162

The Sultans of Kashmīr

739–996/1339–1588

1. The line of Shāh Mīr Swātī

2. The line of Ghāzi Shāh Chak

Because of its geographical position, separated by high mountain barriers from the plains of northern India, Kashmīr was long sheltered from Muslim raids. It remained under its own dynasty of Hindu rulers long after most of northern India had passed under Muslim control. Maḥmūd of Ghazna (see above, no. 158) made two attempts to invade Kashmīr from the south, but was held up on both occasions by the fortress of Lohkot. However, Muslim Turkish mercenaries [Turuśka) began to be employed by the Hindu kings of Kashmīr, and the process of Islamisation, which has given the province today an overwhelmingly Muslim population, must have tentatively begun.

In 735/1335, the throne there was seized by Shāh Mīr Swātī, a Muslim adventurer who was probably of Pathan origin and who had been minister to Rājā Sinha Deva. The régime of Shāms al-Dīn (this being the honorific which Shāh Mīr adopted) was tolerant and mild towards the majority Hindus, but his grandson Sikandar was a Muslim zealot who patronised the ‘ulamā’ and scholars and who persecuted the Hindus, destroying their temples and earning for himself the epithet But-shikan Idol-breaker’. Already before this, the Kubrawī ṣūfī saint ‘All Hamadhānī and many Sayyids had arrived in Kashmīr, and during Sikandar’s reign the group of Bayhaqī Sayyids, who were to play a prominent role in the religious and intellectual life of the province, migrated from Delhi to Kashmīr. However, his son Zayn al-‘Ābidīn reversed this rigorist policy, and his long and enlightened reign was something of a Golden Age for Kashmīr; under his patronage, the Mahābhārata and Kalhana’s twelfth-century metrical chronicle of Kashmīr, the Rājataranginī, were translated into Persian. Unfortunately, his descendants were lesser men, and much internecine strife now followed; various provincial chiefs took advantage of the mountainous and difficult terrain and established a virtual independence. In particular, the influence of the powerful Chak tribe, originally immigrants from Dardistān, grew, its leaders serving as ministers and commanders for the last feeble fainéant rulers of Shāh Mīr’s line. The Mughal prince Ḥaydar Dughlat invaded Kashmīr in 947/1540, and ruled in Srinagar for ten years on behalf of his kinsman Humāyūn, until he was killed in an uprising. The Chak family was now again in the ascendant, and after 968/1561 they ruled as sovereigns themselves, assuming the title Pīdishāh ’Monarch’ in imitation of the Mughals; their religious inclinations were towards Shī‘ism. However, the last two Chaks had to rule as vassals of Akbar until they were finally deposed and Kashmīr fully incorporated into the Mughal empire.

Justi, 478; Sachau, 32–3 nos 89 and 90; Zambaur, 293–4.

EI² ‘Hind. IV. History’ (J. Burton-Page), ‘Kashmīr. I. Before 1947’ (Mohibbul Ḥasan), Suppl. ‘Caks’ (idem).

Sir T. W. Haig, ‘The chronology and genealogy of the Aḥmadan Kings of Kashmir’, JKAS (1918), 451–68.

Mohibbul Ḥasan, Kashmir under the Sultans, Calcutta 1959.

R. C. Majumdar et al. (eds), The History and Culture of the Indian People. VI. The Delhi Sultanate, ch. 13 C.

M. Habib and K. A. Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India. V. The Delhi Sultanat (A.D. 1206–1526), ch. 9.