Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c22.s3.6

v2.c22.s3.6

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.