A history of the Sikhs, from the origin of the nation to the battles of the Sutlej.

CHAP. VI FATEH KHAN PUT TO DEATH

157

During the same year, 1818, Fateh Khan, the Kabul 1818.
Wazir, was put to death by Kamran, the son of Mahmuid, Fateh
the nominal ruler. He had gone to Herat to repel an attack Khan,
of the Persians, and he was accompanied by his brother, Wazr of
Kabul, put
Dost Muhammad, who again had among his followers a to deatb,
Sikh chief, Jai Singh Atariwala, who had left the Punjab in 1818.
displeasure. Fateh Khan was successful, and applause was
freely bestowed upon his measures; but he wished to place
Herat, then held by a member of Ahmad Shah's family,
within his own grasp, and Dost Muhammad and his Sikh
ally were employed to eject and despoil the prince-governor.
Dost Muhammad effected his purposes somewhat rudely,
the person of a royal lady was touched in the eagerness of
the riflers to secure her jewels, and Kamran made this affront
offered to a sister a pretext for getting rid of the man who
from the stay had become the tyrant of his family. Fateh
Khan was first blinded and then murdered; and the crime
saved Herat, indeed, to Ahmad Shah's heirs, but deprived
them for a time, and now perhaps for ever, of the rest of
his possessions. Muhammad Azim Khan hastened from
Kashmir, which he left in charge of Jabbar-Khan, another
of the many brothers. He at first thought of reinstating MuhamShah Shuja, but he at last proclaimed Shah Ayfib as king, mad Azim
proclaims
and in a few months he was master of Peshawar and Ghazni, Shah Ayub.
of Kabul and Kandahar. This change of rulers favoured,
if it did not justify, the views of Ranjit Singh, and towards Ranjit
the end of 1818 he'crossed the Indus and entered Peshawar, Singh
marches to
which was evacuated on his approach. But it did not Peshawar,
suit his purposes, at the time, to endeavour to retain the
district; he garrisoned Khairabad, which lies on the right
bank of the river, so as to command the passage for the
p. 114, &c. The Maharaja told Mr. Moorcroft that he had got very
little of the booty he attempted to recover. (Moorcroft, Travels,
i. 102.) Muhammad Muzaffar Khan, the governor, had held Multan
from the time of the expulsion of the Sikhs of the Bhangi 'Misal', in
1779. In 1807 he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and, although he
returned in two years, he left the nominal control of affairs with his
son, Sarafraz Khan. On the last approach of Ranjit Singh, the old
man refused, according to the Bahawalpur annals, to send his family
to the south of the Sutlej, as on other occasions of siege; but whether
he did so in the confidence, or in the despair, of a successful resistance
is not clear.