Shah Sentence Examples

While the shah and the king were talking, two countrymen came in.

But when Ahmad Shah returned to Kabul the Sikhs rose once more and re-established their religion.

All this part of the mosque (shrine) was built by Shah Abbas.

But the Persian War dragged on, with varying fortune, for years, till after Suleiman had ravaged Persia it was concluded by the treaty - the first between shah and sultan - signed at Amasia on the 29th of May 1555.

The province used to be one of the administrative divisions of Khorasan, but is now a separate province, with a governor appointed by the shah.

The coast is chiefly occupied by Arab tribes who were virtually independent, paying merely a nominal tribute to the shah's government until 1898.

Aurangzeb's death and the invasion of Nadir Shah led to a triple alliance among the three leading chiefs, which internal jealousy so weakened that the Mahrattas, having been called in by the Rahtors to aid them, took possession of Ajmere about 1756; thenceforward Rajputana became involved in the general disorganization of India.

In 1561 Anthony Jenkinson arrived in Persia with a letter from Queen Elizabeth to the shah.

In 1579 Christopher Burroughs built a ship at Nizhniy Novgorod and traded across the Caspian to Baku; and in 1598 Sir Anthony and Robert Shirley arrived in Persia, and Robert was afterwards sent by the shah to Europe as his ambassador.

He went thence to China, returned to Lhasa, and was in India in time to be an eye-witness of the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1737.

In 1622 he took the island of Ormuz from the Portuguese, by the assistance of the British, and much of its trade was diverted to the town of Bander-Abbasi, which was named after the shah.

This pavilion was built by Nadir Shah.

On the right of the Imam's tomb is that of Abbas Mirza, grandfather of the reigning Shah.

He received considerable aid from Shah Ismael of Persia, and in 1511 made a triumphal entry into Samarkand.

At one time of greater size, it was reduced by Nadir Shah within its present limits.

The population is about 6000, comprising descendants of some Georgians introduced by Shah Abbas I.

The place was without importance until 1612, when Shah Abbas began building and laying out the palaces and gardens in the neighbourhood now collectively known as Bagh i Shah (the garden of the shah).

The principal palace was the Chehel Situn (forty pillars), destroyed by the Afghans in 1723, and, although rebuilt by Nadir Shah in 1731, already in ruins in 1743.

It is situated on a lovely wooded hill, and was repaired and in part renovated about 1870 by Nasiru'd-Din Shah.

They never subjugated the south, but the empire which they founded in the north was for about two centuries, under such rulers as Akbar and Shah Jehan, one of the most brilliant which Asia has seen.

It attained a certain dignity and unity under Abbas Shah (1585-1628), but in later times was distracted and disorganized by Afghan invasions.

Ahmed Shah Abdali burst upon India from Afghanistan.

Many of his coins bear the Nandi bull (Siva's emblem), and the king's name is preceded by the title sahi (shah), which had previously been used by the Kushan dynasty.

Peace and security being established in his dominions, he convoked an assembly of the states and declared his son Malik Shah his heir and successor.

The Lal-bagh palace was commenced by Azam Shah, the third son of the emperor Aurangzeb.

On the death of Malik Shah, the last of the great Seljukian emperors (1092), the empire dissolved.

He was finally overthrown and killed by Hoshang Shah, king of Malwa.

Humayun was thus left in possession of his father's recent conquests, which were in dispute with the Indian Afghans under Sher Shah, governor of Bengal.

Sher Shah was killed at the storming of Kalinjar (1545), and Humayun, returning to India with Akbar, then only thirteen years of age, defeated the Indo-Afghan army and reoccupied Delhi (1555).

The tomb of Humayun is one of the finest Mogul monuments in the neighbourhood of Delhi, and it was here that the last of the Moguls, Bahadur Shah, was captured by Major Hodson in 1857.

He used his influence with the emperor of Russia, as also with the emperors of China and Japan and with the shah of Persia, to secure the free practice of their religion for Roman Catholics within their respective dominions.

In that year a horde, variously estimated at from two to four thousand souls, with their flocks and their slaves, driven originally from their Central Asian homes by the pressure of Mongol invasion, and who had sought in vain a refuge with the Seljukian sultan Ala-ud-din Kaikobad of Konia, were returning under their chief Suleiman Shah to their native land.

In 1381 Murad's son Yilderim Bayezid married Devlet Shah Khatun, hausted by the onslaughts of Ghazan Mahmud Khan, 1288-1326.

Meanwhile in Asia also the Ottoman Empire had been consolidated and extended; but from 1501 onwards the ambitious designs of the youthful Shah Ismail in Persia grew more and more threatening to its security; and though Bayezid, intent on peace, winked at his violations of Ottoman territory and exchanged friendly embassies with him, a breach was sooner or later inevitable.

In Constantinople, early in 1603, there was, moreover, a serious rising of the spahis; and, finally, in September Shah Abbas of Persia took advantage of what is known in Turkish history as " the year of insurrections " to declare war and reconquer Tabriz.

But Nadir Kuli Khan came forward as the champion of Shah Tahmasp II., the rightful ruler, and drove the Turks from these provinces, capturing Tabriz.

With difficulty the rebellion was suppressed; in 1733 the war with Persia was resumed, and after three years of fighting Nadir succeeded in 1736 in inducing Turkey to recognize him as shah of Persia and to restore the territory captured since the reign of Murad IV.

Scarcely two years after the signature of the treaty of Belgrade sinister rumours reached Constantinople from Persia, where Nadir Shah, on his return from India, was planning an attack on Mesopotamia.

In the war of the Austrian Succession, which followed the accession of Maria Theresa to the Habsburg throne, Turkey, in spite of the urgency of France, would take no share, and she maintained the same attitude in the disorders in Persia following the death of Nadir Shah.

He and his descendants reigned in Bagdad until Shah Ismail I., the founder of the Safawid royal house of Persia, made himself master of the place (c. 1502 or 1508).

Since that period it has remained nominally a part of the Turkish empire; but with the decline of Turkish power, and the general disintegration of the empire, in the first half of the 18th century, a then governor-general, Ahmed Pasha, made it an independent pashalic. Nadir Shah, the able and energetic usurper of the Persian throne, attempting to annex the province once more to Persia, besieged the city, but Ahmed defended it with such courage that the invader was compelled to raise the siege, after suffering great loss.

Shah Jahan erected many splendid monuments, the most famous of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra, built as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal; while the Pearl Mosque at Agra and the palace and great mosque at Delhi also commemorate him.

The last of these kings was Shah Mahommed, who died in the middle of the 15th century, leaving only his married daughters to represent the royal line.

In 1859 the Kataghan Usbegs were expelled; and Mir Jahander Shah, the representative of the modern royal line,was reinstatedat Faizabad under the supremacy of the Afghans.

In 1867 he was expelled by Abdur Rahman and replaced by Mir Mahommed Shah, and other representatives of the same family.

After a time Jahangir died and was succeeded by Shah Jahan, with whom the guru was constantly at war.

Har Rai was charged with friendship for Dara Shikoh, the son of Shah Jahan, and also with preaching a religion di s tinct from Islam.

It was sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1017-18; about 150o Sultan Sikandar Lodi utterly destroyed all the Hindu shrines, temples and images; and in 1636 Shah Jahan appointed a governor expressly tQ " stamp out idolatry."

It became the seat of the Ayyubite sultan Saladin in 1184; was bequeathed in 1233 to the caliphs of Bagdad; was plundered by the Mongols in 1236 and in 1393 by Timur, and was taken in 1732 by the Persians under Nadir Shah.

His father's express orders prevented Aurangzeb from following up this success, and, not long after, the sudden and alarming illness of Shah Jahan turned his thoughts in another direction.

Of Shah Jahan's four sons, the eldest, Dara, a brave and honourable prince, but disliked by the Mussulmans on account of his liberality of thought, had a natural right to the throne.

Meanwhile Shah Jahan had recovered, and though Dara resigned the crown he had seized, the other brothers professed not to believe in their father's recovery, and still pressed on.

At first she influenced Jahangir for good, but surrounding herself with her relatives she aroused the jealousy of the imperial princes; and Jahangir died in 1627 in the midst of a rebellion headed by his son, Khurram or Shah Jahan, and his greatest general, Mahabat Khan.

In the first half of the 18th century, when Bushire was an unimportant fishing village, it was selected by Nadir Shah as the southern port of Persia and dockyard of the navy which he aspired to create in the Persian Gulf, and the British commercial factory of the East India Company, established at Gombrun, the modern Bander Abbasi, was transferred to it in 1759.

Before the Aga Khan emigrated from Persia, he was appointed by the emperor Fateh Ali Shah to be governor-general of the extensive and important province of Kerman.

His rule was noted for firmness, moderation and high political sagacity, and he succeeded for a long time in retaining the friendship and confidence of his master the shah, although his career was beset with political intrigues and jealousy on the part of rival and court favourites, and with internal turbulence.

At last, however, the fate usual to statesmen in oriental countries overtook him, and he incurred the mortal displeasure of Fateh Ali Shah.

Bhagalpur passed to the East India Company by the grant of the emperor Shah Alam in 1765.

At the close of the century Dilawar Khan, the builder of the Lat Masjid, who had been appointed governor in 1399, practically established his independence, his son Hoshang Shah being the first Mahommedan king of Malwa.

Till the year 1079 the Persian year resembled that of the ancient Egyptians, consisting of 365 days without intercalation; but at that time the Persian calendar was reformed by Jelal ud-Din Malik Shah, sultan of Khorasan, and a method of intercalation adopted which, though less convenient, is considerably more accurate than the Julian.

It was erected towards the close of the 15th century, during the reign of Shah Sultan Hussein of the family of Timur, and is said when perfect to have been 465 ft.

This building, which was erected by Shah Rukh Mirza, the grandson of Timur, over Soo years ago, contains some exquisite specimens of sculpture in the best style of Oriental art.

Adjoining the tomb also are numerous marble mausoleums, the sepulchres of princes of the house of Timur; and especially deserving of notice is a royal building tastefully decorated by an Italian artist named Geraldi, who was in the service of Shah Abbas the Great.

Afghan tribes, who had originally dwelt far to the east, were first settled at Herat by Nadir Shah, and from that time they have monopolized the government and formed the dominant element in the population.

It will be needless to trace the revolutions and counter-revolutions which have followed each other in quick succession at Herat since Ahmad Shah Durani founded the Afghan monarchy about the middle of the 18th century.

Persia indeed for many years showed a strong disposition to reassert the supremacy over Herat which was exercised by the Safawid kings, but great Britain, disapproving of the advance of Persia towards the Indian frontier, steadily resisted the encroachment; and, indeed, after helping the Heratis to beat off the attack of the Persian army in 1838, the British at length compelled the shah in 1857 at the close of his war with them to sign a treaty recognizing the further independence of the place, and pledging Persia against any further interference with the Afghans.

In 1141 the assistance of this Khitaian prince was invoked by the shah of Kharezm against Sanjar, the Seljuk sovereign of Persia, who had expelled the shah from his kingdom and killed his son.

Though the Gur Khan himself is not described as having extended his conquests into Persia, the shah of Kharezm followed up the victory by invading Khorasan and plundering the cities and treasuries of Sanjar.

About the year 1418 Sultan Husain Shah of Malwa invaded Kherla, and reduced it to a dependency.

The province is divided into a number of administrative sub-provinces or districts, each with a hakim, governor or sub-governor, under the governor-general, who under the Kajar dynasty has always been the heir-apparent to the throne of Persia, assisted by a responsible minister appointed by the shah.

He died in 1504 and his direct descendants held the sultanate of Berar until 1561, when Burhan Imad Shah was deposed by his minister Tufal Khan, who assumed the kingship. This gave a pretext for the intervention of Murtaza Nizam Shah of Ahmednagar, who in 1572 invaded Berar, imprisoned and put to death Tufal Khan, his son Shams-ul-Mulk, and the ex-king Burhan, and annexed Berar to his own dominions.

Little Luristan was governed by a race of independent princes of the Khurshidi dynasty, and called atabegs, from 1155 to the beginning of the 17th century when the last atabeg, Shah Verdi Khan, was removed by Shah Abbas I.

On an eminence in the western part of the city are the ruins of a large square citadel with a small whitewashed building, called Molud Khaneh (the house of birth), in which Fath Ali Shah was born (1772).

The Portuguese, under treaty with Bahadur Shah of Gujarat, built a fort here in 1 535, but soon quarrelled with the natives and were besieged in 1538 and 1545.

In 1808 he was appointed the first British envoy to the court of Kabul, with the object of securing a friendly alliance with the Afghans; but this proved of little value, because Shah Shuja was driven from the throne by his brother before it could be ratified.

The Chinese had thoughts of pushing their conquests towards western Turkestan and Samarkand, the chiefs of which sent to ask assistance of the Afghan king Ahmed Shah.

This monarch despatched an embassy to Peking to demand the restitution of the Mahommedan states of Central Asia, but the embassy was not well received, and Ahmed Shah was too much engaged with the Sikhs to attempt to enforce his demands by arms. The Chinese continued to hold Kashgar, with sundry interruptions from Mahommedan revolts - one of the most serious occurring in 1827, when the territory was invaded and the city taken by Jahanghir Khoja; Chang-lung, however, the Chinese general of Ili, recovered possession of Kashgar and the other revolted cities in 1828.

On the eastern side of the city stand the ruins of the Masjed i Jehan Shah, commonly known as the Masjed i Kebud, or "Blue Mosque," from the blue glazed tiles which cover its walls.

It was built by Jehan Shah of the Kara Kuyunli, or Black Sheep dynasty (1437-1467).

Malik Shah, third of the Seljuk dynasty of Persia, passed the Oxus about the end of the 11th century, and subdued the whole country watered by that river and the Jaxartes.

In 1216 Bokhara was again subdued by Mahommed Shah Khwarizm, but his conquest was wrested from him by Jenghiz Khan in 1220.

The principal event of his reign was the defeat he inflicted on Shah Abbas of Persia in the neighbourhood of Balkh.

The invasion of Nadir Shah of Persia came to complete the degradation of the land; and in 1740 the feeble king, Abu 'l-Faiz, paid homage to the conqueror, and was soon after murdered and supplanted by his vizier.

In 1530 it became the residence of Shere Shah the Afghan, and forty-five years later was recovered by the emperor Akbar after sustaining a siege of six months.

Lindsay-Bethune, routed the much superior combined forces (6000 men) of the shah's two rebellious uncles, Firman-Firma and Shuja es Saltana.

In 1742 Shemakha was taken and destroyed by Nadir Shah of Persia, who, to punish the inhabitants for their creed (Sunnite Mahommedanism), built a new town under the same name about 16 m.

The circumstance of their alleged discovery and presentation to Shah Jahan in 1637 was of itself open to suspicion.

It was founded by Ahmad Shah in A.D.

Ahmad Shah pulled down Hindu temples in order to build his mosques with the material.

The Discovery Of The Period Of Thirty Three Years Is Ascribed To Omar Khayyam, One Of The Eight Astronomers Appointed Byjelal Ud Din Malik Shah, Sultan Of Khorasan, To Reform Or Construct A Calendar, About The Year 1079 Of Our Era.

Malik Shah regulated also the affairs of Asia Minor and Syria, conceding the latter province as an hereditary fief to his brother Tutush, who established himself at Damascus and killed Atsiz.

At his instigation the calendar was revised, and a new era, dating from the reign of Malik Shah and known as the Jelalian, was introduced.

He had fallen into disfavour because of his unwillingness to join in the intrigues of the princess Turkan Khatun, who wished to secure the succession to the throne for her infant son Mahmud at the expense of the elder sons of Malik Shah.

After the death of Malik Shah the head of the family was not strong enough to enforce obedience, and consequently the central government broke up into several independent dynasties.

Notwithstanding the intrigues of Turkan Khatun, Malik Shah was succeeded by his elder son Barkiyaroq (1092-1104), whose short reign was a series of rebellions and strange adventures such as one may imagine in the story of a youth who is by turns a powerful prince and a miserable fugitive.'

In 1117 he led an expedition against Ghazni and bestowed the throne upon Bahram Shah, who was also obliged to mention Sinjar's name first in the official prayer at the Ghaznavid capital - a prerogative that neither Alp Arslan nor Malik Shah had attained.

In 1134 Bahrain Shah failed in this obligation and brought on himself 1 See Defremery, Journ.

His empire fell to the Karakitai and afterwards to the shah Khwarizm.

Mention has been made of his war with Malik Shah and of his ensuing death (1073).

Nevertheless his descendants were left in possession of their ancestor's dominions; and till 1170 Kerman, to which belonged also the opposite coast of Oman, enjoyed a well-ordered government, except for a short interruption caused by the deposition of Iran Shah, who had embraced the tenets of the Ismailites, and was put to death (IIoi) in accordance with a fatwa of the ulema.

But after the death of Toghrul Shah (1170) his three sons disputed with each other for the possession of the throne, and implored foreign assistance, till the country became utterly devastated and fell an easy prey to some bands of Ghuzz, who, under the leadership of Malik Dinar (1185), marched into Kerman after harassing Sinjar's dominions.

The sons of the former, Alp Arslan and Sultan Shah, reigned a short time nominally, though the real power was exercised by Lulu till 1117.

Owing to these family discords the decision of Malik Shah was necessary to settle the affairs of Asia Minor and Syria; he kept the sons of Suleiman in captivity, and committed the war against the unbelieving Greeks to his generals Bursuk (IIpovovx) and Buzan (HovTavos).

The sultan Mahommed, however, set at liberty his eldest son Malik Shah, who reigned for some time, until he was treacherously murdered (it is not quite certain by whom), being succeeded by his brother Masud, who established himself at Konia (Iconium), from that time the residence of the Seljuks of Ram.

This valiant prince saved the empire from destruction and conquered Erzerum, which had been ruled during a considerable time by a separate dynasty, and was now given in fief to his brother, Mughit ud-din Toghrul Shah.

After this Suleiman set out to subdue his brother Masud Shah, at Angora, who was finally taken prisoner and treacherously murdered.

At the time of the latter's death his eldest surviving son, Prince Muazim, was governor of Kabul, and in his absence the next brother, Azam Shah, assumed the functions of royalty.

Muazim then ascended the throne under the title of Bahadur Shah.

For the next two years comparatively little was heard of the Babis, but on the 15th of August 1852 three of them, acting on their own initiative, attempted to assassinate Nasiru'd-Din Shah as he was returning from the chase to his palace at Niyavaran.

They were in no way concerned (as was at the time falsely alleged) in the assassination of Nasiru'd-Din Shah in May 1896.

In 1589 Ferishta removed to Bijapur, where he spent the remainder of his life under the immediate protection of the shah Ibrahim Adil II., who engaged him to write a history of India.

The invasion in 1738 of Nadir Shah, who traversed the province from Peshawar to Dera Ismail Khan, is a landmark in the history of the frontier.

In 1785 he re-established Shah Alam on the imperial throne at Delhi, and as his reward obtained for the peshwa the title of vakil-ul-mutlak or vicegerent of the empire, contenting himself with that of his deputy.

In 1788 he took advantage of the cruelties practised by Ghulam Kadir on Shah Alam, to occupy Delhi, where he established himself as the protector of the aged emperor.

Another palace of even greater extent was added to this in 1516; both Jehangir and Shah Jahan added palaces to these two - the whole making a group of edifices unequalled for picturesqueness and interest by anything of their class in Central India.

In 1502 Mesopotamia passed for a time into the hands of the Safawid shah, Ishmael; but in 1516 it came under the Osmanli Turks, to whom it has belonged ever since.

After travelling from Lhasa to Peking with a lama mission he returned, again by Lhasa, to India, and was an eyewitness of the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1737.

Bayezid first married Devlet Shah Khatun, daughter of the prince of Kermian, who brought him in dowry Kutaiah and its dependencies.

Allahabad was taken by the British in 1765 from the wazir of Oudh, and assigned as a residence to Shah Alam, the titular emperor of Delhi.

Tavernier states that it was the famous stone given to Shah Jahan by the emir Jumla.

The Koh-i-nor, which was in 1739 in the possession of Nadir Shah, the Persian conqueror, and in 1813 in that of the raja of Lahore, passed into the hands of the East India Company and was by them presented to Queen Victoria in 1850.

He suggests that the other and larger diamond of antiquity which was given to Shah Jahan may be one which is now in the treasury of Teheran, and that this is the true Great Mogul which was confused by Tavernier with the one he saw.

The Akbar Shah was originally a stone of 116 carats with Arabic inscriptions engraved upon it; after being cut down to 71 carats it was bought by the gaikwar of Baroda for £35,000.

The Great Table, a rectangular stone seen by Tavernier in 1642 at Golconda, was found by him to weigh 242 1 - 3 6 - carats; Maskelyne regards it as identical with the Darya-i-nur, which is also a rectangular stone weighing about 186 carats in the possession of the shah of Persia.

Another stone, the Taj-e-mah, belonging to the shah, is a pale rose pear-shaped stone and is said to weigh 146 carats.

The tomb of Ahmad Shah is the only attempt at monumental architecture.

This, with its rather handsome cupola, and the twelve minor tombs of Ahmad Shah's children grouped around, contains a few good specimens of fretwork and of inlaid inscriptions.

It remained in Persian possession till 1709, when it was taken by the Afghans, but was retaken after a two years' siege by Nadir Shah.

Nadir Shah was assassinated in 1749, and immediately on hearing the news of his death Ahmad Shah (Abdali) seized Nadir Shah's treasure at Kandahar, and proclaimed himself king, with the consent, not only of the Afghans, but, strange to say, of the Hazaras and Baluchis as well.

Ahmad Shah died in 1773, and was succeeded by his son Timur, who died in 1793, and left the throne to his son Zaman Shah.

This prince was deposed by his half-brother Mahmud, who was in his turn deposed by Shah Shuja, the full brother of Zaman Shah.

In 1839 the cause of Shah Shuja was actively supported by the British.

Kandahar was occupied, and Shah Shuja reinstated on the throne of his ancestors.

The victories of the Delhi emperors, Akbar, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, crushed the rest.

It formed the chief seat of the government of the Deccan provinces of the Mogul empire till Shah Jahan removed the capital to Aurangabad in 1635.

In March 1738 he was rescued by Nadir Shah, who soon afterwards gave him the command of a body of cavalry composed chiefly of Abdalis.

Being possessed of the Koh-i-noor diamond, and being fortunate enough to intercept a consignment of treasure on its way to the shah of Persia, he had all the advantages which great wealth can give.

The shah himself added to his wives a princess of the imperial family, and bestowed another upon his son Timur Shah, whom he made governor of the Punjab and Sirhind.

At the age of twenty he obtained from Zaman Shah, the king of Afghanistan, a grant of Lahore, which he seized by force of arms in 1799.

In 1833 when Shah Shuja, flying from Afghanistan, sought refuge at his court, he took from him the Koh-i-nor diamond, which subsequently came into the possession of the British crown.

Though he disapproved of Lord Auckland's policy of substituting Shah Shuja for Dost Mahomed, he loyally supported the British in their advance on Afghanistan.

Much of Kait Beys reign was spent in struggles with Uzun Hasan, prince of Dirbekr, and Shah Siwar, chief of the Dhul-Kndiri Turkomans.

It is subsequently stated that after leaving his father's roof he "became an archer,' and dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and Zill es Sultan, elder brother of Muzafar ed d-n Shah, became governor-general of the Isfahan province in 1869.

The district was acquired by the East India Company under the treaty with Nawab Mir Kasim in 1760, and confirmed by the emperor Shah Alam in 1765.

The Mogul emperors of India occasionally interfered in these provinces, notably Shah Jahan in 1646; but, finding the difficulty of maintaining so distant a frontier, they abandoned it to the Uzbeg princes.

About 1765 the wazir of Ahmad Shah Abdali of Kabul invaded Badakshan, and from that time until now the domination of the countries on the south bank of the Oxus from Wakhan to Balkh has been a matter of frequent struggles between Afghans and Uzbegs.

Alexander the Great, Tamerlane and Nadir Shah are believed to have successively crossed the Indus at or about this spot in their respective invasions of India.

On the opposite side of the river is the village of Khairabad, with a fort, also erected by Akbar according to some, or by Nadir Shah according to others.

But it was during the reign of Shah Abbas I.

Three years out of four at Herat it does not freeze hard enough for the people to store ice; yet it was not very far from Herat, and could not have been at a greatly higher level (at Kafir Kala, near Kassan) that, in 1750, Ahmad Shah's army, retreating from Persia, is said to have lost 18,000 men from cold in a single night.

The predominance of the Afghan in Afghanistan dates from the middle of the 18th century, when Ahmad Shah carved out Afghanistan from the previous conquests of Nadir Shah and called it the Durani empire.

Ahmad Shah, the founder of the monarchy, likewise wrote poetry.

Kabul so continued till the invasion of Nadir Shah (1738).

After a long siege, Shah Husain came forth from Ispahan with all his court, and surrendered the sword and diadem of the Sufis into the hands of the Ghilzai (October 1722).

In 1737-38 Nadir Shah both recovered Kandahar and took Kabul.

With Ahmad Shah, Afghanistan, as such, first took a place among the kingdoms of the earth, and the Durani dynasty, which he founded, still occupies its throne.

The last Afghan hold of the Punjab had been lost long before - Kashmir in 181 9; Sind had cast off all allegiance since 1808; the Turkestan provinces had been practically independent since the death of Timur Shah.

That city was occupied in April 1839, and Shah Shuja was crowned in his grandfather's mosque.

Dost Mahommed, finding his troops deserting, passed the Hindu Kush, and Shah Shuja entered the capital (August 7).

During the two following years Shah Shuja and his allies remained in possession of Kabul and Kandahar.

The leading chiefs of Afghanistan perceived that the maintenance of Shah Shuja'?

They were insatiable in their demands for office and emolument, and when they discovered that the shah, acting by the advice of the British envoy, was levying from among their tribesmen regiments to be directly under his control, they took care that the plan should fail.

Without a regular revenue no effective administration could be organized; but the attempt to raise taxes showed that it might raise the people, so that for both men and money the shah's government was still obliged to rely principally upon British aid.

It was probably due to the strength and solidity of the executive administration organized, during his lifetime, by Abdur Rahman that, for the first time in the records of the dynasty founded by Ahmad Shah in the latter part of the 18th century, his death was not followed by disputes over the succession or by civil war.

Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb extracted a larger land revenue than the British do.

In Humayun's reign the subject Afghans rose in revolt under Sher Shah, a native of Bengal, who for a short time established his authority over all Hindustan.

But Sher Shah was killed at the storming of the rock-fortress of Kalinjar, and Humayun, after many vicissitudes, succeeded in re-establishing his authority at Lahore and Delhi.

Jahangir was succeeded by his son Shah Jahan, who had rebelled against his father, as Jahangir had rebelled against Akbar.

Shah Jahan's reign is generally regarded as the period when the Mogul empire attained its greatest magnificence, though not its greatest extent of territory.

Shah Jahan had four sons, whose fratricidal wars for the succession during their father's lifetime it would be tedious to dwell upon.

Suffice it to say that Aurangzeb, by mingled treachery and violence, supplanted or overthrew his brothers and proclaimed himself emperor in 1658, while Shah Jahan was yet alive.

During the reign of his father Shah Jahan he had been viceroy of the Deccan or rather of the northern portion only, which had been annexed to the Mogul empire since the reign of Akbar.

During the early years of his reign Aurangzeb had fixed his capital at Delhi, while he kept his dethroned father, Shah Jahan, in close confinement at Agra.

The Grand Trunk road running across the north of the peninsula, is generally attributed to the Afghan usurper, Sher Shah.

His son and successor was Bahadur Shah, who reigned only five years.

Then followed in order three sons of Bahadur Shah, whose united reigns occupy only five years more.

In 1739 Nadir Shah of Persia, the sixth and last of the great Mahommedan conquerors of India, swept like a whirlwind over Hindustan, and sacked the imperial city of Delhi.

The central authority never recovered from the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1 739, who carried off plunder variously estimated at from 8 to 30 millions sterling.

The victory of Panipat, won by Ahmad Shah Durani over the united Mahratta confederacy in 1761, gave the Mahommedans one more chance of rule.

But Ahmad Shah had no ambition to found a dynasty of his own, nor were the British in Bengal yet ready for territorial conquest.

Shah Alam, the lineal heir of the Mogul line, was thus permitted to ascend the throne of Delhi, where he lived during the great part of a long life as a puppet in the hands of Mahadji Sindhia.

On the west the shahzada or imperial prince, known afterwards as the emperor Shah Alam, with a mixed army of Afghans and Mahrattas, and supported by the nawab wazir of Oudh, was advancing his own claims to the province of Bengal.

Shah Alam, who had now succeeded his father as emperor, and Shuja-udDaula, the nawab wazir of Oudh, united their forces, and threatened Patna, which the British had recovered.

The provinces of Allahabad and Kora, forming the lower part of the Doab, were handed over to Shah Alam himself, who in his turn granted to the company the diwani or financial administration of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, together with the Northern Circars.

Sindhia ceded all claims to the territory north of the Jumna, and left the blind old emperor Shah Alam once more under British protection.

Sir Charles Metcalfe was the envoy to the court of Ranjit Singh at Lahore; Mountstuart Elphinstone met the shah of Afghanistan at Peshawar; and Sir John Malcolm was despatched to Persia.

All looked peaceful until Lord Auckland, prompted by his evil genius, attempted by force to place Shah Shuja upon the throne of Kabul, an attempt which ended in gross mismanagement and the annihilation of the British garrison in that city.

The attention of the British government had been directed to Afghan affairs ever since the time of Sir John Shore, who feared that Zaman Shah, then holding his court at First Lahore, might follow in the path of Ahmed Shah, Afghan and overrun Hindustan.

Subsequently, in 1809, while a French invasion of India was still a possibility to be guarded against, Mountstuart Elphinstone was sent by Lord Minto on a mission to Shah Shuja to form a defensive alliance.

Before the year was out Shah Shuja had been driven into exile, and a third brother, Mahmud Shah, was on the throne.

Shah Shuja, now in exile at Ludhiana, was selected for the purpose.

At this time both the Punjab and Sind were independent kingdoms. Sind was the less powerful of the two, and, therefore, a British army escorting Shah Shuja made its way by that route to enter Afghanistan through the Bolan Pass.

The Mogul court of Delhi, especially during the reign of Mahommed Shah, nicknamed Rangila or the " dandy," greatly influenced change in these matters.

Bar Durani is a name sometimes applied to the independent Pathan tribes who inhabit the hill districts south of the Hindu Kush, parts of the Indus valley, the Salt Range, and the range of Suliman, which were first conceded to them by Ahmad Shah.

In 1765, after the battle of Buxar, when the nawab of Oudh had been decisively defeated and Shah Alam, the Mogul emperor, was a suppliant in the British camp, Lord Clive was content to claim no acquisition of territory.

The whole of Oudh was restored to the Nawab, and Shah Alam received as an imperial apanage the province of Allahabad and Kora in the lower Doab, with a British garrison in the fort of Allahabad.

Warren Hastings augmented the territory of Oudh by lending the nawab a British army to conquer Rohilkhand, and by making over to him Allahabad and Kora on the ground that Shah Alam had placed himself in the power of the Mahrattas.

It was chiefly the mineral wealth of the Cordilleran region, first developed on the far Pacific slope, and later in many parts of the inner mountain ranges, that urged pioneers across the Agra and the guardianship of the old and blind emperor, Shah Alam, at Delhi, were obtained from Sindia.

After conspiracies that caused the dethronement of two brothers, Taman Shah and Mahmud Shah, he became king in 1803.

He was, however, in his turn driven out of Afghanistan in 1809 by Mahmud Shah, and found refuge and a pension in British territory.

Distrusting the attitude of the Amir Dost Mahommed towards Russia, Lord Auckland in 1839 attempted to restore Shah Shuja to the throne against the wishes of the Afghan people.

After the retreat of the British troops from Kabul, Shah Shuja shut himself up in the Bala Hissar.

In Bengal he visited the famous Moslem saint Shaykh Jalaluddin, whose shrine (Shah Jalal at Silhet) is still maintained.

After having formed part of the possessions of the Seljuks, Mongols, Tatars and Persians, Van passed in 1514, after the defeat of Shah Ismail by Selim I.

The peculiar conciliatory tendencies of Kabir were carried on with even greater zeal from the latter part of the 15th century by one of his followers, Nanak Shah, the promulgator of the creed of the Nanak Shahis or Sikhs - i.e.

The population returned to the original site after the destruction of the medieval city by Shah Abbas, and the city prospered again until its bloody siege by Nadir Shah.

In 1765 Lord Clive obtained from the Mogul emperor Shah Alam a grant of the five Circars.

By a second treaty, signed on the 1st of March 1768, the nizam acknowledged the validity of Shah Alam's grant and resigned the Circars to the Company, receiving as a mark of friendship an annuity of £so,000.

The other was built by another merchant prince, Vimala Shah, apparently about A.D.

In 1638, during the reign of the emperor Shah Jahan, the Assamese descended the Brahmaputra, and pillaged the country round the city of Dacca; they were expelled by the governor of Bengal, who retaliated upon the plunderers by ravaging Assam.

During the civil wars between the sons of Shah Jahan, the king of Assam renewed his predatory incursions into Bengal; upon the termination of the contest, Aurangzeb determined to avenge these repeated insults, and despatched a considerable force for the regular invasion of the Assamese territory (1660-1662).

Entering the Indian civil service in 1849, he became collector of Etwah, and rendered distinguished service during the Mutiny and later against Firoz Shah.

The ancient town of Khulm stood in the Oxus plain, surrounded by orchards of famous productiveness; but it was destroyed by Ahmad Shah Abdali, who founded Tashkurghan in the middle of the 18th century, and took all the inhabitants away from Khulm to populate it.

On the outbreak of war with Persia in 1826 he was appointed second in command, and, succeeding in the following year to the chief command, gained rapid and brilliant successes which compelled the shah to sue for peace in February 1828.

He was a titular emperor only, since from the time of the defeat of Shah Alam at Buxar in 1764 all real power had resided with the East India Company; but all proclamations were still worded under "The King's Realm and the Company's rule."

Persia of the present day is not only, in the matter of geographical definition, far from the vast empire of Sacred Writ and remote history, but it is not even the less extensive dominion of the Safawi kings and Nadir Shah.

This person, called viziar, or paishkar, is often nominated by the shah, and his functions in the provincial government are similar to those of the grand vizir in.

This was not so formerly, when not infrequently an official, generally a near relation of the shah, held the same governorship for five, ten or even more years.

The powers of the Shah (Shahanshah,2 or king of kings) over his subjects and their property were absolute, but only in so far as they were not opposed to the shar, or divine law, which consists of the doctrines of the Mahommedan religion, as laid down in the Koran, the oral commentaries and sayings of the Prophet, and the interpretations by his successors and the high priesthood.

On the 7th of October the national council, or as many members of it as could be got together, was welcomed by the shah and elected a president.

With the Mahommedan conquest of Persia and the fall of the Sassanians the title was abolished; it was in use for a short time during the ioth Century, having been granted to Shah Ismail Samani by the Caliph Motadid A.D, 900; it appeared again on coins of Nadir Shah, 1736-1747, and was assumed by the present dynasty, the Kajars, in 1799.

Its sanction is required for all territorial changes, for the alienation of state property, for the granting of concessions, for the contracting of loans, for the construction of roads and railways, for the ratification of treaties, &c. There was to be a senate of 60 members of whom 3d were to be appointed to represent the shah and 30 to be elected on behalf of the national council, 15 of each class being from Teheran and 15 from the provinces (the senate, however, was not immediately formed).

By a rescript dated February 2, 1907, Mahommed Ali Shah confirmed the ordinance of the 3oth of December, and on the 8th of October 1907 he signed the final revised constitution, and took the oath which it prescribes on the 12th of November in the presence of the national council.

In accordance with the constitution the shah must belong to the Shiah faith, and his successor must be his eldest son, or next male in succession, whose mother was a Kajar princess.

Until 1906 the shah was assisted in the task of government by the sadr azam (grand vizir), a number of vizirs, ministers or heads of departments somewhat on European lines, and a grand council of state, composed of some ministers and other members nominated by the shah himself as occasion required.

In addition to these twenty-seven vizirs with portfolios, there were some titulary vizirs at court, like Vizir i Huzur i Humayun (minister of the imperial presence), Vilir i makhsus (extraordinary minister), &c., and a number in the provinces assisting the governors in the same way as, the grand vizir assists the shah.

The shah and the government have no voice whatever in the matter of appointing mullahs or mujta/zids, but frequently appoint s/zeilths-ul-islam and cadis, and occasionally chief priests of mosques that receive important subsidies out of government funds.

Formerly all cases, civil and criminal, were referred to the clergy, and until the 17th century the clergy were subordinate to a kind of chief pontiff, named sadr-us-sodur, who possessed a very extended jurisdiction, nominated the judges, and managed all the religious endowments of the mosques, colleges, shrines, &c. Shah Safi (1629-1642), in order to diminish the influence of the clergy, appointed two such pontiffs, one for the court and nobility the other for the people.

Nadir Shah (1736-1747) abolished these offices altogether, and seized most of the endowments of the ecclesiastical establishments in order to pay his troops, and, the lands appropriated by him not having been restored, the clergy have never regained the power they once possessed.

The non-Mussulman Persian subjects, particularly those in the provinces, were formerly much persecuted, but since 1873, when Nasru d-Dfn Shah returned to Persia from his first journey to Europe they have been treated more liberally.

Soon afVcr his accession in 1896 Muzaffar-ud-DIn Shah expressed a desire that something more should be done for public instruction, and in the following year a number of Persian notables formed a committee and opened some schools in Teheran and other places in the beginning of 1898.

After his second journey to Europe in 1878 Nasrud-Din Shah desired to organize a police for the whole of Persia on the European system, but only a small body of police, in the capital and its immediate neighborhood, was created in 1879.

If, however, circumstances should be of a nature to require a second inquiry, it shall not take place without previous notice given to the minister, or the charg daffaires, or the consul, and in this case the business shall only be proceeded with at the supreme chancery of the shah at Tabriz or Teheran, likewise in the presence of a dragoman of the mission, or, of the consulate.

After November, 1903 the expenditure was reduced, and the new customs tariff which, came into force on the 14th of February 1903 increased the revenue by nearly 200,000 per annum; it was thought that the expenditure would not exceed the receipts, even if the shah undertook a third voyage in Europe (which he did in 1905).

In 1889 the shah granted a concession to Baron Julius de Reuter for the formation of a state bank with the exclusive right of issuing bank-notes not exceeding 8oo,000 without special assent of the Persian governmenton the basis of the local currency, the silver kran.

In the last of these positions we frequently find princes of the blood, who then bear the royal title (shah).

The first three Seljuk rulers were Toghrul Beg, Alp Arsian and Malik Shah.

These rulers were descended from Anushtajin, a Turkish slave of Ghazni, who became cupbearer to the Seijuk M alik Shah, and afterwards governor of Khwarizm (Khiva) in 1077.

The brief reigns of Il-Arslan arfd Sultan Shah Mahmud were succeeded by that of Tukush (1172-1199) and Ala ed-din Mahommedi (1199-1220).

His nephew Shah Walad reigned for a few months only and the throne was occupied by his widow Tandu, formerly wife of Barkuk, who ruled over Basra, Wasit and Shuster till 1416, paying allegiance to Shah Rukh, the second Timurid ruler.

His descendants, except for Jelal ed-din (Jalaluddin) Shah Shuja, the patron of the poet Hafiz, were unimportant, and the dynasty was wiped out by Timur about 1392.

There were Timurid governors of Fars under Shah Rukh, Pir Mahommed (1405-1409), Iskendar (140914,4), Ibrahim (1415-1434) and Abdallah (1434); in other parts of Persia many of the Timurid family held governorships of greater or less importance.

The third son of Timur, Miran Shah, had ruled over part of Persia in his fathers lifetime; but he was said to be insane, and his incapacity for government had caused the loss of Bagdad and revolt in other provinces.

His claim to succession had been put aside by Timur in favor of Pir Mahommed, the son of a deceased son, but KhaliI Shah, a son of the discarded prince, won the day.

His waste of time and treasure upon a fascinating mistress named Shadu l-Mulk, the delight of the kingdom, soon brought about his deposition, and in 1408 he gave way to Shah Rukh, who, with the exception of Miran Shah, was the only surviving son of Timur.

In 1409 Khalil Shah died; and the story goes that Shadu l-Mulk stabbed herself and was buried with her royal lover at Rai, one of the towns which his grandfather had partly destroyed.

Shah Rukh, the fourth son of Timur, reigned for thirty-eight years, and appears to have been a brave, generous, and enlightened monarch.

As regards his Persian possessions, he had some trouble in the north-west, where the Turkomans of Asia Minor, known as the Kara Kuyun,i or Black Sheep, led by Kara Yusuf2 and his sons Iskandar and Jahan Shah, had advanced upon Tabriz, the capital of Azerbaijan.

On the death of the Shah Rukh in 1446 he was succeeded by his son Ulugh Bey, whose scientific tastes are demonstrated in the astronomical tables bearing his name, quoted by European writers when determining the latitude of places in Persia.

After him Abu Said, grandson of Miran Shah, and once governor of Fars, became a candidate for empire, and allied himself with the Uzbeg Tatars, seized Bokhara, entered Khorasan, and waged war upon the Turkoman tribe aforesaid, which, since the invasion of Azerbaijan, had, under Jahan Shah, overrun Irak, Fars and Kermgn, and pillaged Herat.

The nearest approach to a sovereignty in those parts on the death of Abu Said is that of Uzun Ijasan, the leader of the Ak Kuyun, or White Sheep Turkomans, and conqueror of the Black Sheep, whose chief, Jahan Shah, he defeated and slew.

According to Erskine, this chief killed Miran Shah, who& dwelling-place was Tabriz.

That the result was disastrous to the shah is not surprising, but the war seems to hold a comparatively unimportant place in the annals of Turkey.

Barbaro and Contarini met at Isfahan in 1474, and there paid their respects to the shah together.

There is good reason to suppose that Jahan Shah, the Black Sheep Turkoman, before his defeat by Uzun IJasan, had set up the standard of royalty; and Zeno, at the outset of his travels, calls him king of Persia 1 in 1450.

Those authorities who maintain that Yaqub Shah left no son to succeed him consider valid the claim to the vacant throne of Sheikh Haidar Sufi.

He was soon after proclaimed shah of Persia (1499), under the designation which marked the family school of thought.

The deceased shah had a numerous progeny, and on his death his fifth son, Haidar Mirza, proclaimed himself king, supported in his pretensions by the Kizil-bash tribe of Ustujulu.

Shah Abbas the Great commenced his long and glorious reign (1586) by retracing his steps towards Khorasan, which bad been reinvaded by the Uzbegs almost immeAbbas the diately after his departure thence with the Kizil-bash Great.

In his absence Abd-ul-Munim Khan, the lJzbeg commander, attacked the sacred city, obtained possession of it while the shah lay helplessly ill at Teheran, and allowed his savage soldiers full licence to kill and plunder.

Taverflier, without charging the shah with injustice to Christians, mentions the circumstance that the first and only European ever publicly executed in Persia was in his reign.

Abbas was succeeded by his son, Shah Sufi II., crowned a second time under the name of Shah Suleiman.

Krusinskis memoir is full of particulars regarding Shah I.Iosain, the successor of Suleiman.

In 1702 a newly-appointed governor, one Shah Nawaz, called Gurji Khan from having been wali or ruler of Georgia, arrived at Kandahar with a tolerably large force.

Thus surrounded by dangers on all sides the wretched shah was bewildered.

The shah offered him a sum of money to return to Kandahar, but the Afghan answered by advancing to a place called Gulnabad, within 9 m.

Mahmud seized on the Armenian suburb of Julfa, and invested the doomed city; but Tahmasp, son of the shah, had previously escaped into the mountains of Mazandaran.

Famine soon began to press hard upon the besieged, and in September Shah Uosain offered to capitulate.

Mahmud entered Isfahan in triumph, with the captive shah on his left hand, and, seating himself on the throne in the royal palace, he was saluted as sovereign of Persia by the unfortunate klosain.

Not content with this, in February 1725 he assembled all the captives of the royal family, except the shah, in the courLyard of the palace, and caused them all to he murdered, commencing the massacre with his own hand.

He gave the dethroned shah a handsome allowance, and strove, by a mild policy, to acquire popularity.

The Afghans fled through the town; and Ashraf, murdering the poor old shah Uosain on his way, hurried with the wreck of his army towards Shiraz.

On the 16th of November the victorious Nadir entered Isfahan, and was soon followed by the young shah Tahmasp II., who burst into tears when he beheld the ruined palace of his ancestors.

He was proclaimed shah of Persia by a vast assemblage on the plain of Moghan.

The fact is that, two centuries after Shah Ismails accession to the throne, the Safawid race of kings was effete; and it became necessary to make room for a more vigorous if not a more lasting rule.

Nadir, it has been said, was proclaimed shah in the plains of Moghan in 1736.

From Kazvin Nadir moved to Isfahan, where he organized an expedition against Kandahar, then in the possession of a brother of Mahmud, the conqueror of Shah Jlosain.

Sind was certainly included in the cession to him by Mahommed Shah of all the territories westward of the river Attok, but only that portion of it, such as Thattah (Tatta), situated on the right bank of the Indus.

Adil Shah was soon dethroned by his own brother, Ibrahim, and he in his turn was defeated by the adherents of Shah Rukh, who made their leader king.

Said Mahommed, son of Mirza Daud, a chief mullah at Meshed, whose mother was the reputed daughter of Suleiman, declared himself king, and imprisoned and blinded Shah Rukh.

At this juncture Abmad Shah Abdali reappeared in Persian Khorasan from Herat; he attacked and took possession of Meshed, slew Mir Alam, and, pledging the local chiefs to support the blinded prince in retaining the kingdom of his grandfather, returned to Afghanistan.

His father, Fatli Ali Khan, after sheltering Shah Tahmasp II.

But such usurpation at the old Safawid capital would have been too flagrant an act for general assent; so he put forward Ismail, a nephew of Shah Ilusain, as the representative of sovereignty, and himself as one of his two ministersthe other being Karim Khan, a chief of the Zend Kurds.

Shah Ismail, it need scarcely be said, possessed no real authority; but the ministers were strong men in their way, and the Zend especially had many high and excellent qualities.

Taken prisoner by Nadir and barbarously mutilated by Adil Shah, he had afterwards found means to rejoin his people, but had surrendered himself to Karim Khan when his father was killed in battle.

In 1783, when the strength of the Persian monarchy was concentrated upon Isfahan and Shiraz, the Georgian tsar Heraclius entered into an agreement with the empress Catherine by which all connection with the shah was disavowed, and a quasi-vassalage to Russia substitutedthe said empire extending her aegis of protection over her new ally.

Then he returned triumphant to Teheran, where (or at Ardebil on the way) he was publicly crowned shah of Persia.

Owing to the frequent revolutions in the holy city the generals of Timur Shah, king of the Afghans, had made three expeditions on Shah Rukhs behalf.

Three years before Timur had died, and his third son, Zaman Shah, by the intrigues of an influential sirdar, Paiyanda Khan, and been proclaimed his successor at Kabul.

The Kajar shah walked on foot to the tomb of Imam Riza, before which he knelt and kissed the ground in token of devotion, and was recognized as a Shiite of Shiites.

Shah Rukh submissively followed in his train.

Although, when the spring arrived and the shah led his forces to the Aras, the Russians had, it is true, retreated, yet territory had been regained by them as far south as the Talysh.

The brutal treatment he had experienced in boyhood under the orders of Adil Shah, and the opprobrious name of eunuch with which be was taunted by his enemies, no doubt contributed to embitter his nature.

Aga Mahommed had made up his mind that he should be succeeded by his nephew Fath Ali Shah, son of his full brother, Hosain Kuli Khan, governor of Fars.

The second closed the gates of Teheran to all corners until Fath Ali Shah came himself from Shiraz.

Another adversary presented himself in the person of Nadir Mirza, son of Shah Rukh, who, when Aga Mahommed appeared before Meshed, had taken refuge with the Afghans.

Peace having been further cemented by an alliance between a Kajar general and the princes daughter, the shah returned to Teheran.

Now that the narrative of Persian kings has been brought up to the period of the consolidation of the Kajar dynasty and commencement of the 19th century, there remains but to summarize the principal events in the reigns of Fath Ali Shah and his immediate successors, Mahommed Shah and Nasru d-Din Shah.

Fath Ali Shah undertook, at the outset of ith his reign, a contest with Russia on the western side, of War,w the Caspian, which became constant and harassing Russ a.

In 1800 its tsar, George, son and successor of Heraclius, notwithstanding his former professions of allegiance to the shah, renounced his crown in favor of the Russian emperor.

On the latter occasion the shah is credited with gallantly swimming his horse across the Aras, and setting an example of energy and valour.

In the following year Abbas Mirza advanced upon Shishah, the chief of which place and of the Karabagh had declared for Russia; much fighting ensued, and Erivan was formally taken possession of in the name of the shah.

A few days before his entry General Gardane had been dismissed, as the peace of Tilsit debarred France from aiding the shah against Russia.

He brought with him Captains Lindsay and Christie to assist the Persians in the war, and presented the shah with some serviceable fieldpieces; but there was little occasion for the exercise of his diplomatic ability save in his non-official intercourse with the people, and here he availed himself of it to the great advantage of himself and his country.i He was welcomed by the shah in camp at Ujani, and took leave a month afterwards to return via Bagdad and Basra to India.

The shah made great efforts to renew the war; but divisions took place in his sons camp, not conducive to successful operations, and new proposals of peace were made.

In the sequel a kind of desultory warfare appears to have been prosecuted on the Persian side of Kurdistan, and the shah himself came down with an army to Hamadan.

Profiting from this victory, Abbas Mirza repeated an offer of peace before made without avail to the pasha of Erzerum; and, in order to conciliate him more effectually, he retired within the old limits of the dominions of the shah, his father.

Moreover, the family divisions among the ruling houses of Afghanistan grew from day to day more destructive to that patriotism and sense of nationality which Ahmad Shah had held out to his countrymen as the sole specifics for becoming a strong people.

Now, however, that she marched her army against the place, Firuzu d-Din called in the aid of his brother Mahmud Shah of Kabul, who sent to him the famous vizier, Fath Khan Barakzai.

Little more remains to be here narrated of the days of Fath Ali Shah.

Fath Ali Shah had a numerous family.

Mahommed Shah was twenty-eight years old when he came to the throne in 1834.

Markham, however, states that both Ali Mirza and Hasan Ali were allowed to retire with a small pension, and that no atrocities stained the beginning of the reign of Mahommed Shah.

Still the garrison was disheartened; but Colonel Stoddarts arrival on the 11th of August to threaten the shah with British intervention put a stop to further action.

Colonel Stoddarts refusal to allow any but British mediators to decide the pending dispute won the day; and that officer was able to report that on the 9th of September Mahommed Shah had mounted his horse and gone from before the walls of the beleaguered city.

The siege of Herat, which lasted for nearly ten months, was the great event in the reign of Mahommed Shah.

The British expedition in support of Shah Shuja, which may be called its natural consequence, involves a question foreign to the present narrative.

It was most cordially received by the shah, and as one of its immediate results, Kharak was evacuated by the British-Indian troops.