New Delhi: The history of India is full of interesting characters and Malik Ambar is unarguably one among them. The rise of Ambar through struggles and hardships to become one of the greatest adversaries of the Mughal Empire is nothing short of the script of a thrilling film. Interestingly, Malik Ambar was not an Indian. Rather, he came from a faraway land as a slave.

Malik Ambar was born in 1548 in Harar which is now in Ethiopia. He was converted to Islam and his parents sold him into slavery. As a slave, he was taken to Yemen where he was sold again and was taken to Baghdad’s slave market. There, he was sold a third time to a person from Mecca and again in Baghdad to Mir Qasim al-Baghdadi. It is Baghdadi who brought Ambar with him to the Deccan Plateau where the fortune of the slave will change forever. Chengiz Khan, a former Habshi slave who served as the Peshwa of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate bought Ambar.

After the death of Baghdadi, his wife freed Malik Ambar who got married and served the Sultan of Bijapur for a brief period. It was during his service for the Sultan of Bijapur that he was given the title ‘Malik’. Ambar quit the job citing insufficient support and entered the army of the Nizam Shahi. From 1600 to 1626, he was the regent of the Nizam Shahi dynasty of Ahmednagar and he increased the strength of Murtaza Nizam Shah II by raising a large army.

He revamped the Ahmadnagar Sultanate and appointed puppet sultans to thwart the Mughal invasion. By 1610, his army had 10,000 Habshis and 40,000 Deccanis. Ambar would go on to fight and defeat Mughal Emperor Jahangir who tried to invade his kingdom. To Jahangir, Malik Ambar was his arch-nemesis and had vented his anger publicly towards him. So much so that he commissioned Abu’l Hasan, a painter at his court to create a painting where Jahangir was shooting arrows at Ambar’s severed head.

Ambar defeated the Mughal General Khan Khanan several times and also took the help of prominent Maratha chiefs. But in one battle, the Mughals defeated Ambar and captured the fort of Ahmadnagar. The powers of Ambar were greatly reduced by the crushing blows of Shah Jahan. Notably, Ambar founded a new city Khadki which would go on to become Aurangabad. He was one of the proponents of guerrilla warfare in India and interestingly, helped Shah Jahan to defeat his stepmother Nur Jahan and become the Mughal Emperor. He passed away in 1626 at the age of 77.