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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 14, p. 3.

NLS'TORY as, however, ill adapted for defence, so Jaisal sought for a stronger place and founded the fort and city of Jaisalmer in 1156. He was succeeded by several warlike chiefs who were constantly engaged in raids and battles, but their passion for faeebcoting proved disastrous. Authentic history begins at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, when the Bbatis s nraged Ata-ud-din that his army captured and sucked the fort and city of Jaisalmer, which for some time remained deserted. Sabal Singh, who began to rule about 165r, was the first of the Bhati chiefs who held his dominions. sat a fief of the Delhi empire. According to the. annals of the Kishângarh State, he served in Peshawar and Kandehar, and received the grant of Jaisalmer through the intercession of his cousin, Raja Rap Singh of Kishangarh. Jaisalmer had now arrived at the height of its power; the territory extended north to the Sudej, comprised the whole of Bahawalpur westward to the Indus, and to the east and south included many districts subsequently annexed by the Rathors and -prated in MI-A, and Btkaner. But from this time till flue n of Mahanawal Mulrnj in r76z the fortunes of the State rapidly declined, and most of the outlying districts were lost. Owing, however, to its isdlated situation it e Gaped the ravages of the Mamthas, end it was partly for this res that Jaisalmer w of the last States in Rajputana to be taken under s under the protection of the British Govern- ment. By the treaty dated December r r8r8, concluded with Mulrnj, the su as gum anteed.to his posterity; the chief was to be protected from se vasions and dangers - his State, provided he was not the origunto, of the quarrel, and he was to act subordinate o-operation with the British Government. Apart from this treaty, the only important -tuts of Mulraj's rule were the tmal atrocities of his minister, Mehta Sali, Singh. According to Tod, this man, a Mahajan by caste and a Jain by religion, united `the subtlety of the serpent to the ferocity of the tiger.' He put to death nearly all the relatives of the chief. With commercial men and with the jndustrious agriculturists or pastoral communities 'he had so long forfeited all third to credit that his oath w not valued at a single grain of the sand of their own desert dominion';. and finally he drove out the Paliwbl Brahmans, famous as enterprising cultivators and landholders, who had constructed most of the khaivxs o rrigatfon tanks now to be found in the State, and whose solid well-built adtlages still stand deserted, marking an sm of prosperity to which it will be difficult for the State ever again to attain. Salim Singh, however, was mortally wounded by a Rajput in 1824, and, as there was some fear that the wound might heal, his wife gavc him poison.. Molrnj,,who had died fear years before, was .succeeded by his grandson Gaj Singh. In a829 a Bdnmr army invaded Jaisalmer to revenge some injuries committed