— AME
42
The town is situated off the road to the left and is buried in trees, and the visitor has to thread his way through the long winding alleys formed by the high walls of the agglomeration of mud houses which compose the town, coming sometimes across a gateway which leads into the court-yards of some impoverished Musalman residents, or the grass-covered dome of larger proportion than the tomb of some old Muhammadan saint. usual, amounting to half of the whole population which numbers 7,128 souls, is Muhammadan, and the town contains several Musalman muhaU.as, two of which the Malikzada and Ansari are very old. The date of the foundation of the town is unknown, but Amethi is a common name of a village and is probably of Bhar origin. It seems to have been an advanced post of the Bhar kingdom that was ruled by the Bhar Raja Baladatt, from Bahraich, as he maintained a force here to keep in check the two Banaphar Rajput leaders, Alha and Udal, who had been sent by the Kanauj raja to subdue the country of Oudh. They must have met with a check, for they do not seem to have advanced further, and a great battle is said to have been fought on a plain on the borders of the pargana about twenty miles to the west, and which is known as the Lohiiganj ' The town of blood.' Alha and Udal had a fortified camp in the village of Pah^magar Tikaria. The next scene was the invasion of Sayyad Salar in whose track Amethi fell he sent forward one of his lieutenants, Malik Ytisuf, who took and held the town. It is his descendants that inhabit the Malikzada muhalla, where the tombs of six martyrs (Shahids) attest the severity of the resistance, he met with. Of these, the two best known, are the tombs of Jugan Shahid and Sej-ud-dm Gada Shahid. In honor of the latter a festival is held in the month of Jeth, called the Hara-tale festival The "under the Hara tree" festival. It is held on the same day as the festival in honor of Sayyad Salar at Bahraich. The Musalman invasion seems to have led to no further result. Sayyad Salar's defeat at Bahraich and his own death, as well as that of the Bhar Raja BaMdatt, seems to have drawn off both parties. The next occupants of the town and the pargana were the Chamar Gaur Rajputs of the country near Kangari, whose invasion took place probably at the end of the fourteenth century. The most famous of this family seems to have been Raja Dingur, after whose time the town was called Amethi Dingur, and his tribe was known as the Amethia Rajputs. They, in turn, gave way before another invasion of the Musalmans, headed by Shekh Abid Husen, Ansari, and retired to their present seats in Kumhrawan and Haidargarh, in the district of Bara Banki. This Shekh was the father of the chaudhri family of Sahnipur, and some of this same tribe stiU inhabit the Ansdri muhalla of the town. From this time the Musalman element in the place increased. Two celebrated saints lived here in the time of Jalal-uddin Akbar Hazrat Bandagi Mian and Shekh Baha-ul-Haq and so widely known was the sanctity of the former, that the town began to be known as the Amethi of Shekh Bandagi Mian. When Akbar was on his way back from the conquest of Bengal, he turned aside to visit the saint and at his bidding, the platform on which he sat and on which his shrine is now built advanced six paces to meet the coming monarch and in such reverence is his memory held that even the dispossessed Amethia Rajputs make offerings to his tomb on their visits to the place some muafi land
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