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Updated: June 19, 2025
As a further means of attaching to him this important, even if not very intelligent chief, the Patel about this time conferred upon him a portion of Najaf Kuli's fief in the Mewat country south of Dehli. By this he not only pleased the Moghul noble, but trusted to furnish him with occupation in the reduction and management of the wild mountaineers of that district.
This mandate the Shaykh instantly forwarded to the ecclesiastics of Najaf and Karbilá, asking them to convene a gathering in Kazímayn, the place of his residence. A concourse of shaykhs, mullás and mujtahids, eager to curry favor with the sovereign, promptly responded.
If the surmise of the native historians be correct that Abdul Ahid Khan had been privy to the late combination between the Sikhs and Zabita Khan against Mirza Najaf the fact of his being sent against them, without any objection from so wise and loyal a minister as the Mirza, can only be accounted for by citing it as a proof of the peculiar danger to which great men are exposed, under an Eastern despotism, of reposing their confidence in secret enemies.
He shortly afterwards, however, returned, reinforced by the regulars and guns under Sumroo; but by this time the Mirza was returned from Rohilkand, and after the rains of 1774, marched against them, aided by a chief from Hariana, named after himself Najaf Kuli Khan, who brought into the field some 10,000 troops.
Although this campaign was dictated by a Mahratta policy, yet the small Moghul nucleus bore a certain part, being ably commanded by the Persian, Mirza Najaf Khan, who has been already mentioned as Governor of Korah, and of whom we shall hear frequently during the account of the next ten years.
They would willingly have proceeded to complete the reduction of all Rohilkand, but that Mirza Najaf flatly refused to join or sanction such a course; seeing clearly that it must involve a collision with Shujaa-ud-daulah, who was supported by the British alliance, and of whose traditional policy the annexation of the province formed an essential part.
To this period must probably belong the unnumbered Epistles which, as attested by no less an authority than Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb specifically addressed to the divines of every city in Persia, as well as to those residing in Najaf and Karbilá, wherein He set forth in detail the errors committed by each one of them.
Najaf Khan seems to have been equally deceived at the time; but after-events showed the difference between the undeceiving of a worn-out voluptuary, and that of a nature unsuspicious from its own goodness. Such were the first fruits of Najaf's alliance with the Viceroy of Audh; the price was to be paid in the bestowal of the Imperial sanction upon the final destruction of the Rohilla Pathans.
Their barefaced boldness in restoring Zabita Khan's family and appropriating the ransom paid to the Emperor's account for them has been already mentioned. With the view of paving the way for the removal from power of Mirza Najaf, they next addressed themselves to creating disturbances in the country around Dehli.
I consider the empire to have endured as long as "the king's name was a tower of strength"; as long as Nawabs paid large fines on succession, and contending parties intrigued for investiture; as long as Shujaa-ud-daulah could need its sanction to his occupation of Kattahir, or Najaf Khan led its armies to the conquest of the Jats.
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