gallantly against both the Sikhs and the neighbouring tribes, Siáls and others, who attacked him. In 1802, Muzaffar Khán first saw the young chief Ranjít Singh, who had marched from Lahore to spy out the land. The Nawáb came out to meet him, thirty miles from the city, and the chiefs, having interchanged valuable presents, parted very good friends. Again, in 1806, after having reduced Jhang, Ranjít Singh marched towards Múltán and reached Mahtam, twenty miles north of the city, when the Nawáb, who had no wish to fight, gave him Rs. 70,000 to retire. The next year, his appetite whetted by what he had so easily won, the Mahárájá returned and attacked Múltán in force. The town was in part captured, but the fort held out against all the Sikh efforts, and an agreement was concluded, through Sirdár Fateh Singh Kálianwala, by which the Mahárájá retired on receiving a large sum of money. Nawáb Muzaffar Khán, weary of war, now made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and on his return vainly tried to induce the English to take him under their protection. But this the British Government declined. Múltán was remote and beyond the sphere they then desired to influence.
At the beginning of 1810, Ranjít Singh again marched against Multan. He had just met the Afghán Sháh Shujá at Khusháb, and the exiled monarch wished the Sikhs to take Múltán and make it over to him. Muzaffar Khán had, in 1803, repulsed an attack of the Sháh's troops, and, in the hope of conciliating him, had more than once offered him an
