Mahboob Ali Khan
Nizam of Hyderabad
Asaf Jah VI, also known as Sir Mir Mahboob Ali Khan Siddiqi Bayafandi (17 August 1866 – 29 August 1911), was the 9th Nizam of Hyderabad. He ruled Hyderabad State, one of the princely states of India, between 1869 and 1911. Mahboob Ali Khan was born on 17 August 1866 at Purani Haveli in Hyderabad, Hyderabad State (now in Telangana, India). He was the youngest son of the 5th Nizam, Afzal-ud-Daulah.[3] On 29 February, Mahboob Ali Khan, after Afzal-ud-Daulah had died a day earlier, ascended the throne under the regency of Dewan Salar Jung I and Shams-ul-Umra III. Mahboob Ali Khan was then aged two years and seven months. While Salar Jung I served as regent, Shams-ul-Umra III served as co-regent. Mahboob Ali Khan was the first Nizam to have a Western education. A special school, under the guidance of Captain John Clarke, was started in the Chowmahalla Palace. The children of Salar Jung I, Shams-ul-Umra III and Kishen Pershad were his classmates. Besides English, he was also taught Persian, Arabic and Urdu. In 1874, Captain John Clarke, a former tutor to the Duke of Edinburgh, was appointed to teach him English. Clarke imbibed in the "young Mahboob the customs and manners of high English society". Clarje worked closely with an Indian tutor, Navab Agha Mirza Sarvar al-Mulk, who shared in supervising the Nizam's education and ultimately became a close confidant and advisor to him. At
the age of sixteen, Salar Jung I began introducing Mahboob Ali Khan to the administrative processes of the state. The highest-ranking officials of various departments would meet him to teach how their respective departments worked. The regency of Salar Jung I and Shams-ul-Umra III ended when Mahboob Ali Khan came out of age. His investiture ceremony took place on 5 February 1884. Lord Ripon, the Governor-General of India, was present and gave him a golden sword, which was studded with diamonds. Mahboob Ali Khan took the title His Exalted Highness Asaf Jah, Muzaffar-ul-Mulk, Nawab Mahbub Ali Khan Bahadur, Fateh Jung. Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway, a railway company fully owned by the Nizams, was established in 1879. Formed to connect Hyderabad State with the rest of British India, it had its headquartered at Secunderabad Railway Station. Its construction commenced in 1870, and four years later, the Secunderabad-Wadi line was completed. In 1879, Mahbub Ali Khan took over the railway line, which became managed by the Nizam's state-owned railway. Mahboob Ali Khan established the Hyderabad Medical College, the first in India, and commissioned for chloroform the first time in world. In 1873, there were 14 schools in Hyderabad City and 141 in the rest of the districts. That reached 1000 at the time of his death. The Great Famine of 1876-1878 occurred during his reign. The entire Deccan, including Hyderabad Deccan, was devastated by food shortages, which were enormously exacerbated by British policies. The Nizam distributed aid to famine victims, which caused tens of thousands of people to flee to Hyderabad from Sholapur and other affected areas. According to the Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, the Nizam was the object of the Diwan, Salar Jung I, a man who wanted to reduce Mir Mahboob Ali Khan to a cipher to hold the power of the state and remain concentrated in his own hands. The sixth Nizam had seven sons and seven daughters. Mir Osman Ali Khan became his successor and his daughters were married into House Paigah He was married to Amat Uz Zahra Begum, daughter of Salar Jung I with whom he fell in love while he was studying at the age of 18. The Nizam was well known for his extravagant lifestyle and collection of clothes and cars. His collection of clothes was one of the most extensive in the world at the time. He devoted a whole wing of his palace to his wardrobe and would never wear the same outfit twice. He bought the Jacob Diamond, which stands out among the Jewels of The Nizams that are now owned by the Government of India. The Nizam was also fluent in Urdu, Telugu and Persian. He also wrote poems in Telugu and Urdu, some of which are inscribed along the walls of Tank Bund. He was known as a skilled hunter. People from nearby villages many times called for his help to kill tigers that were lurking in the nearby fields and threatening the lives of poor farmers. Hence, he ended up killing at least 33 tigers during his lifetime. He was popularly known as Tees Maar Khan, meaning the Khan who killed tees (thirty) tigers. Despite his reputation as a tiger-hunter, Khan was known for his compassion and love for all living things. He would never kill a tiger unless it was a matter of necessity, and he always treated the animals he hunted with respect. He understood that the tiger was not just a threat but a magnificent creature, which deserved to live unless it posed a threat to humans. He claimed to possess a healing power against snakebites. It was his order that if anyone from the public had a snake bite, they could approach him. As a result, he was repeatedly awakened from his sleep to cure people of snakebites.
The Hyderabad State Forces were the armed forces of the princely state of Hyderabad. People from both India and abroad were recruited into the Forces. Among these groups were Arab nationals like Chaush and African nationals like Siddis who now stay in Barkas and A. C. Guards areas of Hyderabad respectively. The Hyderabad cavalry was chiefly composed of Muslim castes such as Mughals, Pathans, Syeds, Sheikhs and Balochs. They were principally recruited from the Deccan, but Delhi, Lucknow, Shahjahanpur, Sindh and Balochistan also supplied recruits to bolster ranks. These non-indigenous soldiers were known as the "Rohollas". The Hindus made a very small portion of the cavalry. The Nizam of Hyderabad also had about 1200 Sikh guards. Other battalions within the army were referred to with the suffix "-walas". Some troops were also supplied by the Europeans for the security of the Nizam. Three different corps were commanded by three different independent commanders. The Nizam, the Diwan, and an important officer in the Nizam's government, Shangal Umara or "Amin Kabir", each maintained their own separate divisions. In 1767-1768, Nizam accepted British Suzerainty over Hyderabad State through the Treaty of Masulipatam. From 1778 onwards, a British resident and subsidiary force were installed in his dominions. Nizam Khan, Asaf Jah 2 was pushed to enter into an agreement that placed his country under British protection in 1798. Nizam Khan and his soldiers fought for the British in
the Second (1803–05) and Third (1817–19) Maratha Wars, and Nizam Nasir al-Dawlah and Hyderabad's military contingent remained loyal to the British during the Sepoy Mutiny (1857–58).
The Asaf Jahi was a Muslim dynasty that ruled the Hyderabad State. The family came to India in the late 17th century and became employees of the Mughal Empire. They were great patrons of Persian culture, language, and literature, and the family found ready patronage. The dynasty was founded by Mir Qamar-ud-Din Siddiqi, a Viceroy of the Deccan—(administrator of six Mughal governorates) under the Mughal emperors from 1713 to 1721. He intermittently ruled after Aurangzeb's death in 1707 and under the title Asaf Jah in 1724. The Mughal Empire crumbled and the Viceroy of the Deccan, Asaf Jah I, declared himself independent, whose domain extended from the Narmada river in the North to Trichinopoly in the South and Masulipatnam in the east to Bijapur in the west. Nawab Khwaja Abid Siddiqi, the grandfather of the first Nizam, was born in Aliabad near Samarkand in the kingdom of Bukhara in modern-day Uzbekistan. His father, Alam Shaik, was a well-known Sufi and celebrated man of letters. Khwaja Abid's mother was from the family of Mir Hamdan, a distinguished Syed of Samarkhand. The first Nizam's mother was the daughter of Sadullah Khan, the Grand vizier (1645-1656) of Mughal
Emperor Shah Jahan. After succeeding in the war of succession, Aurangzeb made him the Governor of Ajmer and subsequently of Multan with the title of Qalich Khan. He served the Emperor with distinction particularly during the early years of Aurangzeb's reign while he was consolidating and restoring peace in his newly acquired territory. Asaf Jah's father Ghazi ud-Din Khan Feroze Jung I was a military general under Aurangzeb. Under the command of Feroze Jung, Hyderabad was sieged and later occupied by the Mughals. The founder of this dynasty was Mir Qamaruddin Khan, a noble and a courtier of the Mughal Muhammad Shah, who negotiated a peace treaty with Nadirshah got disgusted with the intrigues that prevailed in Delhi. He was on his way back to the Deccan, where, earlier he was a Subedar. But he had to confront Mubariz Khan, as a result of a plot by the Mughal emperor to kill the former. Mubariz Khan failed in his attempt and he was himself slain. This one took place in AD 1724, and henceforth Mir Qamaruddin, who assumed the title of Nizam-ul-Mulk, conducted himself as an independent ruler. Earlier, while he was one of the Ministers of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah, the latter conferred on him the title of Asaf Jah. Thus begins the Asaf Jahi rule over Golconda with the capital at Aurangabad.
Awards: Sash and star of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Collar and star of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India.
