Part I: Chapter 16

CRUSADE RE-LAUNCHED - SHAMS-UD-DIN IRAQI

The chaks, rough and rugged, owing their descent to Dardistan, added new chapters to the history of gore and blood that was being wantonly written in Kashmir. It was during their rule and hegemony that the Kashmiri Hindus, who, having survived the first wave of fury unleashed by Sultan Sikandar, were again hurled into the orgy of flashing swords and savage brutalities, thus terminating their short spell of honeymoon with peace and respite during the reign of Zain-ul-abidin. During chak period of Kashmir history, Muslim bigotry and intolerance touched a new crescendo and Hindus were brutalised, tortured and killed on an unprecedented scale.

Shams-ud-Din Iraqi, a frightful crusader from Talish on the shores of Caspian sea, had two stints in Kashmir, one in the times of Sultan Hasan Shah and the other during the reign of Mohammad Shah. His stay in Kashmir was highly controversial as he clandestinely propagated the canons and credos of Shia Sect of Islam, which the Sunni Muslims bitterly resented and opposed, thus setting the ground and pace for Shia-Sunni strifes and feuds. Shams Iraqi's mission and role in Kashmir was the same stamping out and extirpation of infidelity and he in his conversionery campaigns was extended all manner of support and succour by the governments led by Musa Raina and Kaji Chak, who as principal converts to his faith executed his fiats and played a second fiddle to him. Musa Raina gave gardens, orchards, ornaments, costumes, horses, jewellery and gold to Shams Iraqi, who utilised the wealth, they say, for the construction of a Khanqah at Zadibal on the outskirts of Srinagar. The chiselled stones and other materials from ravaged temples are said to have been utilised in the construction of the Khanqah.

Kashmiri Hindus had already tasted the bitter fury of a crusade, but Shams Iraqi lent it a new ferocity of pace and momentum and as an outcome history was repeated for the Hindus, who were tortured, persecuted and killed to bring them to the fold of Shia-faith of Islam. Temples out of morbid intolerance were again pillaged and destroyed and mosques built at their sites. The Hindus were terrorised and converted at the point of sword. "Twenty-four thousand Hindu families were converted at one stroke to the faith of Islam by force and compulsion (qahran and gabran),'' records Hasan. The lands belonging to the Brahmans from ages were suddenly confiscated and as a measure of coercion men associated with the maintenance and up-keep of temples were detained and arrested to break their allegiance to the Hindu places of worship. In the role of a model vandaliser Shams Iraqi vengefully plundered and destroyed the Vishnu temple, a marvel of Hindu architecture, at Buniyar in the district of Baramulla. He lavished personal care and attention in getting all the temples of Srinagar city looted, plundered and destroyed.

"As many as eighteen big temples in the city of Srinagar and in the rural areas of the valley were completely destroyed under the instructions and orders of Shams-ud-Din Iraqi and Malik Musa Raina," records Tohfatul Ahbab.

"At the behest of Shams Iraqi, Musa Raina had ordered 1500 to 2000 infidels to be brought to his door-steps every day by his followers. They would remove their sacred threads, administer Kalima to them, circumcise them and thrust lumps of beef into their mouths,'' mentions Tohfatul Ahbab.

Musa Raina, Prime Minister of Mohammad Shah, proved a scourge for the Hindus. His bigotry and anti-Hindu animus and venom got reflected when his government raised and organised a brigade of ferocious and hardened criminals and notorious scoundrels under the command of a chak brute, who looted and killed Hindu families, destroyed and ravaged Hindu temples and pulled down Hindu schools and Hindu institutions of learning.

Records Bharistan-i-Shahi,"During the government of Malik Musa Raina, all the depraved heretics of this land had been converted to Islam.

It also records, "He (Zain-ul-abidin) had permitted idolators and polytheists to revive the practices of infidelity and they had propagated heresy (kufr) and false religion (Din-i-batil), with the support of some more kings, the infidels had flourished day after day. But, with the support and authority of Malik Musa Raina, Amir Shams-ud-Din Mohammad under-took a wholesale destruction of all those idol-houses as well as the ruination of the very foundation of infidelity and dis-belief. On the site of every idol-house he destroyed he ordered the construction of a mosque for offering prayers after the Islamic manner. The idolatory and heresy which had existed prior to his coming were effectively replaced by his preaching and propagation of Islam, its laws and practices. He brought honour to all the infidels and heretics (Zandiqa) of Kashmir by admitting them to the Islamic faith and bestowed upon them many kinds of rewards and benefactions. It is publicly known that during his life time, with the virtuous efforts and elaborate arrangements made by the fortunate Malik Musa Raina, twenty four thousand families of staunch infidels and stubborn heretics were ennobled by being converted to Islam.