Hyderabad: Shadow of Empire

Aram Bakshian Jr. and Geoffrey D. Schad look at the Indian state of Hyderabad from the 18th century to the last days of the British Raj, and at its rulers who echoed the glories of the Mughal court.

Aram Bakshian | Published in History Today Volume 39 Issue 1 January 1989

Writing about the Nizam of Hyderabad and his Dominions on the eve of the Second World War, the English author-traveller Rosita Forbes described her subject in terms as lavish as those used by Elizabethan visitors to the court of the Great Mughal more than three centuries earlier:

First among the Princes of India comes the Nizam of Hyderabad... Ruler of an independent State about the size of Britain, [he] is probably the richest man in the world. His revenue is seven million pounds sterling and his civil list a thousand pounds a day. Nobody knows the value of his jewels and treasures because nobody ever sees them, but legend insists that in the vaults of the fort which has withstood innumerable sieges, lies hidden an accumulation of precious stones and gold to the value of over fifty millions.