History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c65.s13: § 14. Death of Sikandar Adil Shah.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c65.s13
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§ 14. Death of Sikandar Adil Shah.
v4.c65.s13.1
We may here conveniently follow the last Adil-Shahi Sultan to his grave. After being carried about in the Emperor's train for some time, and begging in vain for the trans-Krishna district of his late kingdom to be given to him as a fief, he was lodged in the State-prison of Daulatabad. Here in a few small apartments almost overhanging the steep bare side of the hill, he sighed out many years of his life in the company of a brother in misery, Abul Hasan, the deposed Sultan of Golkonda. Later, he was again carried about with the camp of Aurangzib, a captive within the limits of the gulalbar tents, in the keeping of Hamid-ud-din Khan Bahadur. In this condition he died on 3rd April, 1700, at the foot of Satara fort, which Aurangzib was then besieging. (*Akhbarat*, 44/52.) He had not yet completed 32 years of age. Having ascended the throne when a boy of four only, he had passed 14 years as an impotent puppet in the hands of his ministers and another fourteen years as Aurangzib's prisoner.[*] (B.S. 541.)
v4.c65.s13.2
According to Sikandar's dying wish, his mortal remains were carried to Bijapur and buried at the foot of the sepulchre of his spiritual guide, Shaikh Fahimullah, in a roofless enclosure. As the bier of the last of the Adil Shahs entered the capital of his fathers, the whole city went into mourning; "thousands of women wept, broke their bracelets and performed such other ceremonies as if they had been widowed." (B.S. 545.)
v4.c65.s13.3
And well they might do so. True, their king had been deposed fourteen years ago, and during his whole reign he had never once governed by his own will. But under him they had at least had a king of their own; they had formed a nation and an independent State, instead of being a mere province of an alien empire, ruled by a mere officer who had to take his orders from a capital a thousand miles distant. Even a subject race liveth not by bread alone.
v4.c65.s13.4
∗ B.S., 544, tells a story that Aurangzib murdered Sikandar by means of a poisoned melon, in order to deprive the old Adil-Shahi officers of the plea that they had a master other than Aurangzib. The story has a Manuccian ring, and rightly finds a place in *Storia do Mogor*, iii. 195. The author of B.S. qualifies his statement by adding the pious cry, "The burden of proof lies on the original narrator!"