Page:Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire.djvu/36

30 erewhile fakír became a statesman and a leader of armies. In February, 1647, Sháh-Jahán raised him to the rank of a mansabdár of 15,000 personal and 10,000 horse, and ordered him to take command of the provinces of Balkh and Badakhshán, on the north-west side of the Hindú Kúsh, which had lately been added to the Mughal Empire. They had once been the dominion of Bábar, the grandfather of Akbar, and it had long been the ambition of Sháh-Jahán to assert his dormant claim and recover the territory of his renowned ancestor. He even aspired to use these provinces as stepping-stones to the recovery of the ancient kingdom of Samarkand, once the capital of a still earlier and more famous ancestor, Tímúr, the 'Scourge of God.' This kingdom, with the dependent provinces of Balkh and Badakhshán, now belonged to the Uzbegs, who were governed by a member of the Astrakhán dynasty, ultimately descended, like their Indian antagonists, from Jinghiz Kaún. Their sway, however, was but a shadow of the power which Tamerlane had bequeathed to his successors; and the Persian general 'Alí Mardán, accompanied by the youngest Imperial Prince, Murád-Bakhsh, at the head of 50,000 horse and 10,000 foot and artillery, had accomplished, though not without severe fighting, the conquest of Balkh and the neighbouring cities in 1645.

The difficulty, however, was not so much how to take, but how to keep, this distant region, separated by the snowy ranges of the Hindú Kúsh from the rest of the Empire, inaccessible in winter, and exposed at