Did Zakariya Khan miss a trick, in the years before his death, by not declaring Punjab’s independence from both Nadir Shah (who would be assassinated in 1747) and the dying Mughal empire? In the south of India, Asaf Jah had established his independent chiefdom, and Saadat Khan had done likewise in Awadh, but Zakariya Khan did not emulate them. It has been suggested that the Sikhs’ rise to power, which we will shortly witness, might have been pre-empted in the early 1740s if a satrap like Zakariya Khan had declared Punjab’s independence.76 We do not, however, know whether the thought entered
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