Page:Historic Landmarks of the Deccan.djvu/197

 emperor, and thus furnishing an excuse for an attack on Haidarabad. His mission was not unsuccessful. Abul Hasan protested that he had no such diamonds as those described by the emperor, and Mirza Muhammad's behaviour goaded him one day into saying, "I, too, am called a king in my own country." The envoy insultingly replied that the title was a misnomer, whereupon the cautious monarch replied, "It is you who are mistaken, for if I be not called a king, how can Alamgir be called the king of kings?" The envoy afterwards confessed that on this one occasion Abul Hasan got the better of him in controversy.

Meanwhile Muhammad Mu'azzam and the Khan-i-Jahan had advanced into the Golconda territories, and the troops of Abul Hasan went out to meet them. Mu'azzam, who had little taste for his mission, was anxious, if possible, to avoid bloodshed, but the only terms which he could offer were so humiliating, being no less than the surrender of all for which he had come to fight, the payment of all arrears of tribute, and a humble apology from Abul Hasan, that the king could not accept them. In the hostilities which followed the failure of the negotiations, the imperial forces were everywhere triumphant, and the parganas which had formed the subject of the dispute remained in their possession. But Mu'azzam, who was far from being convinced of the justice of bis father's cause, and was personally well disposed towards Abul Hasan, deliberately failed to follow up the successes of the troops under his command, and in consequence of their supineness both he and the Khan-i-Jahan were severely rebuked by the emperor. The Deccanis, though they no longer dared to face the Mughals in the open field, harassed them with continual night attacks, and during a period of four or five months, throughout which Mu'azzam and the Khan-i-Jahan, who were disgusted with the emperor's severity, neither ordered nor permitted any action that might have been decisive. The Mughal troops scarcely knew what it was to get a good night's rest. The news of their inactivity only served to inflame still further the wrath of Aurangzib, who now wrote with his own hand a letter in which he severely upbraided his son, adding to it a note for the benefit of the Khan-i-Jahan, the substance of which was that the emperor well knew that his son's misconduct was the effect of the Khan's evil counsels.