Sangni, the fort, stands on a low knoll surrounded on three sides by a hill stream that is a torrent when it rains. Otherwise, it is a meandering dry ravine with a few ponds of blue water. The fort is picturesque, both because of its setting and its pristine condition: it seems as if the builders have just had time to collect their materials and equipment and leave the site.Yet Sangni is no less than one hundred and seventy or so years old.
My civil servant friend Shahid Nadeem told me of it. Shahid regularly takes off into the wilds where few others venture. No surprise then that he has a great stock of travel stories. And so there we were with his friend Tariq Mumtaz meandering through the traffic of Gujar Kh an near Rawalpindi and on to the road to village Beval.
If Mirpur in Kashmir boasts of everything being powered by British pounds, Beval does equally better. Humongous bungalows grow on the slopes around the village. They all rise through three or four storeys, colonnades and pediments make up the façades and vast terraces spread out between iron grills on the upper floors. None of these concrete monstrosities seem to have any less than three dozen rooms. Nor too does a single one seemed lived-in.
Shahid said that the men of Beval like those of Mirpur had all made their fortunes in menial jobs in Britain. They brought home their bags full of pounds sterling to flaunt in the shape of these fancy houses. But these architectural eyesores have no utility for the owners continue to live in Britain and only their ghosts will ever return to haunt these bare walls.
Past Beval we reached Taka and took the road north to Sangni. The fort, just outside the village, less than twenty-five kilometres off the Grand Trunk Road at Gujar Khan, looked prim and new. Save for a couple of them, the merlons on the battlement were all intact, the towers sat solidly and without any cracks, the lintels and doorways were complete. Only the dark lichen covering the masonry showed that the building was old.
We entered the narrow enceinte of Sangni fort through a well kept doorway with traces of modern cement plastering conservation. Inside it was empty save for some rooms to one side and a well on the other. The far end was taken up by a newish domed building. An elderly man sweeping the veranda of
the building gave up his work and came to speak to us. This, he said, was the tomb of someone called Abdul Hakim, a reputed saint. He told us the story of this man having come from Persia. This took me back to my unanswered question as to why all holy men must come from either Arabia, Persia or Central Asia. Why do we believe that a sub continental can never achieve nirvana?
Anyway, after some wandering about, the man came to live where Sangni fort now stands. Some years later, so the story proceeds, the Dogra rulers of Kashmir chose the same spot for their fort and threw the man out. As he was leaving, he is reported to have told the Dogras that it will be he who will remain eventually in the fort. Thereafter for as long as Abdul Hakim lived, he remained in Chakrali village not very far away. There he died and was buried sometime in the 1850s. Early in the 20th century he is reported to have started appearing in the dreams of the people of the neighbouring village of Sui Cheemian exhorting them to remove his remains from the Chakrali tomb to Sangni fort.
As all these pointless tales unfold, this one has a few meaningless twists as well. But to cut a tedious story short, the corpse was dug up and transferred to the fort and the domed mausoleum raised above it. The story goes that the casket (taboot, the narrator insisted it was a taboot) being dug up was opened to reveal the man as if in living splendour with beads of water on his face. This surely can be nothing but pure hogwash for Muslim burials are in shrouds, never in caskets!
Ever since the transference of the skeleton there are two festivals of the dead saint. The one at Chakrali where he was originally buried and the other at Sangni fort. Much money goes into the boxes placed at both sites. The one in the fort being the real winner for here the faithful gather every Thursday leaving behind a goodly booty for the current descendent. Enriched by these donations, he lives like a parasite off the superstitions of simpletons. Three generations before him have done the same and he carries the tradition forward.
So much for superstitious legend concerning the tomb. As for Sangni fort, it is quite evident that it could not have pre-dated the Sikh period. But the question was why would the Sikhs build a fort in the Potohar badlands? There are some interesting facts that might show why. First of all by the beginning of the 19th century Gujar Khan had evolved into a busy mart for the trade of wheat. The grain, grown in Gujar Khan or brought over from Chakwal to the southwest and Kallar to the north, was famous under the generic name of Gujar Khan wheat and transported off in all directions. This trade would have meant wealth in the area.
Now, the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh took control of this part of the country in 1814 and were soon well established. To me it appears that the fort was built in order to facilitate tax collection: a small fortified garrison in the heart of a country seething with recalcitrant hill tribes known for their warlike propensities. But some due needs be given to the tradition of the Dogras having built this fort. Again, in 1831 Maharaja Ranjit Singh granted the district of Murree as a fief to Gulab Singh the Dogra ruler of Kashmir. The town of Gujar Khan may have gone under Dogra control at that time or shortly afterwards when Ranjit Singh died and the Dogras expanded their sway. History tells us of the ruthless rule of the Dogras wherein the slightest dissent was punished with death. In that case the Dogras would have kept a tight little garrison at Sangni forever prepared to ride out and quell this little rebellion or that.
Not long after that the War of Independence (or the Mutiny, suit yourself) was fought in 1857. Shortly thereafter Rawalpindi district became part of the Raj. With the return of order and justice, Sangni was forgotten. Years later, sometime in the 1920s, finding it vacant, the keepers of the shrine of Abdul Hakim, an obscure saint, appropriated it for his tomb. What the real motive was behind this usurpation was perhaps known only to this early example of the now well known qabza group. They may perhaps have thought that the lofty edifice of Sangni would lend grandeur to their own unknown saint. If that was it, a visit on a Thursday will show that they did not do so badly.
Related The Fort Oblivion, Sangni
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