Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/112

82 the constant difficulty of maintaining a hold upon the Deccan provinces, where there was hard fighting with Malik Amber, the able vizir of the Nizam Shah. The boundaries of the empire remained much where they had been under Akbar, though Kandahar was lost to the Persian Shah in 1622 and was not recovered till it was betrayed to Shah Jahan in 1637. On the whole, the years were tranquil until the question of the succession excited rival interests.

Jahangir's eldest son, Prince Khusru, who seems to have been always on bad terms with his father, had openly rebelled in the early days of the reign, and on his defeat had been condemned to a lifelong but not severe captivity, while many of his followers were impaled by his infuriated father in the presence of the youth whom they had followed to the death. Khusru had by some quality or other acquired extraordinary popularity—as Roe's journal repeatedly indicates and people compassionated his dreary fate, and even rose in open rebellion in his cause, with the like enthusiasm that others in Great Britain showed for Marie Stuart or Prince Charlie. He was believed to have been blinded by his father, but Delia Valle explains that, though the eyelids were sewn up, the eyes were still uninjured when Jahangir caused them to be unripped, "so that he was not blinded, but saw again, and it was only a temporal penance." Sir Thomas Roe met him and found him an interesting mystery. The second son, Khurram, reckoned him an exceedingly dangerous factor in politics. What actually happened will never