Mehrauli, Delhi: Four Tombs and an Empty Tomb
By Dr Khalid Siddiqui
Ohio
Moti Masjid in Mehrauli, Delhi, was built in 1709 during the reign of Moghul Emperor #7 Muazzam Shah (also known as Shah Alam I and Bahadur Shah I). Behind the mosque next to the dargah of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, a marble enclosure is located. Within it the graves of three Mughal Emperors and a prince are located. This is the only mausoleum in which more than one Mughal Emperor has been buried.
I had taken photographs of this area in 1987. Recently the area had been thoroughly vandalized and the beautiful marble enclosure was completely destroyed. (See the photograph above.)
Below are the stories of those who were buried there.
Emperor #7 Muazzam Shah :
Aurangzeb had nominated his son Azam Shah as heir apparent as early as 1681. After Aurangzeb died in 1707, Azam Shah immediately ascended the throne and declared himself the Emperor. However, just three months later, his half-brother Muazzam Shah (also known as Bahadur Shah I and Shah Alam I) defeated Azam Shah in a battle in which he and his three sons were killed. Muazzam Shah then crowned himself as the emperor. He soon killed his other half-brother, Kam Bakhsh. He was a weak king and faced revolts in many states. This was the beginning of the disintegration of the Mughal Empire.
Emperor #15 Shah Alam II (real name Ali Gauhar and takhallus Aftab):
His 46-year-long reign (1760-1806) was a life of misery. His father, Emperor #14 Alamgir II, nominated him heir apparent in 1754 against the desires of his powerful chief vizier, Imad ul-Mulk. Imad ul-Mulk had Alamgir II assassinated in 1759 and installed Shahjahan III (great-grandson of Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir) as the emperor instead of Crown Prince Shah Alam II. Shah Alam II, fearing for his life, fled to Bihar in December 1759. After only a few months, the incompetent Shahjahan III was deposed by the Mughal nobles and Marathas and, despite objections from Imad ul-Mulk, Shah Alam II was installed as the Emperor in absentia on October 10, 1760. The Marathas continued to control Delhi until 1761. They were comprehensively defeated by Ahmad Shah Abdali at the Third Battle of Panipat on January 14, 1761. 100,000 Marathas were killed. Ahmad Shah Abdali also endorsed Shah Alam II as the genuine Mughal Emperor. In 1762, Abdali ousted Imad ul-Mulk and installed Najib ud-Daula, a Rohilla of Afghan birth, as the governor of Delhi.
While in Bihar, Shah Alam II gathered troops and attacked the East India Company (EIC) forces twice – in 1761 (Battle of Helsa) and 1764 (Battle of Buxar). He lost both. At the Buxar War, he was captured by the British and imprisoned in Allahabad Fort. He was still the official Mughal Emperor, although he had not yet set foot in Delhi. Lord Clive negotiated a deal (Treaty of Allahabad) with Shah Alam II whereby he obtained from him Diwani (the office of economic management) rights of the rich eastern provinces – Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. EIC paid £34 million, and the Emperor agreed to recognize all conquests of the Company.
The EIC had promised to help him restore his throne in Delhi. However, they didn’t fulfill their promise. In the meantime, the Marathas had regained their power and were controlling Delhi once again. The British wanted to keep Shah Alam II in their hands to force him to legalize and legitimize any decisions they would make in the future. EIC feared that, once in Delhi, Marathas would use him for the same purpose. And that’s exactly what the Marathas were also thinking. In 1771, living in exile for 12 years with no hope of EIC ever helping him to reconquer the Delhi throne, Shah Alam II decided to head home (Delhi) on his own. On February 15, 1771, an agreement was reached between Shah Alam’s son, Prince Jawan Bakht who was in Delhi acting as Regent, and the Marathas. The deal stipulated that the Emperor wouldn’t be allowed to have an army, but just enough sepoys to act as his personal bodyguards. The Maratha troops will be the Mughal army. The deal was ratified by Shah Alam on March 22, 1771.
Shah Alam II had remained absent from Delhi for 12 years. During these twelve long years, the Marathas and Afghans alternately managed the Mughal court in the name of Shah Alam II, but never took over the throne themselves!
On New Year’s Day 1772, Shah Alam entered Delhi. He was greeted by the Maratha troops headed by Scindia. The Mughals were back on the Peacock Throne – though now only a replica of the original one.
In 1786, the Marathas left Delhi on a military expedition for Rajasthan, leaving the Red Fort unprotected.
Sensing an opportunity, in mid-July 1788, Ghulam Qadir Rohilla marched towards Delhi with an army of Rohillas. A few years earlier Ghulam Qadir Rohilla was castrated on the orders of Shah Alam II as he was reported to be taking too much interest in the women of the harem. This story is, however, highly disputed. Ghulam Qadir entered the Fort along with 2,000 Rohillas, took Shah Alam’s dagger, and gouged out both his eyes. He deposed Shah Alam and Bedar Bakht, the grandson of Mohammad Shah Rangeela, was installed as Shah Jahan IV on July 31, 1788. For three months Ghulam Qadir and his troops looted the fort and the city. He fled when the Marathas returned. He was captured by the Marathas, and dismembered. His ears and eyeballs were sent to the Emperor in a box. Shah Jahan IV was executed on the orders of Shah Alam II.
For the next fifteen years, the 75-year-old blind Shah Alam II remained under the nominal protection of the Marathas. The imperial family lived in poverty on whatever was provided to them by the Marathas. EIC was alarmed by the rising power of the Marathas. The final battle between the EIC forces and the Maratha troops, headed by the French, was fought on September 23, 1803, when Arthur Wellesley faced Scindia in the village of Assaye in western Maharashtra. The Maratha troops were routed. EIC got control over half a million square miles of Indian territory. The French influence in India was reduced to Pondicherry. For the Emperor, Wellesley announced a gift of £8 million as immediate expenses and a pension of £8 million per month. Finally, under the Company’s protection and pension, the Emperor could spend the last three years of his life on the throne of his ancestors in comfort and safety, and with some measure of dignity. Shah Alam II died in 1806 at the age of 78.
Emperor #16 Akbar II
He ascended the Mughal throne after the death of his father, Shah Alam II, in 1806. His 31-year reign was the easiest of all the major or minor Mughal emperors. Although he held no territory outside the Red Fort, he also didn’t face any war, rebellion, or invasion from Iran or Afghanistan. He didn’t have to maintain an army or collect revenues from the landlords. He received a pension from East India Company (EIC). His life was spent holding cultural activities like poetry recitals (mushaira) in the Red Fort. The cultural life of Delhi as a whole flourished during his reign. He built a new palace ‘Zafar Mahal’ in Mehrauli. He started a festival in September/October, after the rainy season, in Mehrauli. It was named Phool Waloon ki Sair meaning ‘procession of the florists’. It was also called Sair-e-Gul Faroshan. The Darbar was also shifted to Mehrauli for the 7 days of the Festival. The Emperor used to enjoy the festivities from the balcony of Zafar Mahal.
Slowly, EIC started eroding the powers of the new Emperor. He was not allowed to confer titles on regional rulers without the approval of EIC. All the residents of the palace, with the exception of the Emperor and the heir apparent, were made liable to the British courts if the crime took place in the city. The palace had no jurisdiction over the legal matters of the city. There was a continued shift of the balance of power in favor of the Company, and the gradual erosion of the Emperor’s dignity and independence.
The Delhi mint which issued coins in the name of Akbar II was closed. The company’s coins were minted in Farrukhabad which didn’t have Akbar’s name on them. From 1830, all official work was conducted in English instead of Persian. The Emperor had no issue with all that. He only wanted a raise in his pension, which was denied to him repeatedly. In 1830, in desperation, he sent Raja Ram Mohan Roy all the way to England with a petition to King William IV regarding an increase in his pension; he was unsuccessful. (BTW, Roy died there and was buried in Bristol.)
Akbar II died of natural causes on September 28, 1837. He was 77 years old.
Sard Gah
Sard Gah is the name given to the green patch of plot, between the tombs of Emperors Shah Alam II and Akbar II, where Emperor #17 Bahadur Shah had wished to be buried. His wish, however, didn’t come true and he was exiled to Rangoon, Burma where he died in 1862. He was buried there. This patch of land has remained as such since that time.
Bahadur Shah Zafar came to the throne in 1837, at the age of 62, after the death of his father Emperor Akbar II. Like his father, he was a puppet of EIC. He was a poet himself and spent most of his time holding cultural activities like mushairas. If it was not for three important reasons, his peaceful life would have continued, just like his father, until his death: (1) His expenses outgrew the pension he received from EIC. He had to borrow money from the moneylenders. (2) The constant feud between him and EIC on legal jurisdictions and for the nomination of the heir apparent. (3) The Mutiny of 1857 which he handled poorly.
For a few years there was no change in the EIC policy towards the new Emperor. However, when Lord Ellenborough was appointed the new Governor-General in 1842, he immediately put an end to giving nazrs to or receiving khilats from the Emperor. Zafar’s request for an increase in the stipend was denied - the amount of the stipend had remained the same since 1809. The salateen (family members more distantly related to the Emperor including illegitimate princes) pleaded to receive their allowances directly from the Company instead of through the Emperor. To the satisfaction of the Emperor, this plea was denied. It was one of the few things that the Emperor controlled, and he didn’t want to give it up. New rules were proposed whereby the tenants of the crown estates needed to resolve their disputes through the British courts.
More and more Salateen, though receiving their allowances from the Emperor, were moving out of the palace to the city. Some sold their houses within the Fort and bought property in the city. Most of them were uneducated and unskilled. The British tried to set up educational institutions for them, but the Salateen refused to pay for the tuition. They would spend their allowance and time on kite flying, singing, and dancing. They were chronically in debt and conflict with their creditors. As a result, there were regular skirmishes on the city streets. The matter would go to the British court. The court would place a lien against the Salateen’s property in the city for non-payment of the loan. Zafar didn’t approve of the British court meddling in the affairs of the royal family, but EIC ignored his protests.
Prince Mirza Fakhru
The smaller tomb on the right side belongs to Prince Mirza Fath-ul-Mulk Bahadur also known as Mirza Fakhru. He was the son of Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar through his wife, Rahim Bukhsh Bai Begum.
In 1846 Mirza Fakhru married Wazir Khanum, a well-known beauty of Kashmiri origin. She had previously lived with three men (Edward Marston Blake; Nawab Shamsuddin Khan and Agha Turab Ali) and had been widowed (?) each time. From Mirza Fakhru, she had one son, Mirza Khurshid Alam. Wazir Khanum had a son from Nawab Shamsuddin – the famous Urdu poet Daagh Dehlvi. So, Mirza Fakhru was the stepfather of Daagh Dehlvi.
In 1849, Dara Bakht, the heir apparent, died. Despite Zafar’s objections, the British chose Mirza Fakhru as the heir apparent. Zafar’s own candidate was eleven-year-old Jawan Bakht, the son of his favorite wife, Zeenat Mahal. In 1852, the British laid down the conditions before Fakhru: the Governor-General would meet him on equal terms without any protocols; Crown lands would be managed by EIC; he and his family would vacate the Red Fort and live in the palace built by Shah Alam II in Mehrauli; he would receive the stipend only for himself and his immediate family members; Salateen (family members more distantly related to the Emperor including illegitimate princes) would be paid directly by the Company. Fakhru agreed to all the conditions. Zafar didn’t approve of it and disinherited Mirza Fakhru.
On July 10, 1856, Mirza Fakhru died unexpectedly from cholera or poisoning. Mirza Mughal became the eldest surviving-legitimately-born son of Bahadur Shah Zafar. However, the British refused to recognize anyone as heir to the throne, and indicated that the monarchy would be abolished following Zafar's death.
After Mirza Fakhru’s death, Wazir Khanum was expelled from the Harem. Nothing more is known about her. After the mutiny of 1857, her son Mirza Khurshid Alam spent the rest of his life begging on the streets of Delhi.
