The Saiyads
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
The Saiyads
Caste No. 24
The true Saiyads are the descendants of All, the son-in-law of Mahomet, and I believe that the word properly in cludes only those descended from him by Fatima, Mahomets daughter. But there are Ulavi Saiyads who are said to be descended through other wives. Our tables show 248,102 Saiyads in the Panjab, but it is impossible to say how many of these are of true Saiyad stock. Certainly an immense number of those returned as such have no real claim to the title. The saying is Last year I was a Julaha ; this year I am a Shekh ; next year if prices rise I shall be a Saiyad ; and if generation be substituted for year the process is sufficiently common. The Saiyads are found scattered through out the Province. In the eastern half of the Panjab they form a compara tively small element in the population, except in Dehli itself.
These men for the most part came in with the Mahomedan conquerors or under their dynasties, and were granted lands or revenue which their descendants still hold and enjoy. The Bara Saidat of the Jamna-Ganges Bodb, with whom many of these Eastern Saiyads are connected, enjoyed considerable political importance during the latter days of the Mughal empire. But directly the meridian of Lahore is passed the Saiyads form a markedly larger portion of the population, being largest of all on the Pathan frontier and in the Salt range Tract, and only slightly smaller on the lower Indus. Many of the Pathan tribes, such as the Bangash of Kohat and the Mishwani, claim Saiyad origin, and it may be that some of these have returned themselves as Saiyads instead of as Pathans. The Apostles who completed the conversion of the Pathans to Islam were called Saiyads if they came from the west and Shekhs if from the east, and it is probably to the descendants of the former, and to false claims to Saiyad origin set up most commonly in a wholly Musalman tract; that the large number of Saiyads in the north-west of the Panjab is due. At the same time the Biloches, who were originally Shiahs and were called the friends of Ali,reverence and respect Saiyads far more than do those bigoted Sunnis the Pathans ; and I am surprised to find Saiyads more numerous among the latter than among the former. The Saiyads of Kag^n who came into Hazara with Saiyad Jalal Baba hold the whole of the Kngan valley, and the Saiyads of the Multan district occupy a prominent position, and will be found described at length in Mi. Eoe^s Settlement Report. The abject state of bondage in which the Saiyads and other holy men hold the frontier races has been described in the Chapter on Religion, section 277.
The Saiyad is, no less than the Brahman, a land-owner and cultivator on a large scale. Indeed, while the Brahman is by birth a priest, or at the least a Levite, the Saiyad as such is neither ; though lie makes use of his supposed sainthness, at any rate in the west of the Panjab, to compel offerings to which the ordinances of his religion give him no sort of claim. The Saiyad of Karnal is thus described in my Settlement Report. *' The Saiyad is emphati cally the worst cultivator I know. Lazy, thriftless, and intensely ignorant and conceited, he will not dig till driven to it by the fear of starvation, and thinks that his holy descent should save his brow from the need of sweat ing. At the best he has no cattle, he has no capital, and he grinds down his tenants to the utmost. At the worst he is equally poor, dirty, and holy. He is the worst revenue payer in the district ; for to him a lighter assess ment only means greater sloth.Mr. Thorburn thus describes the Saiyads of Bannu : —
As a rule the Saiyads are land-owners not tenants, and bad, lazy, land-owners they make too. In learning, general intelligence, and even in speech and appearance, they are hardly dis tiugnishable from the Pathans or Jats amongst whom they live. Here and there certainly honourable exceptions are to be found. The way the lands now held by them were originally acquired was in most cases by gift. Though many of them still exercise considerable influence, their hold as a class on the people at large is much weaker than it was thirty years ago. The struggle for existence caused by the increase of population since annexation has knocked much of the awful reverence the Pathan zamindar used to feel towards holy men in general out of him. He LOW views most matters from rather a hard worldly than a superstitious standiwint. Many a family or community would now cancel the ancestral deed of gift under which some Saiyad's brood enjoys a fat inheritance. But for the criminal consequences which would ensue from turning them out neck and crop, the spiritual consequences would be risked willingly enough.
In Afghanistan the Saiyads have much of the commerce in their hands, as their holy character allows them to pass unharmed where other Pathans would infallibly be murdered. Even the Biloches do not love the Saiyad : they say, May God not give kingship to Saiyads and Mullas.The Saiyads as a rule follow the IMahomedan law of inheritance, and do not give their daughters to other than Saiyads. But in the villages of the east many of them have adopted the tribal customs of their neighbours, while in the west the Hindu prejudice against widow-marriage has in many cases extended to them.
Divisions of the Saiyads
The Panjab Saiyads are primarily divided into Hasani descended from Hasan and Husaini descended from Husain the sons of Ali, Hasan-Husaini the descendants of Abdul Qadir Gilani who sprang from an intermarriage between the two branches, Ulavi descended from Ali by other wives than Fatima, and Zaidi who are descended from Zaid Shahid, a grandson of Husain. But they also have a second set of divisions named after the places whence their ancestors came. Thus the descendants of Abdul Qadir are often known as
Gilani : so the Gardezi or Baghdadi Saiyads are an important branch of the Husainis,
and once owned a large portion of the Sarai Sidhu tahsil of Multan, while the Zaidis are said to be a branch of the Gardezis. The Bukhari Saiyads seem to be of the Husaiui section. The numbers returned are given in the margin. The Saiyads of the Western Plains are chiefly Bukhari and Husaini ; the Gilani Saiyads are found chiefly in the centre of the Panjab and the Salt-range and western sub-montane, the Shirazi in Jahlam and Shahpur, the Jafiri in Gujrat, the Husaini in Jahlam, the Bakhari in Rawalpindi, and the Mashaidi in the Salt-range Tract.
