Skip to main content

Caliph of Two Worlds


Historical Fiction

His smile could quell a mob or raise an army.  The charismatic Usman dan Fodio was a holy man whom the Sultan of Gobir (today’s Nigeria) brought into his kingdom in order to make the people more religious.  Bringing a religious person too close to your life can be like taking the snake lying on the fence and putting it in your pocket.  At least that’s how it turned out to be in the case of Yunfa, the Sultan of Gobir.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had just brought out their Romantic Manifesto, The Lyrical Ballads, ushering a poetic revolution in England.  The bloodcurdling violence of the French Revolution had given birth to a whole series of reforms implemented by Napoleon.  In Africa, Allah was beginning to bring light in quite another way.

“There is no God but Allah,” Usman’s voice reverberated in the streets and highways.  “All ways are impure except those shown by Allah.”  Usman denounced the ways of the ordinary people as evil.  Suddenly almost everything became evil for the ordinary people.  Usman decided what was holy and what unholy.  Usman decided when people could smile and whey they should weep.  Usman decided what they could eat and drink.  Usman became the law.  “All laws come from Allah,” Usman declared.

“Allah appeared to me in a dream,” he told the people.  “All the prophets of the past stood on either side of Allah.  And Allah told me, ‘I anoint you as the Messiah of Africa. You are the forerunner of the Mahdi, who is coming soon along with Jesus to initiate the cosmic struggle against the Antichrist.  The end of the world is near.  Teach your people to repent and turn to Allah if they are to be redeemed on the Day of the Judgment.’”

Gods of all hues exercise a strange charm on people of every country.  And the prophets of the gods are like the pied piper whom people follow abandoning everything else. 

The Sultan was not very pleased by this usurpation.  Who is more powerful: the sultan or the maulana?  The answer depends on who you are or on whose side you are.

Sometimes the maulana has to be got rid of if the sultan is to save his throne.  The sultan began his conspiracies.  An earthly king’s conspiracies may not be powerful enough to eliminate a god’s representative. 

The maulana became the commander of an army.  The religious followers became political warriors.  The line between politics and religion is an illusion that can be shifted in any direction as required by the occasion. 

“Win the war,” Usman told his warriors, “and you will get seven towns filled with dark-eyed maidens each one of whom being served by ten thousand slaves.  Win the war and you will embrace those dark-eyed beauties for seventy years.  You will do it again and again until you are tired.  You will have no other work, save the play of delight.”

Usman’s warriors stood erect with their swords unsheathed.  They were intoxicated with both spiritual and temporal lust. Armed with such intoxication,
it didn’t take much time for Usman to decapitate the sultan.  Usman the holy man became Usman the Caliph. 

The successful warriors demanded the promised dark-eyed maidens and seventy years of delight.  The Caliph became the holy man once again, “Wait, children, wait.  The final reward is in heaven.  Wait until your time.”

They waited.  People always wait.


Comments

  1. Replies
    1. In every sense, Ravish. I mean every religion does the same to all people.

      Delete
  2. The ways of the world and some few "good men" have resulted in the circus of human emotions

    ReplyDelete
  3. It actually happens like this.. poor people, blind people, weak people, scared people.. scared of walking down on their own paths.. They need sticks for everything except for reproducing children.. Unless the people become strong such Usman will always conquer the will.. let the sun shine.. let people be strong..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Such poetry, Roohi! Beautiful comment. Powerful. May the sun begin to shine!

      Delete
  4. Why women are always the ultimate prize of conquerors?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wealth and women, Abhijit. Every conqueror wanted those in that order. Wealth for themselves and women for their fighters.

      Delete
  5. Awesome narration and a powerful message, power in the wrong hands and the sufferers' fate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Every time I take up a history book I get a story, Shweta. This is one such story.

      Delete
  6. Felt like reading some different genre in a while...that medieval touch ....but the human spirit never change

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, it hardly changes. There's little fundamental difference between the human nature of a millennium ago and that of today. Only the technology and gadgets change.

      Delete
  7. when they don't its called revolution... and then the few good n wise men decide for many... and the many wait...again .... till the next tumult.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Revolutions also depend on individuals rather than groups, leaders rather than followers. It depends on what kind of a person the leader is.

      Delete
  8. It can happen outside the religion too. Hitler and Stalin did the same without offering women instead making their army and people believe in a cause.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser