A SHORT NOTE ON THE RUTBILS OF SISTAN-ZABULISTAN
A short description and history of the ancestors of the royal clan of the Swati Tajiks of Pakistan — the ancestors of this author
The theory of the late Swati historian Prof. Akhtar that the famed Rutbils were the ancestors of the Swati Sultans carries great weight and is supported by considerable evidence and logic.
The Rutbil (taken from Iltabar, a Turkic title) rulers of early medieval Zabulistan (geographic Greater Sistan) were the allies/junior partners of the Kabul Shahi Hindu Turks who ruled the Kabulistan-Gandhara region to the north.
Here it needs elaboration that about 20 years after the defeat of Sassanian Persia by Islam in 651 AD, its eastern provinces of Kabulistan-Gandhara had fallen to a dynasty of Hinduised Huns known as the Kabul Shahan also variously called the Turki Shahis.
The Rutbils themselves, it seems, belonged to a far older Assyro-Persian stock, and were also the heads of a local solar or “Zun” cult evidently rooted in Assyrian lore — evidence of which is fragmentary but plentiful in this region, and which seems to have survived here since the times of the Jiroft Civilisation. Its key shrine was located at Sakawand near Ghazni. Thus it can be inferred that the Rutbils’ point of origin was the Jiroft Civilisation of Greater Sistan and Kerman — which was connected to ancient Sumeria, Akkad, Assyria, Elam and the Indus Valley civilisations. It is evident that these rulers were not from the Saka-Parthian and Afghan stock which was known to have dominated Zabulistan in Sassanian times, and had taken power after the Sassanian defeat. But being who they were, it goes without saying that the Rutbils would have been conversant with the locally prevailing Saka language, now universally known as Pashto. They themselves used the Zoroastrian Dari spoken around Kerman, also called “Gabari”. (The term Gabari still exists in the shape of a major Swati tribal factional name. In the same manner, the second major Swati tribal faction is named “Mitravi” — which obviously connotes the followers of Mithra). The religious atmosphere was very eclectic, and besides the aforesaid Mithraic influences in this mileu, the Hindu revival which the Huns are known to have caused and its political dominance — is also known to have affected the Persian types at least outwardly.
For about 250 years after the Islamic takeover of Persia, the dynasty of Rutbils effectively resisted the expansion of Arab authority in the crucial region of Sistan-Zabulistan — till an Iranian Muslim king emerged from this area (Yaqub-e-Laith Saffari) who defeated and killed the last Rutbil in about 870…and subsequently expelled the last Kabul Shahi ruler from his seat further north about three years later and sent him eastwards into Waihind in Gandhara.
According to Prof. Akhtar, Yaqub-e-Laith is said to have made the Rutbil remnants and some of their other Dehqan allies flee far northwards to Bactria (Balkh), which at that time was also undergoing the decline of its original form. Balkh was in those days more favourable towards the upholders of the Old Persian order, which the Rutbils were. From Balkh the Muslim Samanid rulers are said to have driven them east towards Kunar, in the environs of Badakhshan, where they later accepted Islam during the Ghaznavid era and were the rulers of the forbidding Pech River Valley.
About 150 years after this conversion, they conquered Gandhara under the tutelage of the Ghoris (who were their old Sistani Persian allies) — becoming its first Muslim Sultans, and vassals of the Ghori established Delhi Sultanate for the next 320 years…coming to prominence this time under the ancient Assyro-Persian name Sawadi, which they gave to their new kingdom as Sawad-Gabr. Sawad was later corrupted to “Swat” by the invading Afghans who overthrew the last Sawadi ruler in 1520. Last but not least — a Sawadi adventurer named Shah Mir betook himself to Kashmir in 1339 where he became its first Muslim Sultan, and established the Shahmiri Dynasty which also ruled a good two centuries in the same subordinate role to the large Sultanate centred on Delhi.
