New History of the Marathas v1.c17.77

v1.c17.77

This correspondence shows that Sambhājī and Akbar were deliberating upon some grand plan. At the beginning of 1685 Sambhājī did actually invade Broach and carried away a good deal of plunder from Gujarat, cutting up the Emperor's troops that came to oppose him on his return journey near Nasik. But this solitary transaction did not materially affect Akbar's prospects. Ultimately in sheer desperation he managed to engage a British cargo vessel on which he embarked at Rājāpur in February 1687 and sailing *via* Vengurla to Muskat, reached Ispahan in Iran in January 1688 after nearly a year's journey. Here he remained for the rest of his life, a wanderer from home and a constant threat to his father's northern possessions. *Fortunately for Aurangzeb Akbar's prolonged stay in Persia proved as ineffective to his ambition as his six years' residence in Mahārāshtra.* Manucci quotes a long and instructive letters⁸ addressed by Akbar to his father a little while before his death in 1704. He died in November of that year, a broken-hearted but spirited soul experiencing the cursed lot of a Mughal prince. Letters often passed between the father and the son and even communication through personal agents was long kept up between them, with eloquent promises of pardon and earnest request for return from the Emperor. But up to the very last Akbar turned a deaf ear to all such entreaties conveyed by his father, sister or friends.