Note 8 — Mīna

The crimes and daring of the Mīnas have obtained for them a considerable place in history. A Muhammadan historian, Zia-ud-dīn Bāmi, wrote of the tribe:8 “At night they were accustomed to come prowling into the city of Delhi, giving all kinds of trouble and depriving people of their rest, and they plundered the country houses in the neighbourhood of the city. Their daring was carried to such an extent that the western gates of the city were shut at afternoon prayer and no one dared to leave it after that hour, whether he travelled as a pilgrim or with the display of a king. At afternoon prayer they would often come to the Sarhouy, and assaulting the water-carriers and girls who were fetching water they would strip them and carry off their clothes. In turn they were treated by the Muhammadan rulers with the most merciless cruelty. Some were thrown under the feet of elephants, others were cut in halves with knives, and others again were flayed alive from head to foot.” Regular campaigns against them were undertaken by the Muhammadans,9 as in later times British forces had to be despatched to subdue the Pindāris. Bābar on his arrival at Agra described the Mewāti leader Rāja Hasan Khān as ‘the chief agitator in all these confusions and insurrections’; and Firishta mentions two terrible slaughters of Mewātis in A.D. 1259 and 1265. In 1857 Major Powlett records that in Alwar they assembled and burnt the State ricks and carried off cattle, though they did not succeed in plundering any towns or villages there. In British territory they sacked Firozpur and other villages, and when a British force came to restore order many were hanged. Sir D. Ibbetson wrote of them in the Punjab:10