Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c22.s3: § 3. Khwajah Abdullah Khan seizes the government of Lahor
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c22.s3
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§ 3. Khwajah Abdullah Khan seizes the government of Lahor
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Mughlāni Begam, finding herself really a captive of the usurper, sent out secret letters to Imād-ul-mulk the wazir of Delhi and to Ahmad Shah Abdali at Qandahar, appealing to them to liberate her. Her mother's brother, Khwājah Abdullah Khan (the younger son of the former governor Abdus Samad Khan, Saif-ud-daulah I) had gone to the Durrani Court and secured an order on Amān Khan, Ahmad Shah's agent in Peshawar, to accompany Abdullah to Lahor with a force of 10,000 men of Kabul and Peshawar (but very few Durrānis or Qizilbashes) and restore the Begam to power. Khwājah Mirzā could make no stand against this force, and was treacherously imprisoned with most of the Mughalia captains, by Amān Khan during a visit to that Afghan under a promise of safety.* Amān Khan now entered the defenceless city of Lahor and by beating all the substantial men and conducting a ruthless general plunder, collected a large sum, and then left for Peshawar, after installing Mughlāni Begam as subahdar and Khwājah Abdullah as her deputy and handing Bihkāri Khan over to her. She at once had him beaten to death by her harem servants, crying out, "The blood of the two (my husband and son) is on you. This is your due recompense for it!" This happened about April 1755.
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The Mughalia captains who had been the cause of the disorder and misrule in Lahor ever since Muin's death, were now dragged away to prison in Qandahar. But it did not bring peace back to the Panjab. "Khwājah Abdullah disliked having to obey a woman. He began to act of his own will and collected 15 to 20 thousand troops." The Begam too made preparations for a conflict and seduced many of these recruits. But her troops, "led by eunuchs, nay by eunuchs' servants," could make no stand against Abdullah and fled away after a short street encounter. Mir Mumin and the Durrāni Resident at Lahor (Hādi Khan) then mediated between niece and uncle, appeased the tumult, and safely conveyed the Begam to her mother's house, posting 50 Durrānī soldiers to protect her there. Abdullah now became the undisputed master of Lahor (July 1755.)
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∗ Khj Abdullah : Miskin 106-110, TALS. 60a: Mux. 82.
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In the meantime, the news of the death of Muhammad Amin Khan (early in May 1754) had reached Delhi, but the Emperor Ahmad Shah was then in the midst of his fatal entanglement with Imād-ul-mulk and could not attend to Panjab affairs. After the accession of Alamgir II, the death of the titular subahdar was formally communicated to the new Emperor and an imperial rescript was issued appointing Mumin Khan subahdar with the title of Mumin-ud-daulah, (probably in July 1754.) But, as we have already seen, this officer was ousted by the Begam, and she by Khwājah Mirzā, and the last-named by Khwājah Abdullah. [DC. TALS. 59b-60a.] Abdullah’s rule was tyrannical. His most pressing need was that of money, and for it he left no kind of oppression unattempted. “Closing the gates of the city, he plundered much from the inhabitants of Lahor, both Hindu and Muslim, on the plea of their having been associates of Bihkāri Khan, and slew many people. Vast numbers were ruined. Grain and other stuffs became very dear.”
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§ 4. Khwajah Abdullah expelled from Lahor and Mughlani Begam made captive by Imad, 1756.
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But his authority did not last beyond six months. Mughlāni Begam, finding her rival installed by Durrānī arms in her lawful seat, appealed to Imād-ul-mulk, who had now become the all-powerful wazir of Delhi, to rescue her and marry her daughter Umda Begam, who had been betrothed to him by her father. The wazir, too, coveted the province of the Panjab. So, at the end of the year 1755, he set out for Lahor and reached Sarhind on 7 February 1756. In the meantime Adina Beg Khan, the faujdar of the Jalandar doab under the Government of Lahor, had made himself an independent power by raising a vast army (rumoured to be one lakh of horse and foot), including many Sikhs, with a strong park of artillery and swivel-guns. After defeating Qutb Shah, the usurper of the Sarhind district, in a battle at Rupar (11 April 1755), he had occupied Sarhind and the country up to Thaneshwar. The wazir was glad to leave him in undisturbed administration of this country, as he realized that only the strong arm of Adina Beg could keep order in that tract, so full of refractory landowners, while the wazir’s own military force and resources were quite inadequate for the purpose. And now, at the beginning of 1756, while the wazir was marching on Lahor, Adina wrote to him not to advance beyond Sarhind, but to send only a small party of his followers whom Adina would strengthen with 10,000 troopers of his own under Sadiq Beg Khan and help to capture Lahor by stratagem.
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This force reached Lahor by rapid marches, rode through the city in full military pomp to the Begam’s residence (her mother's house), and next paid a visit of courtesy to Abdullah, who however guessed out their object and at nightfall fled away to the Jamu hills, abandoniug the city (middle of January 1756.) Next morning Mughlāni Begam, beating her kettle-drums, rode in triumph through the city, reoccupied her official residence, and took up the government of the province once more. After a month, on completing her preparations she sent her daughter with an escort of 3,000 troopers and dowry and presents worthy of her high rank, to Imād's camp near Sarhind, where she arrived on 4th March.*
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Mughlāni Begam's triumph, however, was short-lived. Imād could not tolerate her doings. She was, after all, a Muslim woman, but used to do the work of a provincial governor in the manner of males, before the public gaze. This part of a virago that she played, quite apart from the stories about her loss of character, was felt as a personal disgrace by Imād, because she was his mother's brother's wife and also his prospective mother-in-law. His family honour demanded that she should be removed from Lahor, where she was enjoying unbridled liberty of action. A more sordid motive is said by some writers to have mingled with this feeling, namely greed for the hoarded wealth of her late husband.
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∗ TALS. 47a-48, 66a, 69a ; Miskin 114-119. DC.
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So, Imād sent Sayyid Jamil-ud-din Khan with 10,000 horsemen and ten eunuchs to kidnap her. This Jamil-ud-din had been a favourite lieutenant of Muin-ul-mulk, and had commanded the contingent sent by that governor to Delhi to assist the Emperor in his war with Safdar Jang in 1753. He had won the good opinion of Imād by devoted service under his eyes. And now, by a continuous rapid march, Jamil-ud-din reached Lahor before any one could know of his approach, encircled the Begam’s mansion, forced her upon an elephant, and sent her off to the wazir’s camp at Machhiwara, where she arrived on 28th March. All her property was seized. Mir Mumin, ‘the leading nobleman of Lahor’, was again appointed subahdar of the Panjab, with Sayyid Jamil-ud-din as his deputy and actual governor. The Sayyid was an honest God-fearing and experienced man; he administered the province justly, in strict accordance with the Islamic Canon Law, punished offenders without fear or favour, and tried to maintain peace as far as he could with the actual muster out of the 5,000 Mughal soldiers assigned to the province on paper. He sought to lower the unfairly enhanced price of grain by publicly flogging the headman of the markets, and led some expeditions against the Sikhs, whom he defeated after severe fighting.*
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∗ TALS. 69b. Miskin 120-124. Mux. 106. Shakir 79-80.
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§ 5. *Abdali conquest of the Panjab, Oct. 1756.*
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His rule too did not last more than six months. Khwājah Abdullah, who had fled away before Adina’s troops, went to Qandahar and brought away a strong Afghan force under Abdali’s general Jangbāz Khān, by promising to recover the Panjab from the hands of the Delhi Government’s agents and restore it to the Abdali. With him came Khwājah Mirzā and other Turki captains of Muin who had so long been held captives in Qandahar.
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Strengthened by a force of Afghans of Peshawar under Abdus Samad Khan, the detachment arrived near Lahor. Sayyid Jamil-ud-din appealed to Adina Beg for reinforcements, but in vain. Adina durst not provoke the Durrāni power by standing up against it, and so the governor retreated from Lahor to join Adina. A wild terror seized that city; the inhabitants remembered the atrocities of the former Afghan occupation. Every one who had anything to lose fled away, abandoning his property, as transport animals and porters were very scarce. The fugitive population swelled the train of their governor till they reached Adina Beg’s camp in the Jalandar doab, because a rumour had spread that Ahmad Shah himself was coming to wreak vengeance on the Delhi wazir for having carried off Mughlāni Begam, whom the Durrāni king used to call his daughter and whom he had posted as his agent in Lahor. The invaders entered the city on 4 October 1756. Many of the Lahor fugitives deemed it unsafe to stay anywhere nearer than Delhi. |Miskin 125-128. *TALS.* 80a.|
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Thus Khwājah Abdullah was again installed in authority at Lahor by Durrāni arms, with Khwājah Mirzā Khan as his lieutenant. His Afghan allies roamed through the city, plundering whatever they could lay hands on, without any check. While an envoy of the Durrāni Shāh named Qalandar Beg Khan visited Delhi (end of October) to demand satisfaction for Imād’s attack upon his master’s authority at Lahor, the main Afghan army set out to invade India once more. In the middle of November Ahmad Shah himself reached Peshawar,* his vanguard led by Timur Shah arrived at Hasan Abdal and pushed a detachment on to the city of Gujrat to collect provisions for the main army about to follow. Delhi itself was known to be Abdali’s objective this time.
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The Afghan invaders, passing through and plundering Yaminabad and Batala, advanced upon Adina Beg’s camp at Jalalabad (25 m. s. c. e. of Amritsar.) The Beg fled away with his family and Jamil-ud-din and Sadiq Beg, abandoning his camp and baggage to plunder; by way of Nurmahal, Sodra and Thara he reached Hansi, while the Afghan commander-in-chief Sardār Jahān Khan occupied the Jalandar doab up to the bank of the Satlaj without a blow (early in December.) "From Lahor to Sarhind not a village was left tenanted, all men, high and low, having fled away." Towards the end of this month, an Afghan detachment under Hasan Khan crossed the Satlaj and occupied Sarhind, which had been vacated by its inhabitants. Jahān Khan, with the vanguard, arrived near that city about 5 January 1757 and then pushed on towards Delhi by way of Panipat. From Lahor Ahmad Shah sent threatening letters to the Rajah of Jamu, who made peace by paying a large sum. The Afghan king then crossed the Satlaj, about 10 January, and, marching two stages behind his van, arrived before Delhi on 23rd January, 1757.* His doings there will be narrated in chapter 15.
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∗ Abdali crosses the Indus at Attock (26 Nov.), plunders Batala and Adinanagar (13 Dec.), and enters Lahor (20 Dec.) *DC.* Raj, vi. 365, *TALS.* 85a.
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§ 6. Timur Shah appointed as Abdali's governor of the Panjab, 1757.
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Gorged with the plunder of Delhi, Mathura and Agra, Ahmad Shah set out from Delhi at the beginning of April, on his return homewards. During his stay in India Mughlāni Begam had risen to his highest favour. She had been chosen by the Delhi Emperor and his wazir as their mediator with the Abdali ; she had divulged to the invaders the secrets of all the nobles of Delhi, guiding the Afghans to the hiding place of every noble's treasure and giving information as to the exact amount of wealth that could be squeezed out of each; and she had been Ahmad Shah's agent in procuring the virgin tribute that was exacted for him from the imperial family. She had presented him with costly jewels on her own behalf. There was nothing that the Afghan king could refuse to her. In high delight he had cried out, "Hitherto I had styled you my daughter; but from today I shall call you my son and give you the title of Sultan Mirzā." He presented to her the very cap, aigrette, coat and other vestments that he was then wearing; there could be no more exalted *khilat* than these.
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∗ Abdali's conquest of the Panjab (1756): *TALS.* 85a-88b. Miskin 125-129.
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At the same time, the Afghan king promised to Mughlāni Begam the Jalandar doab, Jamu and Kashmir as her fiefs. She sent agents to these places to establish her own government, and invited Adina Beg to come out of his retreat and administer the Jalandar doab as her deputy. But she was soon undeceived. Ahmad Shah had annexed the Sarhind district as the dowry of Alamgir's daughter Muhammadi Begam, who had been married to his son Timur Shah, and at the time of withdrawing from India he decided to leave this prince as his viceroy in the Panjab.* An independent authority like Mughlāni could not be allowed to hold the Jalandar doab and thus interpose a break between Lahor and Sarhind, nor could the Panjab province be shorn of its northern hill territories, Kashmir and Jamu. He, therefore, revoked his gift and told Mughlāni to take instead jāgirs worth Rs. 30,000 a year elsewhere from Timur Shah. This she refused to do, but followed Ahmad Shah to the bank of the Chenāb, vainly imploring him to give her the territories first promised. Thence, by way of Siālkot she returned to Lahor, where this unreasonable woman passed some time, dunning Timur and exasperating his wazir Jahān Khan by the violence of her wrangling. Her obstinacy only humiliated her and brought down upon her head poverty and scorn in a city which she had once ruled with sovereign power. A beggar cannot dictate the nature of her alms.
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∗ Timur Shah's first viceroyalty of Lahor: Miskin, 145-170. As Adina Beg defaulted in paying the tribute of Jalandar doab, Timur Shah's wazir threw Dilārām (the agent of Adina at the Lahor subahdar's Court) into prison. Mughlāni Begam stood
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The young prince Timur Shah was left in Lahor as viceroy with his father's ablest general Sardār Jahān Khan as his guardian and wazir. The backbone of his armed force consisted of 10,000 Persian troops of his
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security for the payment of the six lakhs due from Adina and thus effected Dilārām's release. Then she advised Dilārām to flee from Lahor at night, go to Adina and procure the money, as his life at Lahor was made intolerable by the Afghans constantly beating him for payment. But Adina did not pay the money, and then the Afghan wazir beat the Begam with sticks with his own hand severely! For 2 days she was kept confined in a small room and unspeakable oppression was done to her. [Miskin, 170.]
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father’s army. But Jahān Khan enlisted India-born soldiers on the lower scale of pay prevailing in this country. This military strength and the terror of the Abdali king who stood behind his son, imposed peace and order on that unhappy province after the late chaos. “Justice was done in the capital and the districts, and the roads became safe for traffic once more.” Timur had the wisdom to lease out the government of the Jalandar doab to Adina Beg for 32 lakhs of Rupees a year, conceding to him the privilege that he would not be required to attend the viceregal Court at Lahor but would be represented there by his former *wakil* Dilārām. In fact, Adina Beg had administered that doab for such a long time,—ever since Abdus Samad Saif-ud-daulah’s regime,—and established such local influence there, especially by his understanding with the Sikhs, that it was recognized on all hands that he was the only man who could keep that territory in order and extract any revenue from it. [Miskin, 167.]
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After thus settling the new administration, Jahān Khan planned to cut off a large body of Sikh rebels who had assembled at Amritsar for a religious bath, and, as was their usual practice, had taken to plunder and violence. Two divisions, under Hāji Atāi Khan and the wazir, were ordered to converge upon the city and attack the Sikhs simultaneously. But Atāi Khan delayed his march, so that when Jahān Khan approached Amritsar with 2,000 horsemen, he was unsupported and had to meet the full force of the Sikh attack. "Many of our men turned to flee, but the Sikhs had left them no path to escape by, and they had to return to our group. We fought in desperation. Then Hāji Atāi arrived and put the Sikhs to flight. The victors gave chase, occupied Amritsar, and slew five Sikh infantrymen who were standing on guard before a screened door"—evidently the shrine of their Holy Book. [Miskin, 162.]