Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c14.s1.3

v1.c14.s1.3

The death of Ali Muhammad and the exile of his grown-up sons revived Shaikh Qutbuddin’s ambition. He bitterly hated the Afghan race as interlopers in his patrimony and longed to oust them and gain the faujdāri of Rohilkhand which his grandfather had once held. Now was his opportunity. He importuned Intizāmuddaulah (the eldest son of the late wazir Qamruddin), who was officially faujdār of Moradabad, to send him to that district as his deputy to take possession of it. Intizām agreed (c. 15 Nov. 1748), but could not help his infatuated agent with the necessary money and materials. However, a number of soldiers joined in the adventure, lured by Qutbuddin’s fame as a gallant fighter, and he thus got together a band of some 7,000 men. Crossing the Ganges, he pushed through the Bijnor district towards Moradabad, but at Dhāmpur, 38 miles north-west of that town, he was confronted by a vastly superior Ruhela army under Dundi Khan with abundance of artillery and munitions. Scornfully rejecting the Afghan proposal to divide the land amicably, Qutbuddin gave them battle but fell after a desperate charge at the head of a handful of devoted followers. [Siyar, iii. 28, Muz. 36-37, Bijnor Gaz. 349.]