The narrow streets and dark alleys of Peshawar are a mirror to the architecture of the past as well as a reminiscent of an Italian governor of the city, General Paolo Avitabile, better known as Abu Tabela.

Abu Tabela joined the army of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1827 and in 1837, took over as the governor of Peshawar.

Though Abu Tabela has reputation of a ruthless ruler, he also did much of the town planning in Peshawar in his time.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Archaeology Department Sub-Regional Officer Nawazud Din tells The News on Sunday that Abu Tabela had done a good job by combining the two parts of Peshawar city.

“The Walled City in his time was divided into two parts. Abu Tabela combined the two and reconstructed the city wall making it a single whole. This way, he made the city more manageable, particularly in times of tribal raids as the city wall now protected the whole city,” says Nawazud Din, who looks after research related issues in Archaeology Department.

He says Abu Tabela did some town planning as well. “The current structures of the streets and roads inside the Walled City of Peshawar were designed by him,” he says.

Nawaz says the general used Gor Khatri complex, a famous archaeological site in Peshawar, as his official residence. “He was a multicultural kind of person. While he was a Roman Catholic Christian, he worked for the Sikhs, and demolished a mosque and built a temple for Hindus in the Gor Khatri complex,” he adds.

He says the Italian governor was regarded as a tyrant. “He ruled on behalf of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of Lahore. Soon his name had become synonymous with terror. He would order public hangings and leave the corpses of the executed there for days. People were afraid of even mentioning his name.”

Paolo Crescienzo Martino Avitabile was born in 1791 in Italy into a peasant family. He joined the military in 1807 and served there briefly. He then decided to head to the Ottoman Empire to try his fortune. From Constantinople, he was enlisted by the Persian Shah and served in Iran from 1818 to 1826. He then returned to Naples in 1826 before once again heading for Asia.

On the suggestion of two of his former comrades in Persia (Jean Francois Allard and Jean-Baptiste Ventura), now employed as military commanders under Ranjit Singh, he decided to reach India. After passing through Kabul and Peshawar, he arrived in Lahore in 1827.

He entered the service of Ranjit Singh as a military instructor and commander. For three years, he organised his infantry brigade on the European model.

In 1829, he was appointed governor of Wazirabad, where he managed his affairs very well.

Due to his successful management of Wazirabad, Avitabile was ordered by Ranjit Singh to serve in Peshawar under Hari Singh Nalwa.

Avitabile looked after the revenue collection for a year before resigning and returning to Lahore.

After the death of Hari Singh Nalwa in the battle of Jamrud (April 1837), Avitabile was named governor of Peshawar.

He was given almost unlimited authority to subdue the Pashtuns. Avitabile replicated his Wazirabad model of governance. In the first phase a huge construction programme was started, for both civil and military buildings.

The city was almost rebuilt in a new modern fashion according to European principles of order: streets were widened and a new bazaar was built along with a mud wall surrounding the city.

Bridges and roads were improved and went under maintenance. The collection of the revenue and the general administration of the state were also improved. Avitabile used to collaborate with the former rulers of the province (the Barakzais of Peshawar) to exploit their know-how of the province social and economic situation and to legitimize his rule, maintaining continuity with traditional institutions.

He also introduced some reforms including a fixed-rate tax, to be paid in silver, instead of payment in goods.

Despite his achievements, Avitabile’s name was always associated with cruelty. The first to mention his heavy-handed rule were British officers who passed through Peshawar, including Alexander Burnes, Col CM Wade, Colin Mackenzie and Henry Montgomery Lawrence. These officers saw how Avitabile was treating the native populace and commented on it.

In his novel, Adventures of an Officer in the Service of Runjeet Singh, Lawrence writes: “Under his rule, summary hangings have been added to the native catalogue of punishments, […] the ostentation of adding two or three to the string suspended from the gibbet, […] added to a very evident habitual carelessness of life, lead one to fear that small pains are taken to distinguish between innocence and guilt.”

Local legends are full of how Abu Tabela used to execute people. It is said that he would have people executed by throwing them from the top of Mahabat Khan’s mosque. For a long time afterwards, unruly children in the city were brought to control by invoking Abu Tabela’s name.

Following the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839, the political situation at the Lahore Durbar started to deteriorate quickly. Most of the European mercenaries had already left the kingdom before the start of the First Anglo-Sikh war of 1845-46.

Avitabile, too, succeeded in building a fortune and getting away with it to Europe. He returned to Naples, where he died in 1850.

The writer is a journalist and a PhD student at the University of Peshawar.