Farrukhsiyar

• 1. Introduction

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  Farrukhsiyar was born on the 20th of August 1683 in Aurangabad, on the Deccan Plateau, the grandson of one Mughal emperor and great-grandson of another. He died on the 9th of April 1719, blinded and strangled in prison, less than six years after seizing the throne. His reign sits at one of the strangest junctures in Mughal history: the moment when the empire stopped obeying its own emperors. Farrukhsiyar held the title of the tenth Mughal emperor, but two courtiers known as the Sayyid brothers held all the real power. He spent his reign trying to outmaneuver them, failing, and paying with his life. What drove the Sayyids to dominate him so completely? How did a farman he signed in 1717 reshape the future of the Indian subcontinent? And what did it mean for an emperor to rule in name only? The answers trace through battlefields, a surgeon's bedside, an iron cage in Delhi, and a palace coup that played out before the eyes of the entire Mughal court.

• 2. The Road to the Throne

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  Farrukhsiyar grew up in the orbit of Mughal power rather than at its center. His father, Azim-ush-Shan, was a prince rather than the emperor, and young Farrukhsiyar was sent in 1696 to accompany his father's campaign in Bengal. When Aurangzeb recalled Azim-ush-Shan from the province in 1707, Farrukhsiyar was left behind to govern it, spending his formative years administering Dhaka, the capital of Bengal Subah.

  By 1712, the aging Mughal court was fracturing. Azim-ush-Shan anticipated a succession struggle following the imminent death of Bahadur Shah I and recalled his son. Farrukhsiyar was marching near Azimabad, present-day Patna, when he learned the emperor had died. On the 21st of March he proclaimed his own father's right to the throne, issuing coinage in his father's name and ordering public prayers. Two weeks later, on the 6th of April, he learned that his father had been defeated in a battle orchestrated by Zulfiqar Khan Nusrat Jung, who allied Jahandar Shah with Farrukhsiyar's uncles Rafi-us-Shan and Jahan Shah. Farrukhsiyar considered suicide. His friends from Bengal talked him out of it.

  The young prince needed allies with armies. He found two: Hussain Ali Khan, the subahdar of Bengal, and Hussain's brother Abdullah Khan, the subahdar of Allahabad. Together they marched on the Mughal capital. At Khajwah, in what is now Fatehpur district in Uttar Pradesh, Jahandar Shah's generals Khwaja Ahsan Khan and his son Aazuddin confronted them, only to flee after a night-long artillery exchange. On the 10th of January 1713, the decisive clash came at Samugarh, nine miles east of Agra. Jahandar Shah was defeated, captured, and imprisoned. The following day, Farrukhsiyar declared himself emperor. On the 12th of February he rode into Delhi, took the Red Fort, and watched as his predecessor's severed head was carried through the city mounted on a bamboo rod atop an elephant.

• 3. Power Without Authority

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  Abdullah Khan had led Farrukhsiyar's army into battle and expected the post of wazir, or prime minister, as his reward. Farrukhsiyar had already promised that position to Ghaziuddin Khan. He offered Abdullah the title of wakil-e-mutlaq instead, a form of regency. Abdullah refused. After a standoff, Farrukhsiyar gave in. Abdullah Khan became wazir. His brother Hussain Ali Khan was appointed Mir Bakhshi, or Commander-in-Chief. The brothers who had put the emperor on the throne now commanded the empire's army and treasury.

  The historian William Irvine recorded how the arrangement soured. Farrukhsiyar's close aides Mir Jumla III and Khan Dauran warned him that the Sayyids planned to displace him. When Hussain Ali Khan learned of these warnings, he wrote to his brother Abdullah: the emperor was, in his words, "a man who paid no regard to claims for service performed, one void of faith, a breaker of his word and altogether without shame." He concluded it was necessary to act in their interests without consulting the emperor at all. Farrukhsiyar could not confront them directly. The Sayyid brothers controlled the strongest divisions of the army, and so the emperor became, in effect, a ceremonial figurehead inside his own court.

  By 1715, Farrukhsiyar was so hemmed in that he transferred authority to his aide Mir Jumla III by decree: "The word and seal of Mir Jumla are my word and seal." Mir Jumla III then began approving jagirs and mansabs without asking the prime minister. The Sayyids' deputy, Ratan Chand, was caught accepting bribes and engaged in revenue farming, which was forbidden by imperial law. Mir Jumla III exploited the scandal to tell the emperor the Sayyids were unfit to hold office, and Farrukhsiyar began quietly building up the troop numbers under Mir Jumla and Khan Dauran, preparing for a confrontation he was not yet ready to force.

• 4. Campaigns on Multiple Fronts

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  Farrukhsiyar's reign was shadowed by uprisings on almost every frontier, and each campaign further entangled him with the Sayyid brothers he distrusted. Maharaja Ajit Singh of Marwar had seized Ajmer with the backing of Marwari nobles and expelled Mughal diplomats from his state. Farrukhsiyar dispatched Hussain Ali Khan to bring him to heel, while simultaneously sending secret letters to Ajit Singh, promising rewards if the Maharaja could defeat his own general. Hussain Ali Khan left Delhi on the 6th of January 1714. By the time he advanced through Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, and Merta, Ajit Singh had run out of room to retreat and surrendered at Merta. As part of the settlement, he gave his second daughter, Kunwari Indira Kanwar, as a bride to the emperor, and his son Kunwar Abhai Singh was compelled to accompany his father to the Mughal court.

  The Jat leader Churaman proved harder to subdue. In early 1713, Farrukhsiyar sent the subahdar of Agra, Chabela Ram, against him without success. A later subahdar forced Churaman to negotiate, but those talks collapsed. In September 1716 Raja Jai Singh II began besieging Churaman's stronghold at Thun in present-day Rajasthan. By the 19th of November the siege was underway, and in December Churaman's son Muhkam Singh fought a battle outside the fort. The siege dragged on past a year. By January 1718, shortages and late rains were eroding Jai Singh II's position, and he wrote to Farrukhsiyar describing "many encounters" with the Jats and requesting reinforcements. When that message failed to move the emperor, Jai Singh II's agent in Delhi offered five million rupees to the government and two million to the minister if Hussain Ali Khan would champion his cause. The deal was accepted; Churaman was brought to the Mughal court on the 19th of April 1718 and agreed to pay five million rupees in cash and goods.

  In Punjab, Farrukhsiyar confronted Banda Singh Bahadur, a Sikh leader who had captured parts of the province in the early 1710s. In 1715 the emperor dispatched 20,000 troops under Qamaruddin Khan, Abdus Samad Khan, and Zakariya Khan Bahadur. After an eight-month siege at Gurdaspur, Banda Singh Bahadur ran out of ammunition and surrendered. He was paraded through Sirhind in an iron cage. His 200 companions were chained. The procession that entered Delhi carried 780 prisoners and 2,000 heads on spears, along with 700 cartloads of slaughtered Sikhs' heads. When offered money by the wealthy Khatris of Delhi to spare them, Farrukhsiyar refused. On the 19th of June 1716, Banda Singh Bahadur and his followers were executed; his eyes were gouged out, his limbs severed, and his skin removed before he was killed.

• 5. The Farman That Altered History

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  In 1717, Farrukhsiyar signed a farman granting the British East India Company the right to reside and trade across the Mughal Empire. The document had an unusual origin. A company surgeon named William Hamilton had treated Farrukhsiyar for a disease, and the emperor issued the farman in gratitude. Under its terms, the company could trade freely throughout the empire in exchange for a yearly payment of only 3,000 rupees, an exceptionally small sum relative to the commercial privileges it purchased.

  The farman also granted the company the right to issue dastaks, or passes, for the movement of goods. Company officials immediately misused the dastaks for their own private trade, moving personal merchandise under the cover of the exemptions meant for company goods. This angered the Nawab of Bengal, Alivardi Khan, who could see his customs revenues evaporating through abuse. The friction between Nawabs of Bengal and the British East India Company that the farman set in motion would deepen for decades, feeding into conflicts that reshaped the entire subcontinent. One physician's consultation, and one imperial act of gratitude, had consequences Farrukhsiyar could not have anticipated.

• 6. Deposition and Death

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  In February 1718, while the emperor was building his case against the Sayyids in Delhi, Hussain Ali Khan reached the Deccan and struck a treaty with the Maratha ruler Shahu I without asking Farrukhsiyar's permission. Shahu was allowed to collect sardeshmukhi across the Deccan and received the lands of Berar and Gondwana to govern. In exchange, Shahu agreed to pay one million rupees annually and provide 15,000 horses for the Sayyids' army. When Farrukhsiyar learned of it, he said the arrangement made it impermissible for "the vile enemy to be overbearing partners in matters of revenue and government."

  By mid-1718, open conflict had arrived at the Mughal court. Farrukhsiyar broke an earlier agreement by appointing new officials in the Deccan; Abdullah Khan canceled those appointments. The emperor tried and failed to eliminate Abdullah Khan. Powerful nobles and troops began gathering against Farrukhsiyar. He was left with only a small Rajput force under Jai Singh Kachhwaha. Abdullah Khan summoned his brother from the Deccan. In October, Hussain Ali Khan marched north with cavalry, matchlock infantry, artillery, and Maratha horsemen led by Balaji Vishwanath.

  They entered Delhi in February 1719. Hussain Ali Khan walked into court ignoring its protocols. Farrukhsiyar, under pressure, removed several key officials including Jai Singh II. When he refused to surrender the palace fortress, Abdullah Khan cleared away his guards and took control of the building. Farrukhsiyar fled and hid in the women's quarters. Loyal commanders tried to rally but were scattered by the Maratha forces. The Sayyid brothers chose not to rule directly. They wanted a manageable figurehead. After failing to capture Prince Bidar Dil, they crowned Prince Rafi-ud-darjat as emperor. That same night, Farrukhsiyar was captured, blinded, and eventually killed in prison. His second wife, Indira Kanwar, left the imperial harem on the 16th of July 1719 and returned to her father in Jodhpur with her property.

• 7. What He Left Behind

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  Farrukhsiyar was remembered with the posthumous title Shahid-i-marhum, meaning "the martyr received with mercy." His coins bore a Persian inscription: "By the grace of the true God, struck on silver and gold, the emperor of land and sea, Farrukhsiyar." One hundred and sixteen of those coins from his reign remain on display at the Lahore Museum and the Indian Museum in Kolkata, minted in Kabul, Kashmir, Ajmer, Allahabad, Bidar, and Berar.

  Two towns carry his name. Farrukhnagar in Gurgaon district, 32 kilometers south of Delhi, was named for him; he built a Sheesh Mahal palace and a Jama Masjid there during his reign. Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh also bears his name.

  The Kashmiri noble Inayatullah Khan, appointed governor of Kashmir in 1717 and given charge of the Diwan-i-Tan-o Khalisa, set fire to the Hindu district of Srinagar and forbade Kashmiri Pandits from wearing turbans. When he reimposed the jizya tax on non-Muslims, Farrukhsiyar justified it by citing a letter from the Sharif of Mecca, saying: "In a matter of faith, I am powerless to interfere." These acts, carried out under the cover of an emperor who claimed powerlessness, point to the defining contradiction of his reign: a man with an emperor's title and a courtier's room to maneuver, squeezed between factions he could not control, whose decisions nonetheless touched millions of lives.