1916.] Numismatic Supplement No. XXVII. 135 



thinking to anticipate an inevitable surrender," but he also 

 believes it to be " just possible" that they may have been 

 issued from some mint accompanying the Imperial forces in the 

 field." Dr. Taylor candidly admits that " no sufficient proof 

 has come down to us that the Mughal assailants did actually 

 capture the city in the year 1091," and it is clear that under 

 the circumstances, the acceptance of some such hypothetical 

 explanation is unavoidable. I am happy to be able to state 

 that I have found in a contemporary Mughal historian, a 

 passage which enables us to dispense with either of these 

 conjectures, and which may be fairly said to be the " sufficient 

 proof, ' $ for want_of which they had to be advanced. It occurs 

 in the Maasir-i-' Alamgiri, of Muhammad Saqi Mustaid Khan, 

 which was written in 1122 a.h. (1710 a.d.), that is, only three 

 years after the death of Aurangzeb (Bibliotheca Indica Text, 

 p. 8 ; Elliot and Dowson VII, p. 181). The author was Munshi 

 ' Inayat-ullah KJaan, Wazir of Bahadur Shah, Shah 'Alam I, 

 and a competent critic has said of him, that " although his 

 style be too concise, I have never met in any other author, 

 with the relation of an event of this reign , which is not recorded 

 in his history." (Stewart, Descriptive Catalogue of Tippoo 

 Sultan's Library, p. 16). This writer says, in the course of his 

 narrative of the events of 1091 a.h. 



^laaj altfjU* d,Uxl-J j3Uj *U> zfyb ^U^feUg ^y\ £ ^ px» 



[Bibliotheca Indica Text, p. 192.] 



"On the fifteenth of Rabi I [1041 a.h.], it reached the 

 Imperial ears (lit. ears around which the messengers of good 

 tidings were always congregating), from the memorial of Shah 

 * Alam Bahadur Shah that the Khutba had been in the renowned 

 name [of the Emperor] in Bijapur, and that the stamping of his 

 auspicious coin-legend had added to the lustre of silver and 

 gold. The courtiers (lit. Kissers of the Carpet) of the splendid 

 and glorious audience-hall went through the salutations of 



congratulation." 



It is perhaps necessaryto add by way of explanation that 



Prince Mu'azzam or Shah 'Alam Bahadur Shah had some time 

 before (11 Sha'aban, 1089 a.h.) been appointed to the supreme 

 government of the Dakhan (Maasir-i-' Alamgiri. Bib. Ind. Text, 

 p. 169), though "the command of the army in the field still 

 remained with Diler Khan" (Grant Duff, ib., p. 128). 



Whatever the circumstances which postponed for six years 

 the extinction of Bijapur as a separate state, there can be now 



