Murshid Quli Khan

• 1. Introduction

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  Murshid Quli Khan died on the 30th of June 1727 and, at his own request, was buried not in a place of honor but beneath the staircase of a mosque he had built with his own hands. That detail says something important about the man. Born as Surya Narayan Mishra, a Hindu Brahmin in the Deccan around 1670, he would end his days as the first Nawab of Bengal, the ruler of one of the Mughal Empire's most prosperous provinces. Between those two points lies a story of a child sold into slavery, a court conflict that nearly ended in assassination, and a city that bears his name to this day. How does a boy sold to a Persian merchant in the Deccan become the most powerful man in Bengal? And what does his reign tell us about how the Mughal world actually worked in its final decades?

• 2. From Brahmin to Bengal Diwan

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  Around the age of ten, Surya Narayan Mishra was sold to a Persian merchant named Haji Shafi, who converted him to Islam and raised him under the name Mohammad Hadi. The historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar confirmed his Brahmin origins, and the chronicle Ma'asir al-umara supports the same account.

  Around 1690, Shafi retired from the Mughal court and returned to Persia, taking the young Mohammad Hadi with him. After Shafi's death, Mohammad Hadi returned to India and entered the service of Abdullah Khurasani, the Diwan of Vidarbha. His skill in revenue matters caught the attention of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb himself, who recognized in him someone capable of managing Bengal's enormous finances. Aurangzeb sent him to Bengal as divan around 1700, assigning him responsibility for the province's revenue collection at a time when Bengal was one of the empire's most lucrative territories.

  His expertise extended to applying the financial strategies drawn from the sharia-based Fatwa Alamgiri, a legal compendium that Aurangzeb had commissioned. For a man born into a Hindu priestly family, his command of Islamic financial law was precise enough to impress the most orthodox Mughal emperor of the age.

• 3. Conflict With Azim-us-Shan

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  Azim-us-Shan, a grandson of Aurangzeb and subahdar of Bengal, had his own plans for the province's revenue. He intended to use Bengal's wealth to finance his bid for the Mughal throne after Aurangzeb died. The arrival of an independent divan answerable directly to the emperor threatened everything he had arranged.

  Immediately after his appointment, Quli Khan traveled to Jahangirnagar, present-day Dhaka, and transferred officials out of Azim-us-Shan's personal service and into his own. The affront was direct and deliberate. Azim-us-Shan responded by planning an assassination.

  He convinced soldiers who had not yet been paid that Quli Khan was personally responsible for withholding their wages. The plan was to have them surround him on the pretense of demanding payment, at which point he would be stabbed. One morning, as Quli Khan was traveling to meet Azim-us-Shan, soldiers led by Abdul Wahid surrounded him and demanded their wages.

  Quli Khan's response was measured and pointed. According to historian Chowdhury, he addressed the soldiers directly: "You have conspired to assassinate me. Remember that the Alamgir will come to know everything. Abstain from doing such things, as it is a way of showing disrespect to the emperor. Be careful! If you kill me, then you will face dire consequences." He then behaved outwardly as though nothing had happened, reassuring Azim-us-Shan of his friendship. Privately, he wrote to Aurangzeb, who sent a letter back warning Azim-us-Shan that if Quli Khan were harmed, the emperor would take revenge personally.

• 4. Building Murshidabad

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  Feeling unsafe in Dhaka, Quli Khan relocated the diwani office to a city then called Mukshudabad, which sat on the banks of the Ganges in the heart of Bengal. He justified the move on practical grounds: the central location made communication across the province easier, and the riverside position allowed him to keep watch over the European trading companies already established there. He also relocated the province's bankers to the new city, drawing the financial infrastructure of Bengal under his direct supervision.

  Azim-us-Shan was furious. The move had been made without his knowledge. But by 1703, Aurangzeb transferred Azim-us-Shan out of Bengal entirely, sending him to Bihar, and Farrukhsiyar was installed as a largely ceremonial subahdar. The subah office itself followed Quli Khan to Mukshudabad.

  Quli Khan traveled to Bijapur to present Aurangzeb with the province's revenue in person. The emperor was pleased, gifting him clothes, flags, a nagra drum, and a sword. He also conferred on him the title of Murshid Quli and gave permission to rename the city Murshidabad, meaning the city of Murshid Quli Khan.

  When the renaming actually occurred is debated. Sir Jadunath Sarkar placed the title's conferral on the 23rd of December 1702, and calculated that the journey back would have taken at least three months, putting the renaming in 1703. The Persian historian Riwaz-us-Salatin and the publication Tarikh-i-Bangla suggest around 1704. A representative of the British East India Company met Quli Khan in early 1704, and the first coins minted in Murshidabad carry that year as their date, which historian Chowdhury considers the strongest evidence for the later date.

• 5. Revenue, Land, and Power

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  Once established as the province's unchallenged authority, Quli Khan overhauled the system by which Bengal's land revenue was collected. He replaced the Mughal jagirdari system with what he called the mal jasmani system, which functioned in a manner comparable to France's fermiers generals. Under this arrangement, contractors called ijardaars posted security bonds and then collected revenue directly from the land. The jagirdars who had previously held land grants were gradually squeezed out, and the ijardaars evolved over time into the class known as zamindars.

  Despite accumulating real power, Quli Khan kept sending revenue to the Mughal court even as the empire deteriorated and emperors became figureheads controlled by factional kingmakers. He argued that the empire could not function without his remittances. Historian Chowdhury read this differently: the revenue payments were a signal to each successive emperor that Quli Khan's loyalty was reliable, which in turn gave him the freedom to run Bengal as he saw fit.

  The sums involved were substantial. Records show that every year, one crore and thirty lakh rupees were sent to the Mughal emperor, alongside payments made in kind. Quli Khan personally led the convoy, traveling with infantry and cavalry to Bihar to hand the revenue to the Mughal collector. For a man who had started as a bought servant, the act of personally delivering tribute to the seat of imperial power carried a weight that figures alone cannot capture.

• 6. Life in the New Capital

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  Murshidabad under Quli Khan was not simply an administrative center. In the Dugharia region of the city he constructed a palace, a diwankhana for revenue administration, an inn, and a mosque for foreign travelers. A mint followed in 1720. At the eastern end of the city he built the Katra Masjid mosque in 1724.

  The city's calendar was marked by festival. The Punyah, held in the last week of the Bengali month of Chaitra, drew zamindars and their representatives for a formal revenue ceremony. The Mawlid, celebrating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, drew visitors from neighboring provinces. On Quli Khan's orders, lamps called chirag were lit in mosques and imambaras throughout the city.

  His durbar attracted bankers, foreign tourists, and representatives of European trading companies. A new class of merchants had grown up alongside the trade boom, and they attended too. Islamic rules governed hospitality: visitors were fed twice a day.

  Around 1720 he banned the export of rice from Murshidabad, a city that had been a major rice exporter across India. Quli Khan employed Hindus heavily in the tax administration, reasoning that they were expert in the work and fluent in Persian. Historian Chowdhury noted that the condition of Hindus during his rule was, in his phrase, "also good", as they grew more prosperous. Despite his orthodox personal piety, Quli Khan is notable for having only one wife, Nasiri Banu Begum, and no concubines.

• 7. Death and the Succession Struggle

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  Quli Khan died on the 30th of June 1727. His final instructions were that he be buried under the stairs of the Katra Masjid, the mosque he had built three years earlier at the eastern end of Murshidabad. The five-bayed rectangular mosque remains his resting place. Popular belief holds that the mosque was constructed using materials taken from demolished Hindu temples and residences.

  The succession he left behind unraveled quickly. His grandson Sarfaraz Khan was initially named successor, but Quli Khan's son-in-law Shuja-ud-Din Muhammad Khan refused to accept the arrangement and prepared for war. Sarfaraz Khan yielded without battle and Shuja-ud-Din took the nawabship in 1727. Sarfaraz would eventually come to power again after his father's death in 1739, only to be defeated and replaced by Alivardi Khan in 1740. The instability that followed Quli Khan's death stood in sharp contrast to the decade of firm, if calculated, authority he had exercised. He had accumulated a string of imperial titles over a lifetime: Kārtalab Khān, Murshid Quli Khān, Jafar Khān, and ultimately the full honorific Mutamin al-Mulk Ála' al-Dauläh Jafar Khān Nasiri Nasir Jang Bahadur. The man who had arrived in Bengal as a revenue officer answerable to an emperor left it as the province's first independent nawab, buried precisely where he asked to be, beneath the steps of his own mosque.