Page 27 - Muzaffargarh Gazzetteer

expedition fitted out by Hayat Khan against one Gul Muhammad of Uch, a
holy individual who had been trying to establish his independence in the
Chenab territory. They accordingly attacked him treacherously and
murdered him in his fort at Mankera in 1787. After this the Sarganis, under
their chief, Gula Khan, held out for some time against Muhammad Khan, the
brother and successor of the deceased Hayat Khan. They were eventually
defeated by the Jaskanis under the leadership of Diwan Ladda Ram, and
their chief, Gula Khan, having been killed in this action, the Sarganis came
to terms with Muhammad Khan, and were bought off with the Munda
Shergarh territory, which was granted to them in jagir.
Reference must now be made again to the affairs of Dera Ghazi Khan, whose
chiefs had always exercised a good deal of influence, if not authority, over
the Layyah portion of the Jaskani dominions. The Dera Ghazi Khan history
is mostly fragmentary and conflicting. It appears that all through the reign
of Ahmad Shah Abdali (1747-73), the old Mirani family was being gradually
crushed out in the conflict between the Durrani king and the Kalhoras of
Sindh; and during the whole of this time Mehmood Khan Gujar, wazir under
the last of the Ghazi Khans, was playing a double game, sometimes siding
with one party, sometimes with the other. When the country west of the
Indus was ceded to Nadir Shah in 1739, he confirmed Mehmood Khan as
governor; and the latter seems also to have been continued by Ahmad Shah
too when he passed through Dera Ghazi Khan in 1748. All that time,
however, the Kalhora rulers of Sindh claimed the sovereignty of the country;
and, though Sindh itself was nominally a portion of the territory ceded to
Kabul by the Emperor of Delhi, still the hold of the Kabul king, even over
Dera Ghazi Khan, was weak and intermittent, and no revenue could be
obtained from Sindh without hard fighting. The Kalhora prince then was Nur
Muhammad, generally called Nur Muhammad Serai, and after his death his
son, Ghulam Shah. This is the same Nur Muhammad who fought with the
Hots of Dera Ismail Khan, and is said to have governed Layyah and the
Sindh-Sagar Doab to the Chenab. The Jaskanis continued to hold Layyah till
1787.
At Dera Ghazi Khan the last chiefs of the Mirani line and Mehmood Khan
Gujjar who, though titularly their wazir, appears to have been more powerful
than his nominal masters, also held their government in subordination to
the Kalhoras; and, though the rule of the latter, after Ahmad Shah's
accession, was rather intermittent, still they do not appear to have given up
their claim to Dera Ghazi Khan till they were themselves driven out of Sindh.
In 1758, the king sent a force under Kaura Mal, by whom the Sindh party
was defeated in a fight near the town of Dera Ghazi Khan. The Miranis, at
that time, were split up into rival factions who took opposite sides, and many
of them after this event migrated to the neighbourhood of Layyah, where they
are still found in considerable numbers. This Kaura Mal was afterwards
Governor of Multan, and exercised a sort of authority under the king both
over the Miranis of Dera Ghazi Khan and over the Jaskanis of Layyah. In

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