Random Interesting Historical Information About Hyderabad

I started this section but never finished it, and now around ten months later I don’t feel like fleshing out my basic notes on the topic. I contemplated deleting the entire thing, but despite it being incomplete it still seems worthwhile, it's just fairly scattered and at times half-assed because of this. I’m not very good with history and I thought I won’t do something like this again, at least not to this extent. Upon re-reading this, though, I found it to be very enjoyable and I’m glad it exists as a reminder of the good times I had being intellectually immersed in Hyderabad, so perhaps I’ll do more of these in the future, should a place call for it. 

This was originally going to be part of my main Hyderabad post, but it got too long so I gave it its own post. Check that post out, and you may also be interested in my reading list for Hyderabad which contains many recommendations for history books.

As I mentioned in the main Hyderabad post, I spent a lot of time reading and learning about the city, as I try to do for every place, but I found it particularly rewarding and beneficial to the experience of Hyderabad, more than it is for most places. Because of that, I wanted to share some of the stories that I came across, in the hope that I can help people appreciate the city more. I won’t narrate the basic history, but will share many of the interesting, funny, and curious historical details that I made a note of to share, which will hopefully help you bring the city to life as you visit it or just imagine it. I don’t have a serious interest in history in the sense of understanding the world, as I’m not a very serious person, but I love great stories and old world charm and wonder, which Hyderabad’s history is full of, as much as anywhere else I’ve been. I hope I can give you a good glimpse at the Hyderabad that was, and I suppose the Hyderabad that was not to be.

I’ll try to do this in a semi-chronological order, so you get some broad strokes of the bigger picture story. You can jump around as you please though, and I hope it is accessible, fun, and not intimidating even to people who don’t know anything about history. Though I am not citing most of this as I want it to be easy to read, a lot of my information comes from various books I read (see my recommended reading section) or things tour guides have said, supplemented by Wikipedia. If I’ve quoted something, it’s likely either from The Last Nizam by John Zubrzycki, Narendra Luther’s Hyderabad, or Wikipedia. I apologize for any errors.

• I don’t recall anything all that interesting from before the Qutb Shahi times. 

  The Qutb Shahis ruled from 1519 to 1687, shifting their capital from Golconda to Hyderabad in 1591. The founder Quli Qutb Shah was a Turkoman born in Persia and was the great great great great grandson of the founder of the Qara Qoyunlu dynasty, which ruled over lands that constitute present day Azerbaijan and Armenia as well as chunks of Georgia, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. (My great great great great grandfather probably just farmed potatoes, so now writing travel blogs is about the best anybody could expect from me.)

  The Qutb Shahis seemed alright, as far as medieval rulers go. It’s hard to judge these things, like I’m not digging into historical records of agricultural productivity to determine how their policies impacted the region’s growth and whatnot. But while the early reign seemed oppressive, with Hindus not being allowed to practice their traditions freely, Golconda soon developed something of a Hindu/Muslim fusion culture that the more enlightened Mughals are often lauded for. Despite being a Persianate dynasty, Telugu became the official language in the latter half of their reign, leading to the rulers being called “Telugu Sultans.” I’ve read that Telugu literature and poetry thrived during this period (some of it by the Sultans themselves). At their tombs and the fort walls you will notice some architectural elements that people would typically associate with Hindu temples.

  Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah was the fourth Qutb Shahi ruler, though he was the son of the dynasty’s founder, ultimately ruling after his brother (who killed his own father) and his brother’s infant son. To avoid being killed by his brother, he fled to Vijayanagar where he was in exile for seven years. In that time he fell in love with Telugu, wrote Telugu poetry, married a Hindu woman, and had his name Teluguized to Malki BhaRama, or Ibharama Chakravarti, or Abhirama, depending on the source. He loved listening to the Mahabharata recited in Telugu, and as ruler he patronized Telugu poets and employed many Hindus. The empire grew very rich and powerful when he took the throne and enacted a more liberal cosmopolitan regime.

  That’s all good and well, but then he teamed up with the four other Deccan Sultanates and destroyed Vijayanagar, around 15 years after he stayed there under the generous hospitality of the same ruler he helped defeat. Oh well. The 16th century was a rough time.

  The ruler who is often portrayed as the most enlightened is Ibrahim’s son Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, who is the founder of Hyderabad and whose mother was a Telugu speaking Hindu. He carried on his father’s tradition of writing Telugu poetry (though his most renowned work was in Urdu). He is often considered to be the greatest of all of the Qutb Shahi rulers.

  Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah got compared to Akbar in a few things I read, a comparison also made of Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur, similarly known for his religious tolerance, artistic patronage, and appreciation (and in some ways adoption) of Hinduism, in addition to bringing the empire to its greatest heights. As the Deccan sultanates are little known in comparison to the Mughals, Akbar is most often the reference point for a cultured, tolerant, and successful Islamic ruler in India. What I find astonishing, though, is that the three were all contemporaries! Akbar’s reign was 1556-1605, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah’s was 1580-1612, and Ibrahim Adil Shah II’s was 1580-1627 (and perhaps surprising to most, Bijapur was the biggest city of the three empires).

  Whenever I read about the history of each empire, I think about how much the different personalities shape their reigns. How the cauldron of genetics and upbringing can make one ruler pious and dogmatic, another ruler curious and tolerant, and how these individual quirks can make a big impact on history. But here you have perhaps the top three “enlightened” Islamic rulers in Indian history ruling at the same time (and they may have been the three most powerful people in India at that time), and it makes me wonder if it says less about the individual rulers and more about the social milieu and some other historical currents of the era (and I don’t doubt political expediency may have played as much of a role as the character of the rulers). We can easily see how social trends spread easily today, how intellectual and political trends are hardly local, but was that same dynamic at work in medieval Islamic-ruled India? The different dynasties had a lot of interactions, but it’s still hard to see how this plays out. Maybe someone can ask Richard Eaton.

  
  

• I mentioned earlier how some Hindu temple architectural elements show up in Qutb Shahi architecture. Also notable in their architecture are pineapples. Lots and lots of pineapples. If you aren’t informed about them, you may just glance at the recurring ornamental spiky bulb things and think nothing of it at all. But once you know they are pineapples, it’s hard not to wonder what’s up with them. (They also show up in the Paigah tombs, but otherwise I don’t recall seeing them in the architecture from the Nizams’ times.)

  It turns out that pineapples were like the truffles and the caviar of their day, an exotic and elite luxury food that only the richest of the rich could afford (outside of their native countries). They were, at one point, valued less for gustatory purposes and more for their ornamental value. In Europe, people would even rent out pineapples to display as decoration at parties to show off their wealth, with a pineapple only retiring once it had rotted. The Qutb Shahis traded with the Portuguese from the ancient port of Machilipatnam (“fish city”, used to be called Maisolos, which traded with ancient Greece and Rome, and the word “muslin” derives from the old name) and would buy pineapples from them, shipped all the way from Brazil and somehow not spoiling (or perhaps they did spoil inside but not outside, making them better as decoration than food?). 

  I couldn’t find much info on the culture of pineapples at the time in India, but it is likely that they were a symbol of wealth and thus began to feature in the architecture, though I don’t believe this happened anywhere else in India. Having pineapples in art and architecture was a thing in other parts of the world, but the Qutb Shahi pineapple motifs are the earliest examples I can find anywhere. Naturally, once pineapple growth and consumption expanded, they no longer held the same value. Though pineapple shows up in some cuisines in India (I mostly think of Kerala, Mangalore, and the pineapple sheera some Udupi restaurants serve, of course those are all coastal), I didn’t come across anything with pineapple in Hyderabad.

  
  

• I wrote in my notes that the Qutb Shahis had a navy and their ships at one point were impounded in Siam. That sounded crazy so I put a question mark at the end of the note. Maybe it is crazy because I can’t find any evidence of this. I’m pretty sure I read this somewhere and didn’t dream it up, but I’m not actually sure. I also noted down that traders from Southeast Asia came to Golconda, but my searches aren’t turning anything up about this. Where did I read this? I gotta start taking better notes, sorry everyone. This blog is free, you can’t expect too much.

  
  

• Probably not entirely true, but the 17th century French gem merchant and traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier claims that there were 20,000 registered prostitutes in Golconda and was told the women were so supple that when the ruler went to Masulipatnam, “nine of them very cleverly represented the form of an elephant, four making the feet, four others the body, and one the trunk, and the King, mounted above on a kind of throne, in that way made his entry into town.”

  
  

• Everybody knows that diamonds were an important source of the Qutb Shahi’s wealth and that many of the world’s most famous diamonds were from here. I’ll list some scattered interesting things on the subject that not everyone knows. 

  For much of history, the region was the diamond capital of the world, though most of the “Golconda mines” aren’t really near Golconda. 

  
  

  Marco Polo apparently visited the region during the Kakatiya age and reported a folk tale which can also be found in Chinese and Arabic texts including Sinbad the Sailor: Because of the prevalence of venomous snakes, people had to get creative to retrieve the diamonds. They would [trigger warning: cow slaughter] catapult cattle flesh from a hill into the valley. Diamonds would stick to the flesh which eagles and vultures would take to their nests, and then the diamond merchants would collect them. Certainly not true, but some believe the story may have roots in animal sacrifices that were made. 

  Though diamond production in India is ancient, it was at its peak under the Qutb Shahis. The mines were largely exhausted by the mid-1800s. The Kollur mine near Guntur was one of the largest, employing upwards of 60,000 people. It is now underwater, but when the water recedes in the summer locals go hunting for diamonds, and they occasionally find them. 

  A few more scattered facts: India was the world’s only source of diamonds until 1725 when diamonds were discovered in Brazil. The association with mining inspired the name of the mining town of Golconda, Nevada, but I don’t know what’s up with Golconda, Illinois, whose motto is “Haseeb Zindabad.” Here is a European artist’s rendition of an Indian mine. There are not enough movies about this. The Kohinoor should stay in the U.K.

  
  

• The Musi river is named after Moses and its tributary Esi is named after Hazrat Esa (Jesus). I’m not sure who named them.

  
  

• The 1687 Mughal siege on Golconda (which brought down the Qutb Shahis and eventually led to the establishment of the Asaf Jahi ruled Hyderabad) lasted eight months, and they only succeeded by bribing some Qutb Shahi commanders to defect. There are a lot of interesting stories about the siege (true or otherwise), even for people like me with little interest in warfare. A tour guide noted that Aurangzeb hired a satirist to write the chronicle, so the official document of the siege contains some amusing flights of fancy. Unfortunately I don’t remember the details of the stories he told well enough to recall them here. There was a story about a dog becoming emperor for a day at Golconda (similar to this story), and one about a fake wall being put up to confuse the invaders, though I don’t remember which document those were from. In fact I have a vague recollection of them somehow being true stories. There is an abridged English translation of Chronicles of the Seige of Golkonda Fort by the satirist Ni'mat Khan-i-Ali, but it is difficult to find. I tried finding a summary online but surprisingly nobody seems to have written much about it. 

  I was able to find a little about the writer Ni'mat Khan-i-Ali, though, and his story is amazing (Hyderabad only plays a minor role here, but nonetheless the stories help bring the era to life). Here is a very brief bio, but most of the information I could find is in The King and the People: Sovereignty and Popular Politics in Mughal Delhi by Abhishek Kaicker. I would love to read a whole book about him, it would make for a great work of narrative nonfiction, or a historical novel since there may not be enough factual information known about his life to justify a full non-fiction book. I’ll refer to him as Ni’mat, though I’m not sure anybody actually referred to him by that, but Khan-i-Ali is too generic of a name.

  I gathered a bit about his career. It is likely that Ni’mat was employed by the Mughals throughout his career, beginning under Shah Jahan and then Aurangzeb’s daughter Zeb-un-Nissa, who was a patron of the arts. He wrote many ghazals, known to contain “light-hearted lampooning,” in addition to many prose texts, including the chronicle of the siege of Golconda. It is unclear to me if Aurangzeb hired him to write that in an official capacity, as it is said to be highly critical of Aurangzeb’s Deccan campaign, and he did get expelled from the imperial army for what he wrote. 

  Despite the criticism, he did work with Aurangzeb after that. I am not sure of the timeline of their working relationship, but Aurangzeb conquered Bijapur in 1686 (one year before the Golconda campaign) and had Ni’mat write a chronogram commemorating the capture of a massive cannon there, with the chronogram then inscribed onto the cannon (I am happy to report I got to visit the “malik-​i maidān” when I went to Bijapur). I guess poets’ roles were multifaceted, because in 1692 Ni’mat was made the superintendent of the imperial kitchen, and later he became the superintendent of the imperial jewel-house and the imperial seal. After Aurangzeb died, he became the official court historian for Mughal emperor Shah Alam (aka Bahadur Shah), despite being known for satires (I’m curious about the Monāẓara-ye aṭebbāʾ, which was “a satire on the incompetence of physicians”). 

  The best story about Ni’mat Khan concerns the 1688 poem he wrote about Kamgar Khan, a real person who was the son of a Mughal minister. Ni’mat had written a chronogram celebrating Kamgar Khan’s second marriage to a much younger woman. Ni’mat felt slighted by Kamgar who didn’t properly appreciate the chronogram (it is unclear whether he was expecting a financial reward or simply wanted praise). In response, he dropped a Mughal era version of a diss track, which is said to be “so riddled with allusions to Arabic grammar, geometry, and medicine that the comic material is transformed into a work of great literary value.” 

  In the poem, Kamgar is unable to perform on his wedding night. His new bride keeps taunting him while he stalls her, making excuses and saying things like how he has to “wait until the moon has moved to the second of ten possible stages, which is considered propitious.” Listening to this, “his wife retorts that her new husband might as well await the day of resurrection. Now seizing the offensive, she asks the khan whether he thinks he’s in a bridal bedchamber or a seminary.” And I’ll let you figure out the meaning of “He asked, have you got any dowry that might be useful for me / Yes, a hammer and tongs have I brought for you, replied she.” I won’t quote more, I will just note that there are actually references to strap-ons, but since this is a family publication that is all I can say…

  Ah fuck it, anybody who has read this far deserves some reward: “Ali finally ends the argument between the spouses, with the observation that since only a “firm argument” could resolve this endless dispute, and may God dispatch a merchant from the “Eastern Oceans” (Zīrbād) to provide one to the couple. A contemporary commentary, which sheds light on this otherwise incomprehensible allusion, is worth quoting at length on this issue: By “the firm argument” (hujjat-​i muhkam) the author refers to a thing that is made in the lands of the Eastern Oceans, which is called a Kīrkāsh; and traders have taken it to other countries. In the palaces of emperors and noblemen where there are many singing and dancing girls, and since besides the master of the house no one else is permitted within, those women buy this merchandise at great prices. And one woman ties it around her waist and has intercourse with another and in this way they satiate their lust.”

  This all sounds so crazy that I wondered if I was buying into some weird fake history, but the writer Abhishek Kaicker is a historian who teaches at UC Berkeley. This is the real deal. Harem girls used strap-ons on each other, or at least people spread rumors that they did.

  Naturally, Kamgar Khan was upset, not just at the content of the poem, but at how rapidly and thoroughly it spread throughout the society. In 1688 or ‘89, he went to Aurangzeb to see that Ni'mat Khan-i-Ali be punished. Aurangzeb, in a shockingly liberal and thoughtful defense of free speech and a keen understanding of the Streisand Effect, says:

  “Punishing him will cause greater disgrace [to you than before]. This naïve (sādah-lauh) hereditary servant wishes to make me his sharer in this humiliation, so that Niʿmat Khan may say and write about me whatever he likes, and fame it through the world (shuhrat-i ʿālam sāzad). Formerly, too, he had not spared me [in his satires]; in return, I had increased his reward, that he might not do it again; yet in spite of this [favor] he had not on his part been less [satirical]. It is not possible to cut out his tongue and sever his neck. One must burn and accept it.”

  The criticisms that Aurangzeb alludes to here likely refer to the Golconda siege chronicle. I was quite surprised that criticism of Aurangzeb was not just open but tolerated from people within his inner circle. Interestingly, Ni’mat was very popular for his time: “The innumerable copies of ʿAli’s Reports, which are to be encountered in every collection of manuscripts from the period, testify not only to the runaway popularity of his works, but to the vibrant networks of the late seventeenth century, through which books traveled from city to city, were copied and recopied with ever greater frequency, and in turn inspired new authors to take up the pen.”

  This all made me want to read more about the culture and society of the era, as opposed to most history I've come across that focuses on the rulers, the palace intrigues, and the military campaigns. I couldn’t find a single article on Ni’mat, which I find surprising. You’d think the Mughal court poet vaulting insults about strap-ons would be more popular.

  Some sources claim that Ni'mat Khan-i-Ali is buried in the cemetery Daira Mir Momin Astarabadi in the old city of Hyderabad, but nothing in what I read explained how he ended up in Hyderabad, and another source mentions him dying in Lahore. I’m wondering if there’s just a plaque of someone with the same name that caused this confusion. In any case, I didn’t visit the cemetery on this trip, but I intend to go to pay homage to the great Mughal satirist next time I’m in the city. 

  
  

• Though the Mughals destroyed much of the city, it’s interesting how much of the original city’s layout, infrastructure, and even culture persists. Most of the major monuments of the old city are from the Qutb Shahis (Charminar, Makkah Masjid, though Aurangzeb added to it, and the lesser visited Badshahi Ashurkhana), as is its basic layout. The Hussain Sagar lake was built by the Qutb Shahis. Even the city’s name, referencing its Shiite origins, survived hundreds of years of Sunni rule (say what you want about the Nizams, but at least they didn’t go around renaming cities). I’m not equipped to understand this, but I read that the Shiite character of the city lived on through the change in leadership. In comparison, of the Nizams, I think it was only the last Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan who could be called a great builder who left a stamp on the city in the early to mid 20th century. 

  
  

• It just occurred to me that while both Aurangzeb and Nehru are criticized for many things, neither seem to get criticized for invading Hyderabad. Nobody cares about Hyderabad’s sovereignty except me. Next person who invades Hyderabad is getting canceled for sure, enough of this. 

  
  

• Here’s a painting of Aurangzeb invading Golconda.

  
  

• Though the Mughals conquered Hyderabad in 1687, Hyderabad did not become the capital of the Asaf Jahi dynasty until 1763. The first Nizam declared independence from the Mughals in 1724 and for nearly 40 years their capital was Aurangabad.

  
  

• The father of Asaf Jah (the first Nizam) was from Bukhara, and his grandfather Kilich Khan was from Samarkand. The Asaf Jahi family traces their lineage to Prophet Mohammed and Abu Bakr. “In 1655 … Kilich Khan undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca. But on his way there he stopped off in Hindustan to present himself before Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. The Mughal Emperor bestowed on Kilich Khan a Khilat or dress of honour and promised him that after he returned from Mecca he could take up a post on his personal staff.” It’s unclear to me if he stopped in India because he saw it as a good career opportunity or if he was taking that route anyway and just happened to meet up with the Mughal emperor. It seems like an inefficient route to take? Or was that a normal pilgrimage route?

  
  

  I didn’t keep track of the history of the Nizams well. Between the first and sixth Nizams, it’s all a blur. I’ll focus most on the seventh and last Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan, who I liked. Before him they seemed kind of crappy. I’m sure I’m forgetting about one or two that were decent, but nothing is coming to mind. I should have taken more notes. As I recall they were always broke and running up debts with the British. The prime minister Salar Jung came and set them straight. There should be a historical novel about Salar Jung, he’s a badass.

  
  

• One of my favorite Nizam era stories is when the British resident James Achilles Kirkpatrick (of White Mughals fame) was building the Residency building in the early 1800s, the era of the fourth Nizam. The Nizam rejected the building plans, because he thought it was too big and would upstage the buildings of his own empire. Kirkpatrick pulled the old trick of submitting the same plans on a smaller piece of paper, and this time it was accepted.

  
  

• Another story I like is of Albert Abid, the Armenian valet to the Nizam who founded the city’s premier department store, which gave the Abids neighborhood its name (it remains the shopping district and it was the border between Hyderabad and British Secunderabad). As an American, I assumed this meant he parked the Nizam’s wagon or something, but I guess in the rest of the world valet means manservant who is often in charge of clothes. There is a lot of info about him on this blog, which I am mostly summarizing here. He grew up in the Armenian quarter in Isfahan, he worked as a servant and interpreter for British officers in Persia, and in 1873 he was an interpreter in the Shah of Persia’s European tour entourage. Abid stuck around in Europe, and at that time one of the Paigahs (Hyderabad's second most important family) was on his own tour. The Paigah noble’s personal chamberlain, a Parsi man, needed somebody to take care of his boss’ wardrobe and found Abid, who ended up going back with them to Hyderabad. It seems Abid was working at Falaknuma after the sixth Nizam Mir Mahboob Ali Khan took it from the Paigahs (the Nizam got whatever he asked for), and that’s how the association between them began.

  Abid started a tailoring shop catering mostly to Europeans, and he had a clever setup going. You may have heard that the Nizam had the world’s largest wardrobe (which you can see at the Purani Haveli) and never wore the same thing twice. Well, according to The Days of the Beloved by Harriet Ronken Lynton and Mohini Rajan, the Nizam’s clothes would frequently be “recycled” by Abid, and “socks were another source of illegitimate profit.  Mahbub wore only silk ones from France and discarded them after a single wearing. The valet used to collect them, but, as Mahub’s foot was unusually small, even for a man of his delicate build, the socks had little resale value.  Undeterred by the limited market, the enterprising valet had them beautifully laundered, re-affixed the paper labels he had preserved from their original appearance, and after a reasonable lapse of time sold them back to his master as a new shipment just arrived from France.”

  A significant source of Abid’s income was as a middle man between the Nizam and a diamond merchant, with Abid taking 10% on the sale of very expensive diamonds. With that money, he and his wife were able to open separate stores catering to whatever European men and women would need, and the Nizam was a major shopper at both stores. Here is an image of Abid’s shop decked up for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.

  The diamond merchant whom Abid profited greatly from was his friend Alexander Malcolm Jacob (the godfather of Abid’s son Alexander Malcolm Abid, clearly named after him), who is the subject of the book The Mysterious Mr. Jacob, which I have yet to read. (I thought Jacob was the foremost Jewish player in Hyderabad’s history, but it is unlikely that he was actually Jewish. Abid is sometimes said to be Jewish too but that also seems untrue. I actually couldn't find any Jewish presence in Hyderabad's history. If I accomplish my dream of directing Telugu movies, I could become the city's most significant Jew.) 

  The story is a bit convoluted and I see different claims from different sources, but for a brief and hopefully but probably not entirely accurate summary: Jacob offered the Nizam what is now known as the Jacob Diamond, the world’s fifth largest polished diamond, the Nizam showed interest based on a glass replica. He paid half in advance but had the right to refuse upon seeing the actual diamond, and Jacob used the advance to pay for the diamond in Europe and bring it to India. Upon seeing the actual diamond the Nizam no longer wanted it, though his change in attitude was likely because he was deeply in debt and was being pressured to cut spending. Jacob didn’t have the money to pay back the advance, and the Nizam charged Jacob with fraud.

  
  

  There was a huge legal battle that took place at the high court in Calcutta though the Nizam gave his testimony at the British Residency in Hyderabad. I believe Abid testified in favor of the Nizam, Jacob ended up winning the case but the Calcutta court has no jurisdiction in Hyderabad, the Nizam ended up with the diamond at a low cost, Albert was ruined, the Nizam thought the diamond was cursed and hid it away. His son, the seventh and final Nizam, found it in his father’s shoe and used it as a paperweight, and now the Indian government owns it and it sits around along with the rest of the jewels of the Nizams that they can’t figure out how to exhibit because they are uniquely incompetent. (And you think India should get the kohinoor back, come on people, get serious here.)

  A few years later Abid moved with his family to England as a rich man, and though it seems his relationship with the Nizam was somewhat strained by the diamond affair, he returned to Hyderabad regularly to tend to his businesses which remained, including the shop, an ice factory, engineering factories, and pharmacies. 

  
  

• The Indian government owns a large collection of the Jewels of the Nizams which has been exhibited publicly just a few times (I believe twice each at Delhi’s National Museum and the Salar Jung museum in Hyderabad) since they were purchased for far less than they were worth in 1995, but they mostly sit at the RBI headquarters in Mumbai. I’m not digging into the numbers but Wikipedia says the government paid $13 million, then in the next section it says $70 million, and it says Sotheby’s valued the collection back then at $350 million. Now it’s probably worth billions?

  
  

• Franz Ferdinand visited Hyderabad in 1893 and he went hunting with the sixth Nizam and had a shooting match, shooting clay balls atop bottles and rupees thrown into the air. At the prime minister’s palace he saw a handful of tiger cubs that “played like kittens.” The PM donated two of them to him to take back to Vienna, and that same year two cubs were donated to the Vienna Zoo. I wonder if the descendents are still at the zoo.

  
  

• The last Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, was a fascinating character. He’s said by many sources to be the richest person in the world at the time. But he was also thrifty and lived simply in many ways. He seemed more interested in buying things for other people, or to give business to those who needed it, than spending on himself. There are stories of him refusing to approve of a few rupees to be spent on getting him a new blanket, though there are many instances of him spending vast sums of money to, say, renovate a mosque somewhere else in the world.

  
  

  Compared to many earlier Nizams he seems far more pious and less extravagant. At the same time, he was Hyderabad’s great modernizer and did a lot to develop the city, and it is said that he is the only Nizam since the first who was able to “[break] the power of the nobility” and “[take] the administration of the state into his own hands.” This is surprising because he seemed pretty eccentric and out there, and from what I read of earlier Nizams it was a good thing that they weren’t all powerful. Was he a great ruler? I don’t know. I’m not sure there was any improvement in the lives of vast numbers of people who lived in the countryside that he ruled over, and the Razakars gained power under him, but Hyderabad itself was transformed for the better. He also looks a little like Eddie Murphy from Coming to America.

  How rich was the Nizam? There’s no consensus, and it’s not clear if he was actually the richest person in the world, but it’s possible. In 1935 the New York Times reported that he was the owner of “$250 million in gold ingots and $2 billion in precious stones (more than $48 billion in today’s money).” It also said his annual income may have been $2.5 million a year, or $50 million a year, and that the combined fortune of Henry Ford and his son added up to only $1 billion, just half what the Nizam’s jewels were worth.

  
  

• Mir Osman’s first and most important wife (Wikipedia tells me he had eight total) was legitimately crazy, at least when she got older. Dulhan Pasha apparently would wander around the city “half-naked and watching her servants copulate.” A Paigah noble said, “She would beat up the Nizam when she saw him, throw her slippers at him she was that mad.” She would disparagingly call him “chaush” which was an offensive term that meant Bedouin Arab. 

  Dulhan Pasha bore him two sons and one daughter, Shehzadi Pasha. Apparently it was believed that the legitimate daughters of the Nizams could not marry, leave the family, or have a child, otherwise the Nizam would die. Because of this she “rarely left her father’s side” and “when taking his afternoon nap, the Nizam would tie the cord of his pyjama pants to hers” so she didn’t run off with his jewelry.

  
  

• As the head of a princely state with cordial relations to the British, the Nizam was supposed to pledge allegiance to the crown. As a Muslim ruler, he also owed allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan. This mostly was not in conflict at first, but it put the Nizam in a very tight spot during WW1. Since the Mufti of Constantinople called for Muslims in India to rise up against imperial overlords, the British requested that the Nizam declare his loyalty to the British. Going against the Caliph was risky in many ways, including inciting radicals at home and the many Arabs in his military. He went with the British, and even contributed £25 million worth to the war effort according to some sources. Another source said it was “around one hundred million dollars in cash and supplies and deploying Hyderabadi army units. At the request of the British, Hyderabad’s government also issued a formal proclamation against the Ottoman sultan’s November 1914 fatwa calling for a holy war against the United Kingdom and its allies, and urged his fellow Muslims to fight for the Allied forces.” With that, he cemented his position at the top of India’s native rulers.

  
  

• The Nizam drank black coffee in the morning (along with salt biscuits, which are the Hyderabad special Osmania biscuits). That’s all I could find about coffee in Hyderabad’s history. I have read that the Mughals had a coffee culture that largely got wiped out by the British, but I’m surprised that I didn’t find any traces of that in Hyderabad, especially considering the large Arab and specifically Yemeni population, though I didn’t go to those neighborhoods. I did find an Arabic coffee shop in the old city, and I wanted to ask about their history, but the shop, Mashallah Arabic Ghawa, is only open during Ramzan.

  
  

• The Nizam had an extensive spy network that included beggars, which was an old Mughal tactic since they had widespread access throughout the city. Every morning they’d have a meeting with the police chief who would then report the important information to the Nizam. Information included “What happened between so-and-so and so-and-so. Who got married last night. Did he consummate the wedding or not. How many times does a certain nobleman sleep with his mistress. What operations were carried out at the hospital, who had been fitted with dentures and so on and so on.” (I must remind you, there is not enough historical fiction set in Hyderabad.)

  
  

• Around this time Hyderabad was known for its cosmopolitan character. A British civil servant stationed in UP stopped in Hyderabad before going back to England in 1947 and noted being confused at seeing a boy at a party with a Hindu name wearing an Islamic hat. When he questioned someone about it, they said “Oh, in Hyderabad we do not care for things like that!”, which was in great contrast to his experiences in North India.

  
  

• I imagine everyone reading this already knows the basics about the connections between Hyderabad and the Ottoman empire?

  
  

  After the fall of the Ottoman caliph, the Nizam helped finance the ex-caliph’s lifestyle in exile, and there were efforts to make the Nizam the Caliph. Behind these efforts were Shaukat Ali, founder of the Khilafat movement, and Marmaduke Pickthall. Pickthall was British and brought up Christian, but he converted to Islam and was employed by the Nizam, heading a school and translating the Quran into English. His translation, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran published in 1930, is apparently still one of the most widely used today. 

  Ali and Pickthall helped arrange the marriage of the Nizam’s sons to Ottoman princesses. Princess Dürrüşehvar, daughter of Abdülmecid II who was the last Caliph (he was cousin of the last Sultan Mehmed VI), married the last Nizam’s eldest son Azam Jah in 1931, and her cousin Nilufer married Moazzam Jah, the Nizam’s second son. 

  Durrusehvar was in high demand, “sought by the Shah of Persia and King Fuad I of Egypt as a bride for their respective heirs, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and Farouk.” Interestingly, she was modern, well educated, and westernized, and coming to Hyderabad was a huge culture shock. It’s crazy that she got a firsthand look at the collapse of two empires.

  The marriages were a testament to the Nizam’s status as arguably the most important Muslim leader in the world at that time. The revival of the caliphate didn’t really go anywhere, but apparently Abdulmecid wanted his grandson Mukkaram (son of Azam Jah and Durrusehvar, and chosen to be the next Nizam) to be the caliph. [This is disputed, this article just confused me but read it if you want to know more.]

  
  

• Everyone reading this far already knows about Operation Polo, right? The Nizam knew he couldn’t stand up to Indian forces. When the army general said they’d only be able to last four days, the Nizam interrupted and said they’d really only last two days. They lacked arms, but they got a glimmer of hope from an Australian named Frederick Sidney Cotton, who is a real Most Interesting Man in the World type. There should be a movie about him (preferably from the 1950s, written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles). There are claims that Cotton inspired James Bond, undoubtedly overstated, but he and Ian Fleming actually were friends.

  
  

  Cotton was a pilot who flew combat missions over Germany in WW1, he was a pioneer of color photography, he later flew aerial reconnaissance missions over Germany and Italy for MI6, and he posed as a businessman and befriended high ranking Nazis and flew them on joy rides over military sites and secretly filmed airfields, bridges, and fortifications. After WW2 he failed in various business ventures, including buying surplus road-making equipment from Calcutta (a mistake many of us have made).

  In 1948 he went to Hyderabad to look into importing groundnuts to the U.S. (maybe I should try this next). At that point there was a blockade from India into Hyderabad, and Cotton saw that as horribly unjust. He believed Hyderabad had a right to statehood, and wanted to help out. Or so he said, maybe he just wanted to make money. He went to the prime minister of Hyderabad and asked if they were ready “to spend £20 million to remain free.” He was basically given a blank check and hired eight 3-man crews to fly five bombers that were made into civilian aircraft to supply 500 tons of weapons. 

  They made a deal with Pakistan to fly in and out of Karachi. The Indian government thought Goa was the landing space because spies saw Cotton snooping around there, but in reality Cotton had just been to Goa earlier in the year for another of his business ideas, looking to salvage sunken German ships. Despite these efforts, it turns out hardly any of these weapons were ever used when India invaded. Cotton ended up with a very light sentence (£200 fine and his pilot’s license canceled for two years), supposedly because Churchill intervened.

  
  

• The numbers are disputed, but there are claims that India’s invasion of Hyderabad killed between 20,000 and 200,000 Muslims, the vast majority of them civilians. This is said to be the deadliest event in India’s post-partition history. (Wikipedia says less than 10 soldiers from India’s military died, which sounds suspiciously low to me.)

  
  

  I don’t see anyone today arguing that Nehru shouldn’t have invaded Hyderabad, but at the time there was criticism from international press such as The Times, which called the invasion a “use of force against a weaker neighbour which resists its claims.” The New York Times saw both sides but stated that the Hyderabadi leadership legitimately believed “they can promote the welfare of their people more successfully outside the Dominion than within it.”

  
  

• After joining India, the last Nizam’s role became purely ceremonial, but he still issued firmans regularly, sometimes written on the backs of cigarette packets, and they were published daily in local newspapers, though they no longer meant much. Some were just his “unsolicited opinions on trivia.” There were firmans for the marriages of his staff members, and firmans for “moving an item from one part of the palace to the other.” The Nizam basically had his own personal proto-Twitter. He also took opium and scribbled on walls. 

  
  

• After the last nizam died, his grandson/heir searched through many rooms, some sealed for 60 years, which contained all sorts of random stuff. One was “stacked floor to ceiling with tins of ghee that the Nizam had bought from a shopkeeper he felt sorry for and then forgotten about.”

  
  

• After integration with India, the Nizam technically held no power, but he devised a way to continue to exert his influence on society. In 1953, the Nizam put out an ad in local papers offering to adopt anyone who wished to be adopted by the Nizam. Thousands of families hoped to take him up on the offer by having him adopt their children, with the children of his Arab guards being the most represented among them. He adopted around 300 children called “khanazads” practically overnight (that is on top of his 34 biological children). Though they wouldn’t inherit anything from the Nizam, he covered their education, housing, and welfare for as long as he lived. For their part of the bargain, they “became loyal subjects of a make-believe kingdom.” One man improved his lot in life by massaging the Nizam’s feet for two hours each night until he fell asleep.

  
  

  The Nizam took good care of his khanazads. He gave advice and settled disputes, he provided healthcare and presided over weddings. He gave them lectures on the importance of hard work, thriftiness, and unity. He gave them access to his large collection of automobiles, and he fed them very well. The cooks made thousands of meals every day to distribute to his “subjects” and their families, with each portion “weighed and graded according to the recipient’s position in the palace.” The palace had a dispensary where pills made of ground almonds and opium were produced and given out, though whisky and brandy were available as well to whomever desired. “Tramps and beggars” were given “wives and fine suites.” There were allegations of this amounting to slavery, but a police investigation “found that everyone was living happily around the old man in his feudal dream world.”

  
  

• Nizam had a kitchen staff of 340 which fed 2000 people a day. Apparently all of the nearby restaurants were secretly being supplied food from the kitchen. I didn’t see any restaurants claiming to be founded by former royal chefs, but there must be some?

  
  

• Despite these feudal extravagances, the Nizam still lived simply in many ways. The aforementioned bedtime foot masseuse said, “His room was very ordinary. There would be bugs in his bed. For him it was important that the general public should be happy, his condition didn’t matter.”

  
  

• Two big counterfactual questions of Hyderabad’s history are what if Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan integrated with India at independence, and what if the next Nizam Mukarram Jah stuck around in Hyderabad. The city’s heritage would be better preserved, perhaps fewer of the Muslim elites would have gone to Pakistan and elsewhere with a smooth, amicable, nonviolent integration, India would have more prominent Islamic leaders (at least one), etc. On the other hand, the city may not develop into a tech hub, maybe a stronger Islamic character keeps the successful Andhraites from making this their home, etc. There’s no saying how it ultimately would have turned out, but it’s definitely a shame that the city had a hostile integration with India and that the heir of its historic leadership rejected the role and left its heritage to stagnate and suffer in legal disputes.

Some other scattered notes on Hyderabad that I wrote down but didn’t feel like researching further and expanding on:

• I wrote in my notes that “Telugu was already the language used in durbar proceedings along with Marathi and Kannada.” Really? I can’t find this info now…

• Because of its modern institutions (schools, hospital, court), central location, and perhaps decent weather, some people including Ambedkar proposed that Hyderabad be India’s second capital. Is this why Rashtrapati Nilayam is the winter residence of the president?

• The communist peasant uprising in Andhra was the biggest in Asia outside of China.

• The beautiful Jagirdars College (in Begumpet) was founded in 1923 to educate the “sons of nawabs, jagirdars and other aristocrats and elites.” It remains pretty illustrious as The Hyderabad Public School, and alumni include Satya Nadella and a bunch of other CEOs, politicians, and film stars. 

• Mir Osman Ali Khan’s favorite songs, which he had a jazz band play at King Kothi, were “Whisperings” and “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.”

• Osman banned cow slaughter in 1923. The princely state was 85% Hindu.

• A landlocked independent Hyderabad would really make no sense, which is why Osman tried buying part of Goa, giving Hyderabad a sea port, but the Portuguese didn’t like the idea and it never got very far.

• "An index of how quickly Indian princes came down in the world is to be found in the fortunes of Hyderabad’s first family. The seventh nizam was possibly the richest man in the world; the ninth was a cameraman on the set of Basic Instinct." Source. It’s ironic because if I could pick anyone to direct a movie about the Nizams it would be Paul Verhoeven.

• Arab sheikhs came to Hyderabad to seek young brides after independence. Hyderabad is the source of the second highest number of expats from India after Kerala (I assume this refers to expats in the Middle East, given the context?). Saudi Arabia alone has around a million people from Hyderabad. 

• “The Nizam provided substantial funding for the restoration of Masjid al-Aqsa” and the renovation of the Indian Hospice in Jerusalem, and he was responsible for significant restorations in Medina. 

• The Grand Mufti of Palestine came to Hyderabad in 1933. 

• The Nizams never traveled abroad, unlike many Maharajas.

• Arabs who worked for the Nizam as soldiers and guards founded their own kingdom in Yemen, and they built many Hyderabad inspired palaces. Read Sam Dalrymple for more on the topic. Also, Aden was part of British India, under the Bombay Presidency! I never knew that.

• The legendary Visvesvarya was brought in to rebuild Hyderabad after the horrible floods of 1908.

• Hyderabad took in Muslim refugees from other parts of India after partition. Makes sense.

• I read a little bit about Burgula Ramakrishna Rao, who was chief minister of Hyderabad State from 1952 to 1956. He was the state’s final CM before the 1956 formation of Andhra Pradesh. He spoke Telugu, Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Persian, Tamil, and English, and he wrote poetry in both Telugu and English. He wrote a Telugu language history of Persian literature, and he made Telugu translations of the works of Omar Khayyam Sufi Sarmad. Do you ever get the sense that Indian politicians have gone downhill?

• Jackie Kennedy’s letter to a friend about her visit: "We had an evening with the old noblemen of the court… There were three ancient classical musicians playing in the moonlight, and the noblemen were speaking of how it was all disappearing, that the youth didn't appreciate the ways of the old culture, that the great chefs were being taken by the Emirates... The evening was profoundly sad. My son, John, told me the next day that the sons of the house had taken him to their rooms because they couldn't stand the classical music - and had offered him a tall glass filled with whisky and had put on a pornographic cassette in the Betamax, and the Rolling Stones on the tape deck. They wore tight Italian pants and open shirts..."

• At the time of independence, Hyderabad was bigger than 20 of the 52 UN member states, and had a larger income than 16 of them. Though it had no port, it was rich in resources such as coal, iron, ore, and cotton.

• The former Hyderabad princely state boundaries survive in the “Nizam” film distribution region.

• “Blue films” were made at the swimming pool at Bella Vista palace. Maybe by Azam Jah. I read a few other disgusting things about sex parties he may have held.

  In a letter to Nehru, the last Nizam wrote that his son “had developed sadistic tastes, he was entirely a moral pervert, his actions were unfit to be described.” What does this mean? Maybe one has to read Wajida Tabassum to find out.

• Some notes I took about NTR: 

  Congress gave NTR the amazing nickname “Drama Rao.”

  NTR never read anything. He would have documents explained to him, and then he’d sign them.

  He called for the Warehousing Corporation and Public Housing Corporation to be merged because they both contained the word housing.

  
  

  Congress blamed NTR for Rajiv’s assassination.

  
  

  Naidu was NTR’s son in law.

  NTR’s wife Lakshmi Parvati tried to have her sterilization reversed and gave an aging NTR steroids in an effort to have a child because an astrologer said if they had a kid together either NTR or the kid would rule the country.