in a variety of workforces, including in the king's army, commerce and agriculture. In 1660, Prince Shah Shuja, the governor of Mughal Bengal and a claimant of the Peacock Throne, fled to Arakan with his family after being defeated by his brother Emperor Aurangzeb during the Battle of Khajwa. Shuja and his entourage arrived in Arakan on 26 August 1660. He was granted asylum by King Sanda Thudhamma. In December 1660, the Arakanese king confiscated Shuja's gold and jewellery, leading to an insurrection by the royal Mughal refugees. According to varying accounts, Shuja's family was killed by the Arakanese, while Shuja himself may have fled to a kingdom in Manipur. However, members of Shuja's entourage remained in Arakan and were recruited by the royal army, including as archers and court guards. They were king makers in Arakan until the Burmese conquest. The Arakanese continued their raids of Mughal Bengal. Dhaka was raided in 1625. Emperor Aurangzeb gave orders to his governor in Mughal Bengal, Shaista Khan, to end what the Mughals saw as Arakanese-Portuguese piracy. In 1666, Shaista Khan led a army and 288 warships to seize Chittagong from the Kingdom of Mrauk U. The Mughal expedition continued up till the Kaladan River. The Mughals placed the northern part of Arakan under its administration and vassalage. Burmese conquest Following the Konbaung Dynasty's conquest of Arakan in 1785, as many as 35,000 people of the Rakhine State fled to the neighbouring Chittagong region of British Bengal in 1799 to escape persecution by the Bamar and to seek protection under the British Raj. The Bamar executed thousands of men and deported a considerable portion of the population to central Burma, leaving Arakan a scarcely populated area by the time the British occupied it. According to an article on the "Burma Empire" published by the British Francis Buchanan-Hamilton in 1799, "the Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan", "call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan". However, according to Derek Tokin, Hamilton no longer used the term to refer to the Muslims in Arakan in his later publications. Sir Henry Yule saw many Muslims serving as eunuchs in Konbaung while on a diplomatic mission to the Burmese capital, Ava. British colonial rule British policy encouraged Bengali inhabitants from adjacent regions to migrate into the then lightly populated and fertile valleys of Arakan as farm labourers. The East India Company extended the Bengal Presidency to