White Mughals Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  Glossary

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  FOR THE BEST IN PAPERBACKS, LOOK FOR THE

  Praise for White Mughals

  “William Dalrymple is that rarity, a scholar of history who can really write. His story of cultural collisions is beautifully told, and brings British India vividly back to life; but it is also a tale with many contemporary echoes. This is a brilliant and compulsively readable book.”

  —Salman Rushdie

  “White Mughals is destined to become an instant classic. William Dalrymple has crafted a tale of romance and nostalgia that echoes in the ears like exotic birdsong. The history of India courses through his veins; the humanity of the past flows from his heart.”

  —Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

  “At the end of the eighteenth century, James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the promising young British Resident at the Shia court of Hyderabad , fell in love with Khair un-Nissa, an adolescent noblewoman and a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. The story of their romance and semi-secret marriage endured in local legend and family lore but was otherwise forgotten. After five years’ work with a trove of documents in several languages, Dalrymple has emerged not only with a gripping tale of politics and power but also with evidence of the surprising extent of cultural exchange in pre-Victorian India, before the arrogance of empire set in. His book, ambitious in scope and rich in detail, demonstrates that a century before Kipling’s ‘never the twain’—and two centuries before neocons and radical Islamists trumpeted the clash of civilizations—the story of the Westerner in Muslim India was not one of conquest but of appreciation, adaptation, and seduction.”

  —The New Yorker

  “A gorgeous, spellbinding and important book . . . A tapestry of magnificent set pieces and a moving romance. William Dalrymple’s story of a colonial love affair will change our views about British India.”

  —Sunday Times (London)

  “Imaginatively conceived, beautifully written, intellectually challenging and a passionate love story—this is Dalrymple’s lifetime achievement and the best book he has ever written. He has done for India and the British what Edward Said did for the meeting between the West and the Arab world in Orientalism. Destroying the centuries-old stereotype depiction of the British in India and the myth of the British stiff upper lip, Dalrymple shows that the British did not merely conquer India, they were seduced by it (and Indian women). Despite its setting in the eighteenth century, this is a hugely important contemporary book. Dalrymple has broken new ground in the current debate about racism, colonialism and globalization. The history of the British in India will never be the same after this book. It is also beautifully written.”

  —Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban and Jihad

  “The cross-cultural romance between Khair un-Nissa and James Achilles Kirkpatrick—the gripping central narrative of this book—is an extraordinary tale. . . . Mr. Dalrymple first began exploring the mingling of East and West as a travel writer, and his sensitive memoir of a year in Delhi, City of Djinns, established him as Britain’s premier author on South Asia. In White Mughals he has pulled off a tour de force of scholarly research. Academics rarely let themselves get so close and the result is a veritable travelogue through the past, packed with detail and sense of place. The book breathes. You can almost smell the spiced meats in the Hyderabad biryanis or the flowering fruit trees Kirkpatrick planted in the Residency garden. Mr. Dalrymple researches like a historian, thinks like an anthropologist and writes like a novelist. It is a winning combination.”

  —New York Sun

  “Masterfully demonstrating that truth can trump fiction, English travel writer Dalrymple relates a wrenching tale of love’s labours lost on the Indian subcontinent. Dalrymple argues that the Brits ‘went native’ a lot more than is commonly thought and that West can meet East when love is the lingua franca. Rigorously researched, intelligent, compassionate. A tour de force.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Anyone who fails to read William Dalrymple’s White Mughals owing to a lack of interest in India will be losing a rich reward. By following the love story of a British Resident in Hyderabad and a Muslim noblewoman, he goes deep into the relationship of East and West in the late eighteenth century when the twain did most certainly meet. A devoted and—in this case—uncannily lucky researcher, Dalrymple offers a feast of often astonishing information and a cast of men and women ranging from the comic to the heartrending, but above all he writes in a way that draws you into his own enthusiasm for the subject. This is an irresistible book.”

  —Guardian Books of the Year

  “Dalrymple’s subject is the unlovely term ‘transculturation,’ but his book has some lovely stuff about race, diplomacy, warfare and, especially, sex . . . A witches’ brew of deviousness, desire, ambition and astonishment.”

  —The Financial Times

  “A masterpiece.”

  —New Statesman Books of the Year

  “Fascinating and enthralling . . . William Dalrymple unscrolls a wide panorama: a vivid and often turbulent panorama of India during the eighteenth century. Impressively researched, and written with vigor and panache, Dalrymple is a gifted narrator who brings vividly to life the dealings between the Indian princes and the East India Company. He brilliantly depicts some of the leading characters.”

  —Daily Mail

  “Brilliant, poignant, and compassionate, White Mughals is not only a compelling love story but it is also an important reminder, at this perilous moment of history, that Europeans once found Muslim society both congenial and attractive, and that it has always been possible to build bridges between Islam and the West.”

  —Karen Armstrong, author of Buddha and A History of God

  “A spellbinding story with massive scholarship, captivating flair and obvious empathy. This is history at its very best, at its most engaging and relevant . . . A superlative, groundbreaking story that fully justifies all the effort, all the costs, all the risks [it took to write].... At a time when Islamophobia is rising to danger levels in the West we need this reminder more than ever that once, however briefly, East and West met in tolerance and peace—and love.”

  —The Scotsman

  PENGUIN BOOKS WHITE MUGHALS

  William Dalrymple wrote the highly acclaimed British best-seller In Xanadu when he was twenty-two. It won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Books Award; it was also shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize. His second book, City of Djinns, won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. From the Holy Mountain was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997; it was also shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Award, the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and the Duff Cooper Prize. A collection of his essays on India, The Age of Kali, was published in 1998. White Mughals won the 2003 Wolfson History Prize and the 2003 Scottish Book of the Year award.

  Dalrymple is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society and in 2002 was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographic Society for his “outstanding contribution to travel literature.” He is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, and they have three children. They now divide their time be
tween London and Delhi.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2002

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of

  Penguin Putnam Inc. 2003

  Published in Penguin Books 2004

  Copyright © William Dalrymple, 2002

  Map and other illustrations copyright © Olivia Fraser, 2002

  All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-09812-7

  1. British—India. 2. India—Social life and customs—18th century.

  3. India—Race relations. 4. Kirkpatrick, James Achilles, 1764-1805. I. Title.

  DS428 .D33 2003

  954’.840311’092—dc21 2002191082

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  For Sam and Shireen Vakil Miller

  and

  Bruce Wannell

  List of Illustrations

  John Wombwell, a Yorkshire chartered accountant, smokes his hookah on a Lucknow terrace c.1790. (Collection Frits Lugt, Institut Néerlandais, Paris)

  Sir David Ochterlony relaxes with his nautch girls at the Delhi Residency, c.1820. (Reproduced courtesy of the Oriental and Indian Office Collection, British Library—OIOC, BL Add. Or 2)

  Antoine Polier admires his troupe in Lucknow some thirty years earlier. (From the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan)

  A Lucknow dinner party c.1820. (Author’s collection)

  Bengali bibi, 1787, by Francesco Renaldi. (OIOC, BL)

  Boulone Elise, the bibi of Claude Martin. (La Martinière School, Lucknow)

  Jemdanee, the companion of William Hickey, 1787, by Thomas Hickey. (Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland)

  Khair un-Nissa, painted in Calcutta c.1806-7. (Private collection)

  A begum listens to music under a chattri in her garden while her attendants look on. Hyderabad, c.1760. (OIOC, BL Johnson Album 37, no. 9, 426 ix)

  A love-sick Hyderabadi begum consults an aseel while waiting in the moonlight for the arrival of her lover, c.1750. (OIOC, BL Johnson Album 50, no. 4, 422)

  The legendary Chand Bibi (d.1599), painted in Hyderabad, c.1800. (OIOC, BL Add. Or 3899, 433)

  A Deccani prince with his women. From Bijapur, c.1680, by Rahim Deccani. (Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin; MS 66 no. 1)

  Nizam Ali Khan crosses the causeway from Hyderabad to his citadel of Golconda, c.1775. (The Bodleian Library, Oxford: MS. DOUCE Or. b3 Fol.25, 31)

  The Handsome Colonel with George and James Kirkpatrick at Hollydale, c.1769. (Private collection)

  William Kirkpatrick in Madras as Wellesley’s Private Secretary in late 1799. (Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland)

  James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the British Resident at Hyderabad, 1799, by Thomas Hickey. (Private collection)

  The Nizam and his durbar ride out on a hunting expedition c.1790, by Venkatchellam. (Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad)

  Aristu Jah at the height of his powers, c.1800, by Venkatchellam. (V&A Picture Library, I.S. 163-1952)

  Henry Russell, c.1805, by Venkatchellam. (Collection of Professor Robert Frykenberg)

  The two youngest sons of the Nizam, princes Suleiman Jah and Kaiwan Jah, c.1802, by Venkatchellam. (Private collection)

  Nizam Ali Khan consults Aristu Jah and his son and successor Sikander Jah, c.1800, by Venkatchellam. (Private collection)

  Ma’ali Mian, Aristu Jah’s eldest son and the husband of Farzand Begum, by Venkatchellam. (Private collection)

  The young Maratha Peshwa Madhu Rao with his guardian and effective jailor, the brilliant and ruthless Maratha Minister Nana Phadnavis. By James Wales, 1792. (Royal Asiatic Society/Bridgeman Art Library)

  Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, c.1790. (V&A Picture Library, I.S. 266-1952)

  Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, by J. Pain Davis, c.1815. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

  Mir Alam. (Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad)

  James Achilles Kirkpatrick, c.1805, attributed to George Chinnery. (Courtesy of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd)

  General William Palmer in old age, c.1810. (Courtesy of the Director, National Army Museum, London)

  General William and Fyze Palmer with their young family in Lucknow, painted by Johan Zoffany in 1785. (OIOC, BL)

  James and Khair’s children, Sahib Allum and Sahib Begum, painted by George Chinnery in 1805. (Courtesy of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd)

  The mercenary Alexander Gardner in his tartan salvar kemise.

  The tomb of Michel Joachim Raymond.

  The hill of Maula Ali.

  Hyderabad state executioners in the 1890s.

  Medicine men.

  Amazon harem guards and band members.

  Raymond’s Bidri-ware hookah. (Private collection)

  William Kirkpatrick. (Strachey Trust)

  William Linnaeus Gardner.

  William Fraser.

  James Achilles Kirkpatrick as a young man. (Strachey Trust)

  William Palmer the Hyderabad banker as a disillusioned old man. (Private collection)

  Kitty Kirkpatrick.

  Henry Russell on his return to England.

  Thomas Carlyle. (Strachey Trust)

  The south front of the Hyderabad Residency in 1805. (Strachey Trust)

  The south front of the Residency today.

  The north front of the Residency today.

  The naqqar khana gateway into Khair un-Nissa’s zenana.

  Hyderabad’s Char Minar in the 1890s.

  THE SHUSHTARIS

  THE KIRKPATRICKS

  White Mughals

  Dramatis Personae

  1 . THE BRITISH

  The Kirkpatricks

  Colonel James Kirkpatrick (‘The Handsome Colonel’, 1729-1818): The raffish father of William, George and James Achilles. A former colonel in the East India Company army, at the time of James’s affair he had retired to Hollydale, his estate in Kent.

  Lieutenant Colonel William Kirkpatrick (1756-1812): Persian scholar, linguist and opium addict; former Resident at Hyderabad and in 1800 Military Secretary and chief political adviser to Lord Wellesley; illegitimate half-brother of James Achilles Kirkpatrick.

  George Kirkpatrick (1763-1818): James’s elder brother, known as ‘Good honest George’. A pious and humourless man, he failed to make a success of his career in India and never rose higher than the position of a minor Collector of taxes in Malabar.

  Major James Achilles Kirkpatrick (1764-1805): Known in Hyderabad as Hushmut Jung—‘Glorious in Battle’—Nawab Fakhr-ud-Dowla Bahadur; the thoroughly Orientalised British Resident at the Court of Hyderabad.

  William George Kirkpatrick (1801-1828): Known in Hydera
bad as Mir Ghulam Ali, Sahib Allum. After arriving in England, he, fell into ‘a copper of boiling water’ in 1812 and was disabled for life, with at least one of his limbs requiring amputation. He lingered on, a dreamy, disabled poet, obsessed with Wordsworth and the metaphysics of Coleridge, before dying at the age of twenty-seven.

  Katherine Aurora Kirkpatrick (1802-89): Known as Noor un-Nissa, Sahib Begum in Hyderabad and subsequently as Kitty Kirkpatrick in England; daughter of James and Khair un-Nissa; sent to England 1805; married Captain James Winslowe Phillipps of the 7th Hussars on 21 November 1829; died in Torquay in 1889 at the age of eighty-seven.

  The Wellesleys

  Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley (1760-1842): Governor General of India. Originally a great hero of James Kirkpatrick, his bullying imperial policies came to disgust James and led him to resist with increasing vigour the Company’s attempts to take over the Deccan.

  Colonel Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852): Governor of Mysore and ‘Chief Political and Military Officer in the Deccan and Southern Maratha Country’. Greatly disliked the Kirkpatrick brothers. Later famous as the Duke of Wellington.

  Henry Wellesley (1773-1847): Assistant to his brother the Governor General, and Governor of the Ceded Districts of Avadh.

  The Palmers

  General William Palmer (d.1814): Friend of Warren Hastings and James Achilles Kirkpatrick, and Resident at Poona until he was sacked by Wellesley. Married Fyze Baksh Begum, a begum of Oudh. Father of William, John and Hastings.