Page:The Musnud of Murshidabad (1704 - 1904).djvu/30

 was removed from Dacca to Murshidabad, in 1704, sixty-eight rulers sat on the throne of Bengal. One of these was Raja Kansa, a Hindu, who wrested the reins of Government from the hands of his Mussulman predecessor, Sultan Shumsuddeen. The reigning- emperor then at Delhi was Feroze Sha. Raja Kansa held the throne from 1385 to 1392, when he was succeeded by his son, who became a convert to Islam, and assumed the name of Sultan Jelaluddeen. Only once more in the history of the Mussulman Government of Bengal, a Hindu convert to Mahomedanism became the ruler of the country. That was in 1704, when Aurengzebe yieldedwielded [sic] the imperial sceptre at Delhi and the Mahrattas all over the empire were exhausting the resources of the Great Mogul; and when Queen Anne reigned in England and Marlborough marched up the Rhine, destroying the Bavarian forces near Donauwerth and advanced against Tallard. This convert was Mahomed Hadi, in whose veins ran Brahmin blood, but whose Hindu nomencleture is sunk in oblivion and lost to posterity. The history of Murshidabad opens with Hadi as its first actor.

For the first half of the eighteenth century, the history of Murshidabad is the history of the progress of the Mahomedan Government of Bengal, while the latter half represents the history of the decline of the Mahomedan and the rise of the British power in that province. After the grant of the Dewani to the East