Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c21.s5.44

v2.c21.s5.44

Even in the districts immediately bordering the capital, so weak and despised was the power of the central Government that smaller usurpers set up their ownership and administration in several places,—which aggravated the evil of Imad-ul-mulk’s alienation of Crownlands and privy-purse estates to the soldiery. The Jat and Gujar encroachments in the south and south-east of Delhi will be described in chapter 22. In the region north and west of the capital, i.e., the modern Karnal and Rohtak districts, the usurpers were Afghan and Baluch captains. Northwards, Kunjpura (80 miles north of Delhi and commanding a ford on the Jamuna) was held by Nejabat Khan Ruhela. Then, in the west, Kamgar Khan Baluch (r. 1747-1760), the official governor of Farrukhnagar (30 m. s.w. of Delhi), held a vast territory embracing the whole of the present districts of Hisar and Rohtak and parts of Gurgaon, Jhind and Patiala. His son and successor was Musa Khan. Another Baluch chief was Bahadur Khan, who had once been a servant of Kāmgār but had later entered the service of Imād-ul-mulk and risen to be colonel of one of his regiments and to be granted the barony of Bahādurgarh (20 m. due west of Delhi.) He was succeeded in 1760 by his brother Tāj Muhammad Khan, who ruled till 1775.* Other minor chiefs of this race were Hasan Ali Khan (of Jhajhar) the son of Kāmgār Khan’s brother, Asadullah Khan of Tauru (18 miles east of Rewari), Auliyā Khan Baluch of Nizāmgarh (in the Saharanpur district), and Qutb Shah, wrongly called Ruhela, who had formerly been a collector in Saharanpur but later usurped parts of the Pānipat and Sarhind districts west of the Jamunā.