Remnants of the past sultanate
The ancient graveyard Lal Mahra offers much more than heaps of rocks and scattered pottery shards. Its four large mausoleums pale every other view offered by the surrounding landscape
By Muhammad Saad Nawaz Qaisrani
For years unending, I had been passing this signboard on the Indus Highway (N-55) proclaiming the existence of an ancient graveyard nearby but could never venture close enough to the graveyard to get a glimpse of it. Unlike the lofty peaks of the Suleiman Mountains which can be seen on any clear day from the Indus Highway over 100 kms away, the 6 km distance between the graveyard known as Lal Mahra and the highway is too great for it to be visible from the road. Consequently I could know nothing more about Lal Mahra than the very fact of its existence as conveyed by the signboard on the highway.
The long journey from Rawalpindi to Tibbi Qaisrani would never allow me to undertake the necessary detour near Mahra Sharif to visit the graveyard, while the distance between Ramak and Tibbi Qaisrani would discourage any attempt to pay it a special visit. One day however, the urge to see it grew so strong that I finally decided to visit Lal Mahra.
It was a frosty morning of mid-February in 2004 when I undertook the visit. Accompanied by two cousins, I made for Lal Mahra in my father’s car. A few kilometers north of Ramak the signboard guided us to a dead-end, with no way ahead. All that could be seen in front was heaps of cut sugarcane, ready to be dispatched to the nearby sugar mills. For a few desperate moments it seemed as if our endeavour to see Lal Mahra would end in a failure, but the day was saved when we came across a Pashtun who led us to the correct route to the graveyard.
About half an hour of some of the toughest riding my father’s car has ever seen, we entered the graveyard. It was actually sugarcane season, and so all traces of the katcha roads were by now obliterated by overloaded tractor trolleys that plied on these routes to transport the cane.
Once we got close enough to Lal Mahra, it became evident that this graveyard was not what I had expected – heaps of rocks and scattered pottery shards. In fact, it was something grander, and much more magnificent. The sight of Lal Mahra’s four large mausoleums paled every other view offered by the surrounding landscape. A blue board of the Archeological Department at the entrance of the graveyard detailed all that is known to date about the Lal Mahra. As per the board, there was no exact history of the graveyard. Subsequently studies were conducted by historians such as Dr. Ahmed Hassan Dani who concluded that the architecture corresponds to the Tughlaq era (1321-1398). It also claimed that the tombs were known to have existed close to 200 years prior to the founding of the Dera Ismail Khan city, and that the four mausoleums are the only remnants of a total of eleven such structures, the rest of which have been lost to the ravages of time.
The era to which this graveyard has been dated was a tumultuous time for the Delhi sultanate. Since 1221 AD, the Mongols had begun adventurous undertakings in the subcontinent. These intermittent invasions and skirmishes which lasted for more than a century had tumultuous effects for the sultanate and proved to be great threats to its survival. Numerous attempts were made by the Mongols to subdue the Delhi sultanate but these were met with stiff resistance by the Khilji and Tughlaq dynasties. In the struggle to protect the sultanate from the rampaging Mongols, princes such as Muhammad, a son of Ghiyas-ud-Din Balban had to part with their material existence.
It must have been sometime in this period that Mongols possibly descending from passes in the mighty Suleiman mountains came face to face with the sultanate armies of India in the vast desert expanse close to Lal Mahra. As we learn from Muhammad’s example, the sultanate armies would have been led by princes who had no choice but to defend their homeland. In the battle that ensued, the Mongols were routed but the cost that had to be paid was heavy. Nobles and princes would have lost their lives in this battle with the Mongols, and it is they who would have been honoured by the sultanate by creating such monumental mansions to house their remains.
As my cousins and I trod in Lal Mahra exploring all its dimensions, time passed and the mid-day started heating up. It was then that we decided to make use of a luxury that we had on that day, but one that the battling armies of the sultanate did not have in their time. It was the luxury of retirement.
Re: Remnants of the Past Sultanate
Amazing thankyou for the above post.
It was very informing and historically it's quite accurate too.
Yes it was in the wars agaisnt the mongols of the Ogadai clans and the Delhi Sultanate.
One of the fighters in these battle was Amir Khusro the famous Poet. Who later founded the system of Quwalli music in Nizamudeen Auwliyahs presence in Delhi.