horror of the court, who had always made huge efforts never to allow the city to be divided on communal grounds, the jihadis went out of their way deliberately to offend Hindu feelings. Normally, across the Islamic world, Muslims celebrated Bakr ‘Id (or ‘Id ul-Adha) by sacrificing a goat or a sheep to commemorate the sacrifice of Abraham and God’s sparing of Ismail (who in the Koran is the son who is about to be offered up, not Isaac as in the Old Testament). But as Muhammad Baqar wrote,

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