Nizam-ul-Mulk, Asaf Jah I

• 1. Introduction

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  Nizam-ul-Mulk, Asaf Jah I, born Mir Qamar-ud-din Khan on the 11th of August 1671, walked into a dying empire and built something that outlasted it. He entered life in Agra, received his name from the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb himself, and died seventy-seven years later in Burhanpur after catching a cold on a tour of his own domain. Between those two moments lies one of the most consequential careers in Indian history. How does a general choose loyalty to an empire that no longer deserves it? How does a man who spent decades serving Mughal emperors decide, at last, to break free? And what does it mean to found a dynasty in the shadow of the very throne you once served?

• 2. Roots and Inheritance

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  His paternal grandfather Kilich Khan came from Samarkand, in what is now Uzbekistan, and first arrived in India in 1654 while travelling to perform the Hajj during the reign of Shah Jahan. After completing the pilgrimage, he stayed. He joined the army of the Mughal prince Aurangzeb in the Deccan in 1657 and fought in the Battle of Samugarh, which ended with the defeat of Aurangzeb's brother Dara Shikoh. Kilich Khan also governed Zafarabad, the place now known as Bidar. His eldest son, Ghazi ud-Din Khan, arrived in India in 1669 and climbed through Aurangzeb's army to the rank of general and then governor of Gujarat.

  Mir Qamar-ud-din's maternal great-grandfather was Sa'adullah Khan, a Punjabi Muslim noble who served as Grand Vizier to Shah Jahan from 1645 to 1656. It was during Sa'adullah Khan's time in office that construction of the Taj Mahal was completed. The man who would one day create Hyderabad carried within his bloodline both the swordsmanship of Central Asia and the administrative tradition of the Mughal court at its height.

• 3. Forged in the Deccan

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  At six years old, in 1677, Mir Qamaruddin accompanied his father to the Mughal court, where Aurangzeb awarded him a Mansab, a formal military rank. By his teens he was going into battle alongside his father. In 1684 he held a rank of 400 zaat and 100 sowar. Four years later, aged seventeen, he joined his father in an assault on the fort of Adoni and was promoted to 2,000 zaat and 500 sowar. The reward from court was vivid: the finest Arab horse with gold trappings and a pastille perfumed with ambergris.

  In 1690, aged nineteen, Aurangzeb gave him the title Chin Qilich Khan, meaning boy swordsman, and gifted him a female elephant. In 1693 the Marathas besieged Panhala Fort; Mir Qamaruddin rode out, defeated them at Karad, and took thirty prisoners. By 1699 Panhala itself fell to his forces on the 9th of June 1700, after he sealed all roads and cut off every supply line to the garrison. Aurangzeb made him faujdar of Bijapur as reward. Long residence in the Deccan shaped the man as much as the battles did. He adopted the flowing Maratha robes, wore them tight at the waist, and wrote poetry in Urdu in the Deccani style. He had absorbed the culture of the land he would one day rule.

• 4. Navigating the Collapse

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  Aurangzeb died in 1707 and the Mughal succession turned murderous almost immediately. Mir Qamaruddin chose a careful neutrality while Aurangzeb's sons fought each other, and when Bahadur Shah I emerged victorious he was rewarded with a series of provincial governorships. His titles multiplied: on the 9th of December 1707 he received Khan-i-Dauran Bahadur, and on the 12th of January 1713 the emperor Farrukhsiyar made him Viceroy of the Deccan with the title Nizam-ul-Mulk, meaning Administrator of the Realm.

  Two men stood between him and influence over the whole empire: Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan and Sayyid Hassan Ali Khan Barha, the so-called badshahgar, or king-makers. They had killed Farrukhsiyar in 1719 by blinding, deposing, and murdering him, and placed the eighteen-year-old Muhammad Shah on the throne with themselves as regents. The Mughal empress's mother sent Nizam a secret message: resist the Sayyids, and you will find yourself a place of honour in the history of Mughals. Nizam did not need much persuading. In June 1720 near Burhanpur, he defeated Dilawar Khan and a Maratha reinforcement that fought on two fronts against him. In July 1720 he defeated the twenty-year-old Alim Ali, the adopted son of Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan. On the 9th of October 1720, a Turkic soldier from among Nizam's sympathizers assassinated Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan in the outskirts of Delhi. His brother Abdullah Khan was captured in November 1720 and later poisoned in captivity. The king-makers were gone.

• 5. Grand Vizier, Then Rebel

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  Muhammad Shah rewarded Nizam with the grand viziership of the Mughal Empire in 1722. The position offered the highest administrative power in the land, but Nizam found it impossible to exercise. His attempts to reform court corruption made enemies quickly. Corrupt courtiers, cliques of concubines, eunuchs, and jesters, who were the Emperor's constant companions, worked methodically to undermine him. Muhammad Shah was young, and allowed his confidants to mock Nizam for making obeisance in the Deccan fashion rather than the court fashion of Delhi.

  In 1723 Muhammad Shah transferred him to Awadh, a demotion dressed as a posting. Nizam refused. He resigned as Grand Vizier, abandoned his imperial responsibilities, and marched south toward the Deccan without the Emperor's permission. The Emperor issued a decree to Mubariz Khan, Governor of Hyderabad and a former ally of the Barha Sayyids, to stop and kill the Nizam. The resulting encounter was the Battle of Shakar Kheda. In 1724, with Maratha assistance, Asaf Jah I defeated Mubariz Khan. Muhammad Shah had no choice but to recognize him formally as Viceroy of the Deccan and grant him the title Asaf Jah on the 12th of July 1737.

• 6. The Nader Shah Moment

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  In 1739 Nader Shah advanced from beyond the Hindu Kush, moving through Afghanistan and the Punjab toward Delhi. Nizam-ul-Mulk sent troops to Karnal, where Muhammad Shah's forces had gathered to repel the Persian army. Muhammad Shah, influenced by suspicions from the Hindustani party at court, refused to give Nizam command of the combined army and handed it instead to the commander-in-chief, Khan-i Dauran. The combined forces were outmatched. Nizam remained with a third of the army, watching the battle without joining it. He later told Muhammad Shah's messenger: the stupid fellows went to launch a campaign without order and discipline, and by their folly destroyed a force of 40,000.

  Nader Shah entered Delhi. When locals quarrelled with his soldiers and killed nine hundred of them in a bazaar brawl, he flew into a rage and ordered a massacre. Neither Muhammad Shah nor any of his ministers dared approach the Persian conqueror to negotiate. Asaf Jah stepped forward alone. He asked Nader Shah to end the bloodshed, and legend records his words: you have taken the lives of thousands of people of the city, if you still wish to continue the bloodshed, then bring those dead back to life and then kill them again, for there are none left to be killed. Nader Shah ended the massacre on condition and returned to Persia. Whatever Nizam's motives at Karnal, at this moment he stood alone between a city and its annihilation.

• 7. The Last Will

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  In March 1742, the British, based at Fort St. George in Madras, sent an elaborate gift to acknowledge Nizam-ul-Mulk's position as the most important Mughal successor ruler. The hamper included a gold throne, European silk threaded with gold and silver, two pairs of large painted-looking glasses, 163.75 yards of green velvet, 73.5 yards of crimson velvet, Persian carpets, two Arab horses, and 39.75 chests of rose water. Nizam returned the favour with one horse, a piece of jewellery, and a note warning the British that they had no right to mint their own currency, to which they complied.

  In May 1748, during a tour of his domain, Nizam arrived in Burhanpur and fell ill with a cold and flu. He died on the 1st of June 1748 at the age of seventy-seven and was buried at the mazaar of Shaikh Burhan ud-din Gharib Chisti in Khuldabad, near Aurangabad, the same place where Aurangzeb, the emperor who had named him, is buried.

  Just before he died, Nizam dictated his last will across seventeen clauses. He advised his successors to keep troops happy and well-fed, apologised for neglecting his wife, reminded his sons to remain subservient to the Mughal Emperor who had granted them office, and warned against needless wars. His final instruction to his sons was direct: you must not lend your ears to tittle-tattle of the backbiters and slanderers, nor suffer the riffraff to approach your presence. It was the counsel of a man who had watched court intrigue destroy everything he tried to build at the centre of Mughal power, and had built something else instead. Hyderabad State survived British rule all the way to Indian independence in 1947, covering 95,337 square miles, a territory the source describes as the size of France when the first Nizam held reign.