Shivaji and His Times c5.s2: §2. The Rise of Shahji Bhonslé, 1625-36
Shivaji and His Times c5.s2
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§2. The Rise of Shahji Bhonslé, 1625-36
c5.s2.1
Shahji's name first occurs in recorded history in 1628, two years after the death of Malik Ambar, when he was sent forth by Fath Khan, the son and successor of that Nizam Shahi wazir, to raid East Khandesh in the rear of a Mughal invading force. Soon afterwards, the plots of the Nizam Shah and his new wazir against each other, the imprisonment of Fath Khan by his king (c. April 1630), the murder of Lakhji Jadav Rao at Court (c. 1630), the treacherous surrender of the Mughal portion of Ahmadnagar territory by the viceroy Khan-i-Jahan Lodi, (1627), a fresh Mughal invasion of the country (1628), and the Bijapuri efforts to seize as much of the wrecks of the Ahmadnagar kingdom as possible,—all combined to throw the Nizam Shahi Government into unspeakable weakness and confusion. This was a golden opportunity for an able enterprising and ambitious man like Shahji. After the murder of his father-in-law Jadav Rao, he left the Nizam Shah, got a band of men together, and tried to seize the country from Junnar to Ahmadnagar, creating a great disturbance at that ill-defined and ill-guarded meeting point of three kingdoms. Then he entered the Mughal service with his eldest son and younger brother (end of 1630), but deserted after a year and a half (June 1632) and went over to the service of Bijapur, where he completely fascinated Murari Jagadev, the right-hand man of the wazir Khawas Khan.
c5.s2.2
∗ The accounts of the family given in the Persian histories of Delhi and Bijapur have been summarized in my paper on the "Rise of Shahji" published in the *Modern Review*, Sept. 1917, (some of the dates of which require correction in the light of information from other sources.) The Marathi accounts given in Malkaré (Persian version in *Tarikh-i-Shivaji*) and very briefly in Sabhasad, have been utilized here to some extent. The exaggerations of Marathi Court-poets, in Sanskrit, have been rejected. Of the eight sons of Vitoji (the younger brother of Maloji I.) four are found in the Mughal service at the beginning of Shah Jahan's reign, viz., Kheloji, Parsuji, Maloji II and Mambaji. [Abdul Hamid, i.A.]
c5.s2.3
The murder of Burhan Nizam Shah (c. Feb. 1632) by his wazir and the Mughal capture of Daulatabad (the new capital) with his successor Husain Nizam Shah in it (17th June 1633), were followed by the final dismemberment of the once glorious Ahmadnagar kingdom. Its local governors declared their independence. Shahji now seized all the Nizam-Shahi territory from Puna and Chakan to the environs of Ahmadnagar and Nasik, and plundered right and left. With Bijapuri assistance he crowned a boy Nizam Shah in Premgarh (renamed Shahgarh) in August 1633, and carried on the government in the name of this puppet for three years,—seizing districts (including North Konkan), enlisting soldiers (especially 12,000 Nizam-Shahi troopers who had been disbanded after the fall of Daulatabad), and raiding the country as far as Bidar and Daulatabad, to the great harassment of the Mughals.
c5.s2.4
But the imperialists launched huge forces against him in February 1636. The campaign, after much hard riding and fighting, ended next October in the completest defeat of Shahji, who was compelled to surrender to the victors his puppet Nizam Shah and seven of his forts, enter Bijapur service, and transfer his mischievous ambition and disturbing activity to regions far away from Maharashtra proper.