92 Report on the District of Azimgurh. [Feb. 



who had left his native village of Mehannuggur, in consequence of 

 the smallness of his share being insufficient for his support, found 

 employment in the imperial court at Delhi, turned Mussulman, 

 became an eunuch of the palace, and obtained in the fourth year of 

 Jehangire (a.d. 1609,) a grant of the Zemindarry of 22 Pergunnahs, 

 in which Chuklah Azimgurh was included. 

 « . , TTU1 . From a.d. 1609 to a.d. 1771, nine succes- 



Rajah Ubluman Sing 



Alee Mahomed Nadir sions of these Rajahs are said to have taken 

 Ra^XHurbunJ place. Their power appears to have varied great- 



Rajah Dhumee Dhur, ly. Their rule is said to have been very oppres- 



Rajah Azim Khan, . _, . , _ ' ■ jL A\ 



Rajah Ikram Khan, sive. They never paid more than 50,000 to 

 Rajah lmdufKha^, han ' 1,00,000 Rupees into the imperial treasury, and 

 Rajah Jehan Khan, even this was often withheld, and the efforts 



Rajah Azim Khan. „ , ^» . i • i . i i .«, 



of the Rajahs are said to have been uniformly 

 directed to the annihilation of all other rights but their own. The 

 Canoongoes were proscribed, and all Pergunnah records that could be 

 found destroyed. Hence none are now found of a date belonging 

 to this period, or prior to it. The Rajahs were first much resisted by 

 the other tribes of Rajpoots, and it was not till after much fighting 

 that Azim Khan, the fourth of the race, about a.d. 1620, overcame 

 the Bais Rajpoots of Uthaisee, and founded the Fort of Azimgurh, 

 Mahabut Khan (said to have reigned from 1677 to 1722) was the 

 most powerful, and established his authority from the Goggra to the 

 Ganges. In 1 77 U the Nuwab of Oude, Shoojahood Dowlah, resumed 

 the grant, expelled and proscribed the family, and governed the district 

 by Chukladars, till it was ceded to the British in 1801. 



30th. Subsequently to our acquisition of the country, the descend- 

 ants of this line sued the Government in the Provincial Court of 

 Benares for their restoration to the Zemindarry. The suit was of 

 course thrown out, but in the course of it the claimants produced an 

 Altumgha Sunnud as the foundation of their right, granted in the 

 fourth year of Jehangire. Doubts may be entertained of the authen- 

 ticity of this document, but there is no reason to doubt that some 

 such Sunnud was given, and the document produced in Court, if not 

 the identical one, was probably an imitation of it, or at least was 

 drawn up in the form which such grants generally assume. As the 

 document possesses some interest, from the light it is calculated to 

 throw on the proper meaning of the much contested term Zemindar 

 I subjoin a copy of it, and a translation in plain English, divested of 

 the redundancies of the original. 



