Shah Jahan Begum of Bhopal

Shah Jahan Begum (1838 – 16 June 1901) was the Begum of Bhopal in central India: she succeeded as a child in 1844, with her mother Sikandar Begum ruling as regent and then in her own right, and reigned herself from 1868 until her death. A reforming and building ruler, she began the Taj-ul-Masajid, part-funded the mosque at Woking in England, ran a press that printed major religious books, and wrote works of her own. The sources differ by one day on her birth (29 or 30 July 1838), and the English article contradicts itself on her death day (16 June in its infobox, 6 June in its closing paragraph); the museum record follows 29 July and 16 June, the readings of the majority of sources, and keeps the variants in its notes. ^{1 2 3}

She was born at Islamnagar, Bhopal, daughter of Nawab Jahangir Mohammad Khan and Sikandar Begum. On her father's death in December 1844 she became Begum at six years old, her mother taking the government as regent; when in 1855 she married Baqi Muhammad Khan she might have claimed power herself but yielded it to her mother, who was recognised as nawab in 1860. Baqi Muhammad Khan died in 1867, and on her mother's death she was enthroned in her own right on 16 November 1868. In 1871 she married the scholar Siddiq Hasan Khan, who became her counsellor and held high office until his death in 1890. ^{2 1}

She codified the state's laws through a dedicated department, the Tanzimat-i Shahjahani, divided judicial powers, appointed a government doctor in every tehsil, founded hospitals including one for women, and organised vaccination. For religion she created a department of religious affairs, maintained imams and muezzins in the state's mosques, expanded the stipends sent to the poor of Mecca and Medina, and had copies of the Qur'an and works such as Fath al-Bari printed at her Shahjahani Press and distributed. She began the Taj-ul-Masajid in Bhopal — among the largest mosques in Asia, completed only in the twentieth century — part-funded the Shah Jahan Mosque at Woking (1889), England's first purpose-built mosque, built the Taj Mahal palace at Bhopal, and supported the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh. She wrote Tahdhib al-Niswan and Khazinat al-Lughat and composed Persian poetry under the pen names Shirin and Tajwar. Stricken with cancer in 1900, she died at Bhopal on 16 June 1901 and was succeeded by her daughter Sultan Jahan. ^{2 1 4}