From the time Shah Shooja lost his throne, he had been first a captive in the hands of the son of his former vizier, and then a pensioner on the bounty of the Maharajah, at Lahore, who in return extorted from him the famous diamond, "The Mountain of Light," and other jewels, which he had brought away with him when he fled at Neemla. He then made his escape from the Maharajah, and found protection and support from the British government of India. Upon the summons from Azeem Khan, Shah Shooja immediately hastened to Peshawur; where, before his benefactor had time to meet him, he practically displayed his ideas of royalty so unwisely, and so insulted some of the friends of the Barukzye family, that the whole party took offence, and they at once rejected him, and placed his brother Eyoob on the throne. Eyoob was but a puppet king, the tool of the family who raised him to the government; Azeem Khan, who was appointed his vizier, being in truth the ruler. Several of the young princes who aspired to the throne were delivered over to Eyoob, who put them to death. Shooja, driven from Peshawur, retired to Shikarpoor, which the Ameers of Sinde ceded to him; where, in place of conducting himself with prudence, he was so addicted to low intrigue with those about him, that his enemies availed themselves of this propensity to effect his ruin, and drove him from Shikarpoor, when, crossing the Indus, he fled through the desert by Juydalmeer, and returned to Loodiana. "The fitness," says Lieut. Burnes, "of Shah Shooja-ool-Moolk for the station of a sovereign seems ever to have been doubtful. His manners and address are highly polished, but his judgment does not rise above mediocrity; had the case been otherwise, we should not now see him an exile from his country and his throne, without a hope of regaining them, after an absence of twenty years, and before he has attained the fiftieth year of his age."