The Bora or Bohorah Dr. Wilson describes as corresponding iu many respects with the Ismaili, the Ansari, the Mutawilah, and the Druse of Syria. They pay particular regard to the tenets of Ismail, son of Jafar, the sixth imam, and 'hold, like the Shiah, but in a more exaggerated form, the mystical doctrine of the Union of the deity with Ali. The mercantile Bora are divided into three sects, — the Sulimani, the Aliyah, and the Dawildiah,' from certain lines of the mullas or pontiffs, to which they adhere. In Bombay city they form. per cent. of the Muhammadans there ; but it is in Kaira, Surat, Broach, Ahmadabad, and other cities of Gujerat, that the sect are principally numerous. They arc pedlars, shopkeepers, workers in iron and tin, and many of the men are long absent from their families following their professions. The Bombay census returns show in that presidency about 10,000.
The Karmati or Karamata is a sect founded about 278 A.H. (891 A.D.) by Ahmad, a follower of Abdallah. He taught that everything desir able was allowable. He endeavoured to carry out his views by violence, and began an open war against the ruling powers. In 290 A.H. (903 A.D.) the Karmat sect made a fearful inroad into Syria ; and in 311 A.H. (923 A.D.) they plundered Basra and Kufa. In 319 A.H. (931 A.D.), led by Abu Tahir, they took Mecca, with terrible slaughter, plundered the temple, and carried away the Black Stone (Hajr-ul-Aswad), which they retained for twenty years. Ar Razi, the twentieth khalif, paid them a subsidy to secure the safe passage of pilgrims to Mecca. The Fatimite dynasty of Egypt was founded in 297 A.H. (909-10 A.D.) by an Ismailian, in rivalry of the Arabian khalifat. It grew rapidly into power, and became a source of great trouble and jealousy to the rulers of Baghdad, and the wars were most savage and unrelenting. They appear to have pushed eastward into the valley of the Indus, and to have sought a country in Sind about 375 A.u. (985 A.D.), and seem to have been ruling there at the time of Mahmud's return from the fall of Som nath. They destroyed the great idol at Multan, and the chief whom Mahmud of Ghazni drove thence was one of this sect. But they re-obtained power there, for in 571 A.H. (1175 A.D.) Muhammad Ghori again delivered Multan from the hands of the Karmatians. In 634 A.H. (1237 A.D.) we find them in some force at Dehli, where they made a concerted assault on the Muhammadans in the great mosque, and slew a considerable number, but they were finally overpowered, `and every heretic (mulahida) and Karmatian was sent to hell.' Their name was given to them from their use of the Karmata or Karmat style of writing Arabic, in which very small letters are used with very close lines. General Merewether's
returns show 39 sections of Karmati in the Kurachee collectorate in Sind, but whether or not they belong to the Karmati sectarians, there is no information.
The Assassin sect known to the Crusaders also sprang from the Ismaili. The founder was Hasan-us-Sabah, a native of Re. He was school fellow and companion of Nizam-ul-Mulk, the well-known wazir of the Saljuki dynasty, and author of Majma-ul-Wasaya. The forcible re moval of all foes and rivals by the dagger was the distinctive practice of this sect. Nizam-ul-Mulk fell under their daggers, and the author of the Jahan Kusha nearly became a victim to them. In 483 A.R. Hasan-us-Sabah obtained possession of the strong fortress of Alamut or Alah-amut (the eagle's nest) in the province of ltudbar, about eleven parsangs north of Kazwin. Here Ito and his descendants maintained themselves for nearly two centuries, when the fortress and many others fell to the Mongols. Mange Klein determined to exterminate the whole of the Ismaili sect ; and under him and his successor Hulaku, their for tresses were taken, and many thousands of their seen, women, children, and babes at the breast were put to the sword.
The Allmon sect of 3Inhammadans are numerous in the Kurachee and Ilyderabad collectorates of Sind, and have spread into all the Bombay districts. The number given in the returns of the census taken in 1872 is about 50,000, but others of the sect must have merely styled themselves Musal man. In Bombay city they numbered 8825. In the returns received from General Mcrewether there are entered Memon Khojah and Menton Sayata, and are placed among tho Shaikh or Mullion sections. Dr. Wilson says they take their sectarian name from Millman, a Persian word for a guest, a stranger, and that they arc converts to the Sunni form of the Muhammadan religion, principally from the agricultural and mercantile classes of Hindus in Sind, Cutch, and Kattyawar.' In Sind they have many learned and respectable men amongst them, but the bulk are engaged in trade, agriculture, and cattle-breeding.
Staffs.—There was in Sind in the time of the Amirs, a system of slavery common to it and all the countries to the north-west, viz. that of fathers selling their daughters as wives when very young, as also of the sale of girls for the zananas of the wealthy. The Afghans were particularly notorious for this traffic in Sind, but it was after all very limited. Under the former rulers, many slaves were brought from Africa and Arabia, and employed as domestics. They were known as Ilabshi ( pl. Habash), also Sidi.