Page:Historic Landmarks of the Deccan.djvu/98

 more probable, a son bearing his title, caused some trouble in the latter years of the reign of Ibrahim Qutb Shah, who reigned from 1550 to 1580. Warangal was never again annexed to a Hindu kingdom of Telingana, and remained part of the Qutb Shahi dominions until those dominions were annexed to the Mughal Empire by Aurangzib in 1687.

Aurangzib had small leisure for composing troubles in his extensive conquests in the south, and the administration of these provinces, between the incompetence of the Mughal officials and the turbulent rapacity of the Marathas, was in the most hopeless confusion. Before Aurangzib's death the inhabitants of the country around Haidarabad had implored him to take measures for the destruction of a freebooter named Papra, a toddy-drawer by caste, who had assembled a small army, built for himself a fort at Shahpur in the Bhongir pargana^ and raided the country far and near. Aurangzib appointed Rustam Dil Khan subahdar of Haidarabad, and the new subahdar, after the defeat of detachments which he had sent out against the rebel, took the field in person, but, after besieging Shahpur unsuccessfully for two or three months, retired on receiving from Papra a gift which may be regarded either as tribute or as a bribe but which, whatever it might be called, was accompanied by no guarantee that the marauder would stay his hand, which fell with equal weight on the goods and the families of his victims. Prince Kam Bakhsh who, after his father's death, was governor of Bijapur and Haidarabad, did nothing to repress Papra, who was so much encouraged by the retirement of Rustam Dil Khan that he ventured to attack Warangal, from which his stronghold was about thirty miles distant.

On Muharram 10, A. D. 1120 (April i, 1708) when all, Musalmans and Hindus alike, as the historian says were engaged in the procession of the fabuis, Papra arrived at the fort of Warangal with two or three thousand infantry and four or five hundred horse, and closed the roads in order to prevent news of his arrival from reaching the interior of the town. Before dawn the infantry set to work to scale the walls of the fortress while the cavalry sacked the town. The fort was captured and money and property to the value of lakhs of rupees and many of the famous carpets of Warangal fell into the hands of the plunderers, and about 12,000 men, women, and children were taken prisoners. Among