Akhund Abdul Ghaffur of Swat

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 8 pages

A piece of journalism from Blavatsky's Indian years, and one of her more vivid character sketches. Abdul Ghaffūr, the Akhund of Swat, was among the most conspicuous figures of the nineteenth century in that part of the world, and this account follows his career, his antagonism with the Sikhs, and the circumstances of his death — which the article notes occurred almost simultaneously with that of the Pope in Rome.

Two claims lift it above reportage. The first is the identification: Ghaffūr is presented as a rebirth of Pope Sixtus V, of crafty and odious memory, which sets an Islamic holy man and a Renaissance pontiff in the same line of incarnation. The second is the prophecy the running head announces — the downfall of what the piece calls the twin foes of truth, Christianity and Islam, treated together and dismissed together. Readers expecting the polemic of this series to fall on Christianity alone will find it distributed more evenly here. From the first volume of Blavatsky Collected Writings.

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