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having been roasted to death in a cauldron by order of Auraugzib, is utterly false. No man below thirty could have been put in charge of a fort containing Aurangzib's wives and children on the eve of the war of succession, and, therefore, Aqil Khan must have been an old man at the time of his death in 1696.

So far was Aqil Khan from being cut off in the prime of youth through the vindictiveness of his mistress's father that he married, raised a family and died at the age of more than seventy surrounded by his grandchildren. The Letters of Mirza Bedil (a favourite of Aqil Khan, when governor of Delhi towards the end of the 17th century,) mentions Qayyum Khan as this noble's son, and Shukrullah Khan and Shakir Khan as his sons-in-law.

And yet the Urdu biographer of Lahor has the audacity to say that Dr. Bernier witnessed the boiling of young Aqil Khan in a cauldron in the harem! Bernier's story refers to Jahanara's lover, and he took all his facts from Manucci.

From the life-sketch of Aqil Khan we find that he was at the same place with Zeb-un-nissa first at Daulatabad in 1658 (some ten months), then at Lahor in 1663 for a week only, thenceforth with the imperial Court at Delhi and Agra till his resignation in April 1669, again with the Court during the Rajput wars of 1679 and 1680 and finally at Delhi from January 1681 to 1696. It was only during the first and last of these periods that he