The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c20: Chapter X. Aurangzīb (1681–1707)
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c20
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Chapter X. Aurangzīb (1681–1707)
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THE flight of his rebel son Akbar to the Marāthā king forced a complete change on the policy of Aurangzīb and hastened the fate of his empire as well. It became necessary for the emperor to go to the Deccan in person and to assemble there his best troops and generals and practically all the resources of his realm. The centre of gravity of the Delhi empire was shifted to southern India for the next twenty-six years, while north India, its real seat of strength, fell into neglect and decay. In Hindustān the administration rapidly deteriorated, peace, prosperity and the arts decreased, and the entire Indian civilisation fell backwards. The defence of the north-western frontier was neglected, and the material resources of the empire dwindled till they ceased to suffice for its needs. The vast annexations effected by Aurangzīb in the Deccan—Bījāpur, Golconda, eastern Carnatic and Mahārāshtra—were all illusive. Instead of adding to the strength and wealth of the empire, they brought down economic ruin upon it and destroyed its army as an instrument of power. In fact, the Mughul empire now became too large to be administered by one man or from one centre, and its disruption began which was to make the history of India in the eighteenth century one “great anarchy”.
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After patching up a peace with Mewār (June, 1681), Aurangzīb despatched his son A‘zam with a large army to the Deccan (31 July), and soon afterwards he himself hastened there, arriving at Burhānpur on 23 November and at Aurangābād on 1 April, 1682. His main occupation now was to watch and check Shambhūjī, the new Marāthā king, and his protégé the rebel prince Akbar.
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Shambhūjī had gained his father’s throne on 28 June, 1680, ten weeks after the death of the latter and in the teeth of strong opposition. His succession had been disputed, a hostile faction at the capital having crowned his step-brother Rājā Rām, a boy of ten, who was too weak to maintain himself when Shambhūjī appeared in force at the capital. But for more than a year afterwards Shambhūjī’s position continued to be insecure and it was only in October, 1681, after ruthlessly crushing a second plot by Annājī Datto against his life and liberty, that he could gain undisputed supremacy in the state. Under him the Marāthā army continued Shivājī’s policy of setting out on plundering expeditions every year on the Dasahra day (October) at the end of the rainy season. In the winter of 1680–81 they raided north Khāndesh, and then passing farther east looted the suburbs of Burhānpur for three days unmolested (9–11 February, 1681), taking an enormous amount of booty. The surprise was complete and none of the people could conceal or remove their property. Many respectable men slew their wives and children to save them from outrage and slavery; many houses were set on fire after being ransacked. The governor was powerless. In November, 1681, an attempt to surprise the fort of Ahmadnagar was defeated.
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Prince Akbar, who had been sheltered by Shambhūjī in the village of Pālī (six miles east of Nāgothān), gathered a small force of 2000 men with the jewels he had brought away with himself, and kept up the pageant of an emperor, issuing letters in the royal style dated in his regnal years! Shambhūjī promised to support him with a Marāthā army in gaining the Delhi throne, but nothing came of these promises. Aurangzīb's wise strategy blocked all the paths out of Mahārāshtra. Early in 1682 he began a vigorous offensive against the Marāthās; one division under Sayyid Hasan ‘Alī Khān descended into the north Konkan and occupied Kalyān (*c.* 9 February), withdrawing in May next to avoid the heavy monsoon. Another, under Shihāb-ud-dīn Khān, invaded the Nāsik district and besieged Rāmsej, but after a six months' siege and the failure of three assaults the attempt was abandoned in October. Rūh-ullah Khān and Shāh ‘Ālam were sent to guard the Ahmadnagar district, while prince A‘zam was despatched towards Bījāpur to prevent aid coming to the Marāthās from that state. In fact, the emperor’s spirit was now up; as the Kārwār factors wrote: “He is so inveterate against the Rāja that he hath thrown off his *pagri* and sworn never to put it on again, till he hath either killed, taken, or routed him out of his country.” Khān Jahān gave the Marāthās a long and hot chase from Nānder and Bīdar to Chāndā and the Qutb Shāhī frontier. A‘zam campaigned for one year in the north Bījāpur territory, capturing Dhārūr. In his absence his camp was attacked by the Marāthās, but, inspired by his heroic wife Jahānzīb Bānū, the Hārā Rājput guards repulsed the enemy, though losing 900 of their own men.
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But nothing decisive was achieved by the Mughuls in 1682, and all their detachments were recalled to the emperor’s side in April, 1683. His distrust of his sons and generals led him to follow a barren policy of waiting and vacillation. “The king’s mind...is continually wavering and he is extraordinarily peevish and uneasy because of Sultān Akbar. Sultān A‘zam, (his) Begam, and Dilīr Khān degraded for even nothing but only suspected, without any grounds, of being kind to Akbar” (Surat Factory letter).
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But just at this time came a happy diversion for the Mughuls. In April, 1683, Shambhūjī began an invasion of Portuguese territory which occupied all his forces till the next January, when he was glad to make peace by the mutual restitution of conquests. In the meantime prince Akbar had realised that the Marāthā king would do nothing for him; his heart grew sick of hope deferred, and he decided to leave Mahārāshtra, go to Portuguese territory and there charter a ship for conveying him to Persia for refuge. In January, 1683, he left Pāli and took up his residence at Bāndā, and then (in September) at Bicholim, very close to Goa. In November he bought a ship and embarked at Vingurlā, but Durgā Dās and Kavi-Kalash arrived there with fresh promises of armed support from Shambhūjī and induced him to give up this attempt to sail to Persia. Throughout 1684 Akbar lived in the Ratnāgiri district as Shambhūjī's unwilling guest, but unable to make any successful dash into his father's territory. In fact, Shambhūjī was now too deeply sunk in vice and his government was too disturbed by the jealousy of the local nobles against the raja's all-powerful "foreign" favourite Kavi-Kalash (a Kanaujiya Brāhman) and the frequent rebellions among his vassals and court conspiracies against his life, so that the Marāthā power ceased to count in Indian politics. There were many desertions of Marāthā officers and nobles to the Mughul side, and the whole west coast was up in arms against Shambhūjī.
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A fresh Mughul offensive was launched at the end of September, 1683; Aurangzīb himself advanced from Aurangābād to Ahmadnagar, while strong divisions were posted at Poona, Nāsik and Akalkot, and the Sīdī cruised off Vingurlā to watch Akbar's movements. But the main attack was entrusted to a grand army led by Shāh 'Ālam into the south Konkan by the Rāmghāt pass (between Goa and Belgaum). After conquering many places in the Belgaum district, this prince crossed the pass and descended into Sāvantvādi. At Bicholim (15 January, 1684) he destroyed the mansions and gardens of Shambhūjī and Akbar and then moved to the neighbourhood of Goa, the invasion of which was immediately abandoned by the Marāthās. But the prince, coming as a deliverer, plotted to seize Goa by treachery; this fatal policy set the Portuguese against him and they stopped his grain supply by sea. The prince next marched northwards, sacking and burning Mālvan, Kudal, Bāndā and Vingurlā in this region, and then returned to the river bank north of Goa. Famine stopped his further progress. No corn could be procured locally and none was allowed to come to him by sea from Surat. So, the baffled prince returned to the Rāmghāt pass on 1 March. Here a pestilence of such virulence spread that in one week a third of his men died, besides an even larger proportion of transport animals. This failure of transport led to a second famine, and more men perished of heat and thirst. The miserable remnant of the army crossed the pass and reached Ahmadnagar (28 May) without having done anything except burning a few villages and robbing a few towns, at the expense of half its strength.
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The Mughul campaign in the first half of 1684 was highly successful in other quarters; many Marāthā forts were taken, their field armies repeatedly defeated, and much of their territory annexed, while many of their captains came over to the imperial side. The sieges of Bījāpur and Golconda, however, relieved the pressure on the Marāthās during 1685–87. Prince Akbar, thoroughly despairing of any success or even safety in India, sailed from Rājapur in February, 1687, and reached the Persian court in January, 1688, after some months' detention by the Sultan of Muscat, who tried to sell him to Aurangzīb.
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While Shambhūjī was absorbed in drinking and merry-making with a small escort and in utter carelessness at Sangameshwar, twenty-two miles from Ratnāgiri, he was surprised and captured by an energetic Mughul officer named Muqarrab Khān, who had made a forced march from Kolhāpur. With him were captured his minister Kavi-Kalash and twenty-five of his chief followers (11 February, 1689). At Bahādurgarh, the two chief captives were brought to the imperial camp and publicly paraded dressed as buffoons with drum and trumpet. Shambhūjī was offered his life if he would give up his forts and divulge the hiding-places of his treasures; but he loosened his tongue in scurrilous abuse of the emperor and his Prophet and asked for one of his daughters to be given to him. After being tortured and mutilated for twenty-four days, Shambhūjī and Kavi-Kalash were hacked to pieces limb by limb on 21 March.
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After the capture of Shambhūjī his younger brother Rājā Rām was crowned by the ministers at Rāigarh (18 February). But, soon afterwards, an imperial army under I‘tiqād Khān (afterwards Zu-’l-Fiqār Khān, Nusrat Jang) laid siege to this Marāthā capital, and Rājā Rām slipped out of it disguised as a religious mendicant (15 April), and finally, after many adventures, made his way to Gingee (11 November). In the meantime Rāigarh capitulated on 29 October, and the Mughuls seized there the surviving ladies of the Marāthā royal family and Shambhūjī's children, including Shāhū, a boy of seven. These were detained in Aurangzīb's camp with every respect and privacy. Thus by the end of 1689 Aurangzīb became the unrivalled lord paramount of northern India and the Deccan alike; but it was the beginning of his end.
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For four years after Dilīr Khān's failure (February, 1680) nothing decisive was done by the Mughuls against Bījāpur, as they were busy opposing Shambhūjī and Akbar. Prince A‘zam's campaign (1682–83) was languidly conducted in the region north of the Nīrā river; thereafter even these desultory attacks ceased. In the meantime the condition of the ‘Ādil Shāhī government grew hopeless. Mas‘ūd resigned his post as minister in despair and disgust early in 1684, and his successor Āqā Khusrav died after six months of office (21 October). The leadership of the state then fell to Sharza Khān (a Mahdavī Sayyid) and ‘Abdur-Rauf (Afghān). The Mughuls then resumed the appropriation of bits of the ‘Ādil Shāhī kingdom and established their own outposts in these; Mangalvide and Sāngola were gained in May, 1684. Although a rupture between the two powers now seemed imminent and some acrimonious letters were exchanged, war did not actually break out until some months afterwards, and Aurangzib continued to send friendly letters and robes of honour to the ‘Ādil Shāhī court. But both sides used the interval in preparing for war, and on 11 April, 1685, the last Mughul siege of Bījāpur began. Rūh-ullah Khān and Qāsim Khān opened their trenches on the Shāhpur or north-western side, half a mile from the fort wall, while Khān Jahān ran his approaches from the Rasūlpur or western suburb. Prince A‘zam arrived on 24 June and took over the supreme command, encamping at the Begam Hauz, south of the city.
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The Mughuls were slow and clumsy in conducting regular sieges; the soil round Bījāpur is extremely hard, and therefore the besiegers made no real progress even after fifteen months of labour. The fort was not fully invested; the soldiers sallied out and returned whenever they liked; and allies flocked to ‘Ādil Shāh, from Mas‘ūd (now semi-independent chief of Adonī), Qutb Shāh and Shambhūjī. A‘zam had to fight three severe battles in less than a month; his grain supply was totally stopped and a famine raged in his camp. But as he refused to retire, even when commanded by Aurangzīb, the emperor sent him provisions, reinforcements and money under the escort of Ghāzī-ud-dīn (Fīrūz Jang), who ably fought his way to the famished army and “turned the scarcity into plenty” (end of October). Fīrūz Jang next intercepted and cut off a force of 6000 Berad infantry, each with a bag of provisions on his head, whom Pām Nāyak tried to smuggle into the fort. At this time the Mughul capture of Hyderābād and the flight of its king to Golconda cut off all hope of aid to Bījāpur being received from that side.
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But discord and mutual jealousy among the Mughul commanders thwarted their efforts. So the emperor himself went to Bījāpur (13 July, 1686) and pressed the siege vigorously. The fort was completely invested and the friends of the garrison in his camp were crushed. The sufferings of the Bījāpurīs were aggravated by a famine which was then raging in the Deccan on account of the failure of the annual rains. Countless men and horses died within the fort, and from the lack of horses the Deccanis could not follow their favourite tactics of hovering round the invaders and cutting off their stragglers and transport. But even then the Mughuls could neither make any practicable breach in the walls nor fill up the broad and deep moat. On 14 September Aurangzib advanced his tent from two miles in the rear to a place immediately behind the siege trenches, and next day rode to the edge of the moat to inspect his raised battery.
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And now the garrison lost heart; the future looked absolutely dark to them, and their ranks had been thinned to 2000 men, while no help was to be expected from outside. Their two leading nobles arranged the terms of surrender, which Aurangzīb readily granted. On 22 September, 1686, Sikandar, the last of the ‘Ādil Shāhs, left the capital of his ancestors and waited on Aurangzīb in his camp at Rasūlpur. He was very kindly received and enrolled among the Mūghul peers with the lesser title of *Khān* (instead of *Shāh*), and an annual pension of 100,000 rupees was settled upon him. All the Bījāpurī officers were taken over into Mūghul service. On the 29th, Aurangzīb entered the fallen city through the southern or Mangali gate (henceforth to be called the “Gate of Victory”, *Fath Darwāza*). In the ‘Ādil Shāhī palace and the “Relic Shrine” (*Āsār-i-sharīf*) he erased all pictures drawn in violation of the Qurānic law and all Shiah inscriptions. The kingdom was ordered to be styled *Dār-uz-Zafar*. Complete desolation settled upon the city of Bījāpur after the fall of its independent dynasty; from a proud capital it became merely the headquarters city of one of the numerous provinces of the Mūghul empire; its nobility decayed and disappeared, and the multitude of artisans and labourers, poets and scholars, lost their bread. Two years after its conquest, a terrible bubonic plague swept away more than half its population, and even the abundant water supply in the city wells suddenly grew scanty. The city and its once populous suburbs were deserted and fell into ruin.
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After being at first lodged in the state prison of Daulatābād and then carried about with Aurangzīb’s camp, Sikandar died outside Sātārā fort on 13 April, 1700, not yet thirty-two years of age.
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For nearly thirty years after Aurangzīb’s accession the kingdom of Golconda enjoyed respite from Mūghul attack, because of the pre-occupation of the Mūghuls with the Marāthās and ‘Ādil Shāh and also because Qutb Shāh paid his tribute regularly. Abu-’l Hasan (accession 1672), the last Sultān of this line, resigned his royal functions to his Brahman minister Mādanna and shut himself up in his palace with a host of concubines and dancing-girls. All power in the state was monopolized by Mādanna, his brother Ākkanna and their nephew surnamed Rustam Rāo; the administration grew more and more inefficient and corrupt, and the Muslims complained of Hindu predominance and their own humiliation in the state. Above all, Mādanna was a staunch supporter of the defensive alliance with the Marāthās for an annual subsidy.
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Soon after the Mūghul siege of Bījāpur had commenced, a letter from Qutb Shāh to his agent in the emperor’s camp was intercepted, in which he called Aurangzīb a mean-minded coward for attacking a helpless young orphan like Sikandar ‘Ādil Shāh, and promised to send a large army in support of Bījāpur. At this Aurangzīb sent Shāh ‘Ālam with a strong force to seize Hyderābād (July, 1685); but this division was effectively checked at Mālkhed and practically besieged by a Golconda army for more than two months. There were frequent fights, in which the Mūghuls could make no advance, as the enemy greatly outnumbered them; their heavy losses took the heart out of the imperialists and the rains added to their hardships. But early in October, the Golconda commander-in-chief, Mīr Muhammad Ibrāhīm, was bribed to come over to the Mughuls, and his disheartened soldiers fled back to their capital.
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The defection of the commander-in-chief paralysed the defence of Hyderābād. Qutb Shāh fled precipitately to the fort of Golconda, leaving all his property behind in Hyderābād. Before Shāh ‘Ālam could arrive and restore order in the city (*c.* 18 October), it presented the spectacle of a sack after assault by an enemy; indiscriminate looting and confusion raged in it, and many women and children were kidnapped and outraged. Qutb Shāh then submitted, and at Shāh ‘Ālam’s recommendation the emperor granted him pardon on the following conditions: (i) the payment of twelve million rupees in settlement of all past dues and in addition a tribute of two hundred thousand *hūns* every year, (ii) the dismissal of Mādanna and Ākkanna, and (iii) the cession of Mālkhed and Seram to the emperor.
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Shāh ‘Ālam halted at Kuhir for some months for the collection of the war indemnity. Abu-’l Hasan put off the dismissal of Mādanna as long as he could. At this his Muslim nobles and the two dowager Sultānas formed a plot and caused Mādanna and Ākkanna to be murdered in the streets of Golconda (March, 1686). The ministers’ residences were plundered and their families ruined by the Muslim mob, who next made a general attack on the Hindu quarter, killing and plundering the Brāhmans. Golconda territory was then completely evacuated by the Mughuls.
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But the fall of Bījāpur (September, 1686) set the imperialists free to deal finally with the Qutb Shāhī government. On 7 February, 1687, the emperor arrived before Golconda, to which Abu-’l Hasan had again fled. The Mughuls occupied Hyderābād for the third and last time. On the first day the Mughuls charged and drove in the Qutb Shāhī soldiers who were assembled in the dry ditch under shelter of the fort walls. Qilich Khān (the grandfather of the first Nizām), in trying to enter Golconda pell-mell with these fugitives, was fatally wounded, and regular siege operations began (17 February). Aurangzīb himself encamped north-west of the fort along the Sholāpur road; trenches were opened against the south-eastern and southern faces of the fort, the Mughul soldiers with the city behind them moving along both banks of the Mūsī river.
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But the emperor’s aims were paralysed by bitter personal jealousies in his camp. Shāh ‘Ālam was soft-hearted and wished to save Abu-’l Hasan from destruction. He welcomed Qutb Shāh’s agents, who visited him secretly and bribed him to use his influence with the emperor to get Abu-’l Hasan pardoned and thus rob his brother A‘zam of the credit of capturing Golconda. The emperor, on learning of these secret negotiations with the enemy, at once put Shāh ‘Ālam and his entire family in prison (3 March), confiscated his property, and even punished his servants. Every hardship and humiliation was inflicted upon the prince in his captivity and it was seven years before he could recover his liberty.
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Another cause of discord in the imperial camp was that the many Shiahs in the imperial service heartily disliked the prospect of the extinction of the last Shiah kingdom in India, and even many orthodox Sunnīs, like the chief Qāzīs Shaikh-ul-Islām and ‘Abdullah, condemned the attacks on Bījāpur and Golconda as “wars between Muslims” and therefore sinful. Fīrūz Jang, a Turk and Sunnī, was at first the leading officer at the siege, and therefore Saf Shikan Khān, the chief of artillery and a Persian Shiah, after working strenuously for some time, resigned “in order to spite Fīrūz Jang”. The next two chiefs of artillery were utter failures, and then this post, the most important in a siege, went begging, till at last Saf Shikan Khān was reinstated (2 July); but by that time the field-works had been demolished by the enemy and the investment had to be begun anew. The fort had an inexhaustible supply of munitions and its walls bristled with guns of large calibre. Its incessant fire caused heavy losses to the Mughuls, but they carried the trenches to the edge of the ditch in six weeks. The ditch however could not be filled up.
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At midnight, 26 May, Fīrūz Jang made an attempt to surprise the fort by scaling the wall with ladders. But a carrion dog of the fort, on seeing strangers, set up a loud bark which alarmed the garrison and the Mughul party had to return without success.
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While the siege operations languished, the Mughul army fell into the grip of famine, as the enemy infested the roads and effectually stopped the transport of provisions. In June the rain descended in torrents, turning the roads into quagmires and the camp into a lake, and completely washing out the trenches and raised batteries. The enemy seized the opportunity. In the night of 15 June, amidst a deluge of rain, they raided the Mughul advanced batteries and trenches, slew the careless gunners, damaged the guns, destroyed the materials and munition, and carried off the chief of artillery (Ghairat Khān) and thirteen other high officers as prisoners. It was only after three days of struggle that the Mughuls were able to reoccupy the lost battery. Meantime, three mines had been carried under the bastions of the fort and each loaded with heavy charges of gunpowder. On 30 June, under the emperor’s own eyes, the first of them was fired, but the force of the explosion was directed outwards and the scattered rock killed 1100 of the densely crowded imperialists. After this the garrison made a sortie, seized the Mughul trenches and outposts opposite, and were driven out only after a long contest and heavy slaughter. Then the second mine was fired with the same disastrous consequences, the Mughuls losing another thousand men. The enemy immediately made another sortie and took possession of the field-works and outposts. The Mughuls fought desperately to recover them, Fīrūz Jang and two other generals being wounded and large numbers of their men slain. Aurangzīb himself advanced into the field to aid his troops; cannon-balls began to fall near him, but he coolly kept his position and cheered his soldiers by his example. While this battle was raging a tempest burst on the plain with the tropical fury of wind, rain and thunder. The rising water forced the Mughuls back, and then the enemy made another charge, seizing the trenches further off and carrying away or damaging all their guns. At sunset the defeated Mughuls fell back on their rear lines. Next morning the third mine was fired, but having been discovered and flooded with water by the enemy, it did not explode. Thus the Mughuls failed with all their efforts and the siege dragged on.
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The *morale* of the imperial army was utterly gone; the famine grew worse than before; and a pestilence broke out which nearly depopulated Hyderābād and caused havoc in the camp. “At night heaps of dead bodies used to accumulate. After some months, when the rains ceased, the white piles of skeletons looked from a distance like hillocks of snow.” But Aurangzīb held on with grim tenacity and called up reinforcements. Golconda was completely enclosed by him with a wall of wood and earth and ingress and egress from the fort stopped. At the same time he annexed the Qutb Shāhī kingdom by proclamation and set up his own officers in all places in it, so as to stop supplies and succour from coming to the fort.
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On 2 October, 1687, Golconda was captured, but by bribery. An Afghān soldier of fortune named ‘Abdullah Pānī (surnamed Sardār Khān), who had deserted from Bījāpur service and then from the Mughul to join Qutb Shāh, now sold his master. He left the postern gate of the fort open, and at his invitation Rūh-ullah Khān with a small force entered by this gate unchallenged at 3 o'clock in the morning, and opened the main gate, by which the Mughul supporting columns poured into the fort like a flood. No resistance could be made to a surprise in such force; only one faithful captain, ‘Abdur-Razzāq Lārī, opposed the assailants single-handed, but he was borne down covered with seventy wounds. The Mughuls nursed him back to recovery and the emperor gave him high rank.
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Abu-’l-Hasan, the last of the Qutb Shāhs, left his throne with calmness and dignity. When Rūh-ullah Khān entered his palace to seize him, he bade his captors to breakfast with him, consoled his women and servants, and left for the Mughul camp. In the evening he was presented by A‘zam to the emperor, who read him a long lecture “on his corrupt government, wherein he had been very unfaithful in the charge he had committed to him, in encouraging the Brāhmans and discouraging the Moors, to the dishonour of their religion and country, whereby he had justly brought these troubles upon himself". After a time he was sent off to the prison-fortress of Daulatābād with an allowance of 50,000 rupees a year.
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The spoils taken at Golconda amounted to nearly seventy million rupees in cash, besides gold and silver plate, jewels and jewelled ware. The revenue of the kingdom was, on paper, nearly thirty million rupees.
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The emperor set himself to take possession of the forts and districts of the fallen kingdoms of Bījāpur and Golconda. Sāgar (the Berad capital), Adonī (the seat of Sīdī Mas‘ūd), Karnūl, Rāichūr, Serā and Bangalore in Mysore, and Bankāpur and Belgaum in Kanara, as well as Wandiwāsh and Conjeveram in the eastern or Madras Carnatic, were gained by his armies, in the course of a year from the fall of Golconda. After his return to Bījāpur, a deadly bubonic plague broke out in the city and camp (November, 1688), which killed about a hundred thousand people, including the emperor’s wife Aurangābādī Mahall, Jasvant’s alleged son Muhammadī Rāj, and many grandees. Fīrūz Jang escaped with the loss of his eyes.
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After the fall of Shambhūjī, Aurangzīb mostly encamped in Bījāpur and at different places south of that city (especially Galgalā) for many years, and finally settled at Brahmapurī (on the Bhīmā river) to which he gave the name of *Islāmpurī*. After four years and a half (June, 1695–October, 1699) passed here, he set out on the campaign against Marāthā forts from which he returned a broken down old man to Ahmadnagar (31 January, 1706), only to die there (3 March, 1707). The flight of the new Marāthā king Rājā Rām to Gingee (end of 1689) made that fort a centre of Marāthā enterprise on the east coast, while his ministers left at home organised resistance in the west and thus doubled the task of the Mughuls. The difficulties of Aurangzīb were multiplied by this disappearance of a common head and a central government among the Marāthās, because every petty Marāthā captain now fought and plundered in a different quarter on his own account. The Marāthās were no longer a tribe of banditti or local rebels, but the one dominating factor of Deccan politics, and an enemy all-pervasive throughout the Indian peninsula, elusive as the wind, the ally and rallying point of all the enemies of the Delhi empire and all disturbers of public peace and regular administration throughout the Deccan and even in Mālwa, Gondwāna and Bundelkhand. The imperialists could not be present everywhere in full strength; hence, they suffered reverses in places.
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In 1689 the Marāthās had been cowed by the fall of Shambhūjī, the siege of their capital and the perilous flight of their new king. Many of their forts easily fell into Aurangzīb’s hands. Throughout 1690 and 1691 the emperor’s chief concern was to take possession of the rich and boundless dominions of the fallen ‘Ādil Shāhī and Qutb Shāhī kingdoms in the south and the east. At this stage, he underrated the Marāthā danger, being satisfied with the annihilation of their state. He was soon afterwards confronted by a *people’s* war, and about the middle of 1690 the first signs of the Marāthā recovery appeared, which became triumphant in 1692. The leaders in the west or homeland were the *Amātya* (Rāmchandra N. Bāvdekar), the *Sachiv* (Shankarājī Malhār), and Parashurām Trimbak (who became *Pratinidhi* or regent in 1701), while in the eastern Carnatic the king’s supreme director was Prahlād Nirājī (created *Pratinidhi*), who stood above the nominal prime minister or *Peshwā*. Two extraordinarily able and active generals, Dhana Jādav and Santājī Ghorpare (rivals for the post of commander-in-chief), frequently passed from one theatre of war to the other across the peninsula, and caused the greatest loss and confusion to the Mughuls. The Marāthā plan of operations was for Rāja Rām to take refuge in the far-off impregnable fort of Gingee (in the South Arcot district) and make a stand there, while in the homeland independent commandos would be organised and guided against the Mughuls by Rāmchandra Bāvdekar, on whom was conferred the new office of dictator (*Hukūmat-panāh*) with full regal authority over all the officials and captains in Mahārāshtra. He had an inborn genius for command and organisation, chose the ablest lieutenants, and managed to make the mutually jealous Marāthā guerrilla leaders act in concert.
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We shall deal with the eastern front first. The eastern Carnatic extended from Chicacole to the mouth of the Cauvery on the sea-board and over all the inland country including the Mysore plateau and the modern Madras districts north of it. As the result of Muslim conquests effected about the middle of the seventeenth century, this vast country was divided into two parts, the Hyderābādī and the Bījāpurī, by an imaginary line from Vellore to Sadras, and each of these parts was further subdivided into uplands and lowlands. But the new rulers had not consolidated their conquests; much of the country was still in the hands of unsubdued *poligars* (local chiefs), or held by nobles who were independent of Bījāpur and Hyderābād in all but name. The situation was further complicated by Shivājī’s invasion of 1677 and establishment of a new Marāthā government at Gingee. After his death, his son-in-law Harjī Mahādik became the local viceroy, but practically assumed independence of his distant master Shambhūjī. After the fall of Bījāpur and Golconda, Mughul sovereignty was proclaimed over all the Carnatic once belonging to them, but without any adequate force to make it effective.
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During this eclipse of royalty, Harjī invaded the Hyderābād Carnatic north of the Palār river and took easy possession of several forts (including Arcot) and a hundred towns. The Marāthās plundered the country and even the sacred city of Conjeveram (January, 1688). On the arrival of Aurangzīb’s officers, the raiders retreated, but took post a day’s march south of the Mughul camp at Wandiwāsh (March). For a year the two armies remained there watching each other, but daily sending out detachments which plundered the country indiscriminately. The trade and industry of the district were ruined, food stuffs became very scarce, and all who could fled to the fortified European settlements on the coast for shelter.
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Harjī died about 29 September, 1689; Rājā Rām arrived at Gingee on 11 November, took peaceful possession of it and established his court there. Zu-’l-Fiqār Khān, as the supreme Moghul commander, reached the environs of Gingee about the middle of September, 1690, with the object of besieging the fort, but the task was too great for his means. The rock-fortress of Gingee consists of three fortified hillocks connected together by strong walls and forming a rough triangle nearly 3 miles in circumference. These hills are steep, rocky and covered with such enormous boulders that they are almost unclimbable. Zu-’l-Fiqār could neither bombard it nor cut off the garrison’s communication with the outside. The activity of the Marāthā roving bands stopped his grain supply, he abandoned the siege, and at his request reinforcements under the *vazīr* Asad Khān and the young prince Kām Bakhsh reached him at the end of December, 1691. He renewed the siege in 1692, ran trenches and bombarded two points without doing any damage. His object was only to make a show, prolong the siege and thereby escape from being sent on campaign elsewhere. Thus, he effected nothing during 1691 and 1692. At the end of 1692 two disasters befell the Mughuls. Two large Marāthā armies raised in western India arrived in the Carnatic under the famous generals Santā and Dhana. The first of these captured ‘Alī Mardān Khān, the imperial commandant of Conjeveram, with all the horses, elephants and other property of his army, near Kāveripāk (23 December). The Khān ransomed himself for 100,000 *hūns*. The other Marāthā division attacked the siege camp round Gingee, and compelled Zu-’l-Fiqār Khān to draw his outposts in for safety, in which operation Isma‘īl Khān Maka was captured with 500 horses and carried off to Gingee.
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The Marāthā light horse now dominated the country and stopped the coming of provisions and letters to the Mughul camp, which lived in a state of siege. Alarming rumours spread that Aurangzīb was already dead and that Shāh ‘Ālam had gained the throne. Kām Bakhsh in fear and despair opened a secret correspondence with Rājā Rām, and planned to escape to Gingee with his family and then make an attempt on the throne of Delhi with Marāthā aid. This foolish plot was betrayed to Zu-’l-Fiqār and Asad Khān. They consulted the leading officers, who urged that the safety of the army required that the prince should be kept under guard, the siege trenches abandoned and all the troops concentrated in the rear lines after bursting the big guns. The retreat was effected only after a severe fight with the surrounding enemy and heavy losses. The prince, who had conspired to arrest the two generals, was himself detained a prisoner in Asad Khān’s tent and was later sent back to his father under escort.
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One great danger was thus averted, but the difficulties of the Mughuls only thickened. Santā and Dhana by daily attacks wore down the outnumbered imperialists and reduced them to famine. Asad Khān then bribed Rājā Rām to let him retreat to Wandiwāsh unmolested, but his soldiers had lost all spirit through famine and the death of transport animals; the retreat became a rout in which the Mughul army was plundered of its property and stores (2 February, 1693). Supplies and reinforcements under Qāsim Khān soon arrived at Wandiwāsh, where the Mughuls halted for some months.
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In February, 1694, Zu-’l-Fiqār Khān set out southwards along the coast, conquering many forts in the South Arcot district and threatening Tanjore, the raja of which, Shāhjī II, had to sign a treaty (1 June) promising to obey the emperor, give up Rājā Rām’s cause, and pay an annual tribute of three million rupees. Then, after storming Pālamcottah, the Mughul general returned to Wandiwāsh, and near the end of the year made a show of renewing the siege of Gingee. But he had come to a secret understanding with Rājā Rām, in expectation of the death of the old emperor and civil wars among his sons, so that nothing was achieved by the Mughuls during 1695. The arrival of Dhana and Santā early in 1695 forced Zu-’l-Fiqār to raise the siege and confine himself to the defensive in Arcot fort throughout 1696; he was hopelessly outnumbered and without money or food.
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Early in 1697 he collected tribute from Tanjore and other places in the south and then returned to Wandiwāsh for the rainy season. A bitter quarrel between Santā and Dhana weakened the Marāthās, and Zu-’l-Fiqār renewed the siege of Gingee in earnest, in November. Dāūd Khān Pānī, his lieutenant, captured Chikkali-drug (the detached southern fort) by assault in one day and then entrenched opposite the south face of Gingee itself, but his further efforts were thwarted by Zu-’l-Fiqār, who gave the Marāthās secret intelligence of his intended attacks. At last Zu-’l-Fiqār had to take Gingee in order to save his credit with the emperor. He sent timely warning to Rājā Rām, who escaped first to Vellore with his chief officers but left his family behind. The three forts within Gingee were successfully stormed in gallant style by the Rājputs and Afghāns (18 January, 1698). A vast amount of booty was captured, and among the prisoners were four wives and five children of Rājā Rām. But the raja succeeded in arriving at Vishālgarh; the work of the long siege of Gingee was undone; the war was merely transferred to the western theatre.
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We shall now turn to the affairs of western India after Rājā Rām’s accession. The first flush of Mughul success was over in a year and a half, the Marāthās recovered from the crushing blows of Shambhūjī’s capture and Rājā Rām’s flight to Madras, and they gained their first signal victory over the Mughuls on 4 June, 1690, when they captured Sharza Khān near Sātārā with his family, 4000 horses and the entire camp and baggage of his army, after slaying 1500 of his men. Then they recovered several forts from the imperialists, Partābgarh, Rohirā, Rājgarh and Tornā. In 1692 there was a renewal of Marāthā activity and their success was conspicuous in many quarters, such as the recovery of Panhālā. The siege of this fort, urged by Aurangzīb, failed after many years of desultory attack under Mu‘izz-ud-dīn Bīdār Bakht and Fīrūz Jang. The disaster to Sharza Khān in 1690 compelled the emperor to occupy the north Sātārā district in force, which led to frequent but indecisive conflicts with Santā Ghorpare, who had made the Mahādev hill his base, and used to raid far to the south and the east. The Belgaum and Dhārwār districts were harried by Santā and Dhana, which necessitated the strengthening of the Mughul forces there; but when these generals went off to the eastern Carnatic (end of 1692), the Mughuls on the western front enjoyed a short respite. Late in 1693 they returned home and renewed their attacks. Dhana destroyed the siege-works before Panhālā, while Santā sent off Amrit Rāo Nimbālkar to raid Berār, and he himself levied *chauth* in the Mālkhed region. Throughout 1694 and 1695 the Marāthā bands were active and the Berads troublesome all over the western Deccan, but nothing decisive or noteworthy was done on either side but desultory fighting and futile marches, which wore the Mughuls down.
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Then came two terrible disasters. In November, 1695, the emperor, learning that Santā was conveying his rich store of plunder to his own home in north-western Mysore, ordered Qāsim Khān to intercept him, and sent a picked force of his personal retinue and the contingents of the nobles, under some of his highest officers, to reinforce Qāsim Khān. The two divisions united near Chitaldroog, and Qāsim Khān entertained his noble guests with all the pomp and luxury of a Mughul grandee, discarding military precaution. Santā came up from a distance by swift and secret marches and formed his men in three divisions which were very ably handled and co-ordinated. The first surprised and plundered the advanced tents of Qāsim Khān and his heavy baggage, the second intercepted and enveloped the Khān, who was advancing to the rescue, while the third Marāthā division looted the camp and baggage left behind by Qāsim Khān in his advance. The Carnatic musketeers and Marāthā light horse completely overpowered the Mughuls and drove them in headlong rout to the small fort of Dodderi, which had neither space nor food sufficient for them. Fully one-third of the Mughul army fell in the battle and the retreat; the rest capitulated through hunger; Qāsim Khān committed suicide. The remnant of his army, after promising a ransom of two million rupees and giving up all its cash, horses and other property, was set free (December, 1695).
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Another great Mughul general, Himmat Khān, was in Basavāpatan (forty miles west of Dodderi). Santā appeared before it on 30 January, 1696, and lured Himmat Khān out of his refuge, and shot him dead as he was leading a charge. His baggage was plundered, and his men fell back into the fort. Here they were relieved after more than a month. The emperor took prompt measures to strengthen the defence of this district. Prince Bīdār Bakht chastised Barmāppā Nāyak of Chitaldroog, who had disloyally sided with Santā. Prince A‘zam was posted at Pedgāon.
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But now a civil war weakened the Marāthā strength. Santājī Ghorpare was mortally jealous of Dhana Jādav, his favoured rival for the post of commander-in-chief (*Senāpati*). His vanity, imperious temper and insubordinate spirit gave great offence at Rājā Rām’s court; Santā was attacked by Rājā Rām and Dhana near Conjeveram (May, 1696), but he defeated them. When he returned to Mahārāshtra in March, 1697, a civil war broke out between him and Dhana, all the Marāthā captains being ranged on the two sides. In another battle most of Santā’s followers, disgusted with his severity and insolence, went over to Dhana. Santā, defeated and despoiled of all, fled from the field, but near the Mahādev hill he was murdered by order of Rādhikā Bāi Mane, whose brother he had slain (June, 1697). In force of genius he was the greatest Marāthā soldier after Shivājī, but his temper was unbearable.
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Nothing remarkable happened in the second half of 1697, nor for some time after Rājā Rām’s return from Gingee to Vishālgarh (February, 1698). Next year, after forming plans for an extensive raid through Khāndesh and Berār, he issued from Sātārā (5 November, 1699) and took the road with a large force. But he was intercepted near Parenda by Bīdār Bakht, broken and driven towards Ahmadnagar; his raid into Berār was nipped in the bud; but one division under Krishna Sāvant crossed the Narbadā for the first time and plundered some places near Dhāmoni. Battles, however, were fought with Dhana and other generals in the Sātārā district with various results (January, 1700).
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On 12 March, 1700, Rājā Rām died at Sinhgarh. His senior widow Tārā Bāi placed her son Shivāji III on the throne, while another wife Rājas Bāi crowned her son as Shambhūjī II, and the Marāthā ministers and generals were again divided into two rival factions. But Tārā Bāi’s ability and energy, seconded by the genius of Parashurām Trimbak (the new regent), gave her supreme power in the state.
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During the past decade, the Mughul cause had achieved remarkable and unbroken success in the northern Konkan through the ability and enterprise of a local commandant named Mu‘tabar Khān, a Sayyid of the Navāit clan. He first distinguished himself by capturing or buying many hill-forts in the Nāsik district, and then descended into the Konkan, where he took Kalyān (April, 1689)
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and several other places, occupying the country southwards to the latitude of Bombay, and even forced the Portuguese of "the North" (Bassein and Damān) to make peace by promising not to support the Marāthās. At Kalyān he lived for many years, adorning the city with his many buildings and gardens, and restoring peace and prosperity to the district.
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By April, 1695, Aurangzib came to realise that his work in the Deccan was not finished with the conquest of Bījāpur, Golconda and the Marāthā capital; it was only beginning; for him there was no going back to Delhi, as he could see no end to the people's war in which he was entangled. Therefore, in May, 1695, he sent his eldest surviving son Shāh 'Ālam to govern the Punjāb, Sind and afterwards Afghānistān and guard the north-western gateway of India, while he himself took post at Brahmapurī for the next four and a half years in the very heart of the enemy country. During this period (1695–99), the Marāthā danger came nearer home and drove the Mughuls into the defensive in Mahārāshtra and Kanara. The movements of their roving bands were bewilderingly rapid and unexpected, and the Mughul pursuing columns toiled in vain after them. Local representatives of the emperor were often driven to make unauthorised terms with the Marāthās by agreeing to pay *chauth*. Worse than that, some imperialists made a concert with the enemy for sharing the plunder of the emperor's own subjects. The Mughul administration had really dissolved and only the presence of the emperor held it together, but merely as a phantom rule.
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The fall of Gingee enabled Aurangzib to concentrate all his resources in the western theatre of war, and now began the last stage of his career, the siege of successive Marāthā forts by the emperor in person. The rest of his life is a repetition of the same sickening tale: a hill-fort captured by him in person after a vast expenditure of time, men and money, the fort recovered by the Marāthās from the weak Mughul garrison after a few months, and its siege begun again a year or two later. His soldiers and camp-followers suffered unspeakable hardship in marching over flooded rivers, muddy roads and broken hilly tracks; porters disappeared, transport beasts died of hunger and overwork, scarcity of grain was ever present in the camp and the Marāthā and Berad "thieves" (as he officially called them) not far off. The mutual jealousies of his generals ruined his cause or delayed his success. The siege of eight forts, Sātārā, Parlī, Panhālā, Khelnā (= Vishālgarh), Kondhānā (= Sinhgarh), Rājgarh, Tornā and Wāgingerā, besides five places of lesser note, occupied him for five years and a half (1699–1705), after which the broken down old man of eighty-eight retired to die.
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Leaving his family, surplus baggage and unnecessary officials in the fortified camp of Brahmapurī in charge of the *vazīr*, and giving Zu-'l-Fiqār, surnamed Nusrat Jang, a roving commission to fight the Marāthā field-armies that hovered round the emperor or threatened this base camp, Aurangzīb started from Brahmapurī on 29 October, 1699. Capturing Basantgarh on the way without a blow, he arrived before Sātārā on 18 December and took up his quarters at Kārañja, a mile and a half to the north of the fort. The entire siege-camp, five miles round, was enclosed with a wall to keep the Marāthā raiders out. The rocky soil made sapping a very slow and difficult work, and the fort was never completely invested. The garrison made frequent sorties, which were repulsed with more or less loss, while the Marāthā field-forces reduced the besiegers to the condition of a beleaguered city, cutting off outposts and closing the road to grain dealers.
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On 23 April the Mughuls fired two mines. The first killed many of the garrison, but the commandant Prāgjī Prabhu was dug out alive from under the debris. The second exploded outwards, killing two thousand of the Mughul soldiers, but making a 20 yards breach in the wall. Bājī Chāvan Daphle, a Marāthā vassal, mounted the breach shouting to the Mughul soldiers to follow him and enter, but they were too dazed by the catastrophe to advance, and he was killed. But after the death of Rājā Rām, the Marāthā commandant Subhānjī lost heart and yielded the fort to the imperialists (1 May, 1700).
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Aurangzīb next laid siege to Parlī, a fort six miles west of Sātārā and the headquarters of the Marāthā government. It resisted for some time, and the invaders suffered terribly from excessive rain and the scarcity of grain and fodder. But the emperor held grimly on, and at last the commandant evacuated the fort for a bribe (19 June). These two sieges caused an enormous waste of men and animals; the Mughul treasury was empty and the soldiers were starving as their pay for three years was in arrears. Excessive rain aggravated their sufferings. On the return march from Parlī to Bhūshangarh, transport utterly broke down, much property had to be abandoned, even nobles had to walk on foot through the mud, and only forty-five miles were covered in thirty-five days. While the emperor was encamped at Khavāsspur (on the Mān river), the river suddenly rose in flood at midnight (11 October) and swept through the camp, destroying many men and animals, and ruining the tents and baggage. The emperor himself stumbled and dislocated his knee in trying to escape. This left him a little lame for the rest of his life, which the court flatterers used to say was the heritage of his ancestor, the world-conqueror Tīmūr-Lang! But reinforcements were summoned from northern India and many thousands of fresh horses purchased to mount the army again. The Marāthās and Berads plundered and levied *chauth* far and wide during this eclipse of the Mughul power.
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Panhālā was the next fort attacked (19 March, 1701). The emperor formed a complete circle of investment, fourteen miles in length, around it and its sister-height Pavangarh. A mobile force under Nusrat Jang was sent out to chastise the Marāthās wherever heard of. But in that stony region the progress of mining was very slow, while the mutual jealousies of his generals led them to thwart each other and thus prolonged the siege. The siege dragged on for two months, without success seeming any nearer. Then a heavy bribe was paid to the commandant Trimbak and he delivered the fort on 7 June. Wardhangarh, Chandan, Nandgir and Wandan were next captured with little or no opposition.
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