I. Introduction
In May 1748, Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah arrived in the central Indian city of Burhanpur. He was 77 years old and exhausted after undertaking an extensive tour of his dominion. While in Burhanpur, the Nizam caught a cold that caused his health to swiftly deteriorate. Sensing death upon him, the Nizam called a gathering of close confidants and family. The atmosphere was intimate and sad. Among other matters, the Nizam dictated his last testament (wasiyyatnama). Spanning 17 clauses, this testament was intended to provide insights into a lifetime of almost unparalleled success in statecraft and a template of how to govern Hyderabad, the nascent state founded by him in the early 1720s in south-central India. Although the tone and content of the will suggest the Nizam is worried about the future of Hyderabad, he also seems concerned to shape his own historical legacy. There is little doubt that the Nizam wished to be remembered as the most successful politician, general and administrator among the post-Mughal rulers. The will is occasionally pontificatory and self-aggrandizing, yet there can be no disagreeing with the Nizam's own conclusion that he had lived a blessed life.Footnote 1 Here, after all, was a man who had not only survived, but also thrived amidst the uncertainty accompanying the collapse of the Mughal Empire during the first decades of the eighteenth century.
Using the career of Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I as its backdrop, this article will explore three broad questions. First, what can a revisiting of a 300-year old corpus of literature on the Nizam tell us about changing and contested portrayals of the man and the state he helped found? Second, how does an understanding of Mughal court politics from the 1680s onwards help explain Nizam-ul-Mulk's transition from being a loyal Mughal in the late 1600s to the founder of a Mughal ‘successor’ state in 1724? Third, why did Hyderabad survive as an independent state despite a hostile post-1724 environment in which various external and internal enemies confronted it? In exploring these questions, this article offers preliminary and tentative insights into a period that, following the withering of the Mughal ‘imperial banyan tree’,Footnote 2 offered tremendous possibilities and also perils for elites formerly linked with the Mughal Empire.
This article marks a preliminary attempt to engage some of the problems and lacunae surrounding studies on the Nizam's career and also the first few decades of Hyderabad's history. Thus, even as Section II seeks to ground Nizam-ul-Mulk's post-Mughal career in critical political developments prior to the Emperor Aurangzeb's death in 1707, it more specifically contests the widely held view that political strength (rather than weakness) dictated the Nizam's decision to embark on a new career in the Deccan. Section III focuses on the creation of the Hyderabadi state itself. Specifically, it argues that Hyderabad's establishment and survival depended on its ability to reconcile previously hostile ethnic groups to its existence, to move beyond Mughal frameworks of governance even as it maintained the fiction that it was a Mughal dependency, and to position itself as a tolerant and inclusive but nonetheless Muslim-ruled state. In the end, Hyderabad was neither a poor imitation nor a miniature version of the Mughal Empire. Furthermore, even if it did ultimately devolve into a ramshackle state with weak political, social and military institutions by the nineteenth century, this later history must be distinguished from that of its founding years. For Hyderabad's early history highlights a state that was dynamic, innovative and strong enough to hold off a range of regional enemies—a far cry from its later counterpart.
II. The Making of a Post-Imperial Mughal Nobleman
Familial Background and Early Connections to Aurangzeb
Mir Qamaruddin (hereafter referred to by his imperial title, Nizam-ul-Mulk, given to him in 1713) was born in 1671 in Delhi—the Mughal imperial capital—to Ghaziuddin Khan and Safiya Khanum. The Mughal Empire was at its height with the Emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) at its helm. Despite minor military setbacks in northeastern India in the early 1660s, the dynasty's political and military authority in the late-seventeenth century was largely unchallenged. At its heart lay a small and elite group of nobles whose unswerving loyalty to the empire was richly rewarded in the form of pecuniary and political benefits. The Nizam was the scion of two such elite noble families. On his mother's side, he was the grandson of Sadullah Khan—the illustrious and long-serving prime minister of the preceding emperor, Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58). Although Sadullah Khan passed away in 1656 his family continued to enjoy great imperial favour. Thus, the women in the family continued to contract excellent marriages. Safiya Khanum was one of them. At the behest of the Emperor Aurangzeb himself, Safiya Khanum was married (in 1670) to Ghaziuddin Khan—the eldest son of Abid Khan, one of the emperor's favourite noblemen. This marriage undoubtedly represented a powerful match-up connecting as it did an impeccably credentialed noble family (that of the Nizam's mother) with a fast-rising family of recent immigrants from Central Asia.
Abid Khan first came to Mughal India in the early 1650s; he was skirting Safavid and Shiite Iran on his way from his Central Asian hometown of Samarkand to Mecca to perform the hajj. While in India, he met the recently appointed governor of the Deccan, Prince Aurangzeb, who promised him great rewards if, on completing his religious obligations, he returned to Mughal India and joined the prince's service. Although the reason for Aurangzeb's interest in Abid Khan is unclear, it may have been related to the Khan's lineal descent from the honoured Central Asian sufi saint, Shaikh Shihabuddin Suhrawardi (d. 1234). More likely, however, Aurangzeb's efforts to cultivate Abid Khan were part of a much larger attempt to recruit individuals in anticipation of an impending war of succession between the Emperor Shah Jahan's four adult sons. Regardless of Aurangzeb's motives, Abid Khan did return to South Asia in late 1656—just in time to fight in the 1657–58 war of succession in which Aurangzeb was victorious. Following Aurangzeb's enthronement as emperor, Abid Khan was richly rewarded for having fought with distinction during the conflict. Thus, began an enduring 50-year long association between Aurangzeb and Abid Khan's family that lasted until the emperor's death in 1707.
Over the next few decades, and until his death during the siege of Bijapur in 1686, Abid Khan was one of Aurangzeb's favourite noblemen. Appreciated for his candor and loyalty, Abid Khan was especially liked because he shared many of the emperor's views regarding Islamic religious practice. Ultimately, he was appointed the imperial sadr-us-sudur (head of religious endowments). Other members of Abid Khan's family similarly enjoyed imperial favour. This was especially true for Abid Khan's son, Ghaziuddin Khan. Besides the honour of marriage to Safiya Begum, Ghaziuddin Khan received steady increments in his noble rank alongside such affectionate sobriquets as farzand-i arjomand (noble/distinguished son) from Aurangzeb. Throughout his long political career, Ghaziuddin Khan remained a committed Aurangzeb loyalist.
Although there are many examples of Ghaziuddin Khan's devotion to Aurangzeb,Footnote 3 two instances stand out. In the early 1680s, he played a central role in thwarting an almost successful rebellion by one of Aurangzeb's son's, Prince Akbar (who ultimately fled Mughal India for a life of exile in Safavid Iran). Later, in 1686–87, Ghaziuddin Khan accused another son—Prince Muazzam—of engaging in secret negotiations with the Kingdom of Golkonda in order to thwart his father's attempts to conquer the Deccan sultanate. How did the emperor respond? He turned aside Prince Muazzam's protestations of innocence and placed him under house arrest for almost a decade!
Needless to say, Ghaziuddin Khan's relations with Aurangzeb's sons were strained. Ghaziuddin Khan's antipathies would be passed on to his eldest son, Nizam-ul-Mulk. Can an understanding of the complex relations between Aurangzeb, his royal sons, and high-ranking Mughal nobles provide us with any insights into the Nizam's transformation from an ultra-loyal Mughal nobleman in the late 1600s to someone who deserted the Mughal system in the 1720s? This article will argue in the affirmative. In so doing, it suggests a different emphasis from the accounts of Yusuf H. Khan, Satish Chandra, M. A. Nayeem and Muhammad Umar among others, all of who focus on the post-Aurangzeb period to explain the Nizam's later career trajectory.Footnote 4 Any understanding of the Nizam's role in the political jockeying between Aurangzeb and his sons, however, does demand some insight into Mughal succession practices.
Aurangzeb, Mughal Succession Practices and Imperial Nobles
Unlike their Ottoman and Safavid counterparts after the 1590s, the Mughals never instituted ordered rules of dynastic succession. Operating within an open-ended and highly competitive system of succession that encouraged rebellion against the emperor and conflict amongst contending siblings, Mughal princes spent decades cultivating groups and forging alliances across a wide geographical terrain. The rules of this deadly contest were simple and are best summed up by the terse Persian phrase: Ya takht, ya tabut (either the throne or the tomb). Ultimately, however, inasmuch as a prince's competitive impulses directly benefited his own dynastic ambitions they also—more crucially—drew disparate social groups beyond the Mughal court into partnership with the imperial dynasty.
Rather than threatening the strength of the Mughal Empire, princely activities of retinue and alliance building and competition were crucial cornerstones of Mughal state formation in the dynamic economic, political and social climate of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century South Asia. Even as successive generations of princes scrambled for the throne for fear of death, they built and nurtured relationships with all manner of potential allies. These efforts would not only unfold in the opulence of the imperial court but, more importantly, in the arid mountains of Afghanistan, the steamy riverine areas of Bengal, the coastal plains of the Konkan, the cotton-weaving areas of the Coromandel, and also the high plateau of the Deccan. In fact, it was to recruit support that individual princes often travelled to the geographical peripheries of the Mughal Empire and in so doing both expanded these peripheries and also incorporated potential opponents into an imperial Mughal framework.
Crucially, service within princely establishments became the primary mechanism through which the Mughal Empire accommodated groups that were distant from and unfamiliar with Indo-Mughal norms of statecraft and sovereignty. Put differently, princely retinues were the outstations where Indo-Islamic and Mughal political and social norms were learnt and loyalty to the dynasty cultivated and tested. The institution of the Mughal Prince arguably played a central role in extending and sustaining Mughal state formation until Aurangzeb's reign.Footnote 5
The position of the Mughal princes, however, declined dramatically during Aurangzeb's reign. Although it is impossible to definitively explain Aurangzeb's motives for undermining his sons' critical role within the Mughal system, this much is clear: he, unlike his imperial predecessors, deliberately deprived his sons of any real opportunities to build independent bases of authority. He also made it difficult for them to cultivate and sustain ties to powerful political, social and economic networks. The emperor used a panoply of tools to achieve these ends, including frequently rotating his sons through provincial assignments and independent military commands, weakening princely establishments by transferring princely loyalists out of them and, more generally, crushing any signs of opposition to the emperor.
Most significantly, however, Aurangzeb fostered a powerful and ultra-loyal core of high-ranking nobles—among whom were Ghaziuddin Khan and Nizam-ul-Mulk—to serve as a counterweight to his sons. Although these nobles continued to pay lip service to the authority of the emperor's sons and grandsons, Aurangzeb implicitly encouraged them to view princes as potential competitors rather than overlords. Indeed, the success of Aurangzeb's political strategy is manifest in Ghaziuddin Khan's direct challenge of Prince Akbar and Prince Muazzam when they opposed their imperial father.Footnote 6
As long as Aurangzeb was alive, men like Nizam-ul-Mulk and his father never wavered in their loyalty to the ageing but relentless emperor. This was true even when large swathes of the Mughal nobility had clearly lost all confidence in achieving the emperor's goal of conquering and pacifying the Deccan.Footnote 7 In the face of widespread demoralization and defeatism, Nizam-ul-Mulk remained a standout general; contemporary sources describe him as showing a casual disregard for his own personal safety when on imperial duty.Footnote 8 How can we explain the Nizam's determination to stay the course until Aurangzeb commanded otherwise? The Nizam's personal letters and anecdotes provide us with some initial insights.
The Nizam and Aurangzeb
On one level, the relationship between the Nizam and Aurangzeb was one of deep personal regard. Reading the Nizam's materials, one is struck by the depth of his reverence for Aurangzeb, even decades after his death in 1707. Nizam-ul-Mulk clearly felt that he had learned much of what he knew about people, politics, loyalty, leadership and religion through his association with Aurangzeb.Footnote 9 The two men, despite a 53-year age gap, by the Nizam's account, enjoyed a strong relationship that went all the way back to the Nizam's infancy when Aurangzeb himself personally chose the Nizam's non-noble and birth name—‘Mir Qamaruddin’. Other examples of intimate relations abound: when the Nizam was a very young boy, the emperor requested that Ghaziuddin Khan (his father) leave him under Aurangzeb's personal charge for 1 day a week so that the emperor might train himFootnote 10; when the Nizam was only 6 years old Aurangzeb granted him his first noble rankFootnote 11; and the emperor took it upon himself on at least two occasions (in 1698 and 1705) to mediate breaches in relations between the Nizam and his estranged father.Footnote 12 Such favours—not to mention unusually close contact with the emperor—bred loyalty over and above that of an ordinary khanazad (house-born) Mughal nobleman who spent most of his youth imbibing Mughal political and social values while in residence at the imperial court.Footnote 13
Two additional factors, however, may explain the Nizam's unquestioned loyalty to Aurangzeb. First, even as Aurangzeb promoted the Nizam and his father to the highest rungs within the Mughal nobility, he extended his generosity to other members of their extended family as well. Muhammad Amin Khan—who was Ghaziuddin Khan's first cousin and the Nizam's uncle—is a case in point. Within 9 years of his arrival in India from Central Asia in 1687, Muhammad Amin Khan was promoted to the much-coveted position of sadr-us-sudur—the position once held by the Nizam's grandfather. Later, just prior to Aurangzeb's death, Muhammad Amin Khan was further honoured with the imperial title of ‘Chin Muhammad Khan’ and another rise in his imperial rank.Footnote 14 Such examples of imperial favour towards the Nizam's extended circle, including uncles, cousins, nephews and family retainers, abound. Having received seemingly boundless imperial patronage and generosity, could there be any question that the Nizam would not, to use a favourite Mughal expression, be true to his salt?
Second, Aurangzeb's success in drawing the Nizam and his extended family into an ever-closer political relationship led the emperor's sons to foreclose any possibility of a political alliance with them. This further reinforced the Nizam's loyalty to Aurangzeb.
Survival and Isolation in the Post-Aurangzeb Era
Everyone knew that the emperor would not live forever. By the early 1700s Aurangzeb was already in his mid-80s (an astounding fact given that the average life expectancy at the time was likely not more than 30 years). Having mostly burnt their bridges with Aurangzeb's three surviving sons (Muazzam, Azam and Kambakhsh), the Nizam, his father, and their supporters were thus faced with the real possibility that the next emperor would destroy their collective power. Rather than resigning themselves to this fate, or turning belatedly (and most likely futilely) to the task of allying with one of the princes and thus betraying Aurangzeb's trust, the Nizam and Ghaziuddin Khan chose a risky strategy, one for which there was no precedent. They were going to sit out the much-anticipated war of succession, maintaining strict neutrality towards the rival contenders.
At the same time, they prepared themselves for the possibility of princely aggression. Towards this end, the Nizam and his family began stockpiling weapons—especially artillery—in the early 1700s. The buildup did not go unnoticed. In a 1703 letter from Aurangzeb to his grandson, Bidar Bakht, the emperor states:
. . .Khan Firuz Jang's (i.e. Ghaziuddin Khan) expenses for his followers are greater than the requirements for his rank and salary (ziyadah az zabit-i mansab wa tankhwah). I noticed all manner of guns. . . horsemen with weapons. . . and many other things, some of which are necessary and others not. As a result I confiscated many of those things.Footnote 15
If Aurangzeb's decision to confiscate some weapons proved a set back, it nonetheless was only a temporary one. For, by the time the emperor passed away in February 1707, the Nizam, his father, their extended family, and their supporters were ready to implement their plan of armed neutrality.
Upon learning of the emperor's death, the Nizam and Muhammad Amin Khan undertook a series of difficult manoeuvres as they simultaneously negotiated their noble duties and their desire for neutrality. First, they deserted their commander Prince Kambakhsh (then governor of Bijapur). They then journeyed to the imperial encampment near Daulatabad where they paid their last respects to Aurangzeb and also congratulated Prince Azam—who was in the camp at the time—on declaring himself emperor. Under some duress they agreed to accompany Prince Azam's army northwards to fight against Prince Muazzam who, meanwhile, was marching southwards from his stronghold in Kabul. During the journey, however, the Nizam and Muhammad Amin Khan deserted Prince Azam's army, plundered its supply train, and made off towards the city of Burhanpur where they quietly awaited the outcome of the conflict. Their actions matched those of Ghaziuddin Khan who refused to leave his armed encampment in Daulatabad despite many invitations to also join Prince Azam's army.
After 3 months, Prince Azam was defeated and killed by Prince Muazzam at the Battle of Jajau (June, 1707). With military momentum and almost all the personnel and financial resources of the Mughal Empire under his control, Prince Muazzam now moved towards the Deccan to confront Prince Kambakhsh. The outcome of the conflict between the princes was never in doubt (Prince Kambakhsh died following a brief battle near the city of Hyderabad). What was uncertain, however, was Prince Muazzam's response to Ghaziuddin Khan, the Nizam, and their supporters. Would he order their elimination? Their disgrace and banishment? Or, would he favour forgiveness and magnanimity? In the end, and likely following calculations concerning their military strength, Prince Muazzam (now crowned as Emperor Bahadur Shah) chose the third option. It would soon become clear, however, that the rewards and high-ranking assignments granted by Bahadur Shah were nothing more than sops. The Nizam, his family, and their supporters were not going to be trusted in any significant way and they certainly were not going to be admitted into the emperor's inner circle. This was the price for having been so closely associated with Aurangzeb against his sons and grandsons.
Between 1707 and 1720, over the course of the short reigns of several Mughal emperors, the Nizam was largely isolated at the imperial court. In 1710, for example, the Nizam took the unusual step of resigning all his imperial positions; he groused that Bahadur Shah was unfairly favouring ‘low-born’ individuals (i.e. those without lineage) over those with deep roots in the Mughal nobility (himself and, by extension, his own supporters).Footnote 16 Bahadur Shah paid little heed to the nobleman's complaints. The bad blood lasted until the emperor's death in 1712 and the subsequent war of succession. As in 1707, the Nizam again took the extraordinary step of sitting out the conflict. Naturally, this did not endear him to the next emperor—Jahandar Shah (r. 1712–13).
What likely irritated Jahandar Shah even further, however, was the Nizam's threat to again resign all imperial commissions (including the recently acquired governorship of Malwa) if the new emperor continued to favour individuals whom the Nizam deemed unworthy.Footnote 17 All indications suggest that the Nizam would have been militarily crushed by Jahandar Shah had the latter not been dethroned in 1713 by his nephew, Farruksiyar (r. 1713–19).Footnote 18
The Nizam played no part in Farrukhsiyar's accession. As a result he continued to remain fairly marginal to the imperial court's inner workings. This is attested by the fact that although the Nizam received the much-coveted governorship of the Deccan in 1713, he was summarily dismissed from that post in 1715. Through the early years of Farrukhsiyar's reign, the Nizam's political and military strength vis-à-vis the imperial court declined as his diverse and often-fractious coalition of family members, political allies and clients fell apart. Muhammad Amin Khan, in particular, proved a weak link for he had never accepted the Nizam as the head of the extended family following the death of Ghaziuddin Khan in 1710. The two men also seem to have disagreed over the direction of the empire. Where the Nizam felt the empire was increasingly adrift (and reacted by withdrawing to his estates in the Moradabad region between 1715 and 1719), Muhammad Amin Khan was committed to accruing power at the imperial court. Initially the Khan sought to do so through the patronage of the Sayyid brothers—the primary backers of Farrukhsiyar's 1712–13 campaign to ascend the Mughal throne. After 1716, however, the Khan worked to supplant the Brothers as the main powerbroker at the Mughal court.
Although Nizam-ul-Mulk would reassert his importance in Mughal politics by helping Muhammad Amin Khan engineer the downfall of the Sayyid brothers in 1719–20,Footnote 19 he would be shortchanged in the political jockeying that followed. Despite widespread expectations that he would be rewarded with the position of wazir (prime minister) of the Mughal Empire by the new emperor—Muhammad Shah (r. 1720–48)—the Nizam found himself thwarted by none other than Muhammad Amin Khan who grabbed the position for himself. In so doing, according to a very bitter Nizam, Muhammad Amin Khan had betrayed him.Footnote 20 In order to avoid a conflict with his uncle, however, the Nizam accepted the governorship of the Deccan for the second time in his career.
While the Nizam made the most of the opportunity (as detailed in the next section), the Deccan clearly remained a second-choice assignment. If the Nizam was privately contemplating a post-Mughal future, then his public actions certainly give us no hint of that possibility. In fact, following the premature death of Muhammad Amin Khan in 1722, the Nizam lost no time in pressing for and ultimately getting the post he had coveted for so long: that of wazir.Footnote 21
A Pyhrric Victory
Nizam-ul-Mulk's tenure as wazir lasted less than 2 years. During this time, he proposed various reform-minded administrative measures (especially in fiscal matters), sought greater control over the imperial bureaucracy, and attempted to tame some of the powerful factions at the imperial court. Each of these initiatives ended in spectacular failure. Undermined at every turn by powerful opponents, the Nizam was finally driven out of the Mughal court after a rebellion was engineered against him in the Deccan.Footnote 22 Forced to protect the foundation of his power—namely his control over the Deccan—the Nizam journeyed southwards in 1724. In so doing, he completed a decades-long transition from loyal Mughal khanazad to semi-independent ruler.
Ultimately, it was the Nizam's marginality and weakness—not his strength, as much of the historiography on Hyderabad suggestsFootnote 23 —that forced him to countenance the possibility of a life beyond the imperial court in 1724. Similarly, studies that suggest that the Nizam deliberately abandoned or even wrecked the Mughal system in order to consolidate his own power in the Deccan misread the Nizam's intentions.Footnote 24 Although there is no denying his poor relations with, and lack of regard for, the rulers who followed Aurangzeb, the Nizam was undoubtedly invested in reviving the empire's glory, albeit on his own terms. This fact does not, however, render him a renegade or traitor to the system that spawned him. If anything, the Nizam's desperation to achieve the rank of wazir in 1722 suggests a deep desire to fulfil his political ambitions within the purview of Mughal politics; it is not hard to imagine the Nizam picturing himself as a latter-day Sadullah Khan (his maternal grandfather who was Emperor Shah Jahan's renowned prime minister).
In retaining a commitment to the Mughal enterprise into the 1720s, the Nizam's egress from the imperial system was crucially different from that of other Mughal noblemen who founded Mughal ‘successor states’—like Murshid Quli Khan (d. 1727) in Bengal, Abdus Samad Khan (d. 1738) in the Punjab, or Burhan-ul-Mulk (d. 1739) in Awadh. Unlike the latter three who parlayed increasingly lengthy stints in their respective regions towards quietly asserting their independence, the Nizam had to fight to establish himself in the Deccan. He, after all, had spent less than 5 years in the region between 1707 and 1724. Ultimately, understanding what distinguishes the Nizam from the rulers of the other so-called ‘successor states’ is important for at least two reasons.
First, it is crucial towards advancing the larger historiography of the eighteenth century. Without a nuanced understanding of differences between the different ‘successor states’, there will be a continued tendency to elide their unique histories.Footnote 25 This would be especially unfortunate in the case of Hyderabad given its status as the only ‘successor state’ outside of the former Mughal heartlands in the Indo-Gangetic region. There is no doubt that Hyderabad faced unique sets of challenges in asserting its statehood and identity compared to the other northern ‘successor states’. Second, any significant efforts to engage comparative approaches to eighteenth-century political history or even complicate long-standing debates about eighteenth-century economic ‘crises’ and Mughal ‘decline’, will continue to be stymied if we are unable to make more finely graded judgments about the various ‘successor states’.Footnote 26
The next section will explore Hyderabad's distinctive founding history while also explaining the state's survival. As will be clear, Hyderabad was neither fully formed in 1724 nor did it survive the next few decades without continuous and innovative work under the most challenging circumstances. Unfortunately, contemporary understanding of the socio-political processes that went into the creation of Hyderabad remains, at best, vague.Footnote 27 Furthermore, there is a marked tendency to view pre-1748 Hyderabad through the same prism as its slothful and hopelessly mismanaged late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century avatar. Such views beg revision.
III. The Establishment and Consolidation of Hyderabad, 1724–48
The Challenges Confronting Hyderabad
Upon his arrival in the Deccan in 1724, the Nizam faced a number of problems. The most threatening was the political and military strength of the Marathas. Having first ground down Aurangzeb's armies in the Deccan and then forced subsequent Mughal rulers to acknowledge their right to tax the inhabitants of the Deccan, the Marathas seemed bent on preventing the Nizam from establishing an independent state. The Marathas had good reason to be wary of the Nizam; he had built a reputation since the early 1710s as an opponent to any tax concessions to the Marathas. Thus, although the Marathas initially helped the Nizam establish himself in the Deccan in 1724 by lending him support against a rival Mughal general (Mubariz Khan), they quickly rued their assistance.
The Marathas were only one of many threats facing the Nizam. Other groups in the Deccan—including the Afghans, Berads and Telugus—similarly saw the Nizam and his supporters as political interlopers. Having previously evaded or opposed encroaching Mughal rule in south India, they were not about to give up their relative political or economic autonomy to the Nizam without a fight. On top of these challenges, Nizam-ul-Mulk was confronted by three additional and arguably more profound challenges.
First, he could not entirely rely on the institutional structures of Mughal imperial rule to boost his authority. This was because Mughal rule in the region was both a relatively recent imposition (dating from the late 1680s at the earliest) and shallow in its application because of conditions of almost non-stop warfare across the region. The Nizam's difficult circumstances contrasted greatly from those of the post-Mughal rulers of Awadh, the Punjab and Bengal where 100 years or more of Mughal imperial experience provided more solid foundations upon which to build new states. So, how was the Nizam to build institutions that simultaneously drew on Mughal expertise but also were sensitive to the local applicability of Mughal models?
Second, the Nizam had to overcome a series of profound cultural chasms between Hyderabad's new ruling elites and many of their subjects—especially those living in the extreme south. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the relationship to Persian. Whereas, the Nizam and most of his closest associates grew up in and operated in a world where Persian was central to the articulation of power, authority and legitimacy,Footnote 28 Persian's importance faded to insignificance in the southern reaches of peninsular India. In areas such as Mysore, Kerala and Tamil Nadu local languages were the language of statecraft. How was the Nizam to cement his rule in these areas if he did not have the cultural tools to back his military strengths?
Third, while establishing his rule over the six Mughal subas (provinces) that comprised the Deccan, the Nizam was painfully aware of their different historical, political and cultural trajectories. The Nizam knew that a one-size-fits-all approach to governance was bound to imperil his authority.Footnote 29 So, how was he to balance this difficulty without fatally undermining the administrative and political unity that he hoped to establish over the entire region?
Building Blocks of the New State
For all the challenges he faced, Nizam-ul-Mulk did enjoy a number of powerful advantages in his quest to establish the state of Hyderabad. Among the more important was his deep personal knowledge of the region's political, social and economic networks. These insights came from time spent in the Deccan—first as a commander through the last 25 years of Aurangzeb's reign, and then as governor between 1713–15 and 1720–22. Ultimately, the Nizam had a clear sense of which groups had to be conciliated and which threatened with violence, which trusted and which sidelined as he went about building Hyderabad. His complex and carefully calibrated relations in the post-1724 period with such varied groups as the Marathas, Afghans, Dakhinis, Gond and Bhil tribals, and Telugus underscore the Nizam's sensitivity to the minutiae of Deccani politics. The success of Nizam-ul-Mulk's enterprise in the final analysis, however, depended on yet another fundamental strength: the ability to threaten, and if needed, use violence against recalcitrant opponents. In this regard, the Nizam wielded two powerful tools—first, a disciplined, experienced and well-equipped core of loyalists, and, second, strong support from the imperial military and bureaucratic apparatus, such as it was, in the regions that had come under Mughal control over the previous decades.
As detailed in Section II, the armed strength of the Nizam and his family was a key factor protecting them against retribution from Aurangzeb's successors. This strength would also be crucial in establishing the Nizam's political and military fortunes in the Deccan. Who were the Nizam's supporters, and what made them such a potent force? Contrary to the view of many historians,Footnote 30 this article finds little merit in the argument that the Nizam commanded a ‘Turani’ faction (comprising mostly familial and clan members, recent unrelated immigrants from Central Asia, and various Barlas, Chaghatay, Kazakh, Qalmaq and Mughal Turks who were long settled in India).Footnote 31 Although ‘Turanis’ were important supporters of the Nizam, his household forces also included many Afghans (including Deccan-based Khweshgis and Ansaris), Indian Muslims (including many members of the Nizam's maternal family—who were originally from the Punjab), Khatris, Kayasths, Bundelas, Rajputs and Dakhinis. Indeed, one of the Nizam's closest advisors was a north Indian Muslim from the town of Shikohabad—Abul Khair Khan, the founder of the famous Paigah lineage that would dominate Hyderabad's nobility until the destruction of the state in 1948.
Despite great ethnic and religious diversity, the Nizam's supporters repeatedly proved their cohesiveness and loyalty. Cementing the bonds among the Nizam's loyalists were conditions of long-standing service to the Nizam (and in some cases his father and grandfather). The Nizam also benefited from perceptions that he was a generous, kind and principled patron,Footnote 32 spiritually blessed,Footnote 33 and Aurangzeb's last living political legatee.Footnote 34 After the Nizam abandoned the Mughal court in 1724, there was also a sense among the Nizam's supporters that they were fighting both for their patron's political future as well as their own right to begin new lives in the Deccan. Their élan and bravery during the 1724 campaign contrasted sharply with that of their fractious opponents under the command of Mubariz Khan (who was ordered by the Mughal court to destroy the Nizam's base in the Deccan). The Nizam's military strength, however, depended on a second crucial source: strong support within the Deccan-based imperial administration itself. It had been cultivated well before the first volley was fired in the battle against Mubariz Khan.
During his second stint as governor of the Deccan (1720–22), the Nizam made an important decision. Unsure of his political future in the imperial capital, the Nizam began to build a base for himself in the Deccan.Footnote 35 It is unlikely that the Nizam was working towards a declaration of independence, as suggested by some scholars.Footnote 36 Rather, it seems that he hoped to use his control over the Deccan to leverage the position of wazir at the imperial court. Whatever his motives, the impact of the Nizam's actions are clear; he installed family members and imperial loyalists in many of the most important positions across the Deccan. These appointments were complemented by enhanced imperial positions (mansabs) and land assignments (jagirs) for supporters, the assertion of direct control over departments (such as revenue and intelligence) previously outside the governor's control, the transfer of individuals who were deemed politically unreliable,Footnote 37 and tribute-extracting expeditions against various groups—especially Afghans—aimed at garnering financial resources.Footnote 38 By 1722—when the Nizam left the Deccan to become wazir of the Mughal Empire—he had largely stamped his authority over the imperial administration across the region. Mubariz Khan would only belatedly learn this lesson when the expected support from fellow Deccan-based imperial officials did not materialize.Footnote 39
After 1724, the Nizam would use his personal retainers and supporters alongside members of the (former) imperial establishment to assert his political and military authority across the entire Deccan.Footnote 40 The state of Hyderabad was born out of these efforts. Hyderabad's long-term survival, however, ultimately depended on other processes as well. None was more important than finding a way to contain the nascent state's many regional and ethnic opponents.
There is an interesting anecdote in Lala Mansaram's contemporaneous text, Maasir-i Nizami. He quotes the Nizam stating: ‘For the efficient administration of the province of the Deccan it is absolutely imperative that three communities should be avoided. . . first Afghans, second Deccanis, and third Marathas’. According to the Nizam each believed that they had a claim to ruling the Deccan.Footnote 41 Contrast this statement with another one—namely the very first clause of the Nizam's 1748 final testament. Here he advises his successors differently: ‘It is necessary for the ruler of the Deccan who desires his own safety, peace from war, and the prosperity of his country to have peace with the Marathas who are the landholders (zamindaran) of this region’.Footnote 42 These quotes get at the heart of Hyderabad's dilemma: even as it needed collaborators among the major ethnic groups in the region, most of the latter viewed the newly emergent state as a threat to their own political aspirations and claims on the land. Put differently, the Nizam was widely seen as an interloper in the region. How did he resolve this conundrum? He used political compromise, financial inducements and the application of military force. Relations with the Marathas richly illustrate use of all these tactics.
Hyderabad and the Marathas
In 1724, there were two major Maratha factions in the Deccan; each acknowledged different grandsons of the great Maratha commander, Shivaji (d. 1681), as their leader—Shahu of Satara or Sambhaji of Kolhapur. Although deeply divided, the two factions temporarily united to help the Nizam defeat Mubariz Khan at the Battle of Shakarkheda. They supported the Nizam for a mixture of reasons: important individuals in both factions had personal relations with the Nizam going back to his previous stints in the DeccanFootnote 43; the Marathas hoped to reap large political and economic rewards for their support of the former Mughal strongman; and both Maratha factions wanted to prevent an exclusive alliance between the Nizam and the other faction. On the Nizam's side, he felt he could use the Marathas to his advantage as long as he offered them some direct political and economic benefit. Thus, shortly after defeating Mubariz Khan, the Nizam confidently predicted that ‘this entire army (i.e. the Marathas) is my own. I will get work done through them. . . I will entrust the governance on that side of the (River) Narmada to them. . . Their armies will not enter my dominions (taluqa-i man)’.Footnote 44
Unfortunately, Shahu of Satara had grander expectations of recompense. Foremost among them was the right to collect certain taxes (chauth and sardeshmukhi, amounting to 35% of total revenue) across the entire Deccan—including the Nizam's territories. After trying in vain to negotiate with Shahu, the Nizam resolved to fight. He did so by invading areas under Shahu's control and also sealing a controversial military alliance with Sambhaji.Footnote 45
The struggle between Shahu and the Nizam (who was supported by Sambhaji) lasted 3 years. By 1728, however, Shahu was victorious. Seeing the writing on the wall, the Nizam agreed to recognize Shahu as Shivaji's sole successor; support for Sambhaji was dropped. The Nizam also agreed to all of Shahu's taxation demands except one: the creation of a Maratha-operated bureaucracy to collect the tributary taxes. Instead, he insisted on creating his own tax collection administration, led either by a Nizam-appointed jagirdar (military assignee) or tahsildar-i chauth (a revenue farmer or ijaradar).Footnote 46 Although the Nizam's pride was severely dented by this capitulation, he remained committed to meeting Maratha tax demands over the next two decades (even if he continued to fight them outside the Deccan for control over the former Mughal province of Malwa or the southern region of Arcot).Footnote 47
His determination to maintain good working relations is suggested in an angry exchange with his uncle Iwaz Khan (d. 1731). Upon learning that the nobleman had shown great disrespect towards visiting Maratha representatives, the Nizam rebuked him for being uncomprehending (nafahm), lacking in wisdom (nadan), and shortsighted (kamandesh). The Nizam explained that the Marathas ‘are the landholders of this country’ who could not even be defeated by Emperor Aurangzeb, ‘despite his immense army and expenditure of the entire treasure of Hindustan (i.e. northern India)’. Due to the Khan's lack of courtesy (ta‘azzum), all of the Nizam's efforts to make them ‘obedient and loyal to me through diplomacy’ are now threatened. Such behaviour is ‘inexcusable’.Footnote 48
The Nizam's words suggest an understanding that if the Marathas really focused their energies they could destroy Hyderabad,Footnote 49 and that as long as relations with the Maratha state were poor, he could not hope to win the support of Marathas living in regions under his control.Footnote 50 Often, the Nizam sought justification for his conciliatory policies by invoking the memory of Emperor Aurangzeb's failure to militarily crush the Marathas despite being supported by the vast resources of the Mughal Empire.Footnote 51
By the late 1730s, the Nizam's policy of seeking relatively stable relations with the Marathas began to bear both financial and political fruits. The former is borne out by the revival of agriculture (and taxation) across much of the Deccan—even regions like Khandesh that had been devastated by decades of incessant warfare began to recover.Footnote 52 On the political front, no longer fearful that the Marathas would take advantage of his absence to crush the state of Hyderabad, the Nizam left the Deccan in order to contest Maratha attempts to control the province of Malwa. The province lay on the northern flank of the nascent Hyderabadi state. More importantly, however, steady relations with Shahu enabled the Nizam increasingly to draw previously hostile Maratha zamindars into serving his administration as low-level revenue officials (deshmukhs, amils, deshpandias and desais) and revenue contractors (ijaradars)—especially in the provinces of Khandesh, Aurangabad and Bijapur (all adjoined the Maratha dominion). Other Marathi-speaking groups were similarly drawn into service in the Hyderabadi state. Among them were various Brahmin groups (especially Karhades and Deshasthas) who brought highly valued scribal and administrative skills, and crucial political, economic and social networks that reached back into the Maratha state. These links played a key role in fostering ties between Hyderabad and the Marathas. Many Marathi-Brahmans would rise over the coming decades to positions of power and authority within the nizamate.Footnote 53
Of greatest significance, however, was the steady influx of Maratha military men—like Rao Rambha Nimbalkar—who decided that rich opportunities for career advancement and wealth now lay in employment with the Nizam.Footnote 54 Besides bringing large contingents of Maratha troops with them (supposedly 20,000 in the case of Rao Rambha), they brought badly needed fighting skills (such as the Maratha mastery over fast-moving, horse-based guerilla tactics). The Nizam would use various Maratha commanders, including Rao Rambha, to good effect against not only the Afghans and Berads of southern India, but also fellow Marathas.Footnote 55 Warfare nevertheless always remained a second option for the Nizam; whenever possible, he preferred to achieve his goals through diplomacy, compromise and financial incentives.Footnote 56 His relations with ethnic groups like the Afghans, Telugus and Berads highlight this policy.
Hyderabad's Relations with Afghans, Telugus and Berads
In the years immediately following the establishment of Hyderabad, Nizam-ul-Mulk faced bitter military resistance from various Afghan, Berad and Telugu groups. This was despite efforts at reconciling high-ranking individuals in each group. Summing up the failure of his conciliatory policies vis-à-vis the Afghans, for example, the Nizam stated:
Izd-ud-daula (i.e. Iwaz Khan, the Nizam's uncle) wrote to me that I should win over and ally myself with the Afghans. . . His advice was reasonable. I did my best to give them proper advice. In spite of my efforts, however, the Afghans did not listen to me. . . it is then that I realized the danger in waiting for this duplicitous group (i.e. Afghans) since the Marathas have already entered into an unholy alliance with them.Footnote 57
Between 1725 and 1730, the Nizam launched military campaigns against not only the Afghans, but also the Telugus and Berads as well; all were defeated. The Nizam, however, generally eschewed calls to destroy their power.Footnote 58 Instead, he settled on a policy of deliberately including them within the apparatus of the Hyderabadi state. Thus, Afghans were confirmed as military intendants (faujdars) and fort commandants (qiladars) in areas where they had previously dominated (such as Cuddapah, Savanur and Kurnool).Footnote 59 In similar fashion, more than a dozen Telugu ‘little kingdoms’ (samasthans) were allowed to retain their autonomy within the Hyderabadi state as long as they paid an annual tribute, contributed a certain number of troops for military campaigns, and occasionally sent representatives to attend the Nizam's darbar (court).Footnote 60 The Nizam's generous treatment of the Telugu nayaks (chiefs) marked a clear departure from the policies pursued by his predecessor, Mubariz Khan, in the early 1720s.Footnote 61 The Nizam, however, handled the Berads slightly differently. Arguably because they proved the toughest group to subjugate (alongside ever present fears that they were colluding with the Marathas), the Nizam refused to leave former strongholds—like the fortresses of Wakinkheda, Sagar, Devadurg—in the possession of their nayaks.Footnote 62 He did, however, allow large numbers of Berad chiefs to become peshkashi zamindars (tribute-paying landholders) and mal-wajib zamindars (landholders who paid land revenue).Footnote 63 He also heavily recruited Berads into the Hyderabadi army and accommodated them within the lower ranks of the nascent Hyderabadi land-revenue administration in southern India.Footnote 64 Judging from the lists of deshmukhs and deshpandias for the region of Hyderabad, large numbers of Telugus were similarly accommodated within the lower ranks of the state's bureaucracy.Footnote 65
The Results of Accommodation
The slow absorption of groups like the Afghans, Telugus, Berads and Marathas within the newly created state structures of Hyderabad was absolutely crucial for its survival. On the most fundamental level, social, political and economic linkages were now forged between different arenas of power. This was important for a number of reasons. First, it began a process whereby the cultural chasm between an almost exclusively Persian-speaking (and often north Indian immigrant) elite and non–Persian-speaking majority was slowly bridged through the use of locally based but state-approved intermediaries. In the decades after 1724 these individuals slowly but surely began to learn at least a modicum of Persian in order to qualify or retain administrative jobs in the emerging Hyderabadi bureaucracy.Footnote 66 Second, with the cooptation of local elites into potentially lucrative administrative jobs, we see the first signs of political and military investments in the survival of Hyderabad. These are in evidence in the early 1740s when Hyderabad waged a difficult (and successful) military campaign against the Marathas in the southern region of Arcot. Hyderabad's victory was in no small part linked to strong Afghan, Telugu and Berad support. Why did they side with Hyderabad? Unlike the Marathas who sought to implant Maratha and Marathi-speaking land-revenue administrators (kamaishdars and gumashtas) across the region, Hyderabad had already indicated its willingness to work with/through local power structures and their representatives. Third, although Hyderabad's share of the all-important land-revenue taxes was somewhat compromised by its bargain with powerful local groups, it nonetheless gained access to a regular flow of income that helped it maintain critical financial solvency through the 1740s.Footnote 67 Ultimately, nothing mattered more to the state's administrators.
There is a second over-arching reason, however, as to why the absorption of large numbers of Afghans, Telugus, Berads and Marathas (and other groups as well, including Tamils, Bhils and GondsFootnote 68) ensured Hyderabad's survival: it forced the state to build administrative structures that were flexible, locally adapted, and cognizant of limits on its power. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Hyderabad's relationship to Mughal models of administrative control. Even as Hyderabad proclaimed its continuity with Mughal administrative regulations,Footnote 69 the reality was quite different; the state consistently broke basic Mughal administrative rules. Thus, for example, officials were not transferred as frequently as required; multiple administrative posts were often combined within a single person; complex processes of bargaining rather than cadastral surveys (although one was taken in 1726–27) tended to determine revenue payments by zamindars; many lower-level revenue offices were allowed to become hereditary; and revenue farming (ijaradari) was tolerated, albeit reluctantly.Footnote 70 These are just some of the many examples of Hyderabad's administrative pragmatism in an environment where a wholesale and rigid application of Mughal imperial models would have been futile at best or provoked massive resistance at worst. Such flexibility was one of Hyderabad's defining early traits and it would be apparent in other areas of the state's identity as well—among them its political relationship to the Mughal court.
Hyderabad and the Mughal Court
Following the Mughal court's abortive 1724 attempt to assert its control over the Deccan, the Nizam did the unexpected. Rather than detach himself from the authority of the empire, he insisted on maintaining the fiction that Hyderabad was a Mughal dependency. This state of affairs would continue until the Nizam's death in 1748. As a result, the Nizam never crowned himself king; he refrained from using marks of imperial authority—such as the colour red or the chattri (royal umbrella); he continued to issue coins and have the khutba (Islamic Friday sermon) read in the name of Emperor Muhammad Shah (r. 1720–48); official documents continued to use the emperor's regnal year for dating purposes; and the Nizam's own seal—where he called himself a fidvi (servant) of Muhammad Shah—attested to his public submission.Footnote 71 Other actions were similarly intended to highlight the lack of any ill will towards the emperor.Footnote 72 Indeed, on his deathbed, the Nizam would importune his heirs to:
Under all circumstances remember that the governance (riyasat) of the Deccan is dependent on our constant service and fidelity to the emperor. It is necessary that you should under no circumstances be remiss in showing the proper respect (adab) to the emperor. . . You should under no circumstances be cursed (mat‘un) for violating the bonds of respect.Footnote 73
Why did the Nizam pursue this political course? Why did Hyderabad not conclusively break with the Mughals after 1724?
Scholars have tended to emphasize two reasons for the Nizam's decision. The first claims that the Nizam felt a deep residual loyalty to the Mughal royal family. Pride in his own past as an imperial nobleman led him to maintain his loyalty.Footnote 74 The second asserts that since the nizamate was the outcome of Central Asian, Persian and north Indian ‘colonization’, its political, religious and social traditions remained firmly anchored in a north Indian ecumene. Ultimately, Hyderabad did not break with the empire because its elites were invested in maintaining their cultural roots in the north.Footnote 75 Neither of these arguments is entirely convincing, however. A more convincing explanation stems from asking what Hyderabad stood to lose by maintaining its association with the imperial court.
The answer appears to be very little. With the imperial court at a safe geographical distance and the Maratha state acting as a political barrier, the emperor could not intervene in Hyderabad's local affairs.Footnote 76 The attempt to pit Mubariz Khan against the Nizam in fact marked Emperor Muhammad Shah's final hand. After 1724, the Nizam ensured that all imperial officials remaining in the Deccan swore loyalty to him alone or else forfeited rank and position.
It may be argued that, by maintaining its ties to the imperial centre, Hyderabad was sacrificing its ability to forge a new non-Mughal and non-imperial identity, one that was in greater synch with the regional politics of peninsular India. While there may have been some truth to this assertion at the level of elite politics, Hyderabad's extra-imperial links actually seem to have had little to no impact on its stature at the local level—the level at which taxes were levied, foot soldiers recruited and social connections forged. Here the state was being judged purely on its ability to provide financial and political accommodations for various regional and local ethnic groups.
What, then, did Hyderabad gain through its fictive allegiance to the emperor in distant Delhi? Muzaffar Alam has highlighted the important role the Mughal court played in bestowing ‘institutional validation’ on ‘successor’ states that desperately needed to ‘legitimize their acquisitions’. According to Alam, recognition by the Mughal court was crucial to negotiate relations between ‘successor’ states as well as to reinforce the new elites' dominance over local groups in their respective regions.Footnote 77 While Hyderabad certainly was interested in maintaining stable relations with other post-Mughal states,Footnote 78 Mughal validation itself arguably offered few advantages to the Nizam in his attempts to dominate such Deccan-based groups as the Marathas, Telugus, Berads or Afghans. But it did play a significant role in Hyderabad's desire to entice southward immigration from the old heartlands of the Mughal Empire, a task that appears to have been somewhat difficult.
In an essay on Sufism in eighteenth-century Deccan, Nile Green writes ‘prior to as well as during the eighteenth century the Deccan was very much felt to be a different country from Hindustan (i.e. northern India)’.Footnote 79 Besides physical distances being great and journeys between the two regions arduous, Hyderabad had to contend with widespread perceptions among northerners that the south was a completely alien political and cultural zone. One way in which Hyderabad hoped to parry such negative views was by reassuringly emphasizing both its lineage and continuing links to the Mughal Empire. All of this ultimately mattered only because Hyderabad was desperate to draw upon the remaining administrative, military and cultural resources of the now increasingly defunct Mughal Empire in order to build itself up. Raising the stakes for Hyderabad, however, was intense competition for the same resources from all manner of northern ‘successor states’.
Despite this competition, Hyderabad was very successful in its recruitment efforts. This was due in large part to its continuing connection with the Mughals. Indeed many north Indians viewed the state as a robust imperial dependency.Footnote 80 The Nizam, however, also proved a master recruiter. When he marched back to the Deccan after a 2-year stint in Delhi between 1738 and 1740, for example, he returned with thousands of administrators, religious scholars, intellectuals, military men and master craftsmen in tow. He seems to have directly recruited many of them. Equally significant to Hyderabad's success in recruitment was the fact that it benefited from diminishing competition from major post-Mughal states in the late 1730s and 1740s: the Punjab was increasingly consumed by Sikh rebellions, Awadh was moving towards a narrower definition of itself as a Shiite state, and Bengal was weakened by Maratha invasions and political instability. Ultimately, Hyderabad's success in attracting the talented and the adventurous can be seen in the arrival of large numbers of often highly skilled and educated Punjabi Khatris, north Indian Kayasths, Shaikhzadas and Awadhis, and ethnic Iranians and Central Asians. Others who joined this influx included trading, cultivating and warrior groups as the Banjaras, Bundelas, Afghans, Kurmis, Kumbis and Kachhis. Although the sources are extremely sketchy, it is also clear that many north Indian moneylenders and small-scale bankers (sahukars) took advantage of recently created familial networks (particularly true for Punjabi Khatris) and conditions of greater security offered by Hyderabad to move to the Deccan in the 1730s and 1740s.Footnote 81 Indeed, massive waves of migration from north India to the Deccan comprise one of the great-untold stories of the early-to-mid eighteenth century.
Hyderabad's relations towards Deccan-based ethnic groups as well as the Mughal Empire provide important illustrations of its keen instinct for survival. This story, however, would not be complete without examining one final area—namely Hyderabad's relationship to Islam and Hinduism.
Of Islam and Hinduism
There is a line of scholars extending back to such contemporaries of the Nizam as Khafi Khan and Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami who have claimed that Hyderabad was an Islamic bastion in the Deccan.Footnote 82 The historical evidence is far more ambiguous, however. The Nizam's political correspondence exemplifies this.
When corresponding about the Marathas with the Mughal emperor, Muhammad Shah, the Nizam often described his forces as ‘holy warriors’ (ghaziyan or mujahidan),Footnote 83 or an ‘army of Islam’ (lashkar-i Islam or fauj-i Islam)Footnote 84 who were engaged in a ‘jihad’Footnote 85 aimed at upholding the ‘prestige of Islam’ (ghairat-i Islam)Footnote 86 against the ‘kafirs’.Footnote 87 This overblown rhetoric is not surprising given that the Marathas were the Mughals' sworn enemies and had been instrumental in the Empire's collapse. At the same time, the Nizam's language followed standard conventions and forms that dated back to the reign of Aurangzeb and were used by Muslim and non-Muslim employees of the Mughal state alike.Footnote 88
When corresponding with others, however, the Nizam's language rarely drew on this normative Islamo-Mughal vocabulary. The Nizam's correspondence with Sawai Jai Singh II, a non-Muslim, non-Mughal ruler, provides an example of this. Here the Marathas are only referred to as ‘misguided people’, ‘Marathas’, the ‘enemy’, or ‘partisans of Shahu’.Footnote 89 Reading these two sets of correspondence without reference to the other it is easy to reach diametrically opposing judgments about the Nizam—committed jihadi or droll politician. More likely, the Nizam was a pragmatic ruler who understood the importance of contingency—tailoring different languages for different actors/audiences and situations. The same judgment seems applicable to Hyderabad's relationship to Muslims and Hindus.
Hyderabad undoubtedly placed great store in cultivating Islamic religious groups. Valued for their widespread social contacts, their political connections, their literacy, their judicial skills and (more than occasionally) their military competence, these groups were an invaluable component in Hyderabad's larger efforts at state formation. The task of honouring and cultivating Muslim religious figures therefore was taken seriously. This is attested by both the Nizam's words and actions. Thus, on his deathbed, the Nizam enjoined his successors to remember that:
. . . the respect and esteem in which I hold the community of supplicants (firqay-i duagu) has been constant. Without them no army will be of any use. I respect them above all other affairs of the state. I receive strength and courage from the mendicants (ghurba) and the faqirs. I consider them as the gateway to God. They are the followers of the Prophet. I consider it my primary duty to treat them with respect. You should also favor this practice.Footnote 90
Such statements were complemented by direct efforts at cultivating all manner of Muslim religious figures. Thus, for example, the Nizam forged close personal relations with a large number of distinguished Sufis across a number of different tariqahs (orders).Footnote 91 Significantly, he also chose to be buried in the shrine complex of Shaikh Burhanuddin Gharib (in Khuldabad). In so doing, the Nizam directly connected the political legitimacy of his family with the spiritual legitimacy of not only the powerful Deccan-based branch of the Chishti tariqah and the Chishti tariqah across India, but even the Mughal dynasty itself (which had a long and storied history of patronage towards the Chishtis).Footnote 92
The Nizam accorded great importance to honouring non-Sufi Islamic religious scholars and clerics (ulema) as well.Footnote 93 In fact, Hyderabad's reputation for generosity supposedly spread so rapidly and widely that, according to one contemporary source, ulema arrived from Arabia (Hejaz), Central Asia (Mawara-al-nahr), Iran (Ajam), Iraq and northern-eastern Iran (Khurasan) to benefit from the promise of honour and financial security.Footnote 94 Among those arriving from closer afield were large numbers of religious scholars from northern India. Many, having lost their stipends and imperial patronage, were looking for fresh beginnings in Hyderabad. The region of Awadh was particularly well represented in this migration.Footnote 95
Despite clear indications of Hyderabad's munificence and respect for Muslim religious figures, its generosity had real practical limits. Nowhere is this more apparent than the state's unwillingness to grant inam (rent-free) grants to religious figures (aimma) in areas where such grants might provoke zamindari hostility. This policy effectively restricted the aimma—and especially recent migrants to the Deccan—from settling outside most urban centres or even in large swathes of southern India.
The attempt essentially to quarantine the Muslim religious class in urban areas was a powerful departure from earlier Mughal policy that especially encouraged settlement in areas that were deemed seditious or rebellious (zortalab).Footnote 96 Hyderabad departed from post-1691 Mughal policy in other significant ways: it essentially entrusted zamindars with the authority to report any illicit attempts by the aimma to transfer or exchange land specifically granted for religious purposes.Footnote 97 It also refused to allow madad-i maash grants (assignments of rent-free lands to support religious families) to become automatically inheritable.Footnote 98 This is an especially interesting position given that Hyderabad actually loosened previously strict Mughal regulations governing the inheritability of offices within the land-revenue administration. We might conclude, then, that Hyderabad had no real interest in cultivating the entrenchment of Islamic religious classes, but did wish to encourage the emergence of a locally based, ethnically diverse, and mostly non-Muslim revenue-collecting intermediary class. If limits on the inheritability of madad grants marked an important curb on the Islamic religious establishment, continuous efforts to reform the system of daily allowances and cash stipends (wazifa)—ostensibly to root out corruption and mismanagement—effectively undermined any possibility of entrenched Islamic privilege.Footnote 99
The ambiguities that are apparent in Hyderabad's dealings with the Islamic religious establishment are on similar display in its relations with non-Muslims. Taking the Nizam's own words as a case in point, it is impossible to ignore the 15th clause in his final testament:
The Dakhini Brahmins are all fit to be killed and their heads severed. Special mention should be made of two leaders (sar-i guruh) of this community: one is Moru and the other is Ramdas. These two have been undermining the state (daulat) for a hundred years. I have imprisoned them. . . They should never be released! The word Pandit Khana is well known in the world. It means the house of imprisonment of this community.Footnote 100
The vituperation and anger is apparent. Yet how are we to make sense of this statement when juxtaposing it with the seventh clause in his will?
. . . After me it would be fitting if every family is taken care of and employed by the government according to their merits—regardless of whether they belong to the Muslim or Hindu community (che az firqay-i ahl-i Islam wa che az firqay-i Hunood).Footnote 101
Or, the 9th clause of his will in which he pointedly praises Puran Chand, his Hindu diwan (revenue and finance minister), for being a ‘good man’ who deserves security of tenure following the Nizam's demise?Footnote 102
Indeed, the Nizam's actions and Hyderabadi state policies largely point to a non-sectarian attitude towards non-Muslims. Most importantly, the Nizam unequivocally rejected calls for the imposition of the jizya (community tax on non-Muslims);Footnote 103 he allowed Hindus to continue to have civil and, in certain instances, criminal cases be tried by local councils (panchayats) where Islamic law was not de rigueur;Footnote 104 he extended the state's patronage to Marathi-speaking Brahmans as well as Khatris, Kayasthas and other Hindu groups;Footnote 105 and he occasionally took personal charge of the upbringing of non-Muslim boys—like Raja Sagar Mal—whose families had served him with devotion.Footnote 106 Finally, in a case of no gesture being too small, the Nizam also ordered that special food and grain arrangements be made for Hindus during military or administrative tours.Footnote 107 Whether these and other gestures were informed by a true lack of animus towards non-Muslims or whether they were based on the practical reality that Hyderabad needed qualified people to serve it, regardless of their religious affiliations, is impossible to answer. This much, however, can be said: Hyderabad's religious policies were undoubtedly tempered by the knowledge that the vast majority of the Nizam's subjects were not Muslim. Having watched Aurangzeb stir up a hornet's nest with religious actions that may have seemed principled, but were clearly not politic, may the Nizam have been hoping to avoid the same fate two decades later and in the same region?
IV. Conclusion
Two shortcomings commonly appear in histories of both the state and the region. On the one hand, we witness a widespread failure to distinguish the dynamic early career of Hyderabad from its often lethargic and later counterpart. Even individuals familiar with the charged ethnic and religious politics of post-1930s Hyderabad project (incorrectly) the same history to the first decades of Hyderabad's existence. On the other hand, important characteristics of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Hyderabad are often seen as being anomalous and idiosyncratic, in other words disconnected from an earlier history. Thus, important points of continuity are often overlooked. For example, the state's continuing dependence (well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) on a steady stream of immigrants from north India—both Hindu and Muslim—to enable administrative expansion was a pattern first set up by Nizam-ul-Mulk. Also, many of the political and economic compromises reached by the Nizam remained in place through the rest of Hyderabad's history. This is attested by the survival of a number of Telugu ‘little kingdoms’ (samasthans) into the twentieth century and administrative patterns that relied heavily on zamindars for the collection of revenue and the maintenance of law and order. An essentially non-sectarian approach to relations between different religious communities would similarly survive for such of the state's history.
Through the years of its existence Hyderabad faced many political, military and financial crises. In every instance it was able to overcome its challenges through a combination of luck, pluck and commonsense. These qualities, however, proved to be in increasingly short supply through the reign of the seventh and final Nizam, Osman Ali Khan Asaf Jah VII (r. 1911–48). Unlike his ancestor, Nizam-ul-Mulk, who successfully weathered the transition from an imperial to post-imperial order, Osman Ali Khan proved unable to master the shift from a colonial to post-colonial order. Buffeted by the winds of anti-British secular, Hindu, Telugu and Islamic nationalisms, the last Nizam proved unable to steer a course that would have protected some vestige of the old Hyderabadi order. How might the Nizam have acted in the same situation? Although historians need to be careful with counterfactuals, in this case it is well to speculate that the first Nizam would have likely avoided staking his career on upholding an older and dying political order. Instead, he would have probably negotiated, bargained, and received an honoured space for himself within the newly emerging order. After all, flexibility and opportunism were hallmarks of his career. Nothing attests to this more than the remarkable story of his transition from a loyal Mughal khanazad to a post-Mughal ruler in the Deccan and Hyderabad's early survival against all odds.
