The Successors of Sher Shah
The Afghan Empire built up by Sher Shah did not long survive his death. The disappearance of his strong personality, and the weakness of his successors, led to the recrudescence of jealousies and refractoriness among the Afghan nobles, which plunged the whole kingdom into a welter of anarchy and thus paved the way for Mughul restoration. On Sher Shah’s death, his second son, Jalal Khan, who was then at Rewah, was proclaimed king under the title of Sultan Islam Shah, commonly known as Salim Shah. Salim strengthened his position against the intrigues of his brother and his supporters, by drastic measures. He maintained the efficiency of the army and most of his father’s wise reforms. ” His internal administration was excellent. ” But he died young in November, 1554, and disorders soon followed. His minor son, Firuz Khan, was murdered by his maternal uncle, Mubariz Khan (son of Nizam Khan Sur, Sher Shah’s brother, and brother of Firuz Khan’s mother, Bibi Bai), who seized the throne and assumed the title of Muhammad ‘Adil Shah. ‘Adil Shah being an indolent and worthless prince, Himu, a purely self made man, who rose from the position of an ordinary Benia of Rewari in Mewat to that of the chief minister of the Sur monarch, tried to manage the affairs of the kingdom with tact; but the suspicious nature, and the follies, of his master frustrated his efforts with great prejudice to the interests of the decaying Afghan Empire. ‘Adil Shah soon afterwards lost Bengal and Malwa; his own relatives rebelled against him ; and his authority was also challenged by two nephews of Sher Shah, who asserted their claims to the throne
Restoration of the Mughuls
This disturbed situation encouraged Humayun to attempt the restoration of his lost dominion after about fifteen years. He had been wandering from place to place in search of shelter and help. So intense was the jealousy of his brother, especially of Kamran, that they showed him great unkindness even in these days of adversity, not to speak of their pooling their resources against the Afghans. His attempts to find a rallying-ground in Sind also proved unsuccessful, because of the hostility of Shah Husain, the governor of Sind; and the scarcity of provisions among his followers, whose numbers had been swelled by the influx of many fugitives. It was during his wanderings in the deserts of Sind that early in 1542 he married Hamida Banu Begam, daughter of Shaikh Ali Ambar Jaini, who had been a preceptor to Humayun’s brother Hindal. The Rajput princes dared not afford him shelter. He went to Amarkot, the Hindu chief of which, Rana Prasad by name, had promised help to conquer Thatta and Bhakkar, but he disappointed him in the end. It was here that his son Akbar was born on the 23rd November, 1542. Bhakkar could not be conquered by Humayun, who failed also to secure asylum with his brother Kamaran. Thus driven from pillar to post, Humayun left India and threw himself on the generosity of Shah Tahmasp. The young ruler of Persia helped him with a force of 14,000 men on his promising to conform to the Shah creed, to have the Shah’s name proclaimed in his Khutba and to cede Qandahar to him on his success. Thus Persian help, which had once facilitated the success of Babur’s eastern enterprise, now enabled his successor to recover his lost dominion. With it Humayun occupied Qandahar and Kabul in 1545. But Qandahar was not given to the Persians, and it proved henceforth to be a bone of contention between them and the Mughals. Kamran was imprisoned, blinded and sent to Mecca, to which Humayun consented with the utmost reluctance, though his brother merited no lenient treatment in view of his past conduct. ‘Askari also proceeded to Mecca, but Hindal fell dead in a night encounter.
Having overcome the hostility of his unkind brothers in the northwest, Humayun marched in November, 1554, to reconquer Hindustan, for which he got an excellent opportunity in the civil wars among the Surs. In February, 1555, he captured Lahore. After defeating Sikandar Sur, the rebel governor of the Punjab, who had been proclaimed Emperor by the Afghans, in a battle near Sirhind, he occupied Delhi and Agra in the month of July of the same year. Sikandar retired to the Siwalik Hills. Thus by a favourable turn of fortune, Humayun succeeded in recovering a part of what he had lost through his own weakness and indecision. But he did not live long enough to show if adversity had produced any wholesome effect on his character. He died on the 24th January, 1556, in consequence of an accidental fall from the staircase of his library at Delhi.
Akbar, who was then in the Punjab with his guardian Bairam, an old comrade of his father, was formally proclaimed on the 14th February, 1556, at the age of thirteen, as the successor of Humayan. But the Mughul supremacy over Hindustan was still far from being assured. As Smith writes, “before Akbar could become Padshah in reality as well as in name he had to prove himself better than the rival claimants to the throne, and at least to win back his father’s lost dominion “. As a matter of fact, India in 1556 “presented a dark as well as a complex picture”. While the country had ceased to enjoy the benefit of the reforms of Sher Shah through the follies and quarrels of his successors, it was subjected at the same time to the horrors of a terrible famine. Further, each of the independent kingdoms in different parts of India was contending for power. In the north-west, Mirza Muhammad Hakim, Akbar’s half-brother, governed Kabul almost independently. In the north, Kashmir was under a local Muhammadan dynasty and the Himalayan States were also independent. Sind and Multan had become free from imperial control after the death of Sher Shah. Orissa, MaIwa and Gujarat and the local chieftains of Golkunda (in the modern Central Provinces) were independent of the control of any overlord. South of the Vindhyas lay the extensive Vijayanagar Empire, and the Muslim Sultanates of Khandesh, Berar, Bidar, Ahmadnagar, and Golkunda which felt little or no interest in northern politics. The Portuguese had established their influence on the western coast by the possession of Goa and Diu. Humayun had been able to recover only a small fragment of his territories in Hindustan before he died. The Surs were still in occupation of the greater portion of Sher Shah’s dominion. As Ahmad Yadgar tells us, ” the country from Agra to Malwa, and the confines of Jaunpur, owned the sovereignty of ‘Adil Shah; from Delhi to the smaller Rohtas on the road of Kabul, it was in the hands of Shah Sikandar; and from the borders of the hills to the boundaries of Gujarat, it belonged to Ibrahim Khan “. As for the claims to the lordship of Hindustan, there was nothing to choose between Akbar and the representatives of Sher. These “could be decided”, as Smith writes, “only by the sword”. Thus Akbar’s heritage was of a precarious nature and his task of building up an Empire was indeed a very difficult one.
