It is said that under the guise of a turban-changing brother, Nadir Shah obtained the Kohinoor diamond from Muhammad Shah Rangeela.
This happened on the evening of May 12, 1739 amid lots of activities in Delhi: illumination in Shahjahanabad and celebrations in the Red Fort and syrup, betel and food being handed out among the poor –money being given to the poor, etc.
Mohammad Shah, the 13th crown prince of the Mughal Empire, sat in front of the Iranian king Nadir Shah in the court. He, however, does not have the royal crown on his head. Nadir Shah had snatched the kingdom from Rangeela two and a half months ago. After 56 days in Delhi, it is time for Nadir Shah to return to Iran and he wants to hand over the reins of India to Muhammad Shah Rangeela again.
Muhammad Shah, the owner of Kohinoor diamond, was born in 1702 during the reign of his great-grandfather Aurangzeb Alamgir.
His birth name was Roshan Akhtar, but on September 29, 1719, King Syed’s brothers installed him on the throne of the Timurid Empire at the age of only 17 and gave him the title of Abul Fateh Naseer-ud-Din Roshan Akhtar Muhammad Shah. His own nickname was ‘Sada Rangeela’. Who remembers such a long name, so the people combined the two to make Muhammad Shah colorful and he is still known and respected by the same name in the subcontinent.
Nadir Shah had swept the centuries-old Mughal treasury and turned over the pockets of all the princes and nobles of the city, but he was secretly told by Noor Bai, a prostitute from Delhi” “Given that all this you have achieved is nothing compared to what Muhammad Shah Rangeela has hidden in his turban”.
Nadir Shah was a wily politician and a dyed wool with using it. A trick was performed which is called Nehle pe Dehla. He said to Mohammad Shah Rangeela, “There is a custom in Iran that brothers exchange turbans on the occasion of happiness. From today we have become brothers, so why not repeat the same ritual?”
Muhammad Shah Rangeela had no choice but to bow his head. Nadir Shah took off his turban and put it on his head, and his turban on his head, and thus the world’s most famous diamond Kohinoor left India and reached Iran.
How much wealth did Nadir Shah loot from the Mughals? Historians estimate it was worth Rs.700 million of that time, which is equal to 156 billion US Dollars today. That’s equal to three budgets of Pakistan! This was the biggest armed robbery in human history.
After Nadir Shah’s attack, Muhammad Shah was content with mostly white clothes. ‘Sada Rangeela’ often liked to wear women’s clothes and used to come to the court dressed as a silk beast. However, it is written in the books that after the invasion of Nadir Shah, they were mostly content with white clothes.
The golden age of Urdu poetry
The court and official language of the Mughals was Persian, but as the court’s grip on public life loosened, the language of the people, Urdu, began to emerge. Just like when the branches of a banyan tree are chopped off, other plants have a chance to flourish under it. Therefore, the era of Muhammad Shah Rangeela can be called the golden age of Urdu poetry. Music also flourished during his era. The Mughal art of painting, which had withered during the reign of Aurangzeb, also came to the fore.
The beginning of this period was when Muhammad Shah Rangeela himself ascended the throne when the Diwan of the Deccan reached Delhi from the Deccan in 1719 –the year of the king’s procession. This Diwan caused a great stir in the literary circle of Delhi and for the first time it was revealed to the people here that poetry could be written in Urdu.
The cheese of Urdu poetry was ready as soon as this happened, in which the names of Shakir Naji, Najamuddin Abro, Sharafuddin Mazz and Shah Hatim are important.
An example of the ghazal of Mir Taqi Mir, a contemporary of Soda, has not been found till date. On one side of Delhi in the same period is the monastery of Mir Dard, the same Mir Dard who is still considered to be the greatest Sufi poet of Urdu. Mir Hassan grew up in the same era, whose Masnavi ‘Sahral Bayan’ is still his own example.
Read the original article in Urdu. It was first published in May 2018.
ALSO READ:
Pakistan at Junction of Two Ancient Civilizations
One of the Best Narratives 1857
The First Mughal Emperor’s Towering Account of Exile, Bloody Conquest, and the Natural World
Few Striking Findings and Some Did You Knows
