CHAP. XIII.] MURAD ATTACKS SURAT. 3²3 without a single friend or sympathiser by his side. Army sent to plunder Surat. The honest minister having been removed from the path, the reign of lying flatterers and eunuchs began. Murad was enlisting troops in large numbers and needed money badly. So he sent an eunuch named Shahbaz Khan with 6,000 troopers and war material to levy contribution from the rich port of Surat. The detachment easily occupied the town which had no wall this time, and began to plunder the citizens (early in November).* But the Imperial treasury, enriched with the custom duties of the greatest Indian port of the age, was situated within the fort, where the chief merchants had also deposited their wealth for safety. As the sea flanked the fort of Surat on three sides and its walls bristled with guns and swivels at every yard's interval,† its capture was no easy task. around it at
- Isardas, 10b and 11a. In Adab, 205a, Qabil Khan
writes that Aurangzib's courier returned from Murad and reached his master, north of Bidar, on 23rd Nov. with the news that Murad's army after capturing the city and district of Surat was engaged in besieging the fort. Description of the fort of Surat in Isardas, 11a; Faiyaz- ul-qawanin, 421. William Finch in 1609 thus describes it, "The castle of Surat is on the south side of the river,... well walled, and surrounded by a ditch. The ramparts are provided with many good cannons, some of which are of Digitized by Microsoft Ⓡ
