J50 
W. Irvine — The Later Mughals (1707-1803). 
[No. 2, 
clasped her lover round the neck, and refused to let go. Violently 
forcing them apart, the men dragged her down the stairs. Then laying 
hands on Jahandar Shah, they tried to strangle him. As he did not 
die at once, a Mu gh al, with his heavy-heeled shoes, kicked him several 
times in a vulnerable place and finished him off. Word was sent to the 
nazim that life was extinct, that an executioner was needed to cut off 
the head. Muhammad Yar Khan, who was standing down below, 
bathed in cold perspiration, answered “ What is left for an executioner 
to do ? Cut off his head, and carry it to His Majesty.” They cut it 
off. The body was then thrown into an open litter ( miyana ) and the 
head placed on a tray (Jchwdn). Half an hour after nightfall, they 
reached the camp with the lifeless head and trunk and laid them at the 
entrance to the emperor’s tents, alongside the body of Zu-l-fiqar Khan. 
Lai Kumwar was sent to the settlement of Suhagpura, where the 
widows and families of deceased emperors lived in retirement. 1 
5. Procession into Dihli. 
Next morning, the 17thMuharram (12th February, 1713), Farrukh- 
siyar left Kliizrabad and marching in state into Dihli took possession 
of the palace and its citadel. The artillery of all sorts went in front. 
Behind the guns came the new emperor mounted on an elephant, and 
at his back sat ‘ Ibad-ullah Khan (Mir Jumlah) waving a peacock fan 
over his master’s head. Largesse was scattered among the crowd as 
he went by. The head of Jahandar Shah was carried on the point 
of a long bambu held by an executioner seated on an elephant; his 
body was laid across the back of another elephant. The corpse of 
Zu-l-fiqar Khan, with head and feet bare, was tied by the feet to the 
tail of a third elephant. These followed about one hundred yards 
behind the elephant on which the emperor rode. The procession was 
met by Sayyid ‘Abd-ullah Khan (now Qutbu-l-mulk) near the city wall, 
at the inside of the Dihli gate. The crowd in the streets was im¬ 
mense, a greater had rarely been seen. Some of the spectators were un¬ 
able to restrain their grief, their eyes filled with tears, lumps formed in 
their throats, and they muttered to each other, under their breath, 
l Kamwar Khan, 130, Ijad, 122 a, KhiifT Khan, IT, 734, Khushhal Cand, 395 a, 
Rustam ‘AIT, 225 6. Suhagpura (Hamlet of Happy Wives) or the Bewa-Khana 
(Widow-house) was one of the establishments ( Kdrkhdnajdt ) attached to the Court 
“ where in the practice of resignation they pass their lives, receiving rations 
* i and a monthly allowance,” Dasturu-Wamaly B. M. No. 6598, fol. 55 a. The name, 
Suhagpura, may have been due to delicacy for the feelings of the ladies, or it was 
perhaps given in derision. 
