Ahmadnagar

“ Malik Ambar would rule the Deccan from his new capital at Ahmadnagar, and Ghulam Adl would be appointed governor of all provinces north from Ahmadnagar to the Narbada River. With their combined troops holding the borders, no Moghul army could ever again challenge the Deccan. Ghulam Adl knew the mansabdars would support him, because he had offered to cut their taxes in half. He had neglected to specify for how long.
"I respectfully submit the time for muster is premature, Highness. Crops are not yet in. The revenues of the mansabdars' jagir estates will suffer if men are called now." ”

“ Abul Fazl had been bred in a cloister; he was approaching his fiftieth year; he had never before been in active service, but he had the spirit of a soldier; he refused to retreat from an enemy's country; he pushed manfully on for Ahmadnagar. His efforts were rewarded with success. The Queen-regent was assailed by other [Pg 381] enemies, and yielded to her fate. She agreed that if Abul Fazl would punish her enemies, she would surrender the fortress of Ahmadnagar.
Tidings had now reached Akbar that his son Amurath was dead. He resolved to go in person to the Deccan. ”

“ One and all refused to pay allegiance to the Mogul. Akbar was wroth at the refusal. He sent his son Amurath to command in Guzerat; he ordered Amurath to seize the first opportunity for interfering in the affairs of Ahmadnagar.
The moment soon arrived. Burhan died in 1594. A war ensued between rival claimants for the throne. The minister invited Amurath to interfere. Amurath advanced to Ahmadnagar. Meantime the minister and queen came to terms; they united to resist the Moguls. The Queen dowager, known as Chand Bibi, arrayed herself in armor; she veiled her face and led the troops in person. ”

“ The northern invaders did not succeed in establishing themselves firmly in Berar and the Ahmadnagar kingdom until early in the reign of Shahjahan, when, in 1633, Daulatabad was captured/ and Husain II, the last titular king of the Nizam Shahi dynasty, and Fath Khan, the son of Malik Ambar, were made prisoners. ”

“ In 1579 Sahib Khan, an unworthy favourite of Murtaza Nizam Shah, fell into disgrace and fled from Ahmadnagar to Bidar, pursued by his master. On his arrival at Bidar the garrison, fearing lest his request for protection should be only a ruse to gain admission to the fort on behalf of his master, shut the gates in his face and fired on his troops, killing several. ”

“ The mansab of K͟hwāja ʿAlī Beg Mīrzā, who had been appointed to the defence and [393] administration of Ahmadnagar, was fixed at 5,000 personal and horse. An elephant apiece was given to Nūru-d-dīn Qulī, K͟hwājagī T̤āhir, Sayyid K͟hān Muḥammad, Murtaẓā K͟hān, and Walī Beg. On the 17th the mansab of Ḥākim Beg was fixed, original and increase, at 1,000 personal and 200 horse. On the same day, after presenting Rāja Sūraj Mal with a dress of honour, an elephant, and a jewelled khapwa, and Taqī with a dress of honour, I gave them leave to proceed on duty to Kangra. ”

“ Vasant Rao laughed lightly and turned to study the brooding man at his side. Can it be true what many suspect about the prince? he again found himself wondering. That he choses his strategy for a campaign from the final hunt of his chitahs!
But what strategy is left for us? The Deccanis have already reclaimed the city of Ahmadnagar, deep in their territory, and once again made it their rebel capital. They drove the Moghul garrison north to the fort at Burhanpur, and now they threaten that city as well, the most important station in the vital route between Agra and Surat. ”

“ A few years afterwards, however, the Kulbarga kingdom was dismembered by revolutions which resulted in the formation of the three Muhammadan kingdoms of Bijápur, Ahmadnagar and Golconda in the years 1489, 1490 and 1512 respectively; and the kings of Orissa recovered this district.
In 1515, Krishna Déva, the greatest of the kings of the Hindu empire of Vijayanagar, the capital of which was at Hampe in the Bellary district, and which was now at the zenith of its power, marched northwards in great strength. ”

“ One of the Moghurs finest generals, whose dispatches from Ahmadnagar, only the previous year, had boasted that the Deccan was finally subdued, now cowered in the fortress at Burhanpur. Arangbar had no choice but to send Jadar again.
"Did you see how they planned their attack?" Jadar fingered the edges of his short beard, then pointed. "She drove them toward his trap. By attacking the weak, she frightened the strong, who flew to their doom."
"We're not facing nilgai, Highness." Vasant Rao shifted in his saddle to face the prince and shielded his eyes against the sun. ”

“ Daud Khan, the governor of Khandesh, was absent campaigning near Ahmadnagar, while his son Ahmad Khan, who officiated as his deputy at Burhanpur, was at open war with Maharajah Jaswant Singh, who was trying to raise money for the Prince's expenses and had demanded five lakhs from the treasury of Khandesh. Daud Khan's son replied that if the Maharajah could procure Aurangzib's order, he would pay him even 20 lakhs, or else not a pice, at which message Jaswant threatened to sack the town. (F. R. Surat, 105, Bombay to Surat, 5 February, 1671.) ”

“ From the environs of Ahmadnagar, Bahadur Khan advanced to Supa (in the Puna district) , while Dilir Khan with a flying column recovered Puna, massacring all the inhabitants above the age of 9 years, (end of December 1671.) Early in January 1672, Shivaji was at Mahad, draining his forts of men to raise a vast army for expelling the invaders from the home of his childhood.* [2] But the pressure on Puna was immediately afterwards removed and Bahadur Khan was recalled from this region by a severe disaster to the Mughal arms in Baglana. ”

“ Early in 1660, Shaista Khan opened the campaign against Shivaji from the north, after arranging for an attack upon the Maratha dominions by the Bijapuris from the south at the same time. Leaving Ahmadnagar with a vast army on 25th February, the Khan marched southwards along the eastern side of the Puna district, methodically capturing and garrisoning all the strongholds that guarded the approaches to Puna on the east and south. ”

“ Firishtah relates an interesting anecdote about this in his history of the Ahmadnagar Sultans. Hussain Nizam Shah desired to make peace with Vijayanagar, and Rama Raja offered to grant it on certain conditions, one of which was that Kallian should he restored to Bijapur, and another that the Nizam Shah should submit to pay him a visit and receive betel from him. Hussain was in such straits that he accepted these severe terms and went to Rama Raja's camp, "who rose on his entering his tent (he did not go out to meet him) and kissed his hand. ”

“ At this auspicious time178 when the standards of victory and conquest were in Kashmir, the province of eternal spring, happily employed in sight-seeing and sport, representations constantly came from the officials in the Southern territories to the effect that when the victorious standards went to a distance from the centre of the Khalifate, the rulers of the Deccan, owing to their wickedness, broke their promises and raised their heads by giving trouble and exciting sedition, and placing their feet beyond their own boundary, took possession of many of the districts of Ahmadnagar and Berar. ”

“ The principal crops are millets, cotton, wheat and pulse. The district is traversed by the Bombay and Baroda railway, and has two seaports, Dholera and Gogo, the former of which has given its name to a mark of raw cotton in the Liverpool market. It suffered severely in the famine of 1899-1900.
AHMEDNAGAR, or AHMADNAGAR, a city and district of British India in the Central division of Bombay on the left bank of the river Sina. The town is of considerable antiquity, having been founded in 1494 by Ahmad Nizam Shah, on the site of a more ancient city, Bhingar. ”

“ They had been constantly at war with the Samuri of Calicut and other feudatories of Vijayanagar; but with the Raya himself they were on terms of friendship, and in 1540 they ratified a treaty of peace with the sovereigns of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar as well as with the Samuri.
Throughout the whole of their dealings with the Portuguese I find not a single instance where the Hindu kings broke faith with the intruders, [287] but as much cannot, I fear, be said on the other side. The Europeans seemed to think that they had a divine right to the pillage, robbery, and massacre of the natives of India. ”

“ The Ganga of Hindustan they dedicate to Mahadeo, but this Ganga to Gotam. And they tell wonderful legends of it, and pay it great adoration. It has its springs in the Sahyā Hills near Trimbak, and passing through the Wilāyat of Ahmadnagar, enters Berār and thence flows on to Tilingāna."—Āīn-i-Akbari (orig.) i. 476; [ed. Jarrett, ii. 228.] We may observe that the most easterly of the Delta branches of the Godavery is still called Gautami.
GODDESS, s. An absurd corruption which used to be applied by our countrymen in the old settlements in the Malay countries to the young women of the land. ”

“ Throughout all this wrangling the little kingdom of Bidar fought for its own hand, allying itself now with one power or combination of powers and now with another. The craft and political acumen of its rulers preserved the little state intact for a longer period than might have been expected, though its preservation is partly to be attributed to the jealousy existing between the three kingdoms of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar and Golconda which was for a long time sufficiently strong to ensure the combination of two of the three against an attempt by any one of them to absorb Bidar. ”

“ South of the Vindhya mountains, in the Dekhan and farther south, there were several other Muhammadan schools, marked by a strong individuality, which, like those of the north, were derived from the pre-existing Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Kulbarga, Bidar, Golkonda, Ahmadnagar, and Aurangabad—the capitals of different Muhammadan kingdoms of the Dekhan from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries—were laid out by the Indian craftsmen in the service of Muhammadan Sultans as magnificently as the ancient cities of India which the armies of Islam destroyed or used as Gaur was used. ”

“ In 1834 he went to India and entered the medical department of the Indian army, and on 2 June 1836 he obtained a commission of assistant-surgeon. As executive officer he had, during various periods until 1862, medical charge of European and native artillery, and of native cavalry and infantry of both the Madras and Bombay armies, and was staff-surgeon at Ahmadnagar in the Deccan and at Bellary in the ceded districts. In 1850 he was acting government agent at Chepauk and paymaster of the Carnatic stipends. ”

“ And now the many rivers between Puna and the Mughal frontier being in flood, no provision reached his camp, and his army had to undergo great hardship from scarcity. He, therefore, decided to remove his camp from Puna to Chakan, 18 miles northwards, as being nearer to Ahmadnagar and the Mughal dominion, whence supplies could more easily reach him. (A. N. 584-5.)
Chakan is a place of great strategic, importance. On the east it is separated from the imperial territory by the shallow upper courses of the Bhima and Ghod rivers only, with no difficult mountain pass to cross. ”

“ He had been previously treating Daud Khan, a 5-hazari, with discourtesy, and now the relations between them became strained to the utmost. Leaving a garrison to hold Ahivant, Mahabat spent three months at Nasik and then went to Parnir (20 miles west of Ahmadnagar) to pass the rainy season (June to September) there, while Daud Khan was recalled to Court (about June.) * [1]
There was excessive rainfall that year and many men and cattle perished of pestilence in the camp; at Parnir. But while his troops were dying, Mahabat Khan attended daily entertainments in the houses of the nobles by turns. ”

“ All round the pond suitable buildings have been begun and are in progress.
On Monday, the 24th, K͟hanjar K., in whose charge is the Fort of Ahmadnagar, was promoted to the mansab of 2,500 personal and 1,600 horse. On Wednesday, the 26th, the Giver of Bounties gave my son S͟hāh-Jahān a son by the daughter of Āṣaf K͟hān. He presented an offering of 1,000 muhars, and begged for a name for him. I gave him the name of Umīd-bak͟hs͟h (bestower of hope) . I hope his advent59 may be auspicious to this State. On Thursday, the 27th, I halted. ”

“ Reign of Sadasiva — The king a prisoner but acknowledged — Rama Raya — The Adil Shah again at Vijayanagar — Bijapur in danger — Saved by Asada Khan — Rebellion of Prince Abdullah — Royal gratitude — Death of Asada at Belgaum — The Portuguese support Abdullah — Treaties — Ain-ul-Mulkh — Fights near Goa — Rama Raya's threatened expedition to Mailapur — He joins the Adil Shah and wastes the territories of Ahmadnagar — Portuguese violence on the Malabar coast — The Inquisition at Goa. ”

“ This Zaman Shah is the same who died, many years later, a blind pensioner of the English at Ludiana; and for the restoration of whose dynasty, among other objects, the British expedition to Kabul in 1839 took place.
To this period also belongs the unsuccessful attempt to revive Musalman power in the South of India, in which the Nizam of the Deccan engaged with the aid of his French General, the famous Raymond. The battle fought at Kardla, near Ahmadnagar, on the 12th March, 1795, is remarkable for the number of Europeans and their trained followers who took part on either side. ”

“ Shortly after this Sindhya and Bhonsla joined forces and advanced southwards into the Nizam's dominions. By this time Major-General Arthur Wellesley, who had been detached from the Madras army with 8,000 infantry and 1,700 cavalry, and Colonel Stevenson with the Haidarabad Subsidiary Force, were ready to act against the allies, who had failed to induce Holkar to join them. In July Wellesley was encamped in the neighbourhood of Ahmadnagar, the old capital of the Nizam Shahi dynasty, Stevenson being on the Godavari ”