Chaush Erotic

In Hyderabad, the name Chaush marks a family as Arab by descent, and more specifically as descended from soldiers. The word is the old Ottoman rank çavuş, a sergeant. It stuck to the Hadhrami men from what is now Yemen who came to the Deccan in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to fight for the Nizams of Hyderabad. They arrived as hired fighters. Over time their commanders, the jamadars, became men of real money and influence at court. Their base was a set of military lines on the southern edge of the Old City. The barracks gave the neighborhood its name, Barkas, and Barkas is still the heart of the community.

The Arabic their ancestors spoke has mostly given way to Dakhini, the Hyderabadi form of Urdu. Arabic survives in prayer and in family names like Yafai and the patronymic bin. The Chaush are Sunni Muslims, and many follow the Shafi'i school brought over from Hadhramaut, which sets them slightly apart from the Hanafi majority among Hyderabad's Muslims. In Barkas, religion sits right inside ordinary life, in the neighborhood mosque, in the family, and on the calendar of weddings and feasts.

Two turning points shaped them. The first ran back toward Arabia: money earned in the Nizam's service flowed home, and the Qu'aiti family, which made its fortune commanding Arab troops in Hyderabad, used that wealth to build a sultanate at Shihr and Mukalla on the Hadhrami coast. The second came in 1948, when India annexed Hyderabad State and broke up the military establishment that had employed the community for generations. Families that had lived by soldiering had to find new work. In later decades many found it in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, reopening a link to the Arabian Peninsula that had never fully closed.

The best-known Chaush legacy now belongs to the whole city. Marfa, the pounding Hadhrami drum ensemble, plays at countless Hyderabadi wedding processions, whoever the families are. Barkas is also where the city goes for mandi, rice and slow-cooked meat served on a shared platter. Hyderabad's famous haleem is often traced to the Arab harees these soldiers brought with them. A community that began as a garrison has ended up setting the sound and flavor of the city's celebrations.