2-1G An account of Upper and Lower Suiodt. [No. 3, 



Such is the true history, and such the faithful portrait of the 

 terrible, fanatic, plotting Akhund of Suwat, the bugbear of Pesha- 

 war. 



That he made the mutineers of the late 55th Eegt. Bengal N. E- 

 Musalmans is totally untrue. They fled into Suwat, and remained, 

 as travellers generally do, for a few days, as his guests ; but, at the 

 end of this time, he advised them to make the best of their way out 

 of Suwat, although Akbar, who is known as the Saiyid Badshah, 

 wished them to remain. In this case the Akhund indeed persisted 

 that they should not be permitted to remain in Suwat ; so the rebels 

 set out towards Kashmir, on the road to which they were cut off by 

 the Deputy Commissioner of Hazarah. Other mutineers also came 

 from Murree, all of whom he dismissed as cmickly as possible to 

 Kabul. 



It is necessary to explain who this so called Badshah was. He 

 was not an Afghan, but a Saiyid, named Muhammad Akbar Shah, 

 a native of Satanah (burnt last year by General Sidney Cotton) 

 near Pakhli, above Attak- Some years since the Akhund Sahib, as 

 the spiritual chief, was requested to appoint a Badshah, that is to 

 say a Saiyid, not a king, for the word means also a great lord or 

 noble, or head man, but as a sort of high-priest, or rather legate, to 

 whom the zaldit and aceashar, certain alms, and a tithe sanctioned 

 by the Kuran, might be legally paid ; and who must be a Saiyid. 

 He died about a year since,* on which his son, Mubarak Shah, wished 

 to be installed in his father's place ; but as the Suwatis were not 

 willing to pay tithes, the Akhund declined to do so. All Saiyids 

 are called Shah or Mi' an ; and Shah and Badshah signify a king 

 also, but here it merely meant a high-priest. At Peshawar, one 

 hears of Gul, Badshah, and there is a gate of the city called after 

 him ; but it does not follow that he was a king, for no such king 

 ever did exist, any more than Saiyid Akbar Shah was a king in 

 Suwat. It was the word Shah, no doubt, which has been magnified 

 into Badshah, as if the words could not possibly mean anything else 

 than a king !f 



* August, 1857. 



t On referring to Captain Conolly's "Notes on the Eusofzye Tribes," already 

 referred to, I find, that the king of Suwat, set up specially by the Akhund, 

 for the Delhi tragedy, existed twenty years befoi'e. I copy Captain Conolly's 

 own words — " The tribes of Booneer and the neighbouring hills, may be said to 



