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Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c13: Chapter VIII

Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c13

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Chapter VIII

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AHMAD SHAH'S REIGN; EVENTS UP TO 1752.

§ 1. Emperor Ahmad Shah; his character

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Ahmad Shah, the only son of Muhammad Shah, did no doubt come to the throne of Delhi at the age of 22 (solar) years; but his education had been totally neglected. His suspicious and miserly father had kept him confined in one corner of the Delhi palace and stinted him shamefully. Young Ahmad did not receive any training in war or government; he had never been placed in charge of a contingent of his own as royal heirs before him used to be; he had not even been given a sufficient allowance to live in ordinary comfort nor permitted to enjoy the usual games and amusements of princes, such as polo, animal combats and hunting. The result was that his natural dulness of intellect was not cured by education, and he grew to manhood as a good-natured imbecile, without a personality of his own and entirely dominated by others. Not only had he been denied any schooling in his early life, but he had received the worst possible training for a ruler of men. "From his infancy to the age of 21 (the time of his accession), he had been brought up among the women of the harem, in neglect and poverty and often subjected to his father's browbeating." Totally ignorant of administration and war alike, when he succeeded to the throne unbridled power had its natural effect on such a raw youth. He was immediately surrounded by base instruments of pleasure, who placed every temptation before him, to which he only too readily yielded, neglecting his duty to his realm and to society. Thus responsibility could not call forth any capacity latent in him, but only revealed to the public his defects of character in the ugliest light. He practically resigned his royal function to Jāvid Khan, and openly referred all questions and suitors to that eunuch for decision, while he himself plunged into sensual pleasure without check or distraction. Jāvid Khan, on his part, encouraged the unhappy youth to drink wine and filled his harem with women. With these debased women came equally debased men whose only business was to humour his passions and fancies. "Gradually the Emperor's mind inclined to the society of vulgar persons (only), and he practised evil deeds which made him a shame to the country."

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The decline went on with increasing speed till at the end of the second year of his reign we find that "the administration had grown very weak and degraded; the pillars of the State were daily shaken; the Emperor never inquired about the realm, the soldiery, or the treasury,—the three foundations of an empire. . . . Jāvid Khan, who had usurped the entire control of the State, governed according to his (poor) natural capacity, assuring the Emperor that everything was being done according to the regulations; so that the Emperor withdrew his hand even from what (little) he formerly used to look after. He became so absorbed in pleasure that a whole kos (an area of four square miles) was turned into a women's preserve by excluding all males from it, and there the Emperor used to disport himself in female company for a week or a month in bower and park." [*TAh.*, 13b-14a, 21a, 25a; *Siyar*, iii. 27.]

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In the midst of the ennui caused by sensual excess, he used to seek diversion in childish acts of sovereignty. For instance, we read that one day in February 1753, he took his infant son Mahmud Shah with himself to a bed of narcissus flowers in bloom in the plain below the window of morning salute, and summoning all the little sons of the nobles and other courtiers who had the entree made them present *nazars* to the prince and follow in his train! Then he took the child with himself to the balconies of the Queen-mother and Malika-i-Zamani and made him formally salām them from outside, as the Emperors used to do. Next, he seated the infant on a royal cushion in a diminutive tent newly made for him, sent the nobles' sons to stand round him, and himself went to visit this juvenile Court. The royal infant's eunuchs welcomed the Emperor on the way and offered him presents in the name of their master! After this, we need not wonder that in November 1753 he thought fit to appoint this son (a boy in his third year) as governor of the Panjab, and in perfect keeping with this spirit nominated a baby one year old as the deputy under him, and that the prince toddled up to the Diwān-i-khās and made his bow of thanksoffering in full Court, while baby-clothes made of cloth of gold were sent to his juvenile deputy at Lāhor; or that the equally important charge of Kashmir, then threatened with invasion by Abdali's general Jahān Khan, was conferred on a still smaller prince Tāla‘ Sa‘id Shah (one year old) as absentee subahdār, with a lad of fifteen (another Court favourite) as the nāib nāzim. Even his Court annalist is constrained to say that these acts only showed the Emperor's lack of sense. [TAh. 46b, 85b, 86a.]

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Occasionally a flash of anger would lend life and colour to his speech, as during the rebellion of Safdar Jang, but it ended only in words.

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Ahmad totally lacked the martial spirit, the capacity to lead armies, and even personal courage. He could not be persuaded to come out of the safety and seclusion of his palace-fort and show himself at the head of his troops, even when his very life and throne demanded that he should thus hearten his supporters and confound the rebels. The imperial army clamoured under his window inviting him to lead them forth in a campaign for wresting the provinces from usurpers, so that revenue might again come to the Delhi Exchequer and the starving soldiery and servants of the royal household might get their long arrears of salary. But he would not agree to it. [*TAh.* 66*b*, 117*a*.] His panic flight from Sikandrabad abandoning all the women of his family to captivity and possible dishonour, at a mere demonstration by the Marāthas, has branded his name with infamy in Indian history for all time.

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In the last two or three years of his reign, he devoted himself to personally transacting business of State for full six hours every morning, without a respite for eating or drinking. He read the news-reports received from all four quarters, wrote replies on the despatches of the *subahdārs*, heard petitions of complaint, inspected the muster-rolls of the troops, and wrote full orders on the revenue or administrative cases, clearly summarising the contents of these papers and the details of his decision. But his energy bore no fruit from his lack of practical knowledge, driving power and persistency of effort. The self-willed youth of 25 would listen to nobody’s counsel, but gave his orders with the unreasoning obstinacy of an autocrat, and these were never translated into action. The actual administration did not show the least improvement for all this activity in the closet. The fixed period of business being over, he withdrew himself from the sight of men for the next 18 hours; the women in his harem and secluded parks monopolised him, and he would refuse a hearing even to his highest minister during this daily eclipse of monarchy, saying with irritation, "I personally devote myself to the administration every day up to noon, besides holding darbār on fixed occasions. I am now engaged in refreshing my spirits and you have come to trouble me. No noble should visit me except during the prescribed six hours in the forenoon and the darbār days, unless I summon him for some special purpose."*

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∗ TAh. 101 b, 115 a. I cannot understand this author's remark that "though the Emperor on account of his youth had a pleasure-loving temperament, he possessed perfect intelligence and readiness of reply" or that "no man was more learned than the Emperor" (illustrated by the case of his writing in his own hand a letter in Turki.) TAh. 103a, 104b. If he really possessed such brain power it was completely neutralised by his utter incapacity for action and for judging character and choosing proper agents.

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§ 2. Queen-mother Udham Bai.

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The Queen-mother Udham Bai, formerly a public dancing girl, had been introduced to Muhammad Shah’s notice by Khadija Khanam, the daughter of Amir Khan, and had so fascinated that Emperor as to be raised to the dignity of a queen. Neither her humble birth and ignoble profession nor her later life in the royal harem had fitted her to play worthily the part of the veiled power behind the throne, in which so many queens of Muslim India have distinguished themselves. She remained the same vulgar woman of loose character to the end, using her son’s elevation as a lever for asserting her own greatness at Court and for grasping at money. She had fallen under royal disfavour and even persecution for her conduct during the latter days of her wedded life, and she now took her revenge by heaping scorn, humiliation and poverty upon her former rivals, the nobly born widows of Muhammad Shah,—Malika-i-Zamani and Sahiba Mahal, who were universally honoured in Delhi society. There were two redeeming traits in her character, namely her blind animal affection for her son and her extensive unselfish charity, by which the nephews and grandsons of former Emperors, pining in neglect and abject poverty in the Delhi palace, as well as many poor people living outside were enabled to enjoy comfort and decency. [TAh. 16.]

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She had not the sense to choose capable instruments and govern through them, but thought of rivalling Nur Jahan by transacting State business in person. "Daily the high officers used to go and sit down at her porch (deorhi) and she used to hold discussions with them from behind a screen (through the medium of eunuchs); all petitions (mutālib) of the realm and closed envelopes that were sent into the harem were read out to her and she passed orders on them, which were final." The result can be inferred from the Court historian's pious lament, "O God! that the affairs of Hindustan should be conducted by a woman so foolish as this!" [TAh. 45b.] But what outraged public sentiment and lowered the imperial prestige most was her intimacy with the eunuch Jāvid Khān, who even went so far as to pass his nights in the imperial harem, in defiance of the long-standing palace rules. The scandal became so notorious that the royal guards who were starving from their salaries remaining unpaid for more than a year and could get no relief from the Emperor or the Emperor's controllers, at last staged a scene. They tied up a young ass and a bitch at the palace gate and when the nobles and other courtiers came to attend the darbār, they audaciously urged them, saying, "First make your bow to these. This one (pointing to the ass) is the Nawab Bahadur, and that (the bitch) is Hazrat Qudsia, the Queen-mother."!*

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At a time when the soldiers were daily mutinying for their long overdue pay and the Government could not raise even two lakhs by selling the palace plate, Udham Bai committed the criminal folly of spending two *krores* in celebrating her birthday, 21st January 1754. [*TAh.* 108.]

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After her son's accession, Udham Bāi was successively given the titles of *Bāi-jiu Sāhiba*, *Nawāb Qudsia*, *Sāhiba-uz-zamāni*, *Sāhibjiu Sāhiba*, *Hazrat*, and *Qibla-i-Alam*. A mansab of 50,000 horse (nominal rank) was conferred upon her, and her birthday used to be celebrated with greater pomp and lavishness of expenditure than that of the Emperor himself. Her brother, Mān Khan, hitherto a vagabond haunting the lanes and occasionally following the despicable profession of a male dancer behind singing girls, was created a 6-*hazāri* peer with the title of Mutaqad-ud-daulah Bahādur. [*TAh.* 16*a*, 17*a*; *Ch. Gul.* 400*a*.]

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∗ *Shākir*, 34-35. Well might this generous and loyal hereditary servant of the Crown cry out in the agony of his heart after narrating this incident, "Great God! the people have utterly lost all fear of their sovereign and regard for decency."

§ 3. Jāvid Khan, eunuch, all-powerful

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Jāvid Khan had been assistant controller of the harem servants and manager of the Begams' estates during the late reign. He had established complete sway over the mind and body of Udham Bāi even before her husband's death. And now at the accession of her son, Jāvid's advance was rapid and boundless. He was at once created a 6-hazāri, and to save appearances the same high rank was conferred upon his chief, Roz-āfzun Khān, the nāzir or superintendent of the harem, a survivor of the age of Aurangzib, who was now well-stricken in years and unable to use his feet for weakness and rheumatism. But all real power passed into Jāvid's hands, who was appointed (on 19th June 1748) superintendent of the Privy Council (Diwān-i-khās), above the heads of the hereditary peers. By virtue of this office, audience with the Emperor rested entirely in his hands, and he could perpetuate his sway over his master by shutting out honest counsellors. Pluralities continued to be showered upon him : he was given the charge of the intelligence department, the imperial elephants, the confirmation of grants and appointments (arz-i-mukarrar), the estates of the Begams and the Emperor's privy purse. [TAh. 14b, D.C., Shākir 63.]

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By reason of his being constantly with the Emperor in the harem, Jāvid Khan impressed that simpleton with a great idea of his wisdom, knowledge of administration and devotion to his person. All power passed into this eunuch’s hands as the Emperor sank deeper and deeper into vice and indolence. After a time the youthful Emperor publicly referred all State questions to Jāvid Khan for decision, while he himself took refuge in the harem. The favourite was now promoted to a 7-hazāri mansab, given the title of Nawāb Bahādur (the Emperor’s Vicar), and rewarded with the highest possible insignia of honour, namely the māhi marātib, standard, banner, kettledrums and a fringed palki. "No eunuch had ever been so exalted before, and no noble had been given the title of Nawāb [at Court.]" Well might a Delhi historian of the time reflect with sadness, "Never since Timur’s time had a eunuch exercised such power in the State; hence the Government became unsettled. The hereditary peers felt humiliated by having to make their petitions through a slave and to pay court to him before any affair of State could be transacted." [Ch. Gulz. 399b; TAh. 15a, 14b, 25a.]

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Jāvid Khan, though now fifty years old, was absolutely illiterate. He had never held any administrative charge, nor seen a battle in all his life, and yet he now began to decide all questions of war and peace, revenue and organisation as the supreme authority.* Abyssinian and Turkish slaves had displayed the highest military and administrative capacity in the long roll of Muslim history in India. But Jāvid Khan was not of that breed. His vulgar ambition was to acquire supreme influence by pandering to the Emperor’s vices and humouring the Queen-mother, and to use that influence to enrich himself. He assigned to himself the most lucrative jagirs and also appropriated the revenue collection that ought to have gone to feed the Emperor’s household and army. His good word in the Emperor’s ears was purchased by suitors for *lakhs* of Rupees.

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The nobles of the realm revolted at the idea of paying their court to a slave and eunuch; the royal ministers felt insulted when the Emperor referred them to this man for orders on their official business. They stood aloof from him in aristocratic contempt. Jāvid Khan returned their hate by heaping neglect and scorn on them, gathering the poor middle-grade nobles round himself, and promoting his own base creatures to dignity and office. The result was a complete breach between the young and inexperienced Emperor and the hereditary supporters of the throne. [TAh. 20b, 15b.]

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∗ As the author of *TAh*. exclaims, "O God! where Emperors personally fought and wazirs had day and night attended to State business, this eunuch, ignorant of everything, who had never seen a battle in all his life nor even heard [its sound] in his ears, now became sole ruler!" [28b.]

§ 4. New official appointments

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There was a new distribution of offices at the accession of the new sovereign. The vacant wazirship was conferred upon Safdar Jang. When the news of the late Emperor's death reached Prince Ahmad's camp at Pānipat, Safdar Jang, then in command of his escort, had improvised a royal umbrella with cloth of gold taken out of robes and banners and held it over the prince's head, crying out "I congratulate your Majesty on becoming Emperor!" and Ahmad had responded with, "I congratulate you on your wazir-ship." But in fear of Nizām-ul-mulk Asaf Jāh, Safdar Jang's appointment was kept secret; he did not receive investiture in the official robes of a wazir till 19th June, when the news of the Nizām's death at Burhānpur (on 21st May) reached Delhi, and he first sat in his office and publicly signed papers, only on the 20th of June. His son Jalāluddin Haidar was given the Superintendentship of artillery hitherto held by him (6th July.) The Chief Paymastership, rendered vacant by the death of Asaf Jāh was conferred upon Sayyid Salābat Khan Zulfiqār Jang (29th June), who was originally known as Sādāt Khan, being a son of that Sādāt Khan whose daughter Gauhar-un-nisā had been married to Farrukh-siyar* and who had been Mir Atish under that Emperor. The First Bakhshi's post carried with it the title of Amir-ul-umarā. The Second Paymastership was bestowed on Intizām-ud-daulah Khān-i-Khānān, the eldest son of the late wazir Qamruddin and a brother of the Nizām's eldest son's wife. The *Diwāni* of Crown-lands was given to Ishaq Khan Najmuddaulah, and the *Sadr-ship* to Abdullah Khan, while S'aduddin Khan continued as Lord High Steward (*Khān-i-sāmān*.)

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Among the more important provinces Lāhor had been already bestowed upon Muin-ul-milk, the second son of the late wazir, during the last days of Muhammad Shah. The *subahs* of Allahabad and Agra had at first been given to Salābat Khan, and that of Ajmir added to Oudh which Safdar Jang held. But it was soon realised that defence required Ajmir to be held by the governor of Agra, while Allahabad was as naturally an adjunct of the province of Oudh, and an exchange of provinces between the two nobles on these lines was made. [Siyar, iii. 37.] Bengal had long been virtually independent under Alivardi Khan and he was wisely left undisturbed, as also was the Peshwā to whom Mālwa had been assigned in 1741. But a last desperate plan was formed for recovering Gujrāt from Maratha hands by nominating Bakht Singh Rāthor, the bravest Rajput prince then living, as its subahdār (29 June.) Nothing, however, came of the attempt; his secret agents sent beforehand to the province reported that the situation was hopeless, and he declined the barren honour. [Mirāt-i-Ahmadi, ii. 374—377.]

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∗ M.U. ii. 524-526. The daughter of Farrukh-siyar and Gauhar-un-nisā, named Mālika-uz-zamāni, was the chief wife of Muhammad Shah, while Zulfiqār Jang's own daughter, entitled Sāhiba Mahal, was married to the same Emperor and had a daughter by him named Begam Sāhiba. During the Sarhind campaign, Zulfiqār Jang, then Fourth *bakhshi*, acted as guardian to Prince Ahmad, and that prince after his coronation made him First *bakhshi* and used to address him as *Nānā Bābā* or maternal grandfather, because the childless Mālika-uz-zamāni had brought up the boy Ahmad as her own son. Jāvid Kh. grew jealous of Zulfiqār Jang and contrived to turn the Emperor against him.

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After keeping the subahdāri of the Deccan in abeyance for a year, the Court in April 1749, formally appointed Nāsir Jang, the second son of Asaf Jāh, to that post, with the title of Nizām-ud-daulah, in succession to his father, as he had already occupied this position on the strength of his presence in the Deccan at the head of an army, while his eldest brother Ghāzi-ud-din had been living at Delhi for the preceding eight years. [*Hadiqat-ul-Alam*, ii. 191.]

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§ 5. *How the imperial administration broke down.*

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The prospect after the death of Muhammad Shah became even more gloomy than before. That monarch's habitual indolence and neglect of the administration had inevitably brought about military impotence and financial bankruptcy. There being no longer any common master to be feared and no protector to be appealed to, each noble took what he could of the public revenue; each zamindar usurped lands in his neighbourhood or levied blackmail on the roads and villages outside his jurisdiction. The Marāthas possessed themselves of the frontier provinces in the south, while their annual raids into Bengal and Orissa cut off the revenue supply from these provinces after 1746. Thus, the treasury became empty and the most abject poverty and distress subjected the Emperor and his family to public humiliation.

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The mischief worked in a vicious circle. The paralysis of the central authority led to the loss by conquest or independence of the provinces, whose revenue had hitherto fed the Court and its army. The stoppage of the regular revenue made it impossible to pay the soldiers or replenish their equipment and munitions for fitting out any expedition. Therefore, no attempt could be made to subdue any of the revolted governors or usurping zamindars and exact the dues of Government from them. Time only intensified the bankruptcy of the Court. Then followed a mad scramble among the powerful ministers and favourite Begams to take for themselves the most fertile and easy to administer jāgirs and the best revenue-yielding markets and similar rich sources of taxation. That famous fiscal milch-cow of the 17th century, the customs of the royal port of Surat, had been long lost to the empire; but the grain-markets near the capital still yielded a sure and large income, while the Jamuna canals brought a clear gain of 25 lakhs a year to their superintendent. [Safdar Jang enjoyed this last. *Asiatic Annual Register* for 1800, Misc. Tracts, 37, Polier's letter.]

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Usually the best and quietest villages were set apart for the Crownlands (*Khālsa*) and the estates of the Emperor's privy purse (*sarf-i-khas.*) The very life and sustenance of the Emperor and his household depended upon this source. But in this reign all-powerful nobles like Jāvid Khan and Safdar Jang,—and in the last year Imād-ul-mulk,—began to misappropriate the revenue collected in these places, leaving only a pittance for the Emperor; they even sent their agents there to plunder the peasants and traders, so that even this last source of revenue was cut off, and the Emperor, his family and his personal servants and guards were faced with starvation. Each noble clung to his immediate gain without a thought for the country or his own future. The provincial governors, who were now sovereigns within their own limits, lived in opulence and independence. All but three of the nobles attached to the Court or living in the capital without employment found the regular income from their estates stopped, soon spent all their accumulated wealth and lived thereafter in poverty and impotence, dismissing all their soldiers and servants. The three fortunate exceptions were Jāvid Khan, Safdar Jang, and Zulfiqār Jang, whose political predominance ensured to them adequate incomes and strong contingents of troops. The last-named, however, reduced himself to beggary by his ruinous Rajput expedition of 1750. The result was that the armed strength of the empire was annihilated for all practical purposes by this wholesale disbandment in the case of most and hopeless arrears of salary in the case of the few that were retained to guard the palace and man the artillery at the capital.*

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∗ Shākir, 35. TAh. 14b, 20b, 21a.

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The insolvency of the imperial Government made it impossible for it to pay the soldiers, whose salary fell into arrears for 14, 18, and finally 36 months. The starving troops mutinied and made riotous disturbances in the streets of Delhi, attacking the military paymasters and blocking the gates of the palace or the ministers' mansions so as to prevent ingress and egress and reduce the inmates to starvation. After the death of Amir Khan, his contingent, whose pay was due for 14 months, assembled at his gate and prevented his burial for four days, until their claims were satisfied. The monotonous tale of such riots by one or other class of soldiers in almost every month, with its sickening details, runs through the entire history of the reign of Ahmad Khan written by a loyal courtier and the terse *Delhi Chronicle*. Shākir Khan of Pānipat, a devoted hereditary servant of the house of Bābur, thus describes the tragic situation :

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"After Ahmad Shah's accession, in the course of time matters came to such a pass that a descriptive list of all articles in the imperial stores,—the arms, carpets, cooking utensils and dinner plate, books and band-instruments, and of every other *kār-khānah*,—was prepared and these articles were sold to the shop-keepers and pedlars, and most of the money thus realised was spent in paying the troops. This opened the door to the most unseemly and unspeakable mockery and insult by the public. . . . Opulence was turned into distress. The Central Asian (*vilāyati*) soldiers and the Emperor's household troops forcibly carried off the valuable articles of all kinds from the houses of wazirs, *āmirs*, *sāhus*, traders and artisans, to the shops [and sold them], thus reducing the nobles to disgrace. The *āmirs* had no help but to wear only the clothes they stood in and to eat off earthen plate. . . . When the Emperor ordered an inquiry, it was found that the soldiers' salary was three years in arrear. What chance was there of a farthing remaining in the Treasury? It became a reign of petty tribal chiefs (*muluk-ut-tawāif.*) [Shākir, 34.]

§ 6. Safdar Jang wazir, his rivals and enemies

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Such a State could have been saved only by a wazir of Bismarckian capacity and dictatorial power. But Safdar Jang had neither. Indeed, his position was one of unusual difficulty. He was a foreign-born adventurer whose uncle had been the first of the family to enter the service of Delhi and he could not establish aristocratic connections and local influence in the course of one generation. Safdar Jang was considered an interloper by the old nobility whose pedigree went back to the reign of Aurangzib or even earlier. Public offices had now come to be regarded as the heritable property of their holders' families, apart from any consideration of ability or training or selection by the master,—the surest sign of political decadence. The late wazir Qamruddin's son, Intizām-ud-daulah, regarded Safdar Jang as having robbed him of his father's legacy, the imperial chancellorship. Intizām's sister had been married to Ghāzi-uddin, the eldest son of the Nizam Asaf Jah, besides which tie the great-grandfathers of these two nobles had been full brothers. They therefore formed a closely knit family interest of the greatest prestige and power in the State. The Nizam's son had, in addition, a grievance of his own. His father had held the office of Mir Bakhshi (from 1739 to his death in 1748) and he looked upon it as his birthright. The appointment of an outsider, Salābat Khan (a friend of Safdar Jang), to that post after the Nizām's death was resented as an act of dispossession!

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This clash of personal interests was aggravated by a racial antagonism. The Nizam, the late wazir Qamruddin, and Zakariya Khan (the late viceroy of the Panjab) were all Turks from Central Asia (Ahrar) and closely linked together by repeated inter-marriages. They recruited their retainers in Central Asia and from Turks settled in India. Safdar, on the other hand, was a Persian and gathered round himself only Persians, such as the ex-soldiers of Nadir Shah and Irani immigrants (genuine or pretended) into India.

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Religious difference further embittered the antagonism between the two parties. Safdar Jang was a Shia. This sect, in spite of the superior general intelligence and polished manners of the Persians, forms a very small minority among the Indian Muslims. Though the Persians are usually very good in revenue management, secretariat work and the civil administration, they lack the tough fighting capacity and power of commanding, controlling and combining subordinates in which the Turks, and even the Abyssinians, as a class often excel.

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Moreover, the Shias, partly by reason of the smallness of their number and partly because of their religious and cultural inspiration being derived exclusively from Persia, tend to form a class apart and to isolate themselves from the rest of the Islamic community. This isolation is intensified by their love of inbreeding or restriction of marriage, and often of social intercourse too, within their own sect and even to Persians by race. This spirit of racial and cultural aloofness has stood in the way of their absorbing other Islamic races and Indian converts to Islam by a rough and ready process of assimilation such as the Sunnis have everywhere adopted. A wide gulf separates the specific local Shia settlements in India from the vast and ever-growing mass of Indian Islam. The Turks, being Sunnis, have more readily amalgamated with the Indian Muhammadans,—and the Abyssinians in the Deccan,—by marriage and social communion and been able to enlist their support in strengthening their position.* This inherent weakness of the Shia position in India, as contrasted with the Sunni, proved fatal to the ambition of Safdar Jang to rule the empire of Delhi as a dominant wazir, overriding the other nobles and the Emperor.

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Small as is the proportion of the Shias to Indian Islam, Safdar Jang could rally round himself only a fraction of this fraction. Most of the Indian Shias stood aloof from him in unconcern. They resented the superior and scornful airs which the Persians assume towards other races even of their own creed. The mocking tongue and mordant wit of the native Persians are unrivalled elsewhere in Asia, as many anecdotes of Aurangzib illustrate. They scoffed at the Indian Muhammadans as clownish and their Persian idiom as barbarous. Hence, Safdar Jang's clientele formed only a very small minority of Muslim India.

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∗ Ghulām Ali adds that the Hindu Rajahs sided with the Turani or Sunni party because they found that in Hindustan all the Muslim chiefs were and had been Sunnis. [Imād, 60.]

§ 7. Court conspiracies for overthrowing Safdar Jang

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Safdar Jang had been appointed wazir, but his position was one more of weakness and danger than of power. Any attempt on his part to exert his legitimate control on the administration as the first servant of the State would antagonise Jāvid Khan, the real power behind the throne. But a more immediate and persistent danger sprang from the ill-concealed hostility of the sons of the late wazir Qamruddin. Their own resources were inadequate for ousting him from the chancellorship: Intizam was as yet only second Bakhshi, and Muin had his hands full in the Panjab with Abdali threatening him from outside and the Sikhs from within. So their only hope lay in their cousin Nāsir Jang, the heir of the Nizam.

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The fickle brainless Emperor was soon induced to take a dislike to Safdar Jang. At the instigation of Jāvid Khan he wrote a secret letter to Nāsir Jang, inviting him to come to Delhi with a strong force and expel Safdar Jang from his office. The favourite eunuch, who dreaded an able and spirited wazir as the only bar to his own supremacy, also sent a similar message of his own to the Nizam’s successor. But Nāsir Jang could not start immediately. Preparations for a trial of strength with the wazir of the empire required time and money. The defence and administration of his six Deccan provinces during his absence in the north involved deep planning and careful arrangement, and he had just cause to be anxious about his nephew Hedāyet Muhiuddin (Muzaffar Jang) who was cherishing designs for the succession to Asaf Jāh. It was, therefore, several months before Nāsir Jang could leave his charge, and by 25th May 1749 he had only reached the south bank of the Narmada at Akbarpur when he received a hurried letter from the Emperor, countermanding his march and ordering him back to the Deccan, of which he was in the same letter formally appointed *subahdār*. This sudden reversal of policy needs explanation. [*Hadiqatul-ālam*, ii. 190.]

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Safdar Jang had publicly assumed the wazir’s office on 20th June 1748. Within five months of it his enemies struck their first blow at him. On 20th November he was returning from the Idgah plain after the public prayer and had almost reached the entrance to the vaulted arcade leading to his own residence (once the mansion of Prince Dara Shukoh) close to the canal in the Nigambodh quarter of the city (north of the modern Calcutta Gate of Delhi Fort), and the holiday crowd in that narrow street had checked his movement, when a sudden discharge of light pieces (rahkala) rocket and carbine from a shop on the right hand side struck his cortege. His horse and two or three servants riding before him were fatally wounded; Safdar Jang himself fell down but escaped without injury. A search revealed that these fire-arms had been planted behind a screen on the projecting terrace of a shop, trained at the level of a rider going through the street below, and their fire had missed the wazir by inches. It was the work of a very skilled artilleryist, but he could not be detected in spite of all inquiries. The room was found deserted and closed from behind, evidently an instant after the discharge. The popular belief was that the miscreant had been set on by Intizām-ud-daulah and afterwards concealed by him. Safdar Jang ordered that the quarter of the city to be sacked. The sparks from the rocket had burnt the thatched roofs of the shops in that street, and now the wazir dismantled all the houses from the steps of the canal to his own mansion. Hindu monks had been living on the river bank in this Nigambodh quarter from time immemorial; they were now ejected and the wazir's men took up residence there. [TAh. 17b;

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Bayān 248; Shākir 71; Muz. 9; D. C. But Siyar, Imād and Chah. Gulz. silent.]

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The wazir, in fear of further attempts on his life, gave up attending Court and removed to tents outside the city (25th Nov.)

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Thus an open breach took place between the Emperor and his prime minister. It was during this period that the Court secretly invited Nāsir Jang to come and deliver them. That noble outwardly gave it out that he was going to Delhi merely to pay his respects to his new sovereign; but he wrote to his brother Ghāziuddin at Court that his real object was to put the administration of the Empire in order, oust the intruder Safdar Jang, and give the wazir-ship to Intizām-ud-daulah. At the same time he tried to humour Safdar Jang by writing to him, "I have only to chastise the Marathas here, and then I shall go to Court. Do you befriend me and secure my appointment to the subahdāri of the Deccan. I only want [in addition] the Chief Paymastership of the Empire which my father held and which Zulfiqār Jang has snatched away from me. You and I shall turn with one heart to the regulation of the State. Bālāji has seized the Empire, even up to Hindustan. If you rely on him, you will be disappointed. He is a great deceiver; he looks to money and nothing else. Give me a safeconduct and oaths of assurance from the Court and we two shall unite for punishing Bālāji. I am at your orders.''

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Safdar Jang showed this letter in the original to Hingané, the Maratha envoy at Delhi, who easily exposed Nāsir Jang’s double-dealing by revealing what he had written to his elder brother. He warned the wazir to be on his guard against the deep machinations of the Turāni party, as this letter was merely a device for estranging Safdar from the Peshwā and then crushing him in his isolation. [S. P. D. ii. 13.] Safdar Jang needed no such warning; he instinctively knew the Nizām’s family for his mortal enemies. On learning that Nāsir Jang had actually started for the north, the wazir took the defensive measure of posting his Maratha allies (Malhar Holkar and Jayāji Sindhia) in Kotā, to intercept Nāsir Jang and thus prevent the ravages of war from reaching his own subahs north of the Chambal. At the same time he sent the following appeal to the Peshwa through Hingané: ''This is the time for testing our alliance. If you are truly my friend, then your generals ought to oppose Nāsir Jang. I am supplying Hingané with funds for equipping an army [of Marathas] and making all arrangements for fighting Nāsir Jang. If the Marathas will not do so, I have 50,000 men under me and shall raise more from all sides." [*S. P. D.* ii. 12*e*, 13.]

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His bold speech and bolder preparations for striking the first blow, effectually cowed the craven Emperor and his eunuch. On 7th April 1749, Ahmad Shah taking his mother with him paid a visit to Safdar Jang in his tents and pacified him by this open sign of humility and promises of friendly support, and brought him with himself to the palace. As the price of the reconciliation, he signed a *farmān* ordering Nāsir Jang to turn back immediately on the receipt of the letter, wherever it might find him, while to soothe his feelings he was formally appointed subahdār of the Deccan with the title of Nizām-ud-daulah. [*Hadiqāt-ul-ālam*, ii. 191, *Bayān* 248; *TAh.* 18*b*, 35*b*.]

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§ 8. Downfall of Salābat Khan, Mir Bakhshi.

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A few months after this settlement of dispute, the wazir became deeply entangled in Rohilkhand which kept him busy from November 1749 to September 1750, and again from February 1751 to April 1752. During the second period of his absence from Delhi, he lost his chief supporter at Court. Salābat Khan, the Head Bakhshi, returned from his Rajput expedition at the beginning of November 1750, a ruined man. His huge army of 18,000 men besides a corps of artillery, kept together for a full year, cost him 60 *lakhs* of Rupees at the lowest estimate, and he had not been able to collect more than five *lakhs* in cash as contribution from Rajputana. As a financial speculation, this adventure had utterly failed. His subahdari of Agra and Ajmir yielded him no revenue, thanks to his fatuous policy of antagonising the Jats, who alone could have kept that region in order. His repeated applications to Government for assistance were shelved by the all-powerful eunuch. The imperial treasury had not the means and Jāvid Khan had not the wish to help him out of his difficulties, because he did not owe his appointment to Jāvid Khan’s favour, and, as a hereditary peer whose family had given two daughters and one grand-daughter in wedlock to the Emperors of Delhi, he scorned to pay court to that upstart slave.

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His starving soldiers daily dunned him for the arrears of their pay and made his life unbearable. So, in disgust he shut himself up in his mansion, dismissed his retainers and gave up visiting the Court or doing any official work. To his friends’ remonstrances he used to reply, “There is no Emperor here. Why should we go to the *darbār* of a eunuch to be insulted? To whom shall I state my case that I may be heard?”

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Jāvid Khan represented this speech to the young Emperor and his mother as proof of a plot to set up another prince on the throne. Grown desperate at last, Salābat one day went to the palace and tried to make a personal appeal to the Emperor. The porters, by Jāvid Khan’s previous orders, stopped him; and then grown wilder at this check he burst into abuse of the idiotic Emperor and his base favourite. This was the development that Jāvid Khan had been working up to. Salābat was at once deprived of all his offices, rank and titles (7th June 1751.) His personal estates were confiscated and guns were planted round his house, keeping him a prisoner within it. He sold everything he had and discharged the claims of his soldiery as far as possible, and thereafter lived in utter poverty and seclusion like a *darvish*. [TAh. 29a-30a; Siyar, iii. 40; Muz. 34.]

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Next, by a shrewd stroke of policy, Jāvid Khan caused the Chief Paymastership to be given to Ghāzi-ud-din Khan, with the title of Amir-ul-umara and the subahdari of Agra, while his brother-in-law Intizām-ud-daulah was appointed subahdār of Ajmir with the title of Khan-i-Khānān, (7th June 1751.) Thus the two heads of the Turāni party were promoted to the highest positions in the State next to the wazir’s, to serve as a check on Safdar Jang, at the same time that the wazir’s strongest ally was effectually crushed. Jāvid Khan had killed two birds with one shot. The news of the murder of Nāsir Jang (on 5th December, 1750) had reached Delhi on 16th January 1751, and five days later his eldest brother Ghāzi-ud-din Khan Firuz Jang had been nominated subahdār of the Deccan with the title of Nizām-ul-mulk. But when he began his southward march, at the first stage, Sarāi Qāzi, 6 miles outside Delhi, his soldiers in a body refused to follow him unless their long outstanding salaries were paid up to date. He paid them, and for the future offered them a reduction of salary to Rs. 30 a month for each trooper or dismissal. Most of his men, being inhabitants of Delhi, preferred to resign and stay at home. This so fully depleted his strength that he was forced to give up his march and stop there. [TAh. 29, 36b; Siyar ii. 43; D. C. But Imād 61 differs.]

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§ 9. Plan for a Maratha subsidiary alliance against Abdali.

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Ever since the beginning of Abdali’s attack on Lahor, the Emperor had been sending appeals to his wazir to patch up a treaty with the Ruhelas and hasten back to the defence of Delhi, lest the horrors of Nādir’s conquest should be repeated by the new invader from Afghanistan. But Safdar Jang after concluding the Ruhela campaign, dismissed his Maratha allies, and went to his own province of Oudh to restore its administration which had been completely upset by the death of its governor Naval Rai and the long absence of the subahdar himself in Rohilkhand. While the absentee first minister of the realm was thus neglecting his duty to the State and only looking after his private interests in the eastern provinces, Lahor fell to the Afghan on 6th March and the news of it reached Delhi on the 13th, causing the greatest consternation there. Most people sent their women outside the capital, chiefly to Mathura, which was then in the strong hands of the Jāt Rājah; and for some days no grain reached Delhi from the villages. The Emperor wrote a most peremptory order of recall to Safdar Jang, urging him to bring a strong Maratha force with him at any price. This letter reached Safdar Jang on the 17th, but he took a week's time to start, and sent off messengers for stopping the Maratha army which had by this time reached the bank of the Ganges on its return to Malwa. Overtaking it, he arranged for a defensive subsidiary treaty with the Peshwa on the following terms:—

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(1) The Emperor was to pay the Peshwa fifty lakhs of Rupees for his armed support, out of which thirty lakhs was the price of keeping the Abdali out. (2) One-fourth of the imperial revenue (*chauth*) in the subahs of the Panjab and Sindh and the four mahals (Siālkot, Pasrur, Aurangabad, and Gujrāt),—the revenue of which mahals had been ceded to Nādir Shah and after him to the Abdali, and the districts of Hisar, Sambal, Moradabad, and Budaun, was assigned to the Marathas for their military expenses. Half the revenue of these places was to be paid into the imperial exchequer for the support of the Emperor and the remaining quarter was to be devoted to paying the contingents of the wazir and Javid Khan.

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(3) The Peshwa was to be appointed *subahdār* of Ajmir (including the faujdāri of Nārnol) and of Agra (including the faujdari of Mathura and other subdivisions) and entitled to the sanctioned remuneration and customary perquisites of subahdars and faujdars.

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(4) The Peshwa, through his generals, was to suppress all enemies of the State, foreign invaders and domestic rebels alike, and wrest the lands usurped by local Rajahs and zamindars and restore them to the imperial officers.

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(5) The Peshwā was to govern these subahs exactly in conformity with the established rules of the Empire, respect the rights of all loyal jagirdars and officers, and never grasp any land or money not thus specifically granted to him. Nor should he interfere with the law-courts and forts directly under the imperial Government within the *subahs* thus assigned to him. Of the lands recovered from usurpers and revenue-defaulters, the Marathas were to get one-half to meet the expenses of conquest.

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(6) The Maratha generals were to attend at the imperial Court like other high mansabdars and to join in the campaigns of the imperial army.

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To save the face of the Emperor, a solemn undertaking on the above terms, calling upon all the Hindu gods to attest the fidelity of the signatories, was presented to the Emperor by Malhar Holkar and Jayāji Sindhia on behalf of the Peshwa, and thereupon the Emperor issued a gracious *farman* granting the prayer and recounting all the clauses of the undertaking in its preamble. [Rajwade, i. 1].

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For meeting the Afghan menace, Safdar Jang advocated the plan of placing the Marathas practically in possession of the north-western frontier province though under the Emperor's suzerainty, so that it would be their interest to resist Abdali, and the Emperor would be relieved of the task of defending it. This was an anticipation of the policy which Wellesley adopted when he made the English hold the ceded districts along the western border of Oudh, so as to face Sindhia's dominions and bar the path of Maratha advance into the Company's territory. Safdar Jang even talked of reconquering Kabul with Maratha help. For the defence of the southern frontier he proposed to send Bakht Singh with other Rajput princes to hold the line of the Narmada against any treacherous Maratha encroachment northwards across that river. But his whole scheme was strangled at its birth and the subsidiary treaty with the Peshwā was turned into a scrap of useless paper by the formal surrender of the Panjab and Sindh to Abdali by the craven Emperor during Safdar Jang's absence and the departure of the Afghan envoy Qalandar Beg Khan with an imperial rescript embodying the surrender only twelve days before Safdar Jang's return. The wazir's partisans threw the responsibility for this cowardly submission on Jāvid Khan, who was the Emperor's sole adviser at the time, but the blame must be shared in a still greater degree by Safdar Jang, who did not care to come to Delhi with the speed that the critical situation of the capital demanded, but most unreasonably delayed on the way, leaving the Emperor and the city of Delhi absolutely undefended and helpless in the event of a cavalry dash by the victorious Abdali from Lahor. [*TAh.* 33*b*; Shākir 65.]

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Safdar Jang had started from Oudh on 24th March, but he took 33 days to reach Delhi. In view of the imminence of the crisis at the capital this snail-slow movement over a road which fast couriers covered in four days only, had but one explanation. He rejoiced to see the late wazir’s viceroy son entirely crushed in the Panjab and thus to have one less head of the Turāni party to dread [*TAh.* 18*b*, 30*b*], and he deliberately prolonged the imperial Court’s agony of terror and suspense in order to enhance his own importance and power there on his return as its sole deliverer.

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§ 10. Quarrel between Safdar Jang and Javid Khan about paying subsidy to Marathas.

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Safdar Jang arrived with a Maratha army of 50,000 men, on the bank of the Jamunā opposite Delhi on 25th April. Next day Jāvid Khan paid him a visit there. The wazir wanted to push on to the Panjāb with his allies and expel the Afghans; but Jāvid told him that peace had been made already by the cession of that province to Abdāli. Safdar was surprised and angered. He had bound himself, by order of the Emperor, to pay the Marathas 50 lakhs of Rupees for the defence of the realm, and he naturally asked how he was to keep this promise. This controversy embittered their feelings, and the wazir indignantly refused to enter the city but kept to his tents on the other side of the river.

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The Marathas, not getting their promised subsidy, halted near Delhi. Their foraging parties daily spread over the villages for 40 miles round and brought back whatever provisions they could seize. "Thousands were ruined by their oppression and the surrounding country was desolated. On the west bank of the Jamunā, towards Bādli, Rewāri and other places, not a village remained unplundered." A great terror hung over the capital itself; so long as the Maratha claims remained unsatisfied, they might any day have broken into the city and helped themselves to its riches, with none to defend it while the exasperated wazir stood aloof. Therefore, Jāvid Khan himself opened negotiations with Malhar, who jumped at this chance of a mutual accommodation with the Delhi Government in consequence of an internal revolution in the Maratha State.

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This needs explanation. On the death of Nāsir Jang (5th December 1750), the Emperor had appointed his eldest brother Ghāzi-ud-din to the vacant subahdāri of the Deccan (21st January 1751.) This selection had been pressed on him by the Peshwā, who had been solicited by Ghaziuddin for his good word with the Emperor, and who now promised Maratha support to the imperial administration in the Deccan if he was made Nizām. Ghāzi-ud-din had been always friendly to the Peshwā and his military incapacity and easy unenterprising character promised to the Marathas the practical domination of Mughal Deccan with such a man as its nominal viceroy. The new Nizām, however, had no adequate force to enable him to take possession of his southern charge, and so he delayed starting. A few months later (7th June) he was appointed Mir Bakhshi and was obliged to stay at Court. He then appointed the Peshwā as his deputy subahdār. But Ghazi-ud-din’s younger brothers living in the Deccan refused to give the Hindu interloper possession of their patrimony, and by influencing Jāvid Khan secured a patent for the deputy subahdār-ship in the name of Salābat Jang, the third son of the late Asaf Jāh.

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Balaji resisted Salābat’s agents wherever his forces could reach and a war broke out between them. In this Salābat Jang found an unexpected ally. Shāhu had died on 15 December 1749 and Rāmrājā had succeeded him on the Maratha throne. This imbecile youth was soon overpowered and placed in confinement by the imperious ex-queen Tara Bai, who formed a league of the chiefs of the warrior-caste (Marathas), against the usurped domination of the priestly Peshwās. In the civil war that followed, while Balaji was fighting Dāmāji Gaikwād and his Gujrat army and Raghuji Bhonsle was menacing him from the Berar side, Salābat Jang invaded Maharashtra with his French contingent and forced his way to Punā (Nov. 1751—March 1752.) The Peshwā had to patch up a truce and induce the invader to return to Haidarabad.* While Balaji was being thus hard pressed and his partisans scattered, his devoted follower Malhar Holkar tried to secure relief for him from the side of Delhi. He agreed that if Ghāzi-ud-din himself went to the Deccan as subahdar, the Marāthas would totally absolve the imperial Government from its obligation to pay those 50 lakhs and would march away from Delhi with Ghaziuddin. Nay more, they would be satisfied with 30 lakhs only, which would be payable by the new Nizām.

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