308Political Developments in the Punjab after 1745 By 1745 when Zakariya Khan died, the hereditary claim of his family over the Punjab and Multan had been established. But the claim extended to the entire ‘Mughal’ group, owing to their kinship with the governor. The Punjab thus had become the homeland of the Mughals, and hence the non-‘Mughal’ faction’s bid to retrieve these provinces from the family of Zakariya Khan. This is vividly borne out from Anand Ram Mukhlis’s account in his Tazkira. According to Mukhlis the services of Abd-us-Samad Khan and Zakariya demanded that following the latter’s death the provinces of the Punjab and Multan be given to the sons of the deceased. ‘Indeed the province of Lahore’, (p.299) he adds, ‘had been the Balkh and Bukhara of the Mughals where they had their mansions, orchards and graveyards…. The appointment of anyone else (as the governor of the Punjab) would amount to the province’s ruin and desolation.’168

Mukhlis’s account showed how much the province of the Punjab had begun to be treated by the Mughals as their personal domain like a watan of an autonomous zamindar. He comments on the emperor’s refusal to concede the claim of the sons of Zakariya Khan ‘while Raja Isar Singh, son of Rajadhiraj [Sawai Jai Singh] after the death of his father had been honoured with [the award of ] the zamindari of Amber and the governorship of Akbarabad [Agra] together with the jagirs that his father had held.’169 Mukhlis, however, noted with satisfaction that ultimately at the wazir’s great insistence, the emperor ignored ‘the others’ proposal and conferred both the provinces to him [wazir]’. This appointment according the Mukhlis was in actuality the appointment of the sons of Zakariya Khan.170

The wazir’s effort was apparently aimed towards retaining, for his group, the resources of the power and authority they had gained in the Punjab and Multan. In view of the emperor’s reluctance and the resistance of Safdar Jang and Amir Khan to the appointment of the sons of Zakariya Khan, he tried to secure these provinces for himself. For, the control of these provinces by the group and not the governorship of any particular individual was the issue at stake. The wazir, as Mukhlis reports, intended to go to Lahore to set things right, but an accident in which he broke his leg prevented him from doing so. Since Safdar Jang and Amir Khan were ever apprehensive of their opponents having a strong base in proximity to Delhi at Lahore and Multan they wanted to take full advantage of Zakariya Khan’s death to break their opponents’ control over the Punjab. Safdar Jang’s governorship of Kashmir formed part of this plan.

The circumstances that followed the death of Zakariya Khan in the Punjab made the position of the governor vis-á-vis the imperial court (p.300) meaningless. Once Kabul broke away from Delhi, the governor of the Punjab encountered difficulties from those in control of the erstwhile north-western borders of the Mughal empire. Nonetheless, Zakariya Khan remained loyal to Delhi, evidently

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because of his old personal ties with the Mughal Emperor and the wazir. But his sons had no such consideration for Delhi.

Yahya Khan and Shahnawaz Khan, who were then the deputies of the wazir in the Punjab and Multan, had serious differences over the left-over assets of Zakariya Khan. The dispute eventually led to the eruption of civil war in 1746 in Lahore. Yahya Khan, the lawful deputy governor of Lahore was overpowered and imprisoned by Shahnawaz Khan who deputized for the wazir in Multan. Although later he sent his envoy to the emperor to seek legitimization of his conduct, the emperor, at the suggestion of the wazir, was reluctant to recognize him as the lawful naib in Lahore. When Shahnawaz Khan feared reprisals from the Mughal centre, he did not hesitate to break even nominal relations. Shahnawaz Khan then sought legitimacy from those in control of Kabul and beyond, only to further confirm the politico-military importance of the north-west frontiers in relation to Delhi’s control of the Punjab.171