Page:History of Aurangzib (based on original sources) Vol 1.djvu/356

326 The despatches of victory and the keys of the fort were presented to Murad at Ahmadabad on 26th December. But money was a more accept- able present, and he pressed his officers at Surat to send him all that they could, loaded on fast camels; for, in the meantime he had crowned himself and begun to bestow offices and rewards and to enlist new troops on a scale that soon exhausted his treasury.

When the news of Shah Jahan's illness was

followed by no tidings of his recovery, but letters from Delhi came fitfully and then stopped altogether, Murad's suspicions deepened into certainty. He concluded that Shah Jahan was already dead, and so got ready to contest the throne. It was necessary to look around for allies, and none was nearer to him than Aurangzib, his immediately elder brother, governing a neighbouring province and united to him by a common hatred of Dara. On 23rd December, 1652, he had met Aurangzib, then journeying to the Deccan across his province of Malwa,