Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/206

 — BAH

128

Up

to

1816 A. D. the ilaqa was included in the j%ir of the Bahii

Begam, and,

like all the estates assigned to her, the irnmeasurable advantage of being exempt from the interference of the grasping revenue officials. The present Raja is the seventh in descent from Bhaw^ni Some cannon were found concealed on his Singh. father's estate, and as a penalty for this he forfeited fisSted*^^^'*^*^""'"' half of his possession. The confiscated portion in the district is now held mainly by the Maharaja of Balrampur.

The Bhiuga ilaqa ineluded in the Bahu Begam's jagir.

Section XIII.

The

felt

The Southern, pO'fgwnas during the Nawahi

rule.

history of the southern portion of the district has been carried down to the commencement of the independent rule of the

soJh:™aLldur! ing the Nawabi.

NawabWazirsofOudh. It is necessary now to sketch the condition and administration of these parganas during the reigns of those princes. _

D., a member of the Ikauna family established himself in an independent position i° t^^^ South of the Ikauna estate. His doing so was Gondr, AlllariLn"^ the signal for the commencement of a series of raids and counter-raids between the Raja of Gonda, Datt Singh, and the Bahraich Pathans who came to Partab Singh's assistance under Alawal Khan.

It has

been mentioned that in 1723 A.

This gentleman was a captain of free lances who had his head-quarters .Sit Bahraich, and who was ready to lend his merce^^ naries to any one who could offer good pay or a fair hisAfehana chance of plunder. He and his co-bandits were probably descendants of some of those Afghans who swarmed in the Court of the Lodis and who were sent flying across Oudh by Humdyun, Babar's eldest son, in 1526 A. D. However this may be, they seem at this time to have been very, numerous and to have been almost masters of Bahraich. It is within the memory of residents of the town still living that at the Muharram festival, the tazia processions were attended by a troop of some 300 of these Pathan musketeers, and to this day on the same occasion the kettledrums of Datt Singh of Gonda which were carried off in the fights above alluded to are paraded in triumph through the streets of Bahraich.,

^

,

At

time the assignments of lands in the district in revenue-free service tenure were very extensive. In Pargana Bah-R Jagira m Bahraich. ^^-^j^ ^^one no less than 858 villages were held by one Nawab Mirza Muhammad Jahdn in jagfr, while another grantee, Sayyad Muzaffar Husen, held 60 villages, and 127 more were assigned in ordinary '-

this

.

•

-i,

revenue-free tenure to others.

The same system of jagirs was pursued by Saddat Khan's. successors down In 1750 A. D., Raja Newal Rae, to A'sif-ud-daula. The system continu*"^'

rfA-Xd-dauK

Khan

Safdarjang's minister, held 54 villages,

and in 1756,

Mairam Ali Khan was .granted ,148 villages on this tenure, while Giiji Beg Khan and Sayyad Mir Was&a

held for niany years betw;een them, no_ less than 346 townships.