Jat War (1027)
| Part of | The Resistance Chronicle — Age I · the Ghazni ledger |
|---|---|
| Epithet | The victory that confesses |
| Date | 1027 |
| Place | The Indus near Multan, fought in boats |
| Belligerents | Ghaznavids — the Jats of the lower Indus |
| Commanders | Mahmud of Ghazni — no Jat name survives |
| Outcome | Ghaznavid victory |
| The sequel | Mahmud’s last Indian campaign; he turned to Persia, and died at Ghazni in 1030 |
The Jat war of 1027, fought in boats on the Indus, was Mahmud's last campaign in India: a punitive expedition against the river people who had harried the victor of Somnath through the desert. In this chronicle its epithet is plain: the victory that confesses.
Background: the retreat of 1026
The account to be settled came from the Somnath campaign. On the long road home through Kutch and Sindh, the Jats of the river country had harried the diminished column for weeks, cutting off stragglers and baggage. The affront was precise: the age's most famous victory had been mauled on its way home by people with no king, no fort and no treasury, and the Sultan's fame required an answer.
Who the Jats were
The Jats of the lower Indus were pastoral and farming communities of the river country, fighting from boats and falling back into the floodplain: a people, not a kingdom. Their quarrel with the caliphate's world was older than Ghazni. They stood in Sindh when Qasim came; and the caliphs had once deported Jat communities to Iraq, where, as the Zutt of the marshes, they fought Baghdad itself for a generation in the ninth century. Label: the Arab notices are scattered; the continuity of the name across them is accepted, the details are thin. No chronicle of their own survives; their history is written entirely by their enemies, which is reason enough for this page.
The river battle
Mahmud returned to Multan in 1027 and built a fleet to settle the account. Gardizi gives him 1,400 boats, armed with iron spikes at prow and sides, carrying archers and naphtha-throwers. The Jats met him on the river in their own flotilla, their families sent to the islands for safety; the late chronicles multiply their boats into the thousands. Label: arithmetic again. The spiked prows decided it. The Jat boats were stoved in and burned, the islands were taken, and the slaughter and enslavement that followed are reported with the usual satisfaction. It was a victory of shipwrights as much as soldiers.
Verdict
Victory for the invader; and a confession in the shape of a war. The empire's last act in India was the punishment of those who had mauled its greatest triumph's retreat.
What it meant for India
First, the closing word of the age belonged to the unnamed. The ledger of the Frontier Age opens with kings and ends with a people: no throne, no fort, no chronicler, and yet they had hurt him enough to bring him back. The wing's rule, that the resistance was wider than its kings, is nowhere plainer. Second, the end of the Indian wars. After 1027 the map turned west, to Ray and the Persian campaigns, and Mahmud died at Ghazni in April 1030. The age closes with his death and with a book: in that same city his scholar finished the Kitāb al-Hind, the conquest's strangest and most lasting trophy.
Sources, labelled
- Contemporary chronicle: Gardīzī (the fleet, the spikes, the battle); al-ʿUtbī's history closes before this year.
- Late chronicle: Firishta, trans. Briggs (the numbers and the embellishments).
- Background: the Chachnama and al-Balādhurī for the Jats of Sindh in the Arab age; Wink, Al-Hind I, for the Zutt.
- Modern: Nazim (1931); Bosworth (1963).