Abu'l Muzaffar Muin ud-din Muhammad Shah Farrukh-siyar Alim Akbar Sani Wala Shan Padshah-i-bahr-u-bar [Shahid-i-Mazlum] (or Farrukhsiyar, August 20, 1685 - April 19, 1719) was the Mughal emperor between 1713 and 1719. Noted as a handsome but weak ruler, easily swayed by his advisers, Farukhsiyar lacked the ability and character to rule independently. His reign witnessed the primacy of the Saiyid Brothers who became the effective powers of the land, behind the façade of Mughal rule.

Biography

Farrukhn Siyar was born at Aurangabad in the Deccan on September 11, 1683. He was the second son of Azim ush Shan, a son of former emperor Bahadur Shah I. His mother was Sahiba Niswan, a sister of Nawab Shaista Khan, the erstwhile Mughal Subadar of Kashmir. He married his first wife, Nawab Fakhr-un-Nisa Begum Sahiba, daughter of Nawab Sa'adat Khan Bahadur [Mir Muhammad Taqi Husaini], a Kashmiri nobleman from the Marashi clan, sometime prior to December, 1715. In September 1715, Farrukhsiyar married Indira Kanwar, daughter of Maharaja Ajit Singh of Jodhpur. He was also married to at least one other lady.

Reign

Jahandar Shah was defeated at Samugarh near Agra on 10 January 1713. Following this, the Saiyad brothers, who were the king-makers of that era, placed Farukhsiyar on the throne as nominal emperor. He took the throne On June 11, 1713, at the age of 30. His reign marked the ascendancy of the Saiyid brothers who monopolized state power and reduced the Emperor to an effective figurehead. Saiyid Huseyn Ali became Wazir or chief minister while his brother, Abdullah, became commander-in-chief of the army. Khalid Nizami

Sikh Supremacy

Farrukhsiyar was irked by the Saiyid Brother's dominance, but could do little to change the situation. Various plots to overthrow the influence of the Saiyad brothers failed. The ensuing internecine strife affected the administration of the empire, taking advantage of the situation, the Maratha and Sikh factions created anarchy in the provinces. The Sikhs under the command of Banda Singh Bahadur and Baj Singh routed Farukhsiyar's army at Haryana, they pursued and killed Farukhsiyars governor of Lahore Wazir Khan and his men at Sirhind in the Punjab. Many towns and villages were conquered by the Sikhs as they descended on Sirhind, as the Sikhs avenged Wazir Khan and the Mughal authorities brutality against the 10th Guru's entire family who were martyred either by being executed or by dying on the battlefield fighting against all odds. Farrukhsiyar was determined to avenge the Sikh victories and rise in power, he issued a Fatwah against the Sikhs and ordered the mass killing of Sikhs with a price on their heads, he was determined to capture and execute Banda Singh Bahadur and Baj Singh.

Farukhsiyars army surrounded Banda Singh's Fort and began a war of attrition to starve Banda Singh and his men out of the fort. Eventually within a couple of months Banda Singh and Baj Singh's close soldiers were tricked out of the fort through persistent assurances by their oppressors who they had vanquished for almost a decade. Feeble, weak, tired and half dead Banda Singh, Baj Singh and their surviving men some 300 had no more options. They all were forcibly marched to Delhi for brutal torture they would ultimately die as martyrs for the Sikh faith. There numbers were swelled en route by evil men who had betrayed and harassed local Sikhs along the way. They were all executed from 28th of February 1716 to the 9th June 1716 in public gaze at the Qutab Minar in Delhi.

The captured Sikhs recited their holy prayers as they met their end by the executioners butchery in batches on newly erected scaffolds and gallows. Farukhsiyar sat watching and seeing the bravery and fortitude of the tortured Sikhs who were in shackles, he decided to mock them by challenging Baj Singh one of the two Sikh commanders to come forward. Farrukhsiyar snorted 'now where is this Baj Singh the so called brave warrior!' as he laughed Baj Singh daringly announced his presence and burst forward menacingly challenging Farukhsiyar, once his shackles were opened Baj Singh pounced on Farukhsiyar's personal guard cutting one of them down instantly with one of their swords taking hold of the sword he then lunged at Farrukhsiyar. Farrukhsiyar now ran for his life tripping over his throne on the very site he had assembled the captured Sikhs for brutal butchery. The feeble Farrukhsiyar had a very narrow escape as he would have been murdered in cold blood.

It was from the brutal oppression in 1716 that great Sikh commanders rose and came forward for the survival of the Sikh People, so that through their leadership during the remainder of the 1700s that the Sikhs constructed the Sikh Empire which would span the entire Punjab from Peshawar in the West to Kashmir in the north, and Haryana in the south. The Sikh Empire reached its peak under Maharajah Ranjit Singh but formally came to an end in 1849. The Sikhs invaded and captured the Mughal capital of Delhi on some 15 occasions starting in the late 1750s through to the 1780s only leaving Delhi once they received suitable financial payoffs and assurances of continued Sikh autonomy from the now vanquished and weak Mughal leaders. The Sikhs had effectively crushed Mughal Rule, Power, and Influence by the time the British had fully reached the North of India.

Trade concessions

It was during Farrukhsiyar's reign, in 1717, that the British East India Company purchased duty-free trading rights in all of Bengal for a mere three thousand rupees a year. It is said that the Company's surgeon, William Hamilton, cured Farrukhsiyar from some ailment and the emperor was moved to grant trading rights to the Company.^[1] Another story tells of a bribe to a eunuch of the seraglio and a rumoured British Naval attack on the Moghul navy at Surat.^[2] This order, which the Company hailed as the golden firman, was not of much practical use. Even though the Company claimed duty exemptions based on this firman, the Mughal governors of Bengal, from Murshid Quli Khan onwards, ignored this order of their suzerain and continued to collect customs duty from the East India Company.

Death

However Farrukhsiyar in the very short term met a humiliating and bloody end, his constant plotting eventually led the Saiyid brothers to officially depose him as the Emperor. Farrukhsiyar was imprisoned and starved; later, on February 28, 1719, he was blinded with needles at the orders of the Saiyad brothers. Farrukhsiyar was strangled to death on the night of April 27/28, 1719. After accomplishing his assassination, the Saiyid brothers placed his first-cousin, Rafi Ul-Darjat on the throne. Rafi-ud-durjat's father and Farukhsiyar's father had been brothers.

Notes

External links

• Mughal genealogy
• Mughal dynasty

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