The blood-stained heads of his two sons and grandson were presented to him in prison vessels... The last Muslim ruler of India, Bahadur Shah, who was imprisoned and died in exile alone

Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor of India, his rule coincided with the control of the East India Company over India, so Britain isolated him after blessing the revolution against its oppression and killed a number of his family members and exiled him to Myanmar, and with his dismissal ended the Muslim rule of India that lasted 8 centuries, and the rule of the Mongols that extended 3 centuries .

Birth and upbringing

Abu al-Zafar Siraj al-Din Muhammad Shah II, nicknamed "Bahadr Shah," the son of Muhammad Akbar Shah II, was born on October 24, 1775 in India. He is said to be a direct grandson of the most famous Mughal emperors such as Genghis Khan and Tamerlane.

Bahadur Shah was the eldest son of Shah Muhammad Akbar from his Hindu wife, Lalbai, a Rajput princess, and was born in a period when British control over India and the sultans of the Islamic Mughal Empire were expanding and expanding.

Its upbringing witnessed the transformation of English merchants into a military force that dwarfed the power of the Muslim Mughal emperors. It also witnessed a literary renaissance and scientific and poetic seminars held in the Red Fort.

seat of government at the time.

Bahadur Shah was a calligrapher and poet in the Urdu language. In his upbringing, he was apprenticed to the Sufi poet Naseer al-Din al-Dahlawi and Sheikh Ibrahim Zawq. He was known for his love of literature, the beauty of his poetry, and the ease of his style.

The historical context of his accession to power

With the establishment of the East India Company, with the permission of Queen Elizabeth I, British influence began on the Indian coasts, while the Muslim Mughal rule remained in control in India.

The English commanders on the coasts were in the position of rulers;

They set laws and form police forces, which disturbed Siraj al-Dawla, the ruler of the Punjab province, who was supported by France, so he attacked the English in 1757 and it was the Battle of Plassey.

The Indians were defeated, so the British ruled the region, imposed taxes, spread Christianization, and sought to erase the Islamic manifestations of the state and fight Islamic education, in addition to insulting the different religious beliefs and spreading enmity among its adherents.

The poet-emperor assumed power after the death of his father in 1838, when he was 60 years old (foreign press)

Government actions in that period were issued by the British, but the rule was in the name of the Muslim sultan who is mentioned in the mosques and coins are minted in his name, but the actual control was for the British who paid the sultans’ salaries and allowances and imposed their control over them and represented them in governance.

The sultans were like employees of the English authorities, who had long had influence controlling the entrances and exits of Delhi.

Bahadur Shah took power

After the death of his father, Bahadur Shah Zafar assumed power in 1838, at the age of 60 at the time. He was a prisoner of the Red Fort, which the British had promised to turn into a military barracks after the death of the Emperor.

Emperor Bahadur was known for his love of gardens and his care for miniature painters, and he was king among his subjects in Delhi and the surrounding areas, but the actual rule was for the East India Company, which was paying him his salary.

Bahadur Shah was an elderly, weak emperor, and his leadership role was weak compared to his Mongolian predecessors such as Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and other Muslim leaders in India. This did not prevent him from becoming an attractive symbol of Islamic civilization and an example of a king who was tolerant of his subjects without his religion.

He led the greatest literary renaissance in the modern history of India, in which he presented the famous Indian poet Mirza Ghalib, as he was a poet and signs his writings with the name "Zafar", which means victory in the Urdu language.

And after assuming power in a historical period in which Britain was firmly in control of India, it was difficult for Bahadur Shah to reduce the great power of Britain represented in the East India Company.

Delhi Revolution of 1857

On the tenth of May 1857, the Indian rebellion began against the rule of the East India Company, which imposes representative control on behalf of the British crown. The revolution began with secret groups in Old Delhi calling for unity against the British enemy.

The Delhi Revolution or the "Prussian Revolution" in which Indians, Muslims and Hindus, led by Bahadur Shah Zafar (Shutterstock) participated

The beginning was within the ranks of the British army itself, which surprised the British, and from the barracks of the Hindu and Muslim soldiers, specifically from the two camps in Mert.

The spark of the revolution was what the British did of insulting the Hindu and Muslim soldiers by making them cut the fat of pigs and cows to lubricate their weapons, and the soldiers considered that an insult because pig is unclean in Islam, and cows are sacred to Hindus.

One of the goals of the revolution was to stand against all manifestations of injustice and tyranny from the British, to object to the high taxes they imposed, and to undermine their attempt to control social life in India.

On May 11, 1857, Indian soldiers stormed the Red Fort, seeking the blessing of Emperor Bahadur Shah for their uprising, and offered him to restore his full authority in exchange for assuming leadership of the revolution.

So he blessed it and stood with the uprising against the British as the last hope to preserve the king of his dynasty, which Britain threatened to end, and turned the castle into a training center for the soldiers of the revolution, and stopped paying allowances to the royal family.

Neither the revolutionaries nor the emperor had any military experience or pre-revolutionary planning, which led to their defeat in front of the large British force, although the Indians entered with great courage in that unequal battle.

The British considered Bahadur Shah Zafar's standing with the revolution a betrayal, as they saw them as guardians of his grace, so they attacked the strongholds of the revolutionaries and captured Bahadur Shah and his family and led them handcuffed. During that, one of the English officers shot his family, killing two of his children and one grandson.

This revolution was the last Mongolian attempt to get out of British control, but it resulted in the end of Islamic rule in India, which lasted 8 centuries, and undermined the rule of the Mongols, which extended for 3 centuries, by capturing Bahadur Shah.

Bahadur Shah was exiled and his trace erased

After the capture of Bahadur Shah and the mutilation of the dead bodies of his family, the English presented him with the heads of his two sons and grandson with their faces covered in blood in closed food containers.

A metaphor for pride and victory in the Urdu language.

The last Mughal emperor died after 4 years in exile, and the news of his death was not published in Britain or India (British Library)

Bahadur Shah was tried in a mock trial on charges of treason and conspiring with his son Mirza against the English and participating in their killing. He and his family and his entourage were sentenced to exile to Myanmar now, but he was isolated in exile from the rest of his family and remained there alone for 4 years until he died.

The British sought to erase the impact of the Islamic Mughal rule in India, which was known for its tolerance of various religious sects, and sought, in particular, the manifestations of the artistic and literary renaissance left by Bahadur Shah in the castle.

Death

Bahadur Shah Zafar died in a shabby wooden house in Yangon, in his exile in Myanmar, and he breathed his last on November 7, 1862 at the age of 87, and he ended his life alone after the British dispersed his family and killed most of them.

He was buried in an ordinary grave near the Shwedagon Temple, and no Indian or British newspaper published news of his death, and the news of his death did not reach India until a week later, and with his death the page of the Islamic Mughal rule of India was turned, and Queen Elizabeth ordered the transfer of power from the India Company to the British crown directly India is officially a British colony.

The last Mughal emperor was forgotten for a whole century, then his memory was revived after his tomb was found in 1991. Historians paid attention to his legacy, and an Indian series in the eighties of the last century narrated the memory of that era.

Roads in Delhi and Karachi were named after him, and a garden in Dhaka was also named after him. His rebuilt shrine became a pilgrimage center for the Muslims of Yangon, and Bahadur Shah left a mystical literary legacy in the Urdu language that the people of that country preserve.