Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c7: Chapter II

Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c7

Language
English

Contents

Chapter II

v1.c7.1

AFGHAN SETTLEMENTS IN THE GANGETIC DOAB.

§ 1. Afghans under Mughal rule in India

v1.c7.s1.1

Within half a century of the final Mughal victory over the Pathān power of Delhi (1556), the Afghān ruling houses in different parts of Hindustan were extinguished, and that race had no independent State left to it anywhere in India. True, their brethren in the north-western frontier made many risings in defence of their tribal independence and immemorial practice of highway robbery and disputed the passes that led from India to the Mughal province of Kābul; but the imperial Government always triumphed in the end, whether by arms or by arts. No doubt, isolated bodies of Afghāns lived in many a distinct locality of India, but as subjects or servants of the all-conquering Mughals. Afghān captains and soldiers fought under the banners of the Empire throughout the reigns of Jahāngir, Shāh Jahān and Aurangzib, and Afghān camel-owners and tradesmen followed the Mughal armies for a living throughout the long Deccan wars of the 17th century. But all these were mercenaries;

v1.c7.s1.2

the Afghān race had no longer any home in India under a chief of their own race even as a great territorial magnate; they possessed no centre of political cohesion, no nucleus for a racial rally.

v1.c7.s1.3

When a full century had worn out in this manner, the dominant Mughal empire began visibly to weaken and break up. After the accession of Muhammad Shāh, the sovereign was clearly seen to be an impotent shadow; in provinces like Bengal, the Deccan and Oudh the imperial governors began to assert their ambition and to found local dynasties, independent in all but the name. Their example in no time impressed the Afghāns who had never forgotten that the Timurids were mere interlopers and had robbed their own race of the empire of Hindustan. Why should they not follow the path of these viceroys or even try to recover their lost dominion over India? The invasion of Nādir Shāh robbed the Mughal Emperor of the last shred of prestige and proved him to be a hollow phantom of power. Divinity ceased to hedge in the sovereign of Delhi and force no longer feared to raise its head against him. The succession of a king of their own race to Nādir Shāh's glorious heritage in 1747 and his military fame as the ablest of Nādir's lieutenants roused the ambition of the Indian Afghāns to the highest pitch of ardour.

v1.c7.s1.4

But long before that date the ground was being silently prepared for them.

§ 2. Afghān settlements in the Doab

v1.c7.s2.1

Descendants of the older Pathān ruling caste of the 15th and 16th centuries were now settled as peaceful landholders or captains of mercenaries in Orissā, Sylhet, Dārbhangā and Allahabad. But fresh bodies of immigrants from their mountain homeland streamed into India in the 17th century and created a large and compact new centre of Afghān population much closer to Delhi than these places.* The newcomers interposed an almost solid block between the vitally important *subahs* of Delhi and Agra on the west and Oudh and Allahabad on the east, and had grown into a serious menace to the imperial Government by the middle of the 18th century. Their Indian home, formerly known as *Katehr*, now acquired the name of *Rohilkhand* from its new dominant race. It is a tract bounded by the Ganges on the west and the Garrā (also called the Deohā) river on the east, with the Rāmgangā running almost midway between the two. But the Afghān immigrants had two considerable settlements even beyond Rohilkhand as thus defined, namely to the south and east of that province, —stretching west of the Ganges to the Kālī Nadī and beyond, and east of the Garrā up to the Sāī river.

v1.c7.s2.2

∗ For Afghan settlements and their early history,—Atkinson's N. W. P. Gazetteer (1st. ed.), Farrukhabad pp. 152-158, Budaun 105-109, Bareilly 656-671, Bijnor 348-350, Shahjahanpur 142-145. The histories written for these Afghan chiefs by their secretaries are all much later than 1750, while the Persian local histories of this region were composed in the 19th century. They contain many errors, some of which can be corrected from the contemporary histories of the Delhi empire used by me. Afghan sources are the basis of the historical narrative in G. Forster's Journey from Bengal to England ("History of the Rohillas", i. 101-130) and the Life of Hafiz Rahmat Khan (tr. by C. Elliott, 1831.) R. S. Whiteway's Ruhela Afghans (in the Calcutta Review, Vol. LXI, 1875, pp. 201-225), though copiously drawn upon in the N. W. P. Gazetteer, is palpably erroneous in many points and has no source independent of the above. The most valuable and scholarly sketch in the Gazetteer is that of W. Irvine in the Farrukhabad volume, but even that requires correction in the light of the fresh material and criticism accumulated since it was written 60 years ago. For the events and traditions before 1739

v1.c7.s2.3

In the first half of the 17th century a number of Afghān captains of the Dāudzāī clan had settled down in what is now called the Shāhjahānpur district, just beyond the north-western corner of the province of Oudh. Their chief town was Shāhjahānpur, colonised by 52 different tribes

v1.c7.s2.4

these Afghan sources (whether in Forster, Elliot or the *Gazetteer*) are our only materials. For later events I have relied on other and more authentic sources. Most of the Afghan histories can be consulted in MS. in the Abdus Salam bequest at the Aligarh University.

v1.c7.s2.5

from Afghānistān (1647.) The fort of Shāhābād, 20 miles south of it, was built some years later. A smaller place, Umrpur, about 10 miles north-west of Shāhjahānpur, was founded by a Yusufzāi Pathān. The Afghān settlements in this easternmost tract did not form a compact dominion obeying one great chieftain who might have united and led the colonists on to greater power or welded the area into a self-contained district by his possession of the whole of it. It was a mosaic of colonies standing in isolation from one another. From this cause as well as their geographical position, the Afghāns of this tract did not share the fortunes and policy of their brethren further west, but usually gravitated to the politics of the dynasty of Oudh on their eastern border.

§ 3. Muhammad Bangash of Farrukhabad

v1.c7.s3.1

A second detached area was occupied by the Afghāns of the extreme south-west, i.e., the district immediately south of Rohilkhand proper. This was the domain created by a highly gifted and successful soldier of fortune, Muhammad Khān Bangash, who lived to rise to the highest rank in the Mughal peerage. The area in his possession varied greatly from time to time, but at its greatest extent it included the whole district of Farrukhābād, the western half of Cawnpur, nearly the whole of Mainpuri and Etāh, two parganahs of Budāun and parts of the Shāhjahānpur, Aligarh and Etāwa districts, some 7500 square miles in all. His family belonged to the Kāghazāi Karlāi clan of the Bangash country in Eastern Afghānistān (i.e., the modern Kohat, Kuram and Paiwar), but he was born at Mau-Rashidābād (now named Qāimganj), a village in the Farrukhābād district, about 1665. At the age of twenty he joined the Pathān freebooters who used to come every year to Katehr and hire themselves out to the local Hindu chieftains in their perpetual intestine wars. In time he rose to be himself a successful leader of mercenaries. His chance came when he sided with Farrukhsiyar in that prince’s bid for the Delhi throne (1713). Thereafter his rise was rapid and unbounded. He became a first-grade *mansabdār*, a Nawāb, and imperial viceroy over highly important provinces like Allahabad and Mālwa. His capital was Farrukhābād, a city founded by him in 1714 and named after his patron. On his death (1743) his eldest son, Qāim Khān, succeeded as Nawāb of the principality.

v1.c7.s3.2

“Muhammad Khān was indeed a man of great energy. His habits were plain and soldierlike. He always wore clothes of the coarsest stuff. In his audience-hall and his house, the only carpets were rows of common mats. He never boasted, and his manner was not overbearing. His hospitality was great. But . . . we find vices which more than counter-balanced these virtues. Muhammad was cruel and vindictive. In the matter of the fair sex he was far more licentious than becomes a great man." (Irvine, *Farrukh. Gaz.* 157). His harem included only one legitimate wife and 2,600 women of another category. But his territories lacked the homogeneity and strength of the Ruhela State across his eastern border, because they were inhabited merely by a lord and his tenantry and did not form a compact tribal brotherhood with perfect cohesion among all its chiefs and their retainers.

§ 4. Career of Ali Muhammad Ruhela

v1.c7.s4.1

After having described these fringe-areas, we shall now turn to Rohilkhand proper.

v1.c7.s4.2

The kernel of the Ruhela power in Northern India was a village at the south-western corner of the Barily district, just across the north-eastern frontier of the district of Budāun. This was acquired early in the 18th century by Dāud, an Afghān soldier of fortune coming from the Qandahār province. By hiring himself and his band of Afghān adventurers out at first to the landowners and then to the imperial governor of that country, Dāud laid the humble foundations of an estate. On his death (c. 1721), his adopted son Ali Muhammad Khān (a converted Jāt boy) succeeded to the command of his retainers and to his programme of ambition. By serving the imperial faujdār of Murādābād at times, but more often by dispossessing the local zamindārs and jāgirdārs, Ali Muhammad soon built up a fairly large estate in the Barily district, with its chief seat at Aonla, a village 18 miles south-west of Barily city and close to the northern border of the Budāun district.

v1.c7.s4.3

The dawn of his fortune was the defeat (at Manauna, one mile west of Aonla) and plunder of Muhammad Sālih, a eunuch of the imperial Court, who had been granted a lease of the villages usurped by Ali Muhammad (1727).* The wealth thus secured enabled him to enlist more Afghān soldiers, and his name became an attraction to those who sought a captain whose service promised them victory and plunder. After this success, he ordered high and low to call him Nawāb, appointed the officials usual to a royal Court, and set up a crimson tent for himself, which was an exclusive privilege of the Emperors of Delhi.

v1.c7.s4.4

∗ Date given in George Forster's Journey, i. 105 n, (a not very reliable authority.) He places the death of Harnand in 1740 (i. 106.n.)

v1.c7.s4.5

He also bought the intercession of the wazir Qamruddin Khān and secured from the Court his own appointment as revenue-collector in the place of his victim.

v1.c7.s4.6

About ten years later he joined the expedition sent out by the wazir for overthrowing Sayyid Saifuddin Ali Khān (a brother of the two deceased Sayyid king-makers) and in the battle near Jansath that followed his Afghan contingent ensured victory to the imperialists by shooting the Sayyid dead. The Delhi Court rewarded Ali Muhammad by giving him the title of Nawāb and the right to play the band (naubat.)*

v1.c7.s4.7

Nādir Shāh's invasion, by temporarily annihilating the Government of Delhi, presented an opportunity of expansion which Ali Muhammad was not slow to seize. He raided and occupied territories right and left. On his aggressions being reported to Court, the wazir,—who held the district of Murādābād in fief,—ordered his local deputy, Rājah Harnand Arora, to expel the Ruhela brigand. But at the village of Asālatpur-Jarrāi, on the Aral river, the Rājah was defeated and slain in a night attack (1741) and all his property and war equipment captured by the Afghāns. This far-resounding success immensely increased the resources and fame of the Ruhela upstart; the country lay helpless at his feet, and thousands of Afghāns flocked to his victorious standard. [Siyar, ii. 9-10, Imād, 42, G-i-R, 16; Forster, i. 106.]

v1.c7.s4.8

∗ *Siyar*, ii. 92; *G-i-R*. 12. *N. W. P. Gaz.*, iii. 605, places the battle at Bhainsi and in the year 1737. *Jansath* is 23 m. n. of Meerut, while *Bhainsi* is 7 m. w. of Jansath, both in the Muzaffar-nagar district. [*Ind. Atlas*, 49 N. E.]

v1.c7.s4.9

After the destruction of Rājah Harnand, Ali Muhammad’s power rapidly extended over the entire Barily district and parts of Murādābād, Hardoi and Budāun. The unprincipled wazir, instead of punishing this open outrage upon his master’s Government and slaughter of his own agent, thought it better to secure such an ever-victorious chieftain’s alliance in his coming contest with his rivals of the Irāni party at Court. He made terms with the Ruhela, accepted his promise of an annual tribute and the hand of his daughter for his eldest son, and secured for him an imperial rescript appointing the usurper as the lawful governor of Katehr, henceforth named "the land of the Ruhelas." The net result was that "the Ruhela power, as represented in the person of Ali Muhammad, spread gradually westwards from a few parganahs in Budāun and Barily (districts.) About 1740 (1741) he managed to annex the bulk of Murādābād." (Bijnor Gazetteer, 348.)

v1.c7.s4.10

Between 1741 and 1748, he spread his conquest in the north and the east, acquiring the Pilibhit district and the kingdom of Kumāun (1742), which latter was reduced to a tributary State. In 1748 he acquired the whole of the Bijnor district.

v1.c7.s4.11

The political situation of the time greatly favoured his increase of strength. The triumph of Nādir had not only destroyed Afghān rule over Persia but even reduced the tribes of the Qandahār province to vassalage and unemployment. These Afghāns, popularly called *Ruhelas* or hillmen, now crowded into Hindustan for their bread and found a ready welcome with their fellow-clansmen in Rohilkhand. On their way to India they were joined by many Afridi adventurers of the Khaibar region. Thus, by the year 1742, Ali Muhammad commanded a force of thirty to forty thousand Afghāns, besides many others of his countrymen permanently settled on the land in Rohilkhand.

§ 5. Military value of the Ruhela army; Ruhela character

v1.c7.s5.1

It was a force formidable in number, but it was rendered still more formidable by its military organization and the racial character of the men. As an eye-witness of the campaign against Ali Muhammad in 1745 writes in his diary, "Every soldier in his army, whether horse or foot, carries a musket; every commander of ten or a hundred infantry has his own small banner of parti-coloured cloth, and these are carried at the head of the cavalcade in marching, so that it looks as if a flower garden is travelling with them." (Anandrām, 261.)

v1.c7.s5.2

A revolution had taken place in the method of Indian warfare since the beginning of the 18th century. In the wars of Aurangzib's heirs artillery had been the decisive factor. The old tumultuous rush of a horde of Rajput desperadoes or regular charge by the heavy armour-clad Mughal cavalry, which formerly used to sweep away every obstacle from before them, was now a thing of the past; its military value was gone except in very rare and accidental combinations of favourable circumstances. Then musketry made a rapid advance. Nādir Shāh's success showed the irresistible power of mobile musketry, —whether matchlocks in the hands of mounted men or long pieces (swivels) carried on camels. Alivardi Khān's campaigns also demonstrated the value of musketry fire when properly directed. Even swift-rushing infantry, called *barqāndāzes*, firing their pieces and acting in concert, had proved victorious over superior bodies of extremely light cavalry armed with the old sword and lance.

v1.c7.s5.3

This fact came to dominate the history of India fully in the middle of the 18th century, and it gave a peculiar importance to the Afghān race by reason of their special aptitude for this kind of warfare.

v1.c7.s5.4

The Afghān soldiers even then displayed the qualities which have distinguished them later in Anglo-Indian warfare.* They were cool, accurate shots, expert in taking every advantage of the ground, clever in executing night attacks and ambuscades, extremely mobile on foot, and yet capable of acting in concert and of controlling their fire at the direction of leaders. Their well-regulated volleys, delivered at the right moment, had an electric effect in shaking their enemies' nerves and deciding battles by one stroke. The Afghan clan-system turned their manhood into naturally disciplined war-bands, acting in cohesion and in submission to a single higher command, without any thought of self. No mercenary or conscript army could match such fighters, as Macaulay has illustrated in the parallel case of the Scottish Highlanders. Their fire-control, disciplined ardour of fight, and active working of the individual soldier’s intelligence were unrivalled in India in that age no less than now.

v1.c7.s5.5

∗ Sir Colin Campbell observed in the course of the N. W. Frontier campaign of 1852, "Swarms rushed forward, taking advantage of every accident of ground, which shows that few equal them in individual action in a broken country." (Life, i, 278.)

v1.c7.s5.6

Above the feud between clan and clan among the Afghāns rises the consciousness of the oneness of their race. They have united to oppose a common enemy more often and more effectively than the Rājputs are known in their long history to have done. An appeal to their general racial interest calls forth their co-operation most easily and speedily. They honour their women, and when a chieftain’s wife sent her veil round among the tribesmen in an appeal for the defence of her distressed husband or son, no Afghān was so unchivalrous as to shrink from taking up arms on her behalf. In addition, they were simple and hardy and not toned down by luxury like the Persians and Turks settled on the fertile soil of India, or ruined by addiction to drugs like the latter-day Rājputs.

v1.c7.s5.7

The defect of the Afghān tribal levies was that they were unable to plan and conduct any long campaign and make the arrangements necessary for it. Away from the stricken field they were no better than brigands. Their failure in diplomacy and constructive statesmanship has always prevented them from confirming and extending the gains of their arms. This political weakness nullified their martial value in the long run. Hence, the Afghāns have always been tough opponents, but never empire-builders.

§ 6. Natural fortresses in Rohilkhand; Ruhela administration

v1.c7.s6.1

The Afghān settlers in Rohilkhand possessed two local advantages of great value. Their strong places were surrounded by dense bamboo hedges which were impenetrable to cavalry and artillery and through which even infantry could thread its way only where paths had been cut. These bamboo pālisades lingered in that region till well after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Then, again, the skirt of the hills in their immediate north, with the thick sāl forests and pestilential swamps called Tarāi, afforded them a safe refuge after any defeat in the plains, because no enemy could pursue them across these natural obstacles or survive the climate long.

v1.c7.s6.2

To individuals the Ruhelas, like others of the Afghan race, were not free from cruelty* vindictiveness and treachery. But as rulers, they saw the unwisdom of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. They protected the peasants and traders in their lands from unauthorised oppression and were eager to drive away other robbers from their own preserves. In this they formed an honourable contrast to the Marāthās, who extorted their *chauth* and then went away, without recognising any moral obligation to protect the people whom they had robbed or whose regular Government they had overthrown. The Ruhela chieftains left the revenue collection in the hands of Hindu ministers (*diwāns*) and their household accounts and correspondence in charge of Hindu secretaries (*munshis*), who were generally very capable men of business and faithfully devoted to their masters' interests. The result was that both rulers and subjects prospered in their dominions when once the violent act of annexation was over.∗

v1.c7.s6.3

∗ At the end of the futile siege of Allahabad fort by Ahmad Khān Bangash (Jan.-April, 1751), his Afghān soldiers set fire to the defenceless and unoffending city of Allahabad, from the Khuldābād gate to the foot of the fort and plundered it, carrying away four thousand women of high and well-born families into captivity. Only the Dāira of Shaikh Afzal Allahabadi and mahalla Dariābād, whose inhabitants were all Afghāns, were spared. (Siyar, iii. 34.)

v1.c7.s6.4

∗ George Forster, a civil servant of Madras, who was travelling through Rohilkhand in the disguise of a Georgian merchant, wrote in February 1783 that "the Ruhelas by a salutary system of government had enriched their country and had made their names respected . . . . had made the country populous and opulent." And, again, "The whole of this chief's [Faizullah Khan's] country evinces the beneficial effects arising from the encouragement of husbandry, and the aid of an active government. Populous villages, skirted by extensive fields of corn, are seen on all sides." [*Journey*, i. 98-99.]

v1.c7.s6.5

§ 7. Emperor's expedition against Ali Md. Ruhela.

v1.c7.s6.6

Safdar Jang had been appointed Mir Atish in 1744. By virtue of this office he now became the working head of the imperial army, as its nominal Chief, the Mir Bakhshi, was Nizām-ul-mulk, who had been absent far away in the Deccan ever since 1740, leaving his son Ghāzi-ud-din I as his deputy at Court. Safdar Jang planned to win martial fame by conducting an expedition under his own leadership. He used to regard the Afghāns of Rohilkhand as "serpents in his path to Delhi", (Ashub, ii. 426,) and now induced the Emperor to sanction a war for curbing Ali Muhammad Ruhela. The wazir was not consulted, as he was publicly known to be the protector of this Ruhela rebel and even related to him by marriage; but the war once begun, the wazir could not in decency absent himself from the Emperor's side. So, Safdar Jang took the Emperor with him on this expedition as its ostensible head.

v1.c7.s6.7

The Ruhela campaign of Muhammad Shāh (1745) revealed the utter rottenness at the core of the imperial Government and the worthlessness of its military machine. It was a war waged not against a foreign invader like Nādir Shāh coming at the head of the veteran victors of a hundred battles, nor even against the organised and hereditary troops of a great feudal baron, but against a petty rebel who had started life as a mere private in a band of mercenaries and was now backed only by the village militia of his own clan.* Yet the full force of the Empire wielded by the Emperor, his Chancellor and Army Chief in person, for three months, achieved only the slightest and least durable result, and that, too, more by persuasion than by compulsion. The moral canker which this failure revealed in the Delhi State is more significant than a hundred defeats in the field. The campaign laid bare to public view the blind selfishness and insane jealousy animating the leaders, and the shameful love of ease and lack of any sense of duty prevailing among all ranks, which have been perpetuated for posterity in Anandrām Mukhlis's graphic diary of the expedition.

v1.c7.s6.8

We do not know whether to weep or to laugh when we hear the pathetic groaning of this high-placed gourmand at the ordinary privations of a march of 120 miles from Delhi into the Doab, in the midst of the entire armed strength of an empire, with no fighting except an occasional distant cannonade,—which spoilt his sleep! Other nobles were equally soft and imbecile. Such an empire had already forfeited its right to exist.

v1.c7.s6.9

∗ "The Emperor was humiliated by reason of his nobles failing to subdue this tāluqdār of a few villages." Anandrām, p. 255.

v1.c7.s6.10

This war was under the special charge of Safdar Jang and had been undertaken at his instance and in opposition to the wazir’s policy; therefore, from the outset the wazir sulked in isolation in his tents, or enjoyed his rival’s troubles and discomfiture. On the second day of the march, Safdar Jang had to “visit the wazir in his camp and crave his pardon, as there had been unpleasantness between the two before.” (Anandrām, 206) Later on, when Qāim Khān, the loyal Bangash chief of Farrukhabad, joined the army, the Mir Atish quarrelled with him and the two had to be reconciled in the Emperor’s presence. (5th May. Anandrām, 247.)

v1.c7.s6.11

Muhammad Shah issued from Delhi on 15th February 1745, but immediately afterwards wasted 18 days in its environs, at the garden of Farhat-āfzā at Loni (east of Delhi, across the river.) The terrible summer of the Upper Doab, with its sand-storms, blistering winds, and dried water-sources was approaching, and yet no attempt was made to reach the objective and end the campaign promptly. The actual start was not made till 5th March, and then this army, or rather this moving city of tents, made its slow and ponderous march, with long and frequent halts, from Loni by way of the Hindan river, Dāsna parganah, Dahāna village (in Hāpur, some 36 miles east of Delhi), Bagsar, Garh Mukteshwar, Sahāranpur and Sambhal, till at last on 14th May, or fully three months after he had left Delhi, the Emperor arrived about eight miles from Bangarh, the enemy’s stronghold, which was only 110 miles from Delhi in a straight line over a level plain, with no difficult river between.

v1.c7.s6.12

The qualities displayed by the army in the face of the enemy were exactly in keeping with this lordly style of marching, as is frequently illustrated by Anandrām’s diary:

v1.c7.s6.13

“3rd May. A violent wind blows all day. Many men of the camp stole away to Delhi under different pretexts.” (P. 245.)

v1.c7.s6.14

“16th May. Qāim Jang rides forth to assault Bangarh, but halts in a grove after passing three miles of the way, returns to the camp four gharis before sunset, his armour-clad troopers blistered by the heat and want of water.”* (P. 253.)

v1.c7.s6.15

“18th May. The generals of the imperial army march out a short distance (towards Bangarh) to a plain, halt there, dig wells, raise

v1.c7.s6.16

∗ Cf. “The troops in the trenches were so covered with dust as to look like parties of sannyāsis. 19 May.” P. 256.

v1.c7.s6.17

batteries, and fire upon Bangarh. But nothing was effected; evidently the nobles did not mean business." (P. 255.)

v1.c7.s6.18

"20th May. Entrenchments were made about two miles in front (of the imperial camp). There was an exchange of fire with Bangarh. At dusk the nobles fell back on their tents near the trenches." (P. 257.)

v1.c7.s6.19

§ 8. Peace made with the Ruhela chief.

v1.c7.s6.20

A night attack attempted by the enemy on 20th May was repulsed by the imperial artillery. But the rainy season was expected to begin in a month's time, when the swollen rivers would cut off the food supply of the imperial camp while Bangarh was still untouched. The wazir therefore induced the Emperor to patch up a peace with Ali Muhammad in order to be able to hurry back to his capital. He himself settled the terms as intermediary, presented Ali Muhammad to the Emperor (23rd May), and secured pardon for him. The Ruhela chieftain agreed to surrender his usurped fiefs to a new imperial officer (Farid-ud-din Khān, the son of Shaikh Azmatullah Khān of Murādābād) and to dismantle the fortifications of Bangarh. After a short time he was given a 4-hazāri mansab and sent to Sarhind as the imperial faujdar of the place, but two of his sons were detained at Court as hostages for his fidelity. Anandrām, who saw him at the time of his surrender, describes him as a man of medium height, with a fair complexion, blooming face and open forehead, about forty years old, but looking youthful and dauntlessly brave. (P. 261.)

v1.c7.s6.21

From this inglorious campaign the Emperor and his army immediately afterwards began a hurried return to Delhi, suffering even worse hardships than in their outward march, from the stormy winds, heavy rain, muddy roads, and swollen rivers. Muhammad Shāh re-entered his capital on 19th June, the return journey having taken 25 days.

§ 9. Imperial authority overthrown in Rohilkhand

v1.c7.s7.1

Muhammad Khān Bangash, lord of Farrukhābād, died in 1743 and was succeeded by his eldest son Qāim Khan, who was a fine soldier and sportsman, but too much obsessed by religiosity to pursue a career of ambition. Moreover, the Bangash chieftains, unlike the Ruhela leader Ali Muhammad, were fairly loyal servants of the imperial Government and lawful jāgirdārs in their barony. Their authority was more recognised, their territories more settled, and their revenue collection more regular than was the case among the Ruhelas. Hence, Qāim Khan did not trouble the Delhi Court but often helped it loyally, and the Farrukhābād district remained quiet during his life time.

v1.c7.s7.2

In Rohilkhand proper, Ali Muhammad's usurped authority had been abolished by the terms of the Emperor's pardon to him in May 1745. The jāgirs seized by him were ordered to be put in the possession of their rightful owners. This, however, was more easily said than done. True, Ali Muhammad was now removed from the scene of his mischievous activity, detained at Delhi for some months, and finally sent off to Sarhind as its faujdār, while his two grown-up sons were held at Court as hostages for his good conduct. But it merely spread anarchy throughout Rohilkhand in the place of one strong usurper's rule. As the author of Siyar-ul-mutākhkharin, who was personally present in Barily at this time, noted, "Thousands of Afghāns were living there, and having struck their roots, had become owners of the land and made it impossible for anybody else to govern that tract." (iii. 20.)

v1.c7.s7.3

Barily and seventeen other mahals had been formerly assigned in jāgir to the Nizām, but they had long gone out of the grantee's control on account of the Afghān predominance. In 1746 the Nizām's eldest son and agent at Court, Ghāziuddin Firuz Jang, sent Hedāyet Ali Khān (the father of the author of Siyar) there as manager of this estate. But the new collector's task was extremely difficult in view of the smallness of his resources and the vast number and turbulent character of the Afghan population he was expected to control. His position was further complicated by the jealous opposition of an old grantee who was the natural enemy of the Ruhelas.

v1.c7.s7.4

Shaikh Azmatullah Khān, of the Shaikhzāda family of Lucknow, had acted as imperial faujdār of Rohilkhand (with his head-quarters at Murādābād) from Farrukh-siyar's reign till his own death in 1737, and his eldest son Muin-ud-din had acted as magistrate of Barily during part of the time. Ali Muhammad Ruhela, in his obscure youth, had served them as a petty jamadār in their personal force. On Azmatullah's death, the governorship of Rohilkhand had gone out of the family to another man, Mir Ahmad Khān, and later on to Ali Muhammad. In 1745, on the downfall of the latter, Azmatullah's second son, Farid-ud-din, had been appointed to this post. His nephew Shaikh Qutb-ud-din (evidently the son of Muin) was living in his mud-fort of Chajlait,[*]

v1.c7.s7.5

∗ Siyar, iii. 21, spells the name as Chachhat, which I take to be an error. Imād 35, places his family home at Amethi (in the Sultanpur district of Oudh.)

v1.c7.s7.6

13 miles north of Murādābād, in great poverty. His ambition was to recover his family possessions and power, now that the field was left clear by the Ruhela usurper. He, therefore, obstructed Hedāyet Ali on his arrival at Barily; but the latter acted with great tact and combination of force and diplomacy and after laying siege to his little fort won him over. Hedāyet Ali also enlisted the Ruhela headmen of the different villages in his service in order to ensure their help in controlling their clansmen. The chief of such auxiliaries was Pir Ahmad Ruhela (a Pir-zāda of the Afghāns); but he soon turned against his employer, partly because of his Sunni bigotry,—Hedāyet Ali being a Shia. Pir Ahmad's band of 1,700 men soon proved the nucleus of an Afghān army hostile to the new collector of Barily, though in their first encounter Ahmad was defeated.

v1.c7.s7.7

But the table was turned upon Hedāyet Ali early in 1748. At the first news of Abdāli's capture of Lāhor and intended march upon Delhi, Ali Muhammad Ruhela deserted his post at Sarhind* (middle of February) and with his entire contingent of Afghāns returned to Rohilkhand. At once his clansmen dropped their ploughs, took up their matchlocks, and joined him in their thousands. With this overwhelming force he swept the district clear of the lawful *jāgirdārs’* officers and re-established his own possession in a month’s time, set up his own magistrates again, and crossed the Ganges into the Bijnor and Murādābād districts.

v1.c7.s7.8

∗ G-i-R., p. 24, tries to explain away this desertion by saying that the Emperor himself sent Ali Muhammad to Katehr as governor in order to prevent his joining Abdali.

v1.c7.s7.9

Hedāyet Ali could not maintain himself against a nation in arms. His hired Afghān retainers turned against him and invested him in his house at Barily for their arrears of pay, while Ali Muhammad arrived within 20 miles of that town. He escaped from the difficulty by paying off his troops, abandoning most of his property, and falling back on Delhi (middle of April). By this time the Emperor Muhammad Shāh was dead; the interregnum (as always happened in Mughal India), had let loose the forces of disorder, and Hedāyet Ali had great difficulty in making his retreat in the midst of the lawlessness and highway robbery that were now raging through this tract “worse than ever before.” (*Siyar*, iii. 23) Thus the fruits of the Bangarh campaign of 1745 were undone in a month’s time in 1748.