History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c81.s3: § 3. Shujaet Khan's government of Marwar, 1687—1701.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c81.s3
- Language
- English
§ 3. Shujaet Khan's government of Marwar, 1687—1701.
v5.c81.s3.1
Up to the year 1687, the faujdari of Marwar† had been added to the subahdari of Ajmir. But Ajmir was a small province, governed by a third-rate noble with a poor income and small army. Hence, the Ajmir subahdar (Inayet Khan) had not been able to cope with the Rathors with his normal resources. But now Shujaet Khan, in addition to the faujdari of Marwar, held the subahdari of Gujrat, —one of the three great frontier provinces of the Mughal empire and famous in those days as a recruiting ground of brave soldiers (*lashkar-khez*). Shujaet Khan's contingent and income were much larger than those of the Ajmir subahdar, and he also knew how to put them to the best use. He always kept his retainers to their full number and was prompt and quick in his movements. He used to spend six months (sometimes eight) every year in Marwar and the other six in Gujrat. Thus, he succeeded in checking the Rathors when it came to fighting, while he made an understanding with them, paying them one-fourth of the imperial custom duties on all merchandise if they spared the traders on the roads (1688). This was another form of the *chauth*, which a few years afterwards many Mughal officers in the Deccan, conscious of their own helplessness and the hopelessness of succour from the Emperor, were glad to pay to the Maratha roving bands as a yearly blackmail.
v5.c81.s3.2
∗ Aurangzib's reply to an appeal for aid from Shujaet Khan (Mirat-i-Ahmadi, 334.)
v5.c81.s3.3
† Inayet Khan, who had been appointed faujdar of Jodh-
v5.c81.s3.4
But from the year 1692 onwards the imperial
v5.c81.s3.5
pur in March 1681, became in addition subahdar of Ajmir in Dec. 1683. On his death in 1687, Marwar was joined to Gujrat.
v5.c81.s3.6
forces in the Deccan began to feel the increasing pressure of the revived Maratha power under their able regent Ramchandra and their brilliant generals Dhanaji Jadav and Santaji Ghorpare, and the Emperor began to look out wistfully for some means of ensuring peace in his rear in Rajputana. There was another and a stronger motive working with him: he must recover his grand-daughter who had been left with the Rathors by her father Akbar in his flight soon after her birth. This girl was now thirteen and Aurangzib's family honour required that she should come to his house before attaining the age of marriage, which for a Mughal princess was usually fourteen. He could have made an honourable and lasting peace and turned the Rathors again into devoted allies, by restoring Ajit Singh to all his father's territory and rank. But a strange obsession, or more probably religious bigotry,* made Aurangzib cling blindly to the soil of Jodhpur. He higgled like a Jew and waited for some turn in the die of war which would enable him to keep the bulk of Marwar and especially its capital in his own hands and delude Ajit with a small tract as jagir. Negotiations inspired by such a motive were bound to fail, though a truce was secured to his weary during the year (1692) through which they protracted. But this fanatical obstinacy or obse born of unlimited power and old age, was re by wiser counsels, and at last in 1696 he agree restore a portion of Marwar to Ajit Singh in ret for the delivery of Akbar's children.
v5.c81.s3.7
∗ He wanted to dismember Marwar and thus prevent the possible opposition to his anti-Hindu measures which a great independent Hindu State in Northern India might have offered. There was to be no second high-spirited and strong Jaswant Singh to rally round himself and lead to victory the discontented Hindus of the empire.
v5.c81.s3.8
But on 9 July 1701* Shajaet Khan died, Prince Muhammad Azam succeeded him as governor of Marwar and renewed hostilities with Ajit, and the third stage of the Rajput war of independence began, which after much bloodshed and many reverses on both sides ended in the complete break-down of the imperial policy of greed and the final recovery of Marwar by its national ruling dynasty (1707). This was the just consequence of Mughal insincerity and unscrupulous opportunism.