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 conduct, but replied that they had no reason to suspect his loyalty. At the most he intended, they said, to request the emperor to pardon Abul Hasan and abandon the siege, and to represent himself to Abul Hasan as the most influential of the emperor's advisers. They were not believed, and Shah Alam and his son Muhammad Azim were summoned to the imperial presence and disarmed. Shah Alam was then deprived of his title, rank, mansabs, and jagirs. Nur-un-nisa was imprisoned and insulted, and measures were taken to induce both her and her husband to confess that they had been guilty of treason; but these failed of their object. Aurangzib even had Nur-un-nisa's uncle and some of her principal eunuchs put to the torture, with a view to extracting confessions from them, but nothing was elicited. The prince, however, remained in disgrace, and Abul Hasan lost his best friend in the imperial camp.

Meanwhile the siege progressed, and the trenches were pushed forward daily. One day, as Firuz Jang was supervising the working parties in person, the besieged, led by Shaikh Nizam and Abdur Razzaq Lari, made a determined sortie. The slaughter on both sides was great, the Rajputs being the principal sufferers among the besiegers. After a most determined struggle the sortie was repulsed, and shortly afterwards Shaikh Minhaj, Shaikh Nizam, Muhammad Ibrahim, and most of the principal amirs of Golconda, realizing that their master was doomed, deserted to the Mughals, and were rewarded by the emperor with honours, titles, and important commands. Abdur Razzaq Khan Lari, who bore the title of Mustafa Khan, was the only one of the principal amirs who remained faithful to his master to the last, resisting all attempts to shake his loyalty.

These defections had no immediate effect on the duration of the siege, which continued to drag its slow length along, for the fortress was so well found both in guns and ammunition that the besieged were able to maintain an almost unceasing fire of artillery and rockets, so that, as the historian says, "so heavy was the smoke that it was impossible to distinguish day from night, and scarcely a day passed on which there were not numerous casualties in the trenches. Nevertheless the imperial troops, prominent among whom were the deserters from Abul Hasan's army, displayed the greatest valour and determination, and