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 THE DAKHAN. 349 him was habitual. He took full advantage of it, so full chap. . n VIII indeed, that he very speedily met with the ordinary fate '_ of unprincipled intriguers. For, having betrayed the 1751. Emperor Jahandar Shah into the hands of his nephew Farukh Siyar, he was at once strangled by order of the new sovereign. Zulfikar was succeeded in the gover- norship of the Dakhan by Chin Kalich Khan, created Nizam-ul-Mulk, a title which has gone down to his descendants, the present rulers of Haidarabad. Nizam-ul-Mulk, at a later period honoured by the title of " Asaf Jah," the " pillar of state/'* was Subadar of the Dakhan when the first contest for supremacy between the French and English began in the Karnatik. We have seen how in the early part of those struggles he imposed his law upon the contending parties, by the appointment, after the murder of Said Muhammad Khan, of his trusted lieutenant, Anwar-ud-din, as Nawwab of the Karnatik. His death, and the conse- quences resulting from it — the succession of his son Nasir Jang, his alliance with the English, his murder at the battle of Jinji; the installation of Nasir Jang's nephew Muzaffar Jang, his death at the moment of victory over the revolted Nawwabs ; and, finally, the elevation in his place of Salabat Jang, the next sur- reviving son of Nizam-ul-Mulk, have been already recorded. f We have now to see what sort of an inheritance it was upon which Salabat Jang thus entered, the obstacles that lay in his path, the difficul- ties that seemed to increase with every movement that he made. The office of Subadar of the Dakhan had not been an hereditary office. It had lain in the gift of the Emperor of Delhi. Now, at the time of the death of Nizam-ul-Mulk, the imperial throne had just fallen into the nominal possession of Ahmad Shah, but that nity." The word " Asaf " is a dom. proper name, supposed to be that of f Chapters III. and VI. the VVazir of Solomon, and indicates
 * Literally, "the Asaf of dig- the possession of the highest wis-