THE DAKIIAN. 347 Birar,* and Khandesh. Of these, in the eourse of chap. time, Birar merged into Aurangabad, and the greater , _ part of Bidar into Golkonda, the remainder being swal- 1751. lowed up by Bijapur. But with the accession of the House of Taimur to the throne, there commenced a struggle on the part of its representatives to conquer these ancient appanages of the empire. Their efforts were so far successful that in 1599 Khandesh was in- corporated by Akbar into his dominions. Thirty-eight years later, Aurangabad, till then governed by the Nizam Shahi dynasty, and the capital of which had been captured by Akbar in 1600, was finally conquered by Shah Jahan. The dynasty of Adil Shah in Bijapur succumbed to his son and successor, Aurangzeb, in 1686 ; whilst the dynasty of Kutab Shah in Golkonda, offered a successful resistance to that monarch but a year longer. Thus it happened that, twenty years before his demise, the whole of the country — lost to the crown of Delhi on the dissolution of the empire under Muhammad Tughlik — had recognised the supre- macy of Aurangzeb, It must not be imagined, however, that every portion of the three fallen monarchies of Golkonda, Bijapur, and Aurangabad, stretching as they originally did to the sea to the westward, and comprising the cities of Puna and Satara, as well as Bijapur and Golkonda, was in an equal degree subject to that monarch. Before even their conquest had been achieved, there had appeared the first germs of a power destined to rival, and finally to overshadow even, that of the Mughal. Commencing as a robber and a freebooter, Sivaji succeeded in baffling, sometimes even in defeating, the armies of the Emperor. Leaving the capitals of the Musalman
- The Birar of those days did not Bhonsla. Nagpur itself did not
include nearly so much territory as form a part of it, being the capital the kingdom of that name governed of the adjoining province of Uon- by the Maratha family of the dwana. Its capital was Elichpur.
