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The Life and Reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar INTRODUCTION The Life and Reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar Sourced from- https://www.wikipedia.org INTRODUCTION Bahadur Shah Zafar or Bahadur Shah II was born as Mirza Abu Zafar Siraj-ud- din Muhammad on 24th October, 1775 in Shahjahanabad, present day Delhi to Mughal Emperor Akbar Shah II and Lela Banu Begum (Lal Bai, a Hindu Rajput princess). Bahadur Shah II, being the last emperor of India, was also called ‘Badshah’ or ‘Shahanshah-e-Hind’. By the time Bahadur Shah Zafar ascended the throne, the area under Mughal rule was drastically reduced, as were the emperor’s powers, symbolic and otherwise, and thus he was ultimately known only as the ‘King of Delhi’. He was a musician, calligrapher, and poet, with so much more aesthetics with mere knowledge of politics. He received his education in Arabic and Persian. He was born in the royal family and as a prince he was trained in the military arts of horsemanship, shooting with arrow and bows, swordsmanship and with fire-arms. He was also excellent in calligraphy and also use his talent to write Quran by himself which was sent to famous mosques around Delhi as gift. BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S FATHER- AKBAR SHAH II Sourced from- https://www.wikipedia.org BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S MOTHER- LAL BAI Sourced from- geni.com SHAHJAHANABAD- BIRTHPLACE OF BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR Sourced from- kamit.jp BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S CALLIGRAPHY Sourced from – granger.com FAMILY TREE OF BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR Sourced from-timesofindia.indiatimes.com Bahadur Shah Zafar had four queens; Ashraf Mahal, Akhtar Mahal, Zeenat Mahal, and Taj Mahal. He was the father of forty-nine sons and daughters. Mirza Dara Bakht, Mirza Mughal, Mirza Fath-ul-Mulk Bahadur, Mirza Khizr Sultan, Mirza Jawan Bakht, Mirza Shah Abbas to name a few. A study of Bahadur Shah Zafar remains incomplete without the description of his wife Zeenat Mahal. He married Zeenat Mahal in 1840 who gave birth to his favourite son Mir Jawan Bakht. She had great influence on the emperor who handed over all his powers to his beloved wife. She became the de facto ruler. Seeing her son as the next great emperor was her only dream, but the primogeniture law of the English was one of the main works in this perspective. She was protective of her son and did not allow him to participate in the war of independence, mostly because she knew that the British will easily win and her son will be the next emperor to their dynasty. But the British wanted to end monarchy. Therefore, she was also exiled to Rangoon along with her son where she died in 1886. BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S WIFE, ZEENAT MAHAL Sourced from- en. Wikipedia.org BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S SONS- JAWAN BAKHT AND MIRZA SHAH ABBAS Sourced from- in.pininterest.com BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S SON AND THELAST CROWN PRINCE- MIRZA FATH-UL-MULK BAHADUR Sourced from- en. Wikipedia.org BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S SON- MIRZA MUGHAL Sourced from-twitter.com BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S SON- MIRZADARA BAKHT Sourced from- in.pininterest.com Bahadur Shah Zafar died on November 7th, 1862, while in exile in Rangoon, now Yangon in Myanmar. Defeated, demoralised and humiliated, it was an inglorious end for a man whose Mughal ancestors had for 300 years ruled a vast territory including modern-day India, Pakistan, large parts of Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Like other Mughal emperors he is said to be a direct descendent of Mongol rulers such as Genghis Khan and Timur. With the death of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the greatest dynasty of India, the Mughals, came to an end. Although he was nothing as an emperor compared to his renowned ancestors like Akbar or Aurangzeb, he was the beginning of the failed rising of the revolt of 1857, when soldiers from all over the country of India stood against the British, East India Company. BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR II ENTHRONED Bahadur Shah Zafar was the 17th and last Mughal emperor. He ruled over a Mughal Empire that had by the early nineteenth century been reduced to only the city of Delhi, and the surrounding territories. The Maratha Empire had brought an end to the Mughal Empire in the Deccan during the 18th century and the regions of India formerly under Mughal rule had either been absorbed by the Marathas or had declared independence and become smaller kingdoms. In 1772, Shah Alam II ascended the throne with the help of the Marathas. He was protected by Maratha general Mahadaji Shinde and maintained his empire on Mughal politics in Delhi. Bahadur Shah Zafar was the second son of Akbar Shah II. He became the successor to his father, Akbar Shah II, upon his death on 28th September 1837. On 29th September he was coronated at the Red Fort at the ripe age of sixty-two. Zafar's father, Akbar Shah II, had been imprisoned by the British. Bahadur Shah Zafar was not his father's preferred choice as his successor. One of Akbar Shah II's queens, Mumtaz Begum, pressured him to declare her son, Mirza Jahangir, as his successor. However, The East India Company exiled Jahangir after he attacked their resident, in the Red Fort, paving the way for Bahadur Shah Zafar to assume the throne. Thus, he was a nominal Emperor, as the Mughal Empire existed in name only and his authority was limited only to the walled city of Old Delhi called Shahjahanbad. The entire power and dominancy was taken over by the East India Company. The emperor was respected by the Company, who provided him with a pension. The emperor not only allowed the English East India Company to collect taxes but also gave control of using their military powers on the land. Bahadur Shah Zafar never had any interest in statecraft or had any "imperial ambition". BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S CORONATION Sourced from- en. Wikipedia.org EMBLEM USED BY BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR Sourced from-twitter.com ‘ZAFAR’, THE POET KULLIYYAT-I-ZAFAR- COLLECTION OF POEMS AND GHAZALS Sourced from-exoticindiaart.com Pramod Nayar in his book of The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar mentioned how Bahadur Shah Zafar could have been a great scion and poet. Bahadur Shah Zafar was a popular Urdu poet who has written various ghazals in the language. The pen name he used, Zafar, means victory. During the Revolt of 1857, some of his poems and works were destroyed or lost. However, a large compilation of his works was able to survive and collected as a collection named Kulliyyat-i-Zafar. His court was the home to several prolific Urdu writers, including Mirza Ghalib, Dagh, Mumin, and Zauq. Urdu poetry flourished during his reign because of the patronization it received from the emperor himself. MIRZA GHALIB- COURT POET OF BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR Sourced from-ummid.com Being a sensitive poet, Bahadur Shah Zafar has a mournful effect on the fall of Mughal Empire. His poetry is marked by a deep sense of pity and pathos, and for being a record of the miserable human predicament. He sought the advice of Zauq on his poetry. After the demise of Zauq, it was Mirza Ghalib who became his mentor. Zafar has also written comments on Sheikh Saadi’s Gulistan. Even when Zafar’s end was near, the only thing that stayed with him were his poems. The poet-king wrote a wonderful ghazals in his days of loneliness during his exile which shows us how great of a poet he was. Zafar became instantly popular for his excellent works in Urdu. His ghazals about life and love are famous and often sung or read out in Yangon's mushairas, gatherings at which Urdu poetry is recited. Banned from using pen or paper, he is said to have written in charcoal on the walls that confined him during his exile. A few of the poems attributed to him have been reproduced in the mausoleum. Although Zafar has lost his dynasty and ruler, but still he was successful in winning millions of hearts as a mystical poet and a Sufi saint. POEM WRITTEN BY ‘ZAFAR’, DATED 29TH APRIL,1844. Sourced from-pininterest.com.au GHAZALS BY BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR Sourced from-rekhta.org SHAYYARI BY BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR Sourced from-rekhta.org BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR’S RELEGIOUS BELIEFS Bahadur Shah Zafar was a devout Sufi. He was regarded as a Sufi Pir and used to accept murids or pupils. Zafar was known as the leading saints of the age after the approval of the Divine Court which was even mentioned in the Delhi Urdu Akhbaar, an old renowned newspaper. Before his accession, he lived like "a poor scholar and dervish", differing from his three royal brothers, Mirza Jahangir, Salim and Babur. Major Archer once predicted Zafar to be the man spare stature and figure and simply dressed. He also expressed that Zafar’s appearance was more like a language teacher than that of an emperor. However, this was in 1828, almost an era before Zafar succeeded the throne. As a poet, he imbibed the highest subtleties of mystical Sufi teachings. He was also a believer of the magical and superstitious side of the Orthodox Sufism. Like many of his followers, he believed that his position as both a Sufi pir and emperor gave him spiritual powers. In an incident in which one of his followers was bitten by a snake, Bahadur Shah Zafar tried to cure him by giving a "seal of Bezoar" (a stone antidote to poison) and some water on which he had breathed to the man to drink. The emperor had a staunch belief in ta'aviz or charms.
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