The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c25.164

v3.c25.164

Ahmad II was virtually a prisoner in the hands of I‘timād Khān, and after passing five years in this condition he reached an age at which he became sensible of the restraint to which he was subjected, and of the minister’s usurpation of his rights. He fled and threw himself on the protection of Sayyid Mubārak Bukhārī at Mahmūdābād, where a number of nobles, influenced more by the Sayyid’s prestige and by hostility to I‘timād Khān than by loyalty to a sovereign whom they hardly knew, assembled. I‘timād Khān and his partisans marched against this confederacy, and the death of Sayyid Mubārak from an arrow involved the defeat and dispersal of the army assembled round the king. Ahmad wandered for some days a helpless fugitive in the jungles, until he was obliged to return to his master, who carried him back to Ahmadābād and imprisoned him in the palace.