Hyder Ali

Hyder Ali (c. 1720 – 7 December 1782) was a Muslim military commander of southern India who rose from service in the Mysore army to become the kingdom's de facto ruler in 1761, expanded the Mysore sultanate, and fought the British in the First and Second Anglo-Mysore Wars ¹.

Born at Budikote, the son of the Mysore officer Fath Muhammad, he distinguished himself in the wars of the Carnatic and climbed through the army until, in 1761, he took effective power under the Wodeyar raja Krishnaraja II, ruling as Sarvadhikari ¹. He modernised the army with French-trained officers and rocket artillery, absorbed the poligar chiefs around Mysore, and fought the Marathas, Hyderabad and the British in turn ². In the First Anglo-Mysore War (1767–69) he reached the gates of Madras and dictated the peace; in the Second (1780–84) his victory at Pollilur destroyed a British column, though Porto Novo checked him the next year ¹. He died at Chittoor on 7 December 1782, still on campaign, and was buried in the Gumbaz at Srirangapatna; his son Tipu succeeded him ².

Hyder Ali's own school is unattested in the sources consulted. The English article's infobox gives Sunni Islam, quoting Richard H. Davis's phrase for Hyder Ali and Tipu jointly, "parvenu Sunni Muslim rulers" ¹; the Urdu article files him by category among Indian Sunni Muslims while praising, in its text, a ruler famously free of sectarian bias toward every faith ³. No consulted source names a legal school or an order for the man himself.

His birth year is genuinely unsettled: the English and Arabic articles give about 1720, the Urdu article's text carries 1720 and 1721 both, and Wikidata holds three competing year values — 1717, 1720 and 1722 ^{1 3 4}. The Arabic article pairs his death day with 2 Muharram 1197 ². Mysore, Budikote, Chittoor and Srirangapatna have no place records in the museum, and his father has no person record, so no family or place edges are recorded for him here.