EARLY CIRCUMSTANCES

~ 10 ~ occupations. Small trifling matters led to prolonged wars such as the pre-Islamic Arab Bedouins had engaged in. They were a brave and sturdy people, but their lack of education and training had come in the way of their advancing beyond the tribal way of life. Major Piolet, the Bandobast officer of Alwar, at the end of the 19th century, writes: “Meo are half-Hindus in their habits and customs.” They had posed a serious threat to the Muslim rule in the initial Sultanate period, looting and plundering the city at night. For fear of their attacks, the gates of the capital were closed at dusk. No one dared to go out after dark. Sultan Ghyasuddin Balban in the year 1266 dispatched an expedition against them in which a great number of them were put to the sword, but they were never fully subdued. Even as late as the period of the British Raj, the government was only partially successful in crushing them and establishing peace in the area. In 1921 new problems arose when Arya preachers resolved to reconvert the Indian Muslims to their ancestral religion. Thanks to the religious and