Short answers, pulled from the story.
Shah Alam II, born Ali Gohar on the 25th of June 1728, was the seventeenth Mughal emperor and the son of Alamgir II. He reigned from 1760 to 1788 and again from 1788 to 1806, dying on the 19th of November 1806.
Shah Alam II fought alongside Mir Qasim and Shuja-ud-Daula against the East India Company under Hector Munro at the Battle of Buxar on the 22nd of October 1764. The Company won decisively, and Shah Alam II was compelled to sign the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765, granting the British the Diwani, or right to collect revenue, across Bengal, Bihar and Odisha.
Ghulam Qadir, grandson of Najib Khan, blinded Shah Alam II with an Afghani knife on the 10th of August 1788 after failing to find the Mughal treasury, which was believed to hold treasure worth Rs. 250 million. Mahadaji Scindia intervened and killed Ghulam Qadir, taking possession of Delhi on the 2nd of October 1788 and restoring Shah Alam II to the throne.
Shah Alam II signed the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765 after his defeat at the Battle of Buxar. He granted the East India Company the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, giving the Company tax-collection authority over more than twenty million people. In return the Company agreed to pay him an annual tribute of 2.6 million rupees, a payment it later discontinued.
Shah Alam II wrote poetry under the pen-name Aftab, meaning the sun, and authored his own Diwan, a collection of poems compiled and guided by Mirza Fakhir Makin. He also composed the Ajaib-ul-Qasas, considered one of the earliest and most prominent books of prose in the Urdu language.
Mirza Najaf Khan was a general appointed by Shah Alam II after his return to Delhi in 1772 to rebuild the Mughal army. He reformed the force to rely on flintlock muskets and talwars rather than heavy artillery and cavalry, and in 1779 decisively defeated Zabita Khan's forces, which lost more than 5,000 men in a single engagement. His death in 1782 left the Mughal Empire without its last capable military commander.