Muhammad Shah
Muhammad Shah reigned for twenty-nine years and watched the empire dissolve around him without ever losing his throne. He was put on it at seventeen by the Sayyid brothers, the kingmakers who had deposed and blinded and killed emperors for four years, and his first achievement was having them killed instead. He is remembered by the nickname Rangila, the colourful, for a court of musicians, dancers and poets. The classical vocal tradition of northern India took its modern shape under his patronage, and Urdu became a literary language at his court. What went on outside it was the end of the empire as a state. His ablest minister left in 1724 to govern the Deccan for himself, founding the line of the Nizams of Hyderabad. Bengal, Awadh and the Punjab went the same way: provinces that still named the emperor in the Friday prayer, still struck his coins, and sent him no revenue and took no orders. The Marathas took Malwa and Gujarat and by 1737 were raiding the outskirts of Delhi. In 1739 Nadir Shah of Persia came through the passes, destroyed the Mughal army at Karnal in an afternoon, and entered Delhi. A rumour that he was dead led to the killing of some of his soldiers, and he ordered a massacre that killed tens of thousands of people in a day. He left carrying the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor. Muhammad Shah was restored to the throne of a country that no longer had an army, a treasury or any authority beyond the walls. He reigned nine more years.
- Lived: 1702 CE – 1748 CE
- Nationality: Mughal
- Roles: head_of_state, royalty
