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Machine transcription
141
all sides at the hands of Fateh Khan's brothers.
Shah Mahmud made a last stand near Ghazni.
The Vazier was once more asked to write to his
brothers to stop fighting and surrender them-
selves to the Shah. Again he refused. The
enraged Shah then ordered the unfortunate
Minister, to whom he owed his crown twice, to
be put to death. The King-maker was literally
hacked to pieces, but he bore his misfortune
with courage. He raised no cry, and did not
pray for mercy. He died as he had lived-brave
and dauntless. The end of the Vazier was in
reality the death-knell of the Durrani dynasty.
It roused the feelings of vengeance on the part of
the powerful Barakzai brothers. Dost Mohammed,
one of the youngest, was the first to strike success-
fully. Shah Mahmud, together with Kamran,
were driven out of all their possessions except
Herat, and the whole of Afghanistan was parcelled
out among the Barakzai brothers.
In the confusion that arose, Afghanistan suffer-
ed heavily. Balkh was seized by the ruler of Bu-
khara, the trans-Indus districts fell to the lot of
Ranjit Singh, while the outlying provinces of Sindh
Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting. How this was measured.