Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/146

110 they were Shi'a heretics, whom it was the duty of an orthodox Moslem to chastise. Aurangzib found an invaluable ally in Mir Jumla, a Persian of brilliant military genius, who in many campaigns, as vizir of Golkonda, had shown himself a very scourge of idolatry and a persecutor of Hindus. This talented and ambitious officer had fallen out with his king, and now threw himself upon the protection of the Moghul. Overjoyed at the pretext, Aurangzib marched upon Golkonda in 1656, and, but for urgent commands from his pacific father, would have added that kingdom then and there to the Moghul empire. Foiled on the very eve of victory, he sent Mir Jumla to Agra, where the crafty Persian so worked upon the cupidity of the old emperor, by describing the wealth of the decrepit southern kingdoms that were ready to fall like overripe fruit into his hands, and by presenting him with an earnest of the treasures to be amassed in the shape of the famous Koh-i-nur diamond, which, after a series of strange adventures, now reposes among the crown jewels of England, that Shah Jahan consented to an aggressive policy. Aurangzib, reinforced by Jumla, accordingly wrested Bidar from the King of Bijapur, occupied Kulbarga and Kaliani, and was on the point of conquering Bijapur itself, the capital of the Adil Shahs, when his father's alarming illness in 1657 summoned him to the north. Once more he was balked on the very eve of triumph.

Shah Jahan was believed to be dying. There was no law of succession, and each of the four sons prepared to fight for the throne. Shuja' was in the east,