Muhammad Shah

Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad Shah (August 1702 – 26 April 1748), born Roshan Akhtar, was the thirteenth Mughal emperor of India, reigning from 1719 to 1748 ¹. Chosen as a youth by the Sayyid Brothers of Barha, he freed himself of their tutelage, and his long reign became the stage on which the Mughal Empire's decline turned irreversible — above all in 1739, when Nader Shah of Persia invaded, defeated him at Karnal and sacked Delhi ^{1 2}. He is remembered as Muhammad Shah Rangeela, the Colourful — a great patron of music, painting and poetry, and himself a poet under the pen name Sadrang ¹.

He was the son of Khujista Akhtar, called Jahan Shah, the fourth son of Bahadur Shah I ^{1 3}. The sources divide on his birth day — the Arabic and Urdu articles give 17 August 1702 and the English article 7 August — and the record preserves both ^{3 2}. Raised to the throne at about seventeen under the strict supervision of the Sayyid Brothers, he escaped their control with the help of Nizam-ul-Mulk, Asaf Jah I: Syed Hussain Ali Khan was murdered in 1720 and Syed Hassan Ali Khan was captured and fatally poisoned in 1722 ¹.

The loss of the Deccan followed: Asaf Jah I, having served as grand vizier, withdrew south, defeated the emperor's appointee at Shakar Kheda and founded the Hyderabad State in 1725 ¹. The Marathas meanwhile ground down the empire's western provinces, taking Malwa and Gujarat through the 1730s ¹. Then came the catastrophe of 1739. Nader Shah crossed into India, took Lahore, and destroyed the Mughal army at Karnal; entering Delhi, his occupation turned to massacre after rumours of his death, and he carried off the Peacock Throne, the Koh-i-Noor and Daria-i-Noor diamonds and the accumulated treasure of two centuries ^{1 2}. Muhammad Shah also had to give his daughter in marriage to Nader Shah's youngest son ¹.

Against the political collapse stood a brilliant court. Urdu became the court language in his reign in place of Persian; qawwali was reintroduced at court; and the Quran was translated for the first time into simple Persian and Urdu ¹. His court musicians Naimat Khan, Sadarang, and Firoz Khan, Adarang, shaped the khyal form of Hindustani music, and the emperor composed songs himself under the pen name Sadrang ¹. The astronomical tables Zij-i Muhammad Shahi were completed by Jai Singh II of Amber under his name between 1727 and 1735 ¹.

In 1748 the Mughal army won a costly victory over the Afghan Durrani Empire at Manupur; when the scale of the losses reached the emperor, the sources say, he fell silent, sickened, fasted and grieved for his fallen commander Qamaruddin Khan, and died in Delhi on 26 April 1748 ¹. His tomb stands in the Nizamuddin Dargah complex in Delhi ¹.