The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c16.50

v4.c16.50

In the summer of 1577 Akbar sent to the Muslim state of Khāndesh an expedition which secured the submission of Rājā 'Alī Khān, who had lately succeeded his nephew as its ruler. The event is less trivial than it seems, for it was the first step in a great enterprise conceived by Akbar, but not finally accomplished until the reign of his great-grandson, Aurangzīb—the reconquest of the Deccan, which had been severed from the empire of Delhi for two hundred and thirty years. In the course of his rapid descent on Gujarāt in 1573 Akbar had learned that the small kingdom of Berār, the northernmost of the five independent states of the Deccan, which was annexed by Ahmadnagar in the following year, was in the last throes of its death struggle, that confusion and disorder reigned in Ahmadnagar, and that his movements had excited apprehension and alarm in that kingdom. This information suggested to him the reconquest of the Deccan between which and his dominions Khāndesh was the only political barrier.