At this time the Pathans of the frontier were generally depressed by the crushing defeat which they and the Peshawar Sirdars had sustained at the hands of Ranjit Singh at the battle of Nowshera, so that when the Saiyid began to preach a _jehad_ many people flocked to his standard, the number of his Hindustani followers grew to 900, and the Peshawar Sirdars also joined him. In the spring of 1827 Saiyid Ahmad proceeded to Nowshera with the intention of laying siege to Attock, but Ranjit Singh was ready for him. The great Sikh general, Hari Singh, with one army, awaited him on the Indus, while Budh Singh, crossing the river with another, marched to and entrenched himself at Saidu. Here Saiyid Ahmad surrounded his force, and in time reduced it to great straits, until Budh Singh, resolving to fight, warned the Peshawar Sirdars of the approach of another Sikh army under Ranjit Singh, and then joined battle. The Sirdars fled, and the Musalmans were routed with great slaughter. Saiyid Ahmad escaped with a handful of followers via Lundkhwar to Swat and thence to Buner, where the Saiyid was able to persuade the Pathans that treachery alone had been responsible for his defeat, and he was soon again joined by thousands. He then went to Panjtar, where he was cordially received by Fateh Khan, the chief of the Khudu Khels, and his position thereby greatly strengthened. Eventually he succeeded in getting the whole of Yusafzai and Peshawar under his control; he subdued the chiefs of Hund and Hoti; levied tithes; defeated a Barakzai force which had marched against him; took possession of Amb; and finally, in 1829, he occupied Peshawar. [Sidenote: Gaduns and Hindustanis] He had now come to the end of his tether; his exactions had made him unpopular with his Pathan following, and there was a general revolt against his authority. The Sikhs organised expeditions against him and his men, which, as Oliver says, “were exterminative rather than punitive. The villagers turned out and hunted back the fugitives into the mountains, destroying them like wild beasts. The history of the time is a record of the bitterest hatred. The traditions tell of massacre without mercy. Hunter quotes one instance in which the very land tenure was a tenure by blood, certain village lands being held by the Hindu borderer on payment to the Sikh grantees of an annual hundred heads of the Hassan Khel. The decline of Saiyid Ahmad’s fame as an apostle came after his ill-advised effort to reform the Pathan marriage customs, which was really an attempt to provide wives for his own Hindustanis. Something like the Sicilian Vespers was repeated, the fiery cross was passed round the hills as the signal for the massacre of his agents, and in one hour—the hour of evening prayer—they were murdered by the tribesmen almost to a man.”