Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c37.s1.6

v3.c37.s1.6

Excess in wine and women quickly sapped Najaf Khan's vitality. Delhi was an exceptionally unhealthy city in 1780, 1781 and 1782 and we read of repeated illness and child mortality in the royal family throughout this period. Najaf's friends complained that his constitution could not bear the change from his former active open-air life in camps and fields to the enforced inactivity of the close insanitary capital. He began to be troubled by long fits of sickness as early as October 1780, and though the doctors pulled him through, he would not listen to their advice to practise temperance, and after a year of such excess a slow secret fever seized him in August 1781 which ultimately developed into consumption and conducted him to a premature grave in 1782.