When Sun Meets Moon by Scott A. Kugle

Author:Scott A. Kugle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

Mah Laqa Bai and the Prime Ministers

Mah Laqa Bai’s first patron, Aristu Jah, was instrumental in advancing her career. He prompted her to collect her poetry into a divan in 1798 toward the end of his long, ambitious, and adventurous political life.6 Aristu Jah began his career as a fortress administrator in Awrangabad but was appointed prime minister in the place of Rukn al-Dawla in 1775. With his reputation for wisdom and wiles, Aristu Jah’s position at court grew so powerful as to breed jealousy, and others conspired against him. His crisis occurred at the battle of Khardla in March 1795. Aristu Jah had convinced the second nizam that his forces could face and defeat the feared Marathas. This departed from prior policy of diplomatic engagement with the Marathas to avoid war. The nizam with his army rode to the borderlands—ostensibly on an extended hunting trip—and faced the Maratha army. Maratha leaders bribed several of the nizam’s generals and courtiers to desert, including Mir ʿAlam, who had been Aristu Jah’s protégé. In the ensuing battle, the Marathas routed the nizam, and he was forced to pay a huge indemnity and cede land and forts. Aristu Jah was taken as a hostage in Pune, and in his absence his position in Hyderabad began to be taken over by Mir ʿAlam (died 1808).

After two years, Aristu Jah managed to free himself. He cleverly manipulated factions within the Maratha leadership such that the nizam’s indemnity of the Treaty of Khardla was rescinded. Aristu Jah returned to Hyderabad a hero, just as the nizam was about to dismiss British troops quartered at Hyderabad, throw his lot with French regiments, and enter into an alliance with Tipu Sultan of Mysore (died 1799). Aristu Jah urged the nizam to reverse course, reinstate the British, and disband French troops under the command of Michel Joachim Marie Raymond, better known as Monsieur Raymond; in turn, the British drew up a new defense treaty pledging to defend the nizam’s forces against the Marathas.7 Rumors circulated that the French forces were engineering a coup, possibly backing one of the nizam’s sons against their aging father. In 1798 amid such rumors, the commander of the French garrison, Raymond, died at the height of his powers; most likely Aristu Jah crafted his assassination by poison.

Aristu Jah secured power by intertwining his family with the nizam’s family. Nizam ʿAli Khan gave one of his sons to Aristu Jah to rear as his own when the prime minister’s son died (though this son was subsequently killed in the Khardla campaign). Aristu Jah later arranged his granddaughter’s marriage to Nizam ʿAli Khan’s son and successor, Sikandar Jah. The wily minister Aristu Jah patronized Mah Laqa Bai with hopes of getting her into the harem of the second nizam as a wife or concubine; having a loyal ally in the female quarters of the nizam’s household would give Aristu Jah a firmer hold upon the ruler’s policies. It would have fulfilled the dreams of Mah Laqa Bai’s mother and half sister who raised her.

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