Page 34

3 After a few days the city surrendered. Shah Jahan, on hearing this, made strenuous attempts to recover it, but all his efforts were of no avail. Thrice the Mughal army advanced on Kandahar and laid siege to it, but due to troubles at the Mughal Court, the siege was not pursued with vigour. Kandahar thus remained in Persian possession until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when a national rising headed by Mir Vais Khan, chief of the Hotaki tribe, a branch of the Ghilzais, liberated the province and put an end to the foreign yoke. Shah Abbas I, was indeed a great king. He had studied the Afghan character minutely and knew that he could not keep the city without the active co-operation of the Afghans themselves. With this in view, he did everything in his power to win the affection of the people. He reduced the revenue, left the people free in their internal administration and did his best to make them forget that they were under alien rule. But the cruelty and avarice of his successors, especially those of Shah Hussein, the last of the Saffivids, soon made the Afghans to take up arms against the Persians in order to assert their independence.