Page:Historyofpersiaf00watsrich.djvu/483

 SULTAN AHMED KHAN. 468 commander, the Barukzye Sirdar was informed by the guards that his Royal Highness was asleep ; and when he pushed them aside, and they still barred his way, he wounded one of them with his dagger. The noise of the scuffle awoke the prince, who, on learning what had taken place, gave orders that the Affghan intruder, whose coming he had little looked for, should be severely bastinadoed. But notwithstanding this unto- ward commencement of sovereignty, Sultan Ahmed Khan persevered in the course to which he had pledged himself; nor did he ever seek to evade the terms upon which he had agreed to hold Herat. Coin was struck in the Shah's name, and the customary prayer was read for his Persian Majesty in the mosques of the city, in the same manner as would have been done had the Persian troops held the principality ; and Sultan Ahmed Khan continued volun- tarily to acknowledge himself to be the vassal of the Shah until the day came when he died at his post, as his capital was about to fall into the hands of the foe against whom he had so long and so bravely defended it. More terrible was the death, and less brilliant the career of the Sedozye claimant to the throne of Herat. On the llth of April, 1857, the day succeeding that of the arrival at Tehran of the copy of the proposed treaty of Paris, Mahomed Yoosuf was seized, and the Sedr- Azem took advantage of a blood- feud to put an end to the dangerous rivalry of this Affghan prince to the new governor of Herat. Shah Kamran had been put to death by his Yizeer Yar Mahomed Khan, and Mahomed Yoosuf, the nephew of Karnran, had, in accordance with Affghan usage and Moslem law, avenged his death by slaying Syd Mahomed, the son of Yar Mahomed Khan. The rela-