Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/305

This page needs to be proofread.

SAN 297 Twenty-six years later Sir W. Sleeman noted his impressions of Sándi (Vol. II, p. 31, Sleeman's Tour in Oudh):- " The river Garra flows under the town to the north. The place is said to be healthy, but could hardly be so were this lake to the west or east instead of to the south whence the wind seldom blows. This lake must give out more or less of malaria that would be taken over the village for the greater portion of the year by the prevailing easterly and westerly winds. I do not think the place so eligible for a cantonment as Tandee- awun in point either of salubrity, position, or soil . The lake on the south side abounds in fish, and is covered with wild fowl, but the fish we got from it was not good of its kind." The best market is that held on Sundays and Thursdays in muhalla Nawabganj, but smaller bazars are held on Tuesdays in muhalla Khalisa, on Mondays in muhalla Auládganj, on Fridays in muhalla Munshiganj, and on Wednesdays in Salámullaganj. The Sándi market has a local fame for its small cotton carpets or qálins. The principal wards or muhallas are called Sayyadwára, Salámullaganj, Munshiganj, Khalísa, Auládganj, Nawabganj, and Unchatila. Unchatila has been built on one of those isolated bluffs where soil harder than usual has withstood the river-floods of ages, and has left a sort of natural for- tress commanding the adjacent river basin. Here, layer upon layer, are piled the vestiges of the Arakbs, Thatheras, Sombansis, and Sayyads of the past, crowned with the successive remains of an earthwork thrown up during the reign of Shujá-ud-daula, a factory built by European enter- prize at a rather later date, a chakladar's tahsil and fort, an English tahsil and police station established at annexation, and now a Govern- ment opium godown or weighing house and office. A gloomy associa- tion clings to this building, for it was here, in 1870, that the opium officer Mr. MacMullen was atrociously murdered by his bearer, who in revenge for a trifling punishment by the kindest and most indulgent of masters, blew out his brains as he lay asleep, and then gave out that his master bad committed suicide. A moment's glance at the poor victim's body refuted the lie; the murderer confessed his crime, and was hanged for it. In Sayyadwára the chief buildings are a mosque and mansion built by Sayyad Qutb-ud-din Husen Khan, chakladar at annexation of Bangarmau and Sandi. In this house is located the Government aided school, averaging 102 pupils. To the south of it is an imámbára and mosque built in 1844. Two other mosques adorn the quarter raised by Muushi Mubarak Ali and Najábat Ali, reader of the khutba or prayer for the king. Salámullaganj, named after one of the Sayyad chaudhris of the pargana, boasts its rauza built in 1738 by Sayyad Muhammad Amjad, father of chaudhri Salám-ulla, and a mosque built by the same Sayyad three years later. To the east of the town are the dargáhs and graves of Shah Allah Bakhsh Darwesh, called also zinda Pír and of Maulana Khális, faqirs of great local renown, and claimed by tradition as companions in arms of Sayyad Sálár Masaúd. 38