Saadat Ali Khan
Saadat Ali Khan was a Persian merchant's son from Nishapur who came to India to trade, rose in the Mughal court through the coups that followed Aurangzeb's death, was made governor of Awadh in 1722 to bring a rebellious province to heel, and made it instead a state his family held for a hundred and thirty-four years; he ended by inviting Nadir Shah to Delhi and poisoning himself when the Persian asked him for more than he had promised. He was born about 1680 in Khorasan, came to India around 1708 after his father, and served the emperor Farrukhsiyar as a cavalry commander. He was one of the Mughal nobles who joined the Sayyid brothers in deposing that emperor in 1719 and then helped Muhammad Shah destroy the Sayyids in 1720, for which he was made governor of Agra and, in September 1722, of Awadh, with the title Burhan-ul-Mulk. Awadh was the Ganges plain between Delhi and Bengal, rich and ungoverned, where the Rajput and Afghan zamindars had stopped paying. He beat them one by one, replaced them with men who paid him, settled the revenue, raised an army that was his own, and by 1730 remitted to Delhi what he chose and appointed whom he chose. The emperor confirmed it because he could not prevent it. Saadat fought the Marathas in 1737 and beat them at Jalesar, and was the noble the court turned to when Nadir Shah of Persia came through the Khyber in 1739; at Karnal in February his cavalry charge began the battle that lost the Mughal army in an afternoon. He was captured. As a Persian himself he negotiated for the invader. He promised Nadir two crores of rupees to go home, and when his rival the Nizam was made vizier in the settlement he told Nadir, out of spite, that Delhi held twenty times that, which brought the Persians into the city, the massacre of March, and the loss of the Peacock Throne. He died on 19 March, of a poison he took or of shame, the chroniclers say either. His nephew succeeded him and the line ended with Wajid Ali Shah in 1856.
- Lived: 1680 CE – 1739 CE
- Nationality: Indian
- Roles: nawab, monarch
