fruitful of events which tended to consolidate British power in India as the paramount authority.
In Hindustán, as elsewhere, when any man of vigour and energy has raised himself to a throne, it is not difficult to find for him a pedigree showing his noble descent, and it is not therefore surprising that native annalists should endeavour to prove that Haidar came from the famous race of the Korésh. According to their accounts, one of his ancestors named Hasan, who claimed Yahya as his progenitor, left Baghdád, and came to Ajmere in India, where he had a son called Walí Muhammad. This person, having quarrelled with an uncle, made his way to Gulbarga in the Deccan, and had a son named Alí Muhammad, who eventually migrated to Kolár in the eastern part of Mysore, where he died about the year 1678, having had four sons, the youngest of whom was named Fatah Muhammad[1]. Fatah Muhammad was not long in finding military employment, and by his prowess
- ↑ Wilks, in his history of Southern India, gives a somewhat different version of Haidar's ancestry. According to his authorities, Haidar's great-grandfather Muhammad Bháilól was a Musalmán devotee, who left the Punjab to seek his fortune in Southern India, accompanied by his sons Alí Muhammad and Walí Muhammad. He settled at Áland in the Haidarábád territory, whence the sons proceeded to Sírá in Mysore, where they found service under the Súbahdár or Governor of that place, but subsequently migrated to Kolár. Here Alí Muhammad died, and his son Fatah Muhammad, with his mother, was ejected by Walí Muhammad from the family home. The discrepancy between this account and that given in the text is not however very material. Bháilól is an Afghán name, and was that of the founder of the Lódi dynasty which was uprooted by the celebrated Mughal Bábar in 1526.
