492 H. G. Raver ty—The Mihrdn of Sind and its Tributaries. [Ex. No. 
appearance bears evidence of its antiquity, and in the masjid is an 
inscription, of which the following is a literal rendering :— 
“ Know, that when this fabric was raised, 
Khizr’s waters encompassed it round about, 
This pleasing hemistich Khizr wrote :— 
In the ‘ Court of God ’ the date is found.” 
This, according to the abjad system, gives the date 341 H. (952-53 
A.D.), which is just two hundred and forty-eight years after the con¬ 
quest of Sind, and two years previous to the death (but some say it 
happened in that year) of ’Abd-ul-Malik, son of Nuh, seventh of the 
Samani rulers, who was killed through falling from his horse whilst 
playing the game of Ohaugan or Polo, when the sway of the Kliilafat 
over Sind was merely nominal, and part of it and Multan were in the 
possession of Karamitah rulers, subsequently expelled by Sultan Mah¬ 
mud of Ghaznili. 
Such a place as Sakhar is not mentioned in history down to the 
time of the Sayyid, Mir Ma’sum, styled Bahkari, because he was a 
native of the Bahkar district, and one of the historians of Sind. He 
was an official under the Mu gh al government in the reign of Akbar 
Badshah, and, after twenty years’ service, was allowed to retire to a jd~ 
gir conferred upon him in that same district in 999 H. (1590-91 A.D.). 
In relating events of the year 416 H. (1025-26 A.U.) he certainly men¬ 
tions Bakhar, and shortly after Sakhar, but this certainly refers more 
to what afterwards became known by those names, in the same way as 
he refers to Tliathah which was not founded for centuries after that period, 
and as he himself relates; and moreover, histories written before his 
time do not once refer to them. In proof of this, he does not seem 
either to refer to Sakhar as a new town, but to what had previously 
been known as Bakhar, as if, after the Panch Nad or Panj A'b, 
as the river is here styled down to modern times as well as A'b-i-Sind 
had cut for itself another and second channel, and severed the fortress 
from the main land, the severed town had become Sakhar. 570 What the 
57° Another fact worthy of notice is, that the channel which separates Sakhar 
from Bakhar is not more than one quarter of the breadth of that separating Bakhar 
from Rurhi, where the river flowed from the first, when it found its way through the 
gap in the rocky hills. The breadth of the former channel is about 100 yards and 
the latter 400. Neither was the depth of water so great in the former as in the 
latter ; and, lately, the former channel has been widened, in order to lessen the 
violence of the current in the larger channel. 
Eastwick says, that just by the place where Clibborn’s house stood, “ The river 
is exceedingly deep, and a whirlpool is formed by the opposition which the remains 
