Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c7.s4: § 4. Career of Ali Muhammad Ruhela
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c7.s4
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§ 4. Career of Ali Muhammad Ruhela
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After having described these fringe-areas, we shall now turn to Rohilkhand proper.
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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.
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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.
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∗ 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.)
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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.
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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.)*
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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.]
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∗ *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.]
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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.)
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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.
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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.