Page:The Nizam.djvu/36

 Ahmednugger with the empty name of sovereign, was allowed to hold the fortress of Ousch, with a few villages General, to yield him subsistence. Perpetual contests subsisted between the usurpers, and Umber succeeded at last in taking Rajoo prisoner and seizing his dominions. Umber was now a sovereign of high rank among the princes of the Deccan, governed his dominions with wisdom, and exacting something more than respect from the kings of Beejapoorand Golconda, held in check the arms of Jehangeer himself. He built the city of Gurkeh, now called Aurungabad, five kos from Dowlutabad, and died two years before the present expedition of Shah Jehan, at eighty years of age, leaving his dominions the best cultivated and the happiest region in India. Futteh Khan, the son of Umber, succeeded him. Mortiza the Second, still alive, got him by treachery into his power, and recovered once more to the house of Mzam Beheree, the remaining part of the Ahmednugger territories. He did not retain them long. Futteh Khan regained his liberty and ascendancy, and with the concurrence of Shah Jehan, whom he consulted, put Mortiza to death, and placed his son, only ten years of age, upon a nominal throne. The Beejapoor and Golconda sovereignties remained nearly in the same situation in which they had been found and left by Akbar. Mahommed Adeel Shah was now on the throne of the former, Abdoolla Kootub Shah on that of the latter kingdom.

The emperor duly arrived at Burhanpoor, the capital of Khandeish, and sent his mandates to the princes of the Deccan to disband their forces, deliver up Lodee, and make their submission in person on pain of destruction. The celerity of the emperor had allowed to Lodee too little time to make the preparations which resistance to so formidable an enemy required. But he had already engaged