SLAVERY AND NAUKARl AMONG THE BANGASH NAWABS OF FARRUKHABAD 1 Jos Gommans The first Bangash Nawab of Farrukhabad, Muhammad Khan, was a son of Malik Ain Khan, descendant of an A(~han farmer in the Kabuli district of Bangash. Early during the reign of Aurangzeb ( 1658-l 707) he had quitted his native country and settled in Mau- Rashidabad, 34 km west of present-day Farrukhabad. Here he enrolled as an officer (sarkiir-i arifiir) in the cavalry of a fellow Afghan named Ain Khan Sarvani. 2 Both were in the service of the local jiigzrdiir, Nawab Mirza Khan, who was a grandson of Khwaja Bayazid Ansari, famous founder of the Roshaniyya sect. 3 Although in the beginning this heterodox movement had been thoroughly anti-Mughal, Bayazid Ansari's descendants had, on the contrary, risen to prominence thanks to their military services to the Mughals. As a reward for their help during the Mughal campaigns in the Deccan, Mirza Khan and his brethren had received some jiig'irs in the area of Mau and Shamshabad. Still on the basis of their charismatic leadership and spiritual guid- ance, they had drawn many recruits from their tribal Roshaniyya following in Roh. Malik Ain Khan married in Mau and when he died left two sons. The oldest, Himmat Khan died while on a military expedition in the Deccan. His second son was Muhammad Khan who at the age 1 This essay was originally written I 0 years ago and was intended to be a chap- ter in my PhD thesis on the Rohillas. For the present purpose I have considerably revised it, skipping the parts that were published in the thesis, with the exception of the description of the Bangash nasab (see JJ.L. Gommans, 17ze Rise of the Indo- Ajghan Empire, c. 171 0-·1780 (Leiden, 1995), pp. 171-5). The revision was facilitated by the comments of Dirk Kolff who, some years ago, had a look at this dropped- out chapter and advised me to rework and publish it. 2 Muhammad Wali al-Lah, Tiirf!ill-i Farrn!illiibiid, British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), Or. 1718, f. lOb; !vL Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1972), p. 51. 3 For details, see: \V. Irvine, "The Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad", Journal qf the Asiatic Sociery of Bengal, Part I, 47, I (1878), pp. 357 64. Jos Gommans - 9789047402367 Downloaded from Brill.com11/23/2022 05:50:56PM via free access