A few miles from Larkana at a place called Fatehpur is a handsome mosque. In its courtyard hang innumerable bells. I long tried in vain to learn its history but at last I obtained from Mr. Bherumal, Inspector of Excise, the following legend.

The town of Larkana derives its name from the tribe of Larak and was probably at one time called Larakanjo got or the village of the Larak tribesmen. They were followers of a [63]family known to history as the Kalhoras, whose family name Abbassi lent strength to their claim that they were sprung from the loins of Abbas, the uncle of the holy Prophet. After the conquest of Sind by Akbar, it became a province of the Moghul empire; but with the decline of the imperial power, authority relaxed and disorder grew. Of this disorder the Kalhoras took advantage. The first great Kalhoro was Adam Shah, who “drank the sherbet of martyrdom at Multan” or in simpler language was killed in an obscure fight with the Moghul governor of that city. Adam Shah’s grandson Shahlal Mahomed was the famous saint, whose memory still lives in the Fatehpur mosque. His first and perhaps greatest—certainly his most useful—miracle was the digging of the Ghar canal that runs past Larkana town. He did not dig it with a spade. His methods were simpler and more efficient. He mounted a Kando or thorn tree. Once firmly seated in its upper branches, he made the wretched vegetable drag its roots from Larkana to Kambar, a distance of twelve miles. In the deep hollow caused by the progress of the Kando tree, flowed the obedient water. The stream so created came to be known as the Shahlal Wah or the canal of Shahlal Mahomed. Many years later Mian Nur Mahomed Kalhoro widened the Shahlal Wah and changed its name to Ghar canal, i.e., the canal broken by the tree driven by the Saint’s superhuman powers. The Ghar canal bears this name to the present day and the tree which Shahlal Mahomed used as his humble instrument is still pointed out on the bank of the Chilo canal in the Kambar taluka.

The miracle of the Ghar canal was followed by so many others that the imperial governor became alarmed at the Saint’s growing fame and power. He reported the facts to Aurangzeb and obtained that emperor’s leave to shorten Shahlal Mahomed’s stature by a head. After a mighty resistance the Saint was [64]taken captive and executed. The governor put his head in a wooden box and sealing it sent it in charge of a police guard to the emperor’s camp. When the police guard reached Lahore they out of curiosity opened the box, in order to see what the head looked like. The lid was no sooner lifted than the head flew out and made its way through the air to Shahlal Mahomed’s favourite village of Fatehpur, wherein the Saint’s body lay buried. The police guard were so alarmed at the strange behaviour of the head that they dared neither return to Larkana nor go on to Delhi. They buried the empty box in Lahore and building a shrine over it, appointed themselves its guardians.

The emperor, however, who was eagerly expecting the sealed box, got disturbed at its delay. He sent a body of troops to Lahore to find out what had happened to it. At first they could find out nothing. At last hearing of the new shrine, they went there and extorted from its guardians the whole truth. They then dug up the ground and unearthed the box. Opening it they found it, not only to their own amazement but to that of the quondam police guard, by no means empty. It contained another head of Shahlal Mahomed exactly similar to the one that had flown away. The troops carried away box and head and showed them to Aurangzeb. Convinced of the miracle, the devout emperor felt sure that he had killed a Saint. To show his repentance of his cruel deed, he had a tomb built at Delhi over the box and the head. In the meantime, the Larak tribe and the other countless disciples of Shahlal Mahomed had built the mosque at Fatehpur over the holy man’s body and true head, once more in union. Thus the great saint is honoured by no less than three tombs, one at Fatehpur, where lie his real head and body, a second at Lahore where the empty box was buried and disinterred, and a third at Delhi where the second head lies. [65]

The descendants of Shahlal Mahomed were the famous Kalhoro Mirs who ruled Sind until overthrown by the Talpurs. Their capital was Haidarabad but they always loved Larkana for the sake of their ancestor; and the fame of its prosperity and wealth under the Kalhoros is still preserved in the well-known couplet

If you have money (to spend) then go to Larkana.