305The Governor of the Punjab and the North-Western Frontier The diminished imperial authority over the Punjab also implied a serious threat to the north-western borders and thus to the whole of the Mughal empire. As Roshan-ud-Daulah and Samsam-ud-Daulah, (p.295) the wazir’s opponents, had the charge of Kabul affairs at the centre, the revenues from the parganas of the Punjab meant for the maintenance of the army in Kabul were often withheld by the governor.

Since the beginning of our period, the revenue of cakla Gujarat and the parganas of Eminabad, Pasrur and the Salt Range in the Punjab were earmarked for the pay-claims of the Mughal army in Kabul. But the amount seems to have, not infrequently, been withheld in the Punjab itself. As early as the reign of Bahadur

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Shah, it was reported that the governor of Kabul could not pay the army as he had not received a single penny from the mahals of the Punjab. Subsequently, the mahals assigned to the mansabdars in command of the contingents in Kabul were resumed into khalisa, with a view to eliminating the conflict between the individual mansabdars and the local officials of these mahals.156 Even then, the governors of the Punjab and Kabul sometimes seem to have had disputes over the revenue of these mahals.157 But no serious complaint from the governor of Kabul is recorded till the beginning of Muhammad Shah’s reign. A measure of the new subadar’s independence from the centre was that he arbitrarily stopped the practice of despatching the revenue of these mahals to Kabul at a time when Kabul needed it most.158

The centre could not effect any change in the attitude of the governor of the Punjab. Consequently, ‘owing to the negligence of the imperial officials and the contumacy of the governor of Lahore’, as a (p.296) contemporary chronicler observes in 1737 ‘the Afghans of that district who were in the service of the emperor and were deputed in Kabul, and whose salaries were fixed from the mahals of suba Lahore, did not receive their emoluments for the last few years. Perforce, they gave up imperial service and took up their own way [left for their homes and resorted to robbery]’.159

There is a possibility that Abd-us-Samad Khan became indifferent to the problems of the borders after he had failed in his bid to combine the governorship of Kabul together with that of the Punjab and Multan. An undisturbed Kabul was, however, evidently a must for stability in the Punjab. In the face of the financial and military bankruptcy of the Mughal court, the governor of the Punjab had to take note of political developments on and beyond the north-western frontiers. This was probably one reason why Zakariya Khan was extremely courteous to the Persian envoy at Lahore and his mutasaddi then accompanied the embassy to Delhi.160 Similarly, it was essential for the governor of the Punjab to contain the Afghan tribes on the frontier. Disruption and independent rule in Kabul had always conditioned the fortunes of Lahore. But unfortunately by the time the Mughal emperor became aware of the repercussions of his indifference to the Persian embassy and issued orders to Abd-us-Samad Khan in this regard, the latter had died.161 Zakariya Khan who had succeeded him and combined the governorship of Lahore with the governorship of Multan was too preoccupied in dealing with the forces which threatened his authority in these provinces to go to the frontier.

The major question before Zakariya Khan was to safeguard his position in the Punjab and Multan. As long as he was able to govern them with the privileges that governorship had by then begun to entail, the question of who was on the throne of Delhi was of little concern to him. Thus, when Nadir Shah had entered Mughal territory Zakariya Khan, who had little in the way of resources to defend his possessions against the Persian invader, had no option but to submit. His

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submission to Nadir Shah was a useful device to save his power and (p.297) interests in the provinces.162 An eighteenth-century historian writes of the whole episode—Zakariya Khan’s preparation, initial fight and then compromise—as the war and peace of the fools.163 Nadir Shah not only retained Zakariya Khan in his existing position, but also helped him, though primarily in his own interest, by leading an expedition against Nur Muhammad Leti, an important zamindar of Multan. The expedition obviously strengthened Zakariya Khan’s authority and placed a check on some internal threats to his subadari.164 Zakariya Khan, however, could not avoid having to bear the financial loss. He was promoted by Nadir Shah to the coveted rank of 8000/8000, but he had also to part with the revenue of a substantial part of the Punjab and Multan. Gujarat, Sialkot, Pasrur and Aurangabad and a few mahals of the zamindari of Khuda Yar Khan and Ghazi Khan in Multan were for all practical purposes annexed to the empire of Nadir Shah and Zakariya Khan was made an ijaradar of these mahals at Rs 20,00,000.165 Although it is not possible to say that the amount was highly inflated, some kind of dual government in these mahals did undoubtedly create difficulties for Zakariya Khan. In 1743 it was reported that the people (traders?) of Wazirabad and Sialkot and some other towns, reduced to distress by Nadir Shah’s deputy, Tahmasp Quli Khan, had decided to flee to Lahore,166 and from there further to the east of Delhi and south of Multan.

(p.298) Close on the heels of the steadily deteriorating economy of the region, came the devastations in the wake of the Persian invasion, causing a serious setback to the process of the consolidation of the new subadari in the Punjab. The province could not recover from the shocks of the invasion and in 1748 it received yet another grievious blow from the plunders of Abdali. The jagirs of a number of important nobles (some of them were the governor’s relations and associates at the court), also restricted the growth of the new subadari in the Punjab; and the governor of the Punjab unlike Nizam ul-MuIk did not have the advantage of geographical distance. He was thus never in a position to assert the degree of independence equal to that of the governor of Awadh. On many an occasion, he had to comply with imperial directives against his judgement. This is illustrated, for instance, from an incident of 1742. A Mughal noble, Azimullah Khan who had been reproved for his failure against the Marathas and had been dismissed from his office of the sadr, retired to Lahore. Since this was done without the emperor’s permission, the wazir’s sons at the head of over 2000 horsemen were deputed to bring him back to the court. A sister of Zakariya Khan’s wife was married to Azimullah Khan. The governor of Lahore therefore treated him well and apparently was reluctant to hand him over to the imperial party. But he had to make the fugitive over to them even though he knew that Azimullah Khan would be imprisoned.167

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