Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c15.s6: § 2. Character of Imād-ul-mulk

v1.c15.s6.1

Imād-ul-mulk’s father was Ghāziuddin Khan Firuz Jang, the eldest son of the Nizām Asaf Jah. An extremely reserved and godly man, Firuz Jang spent his days in the company of theologians and his nights in vigil, and ordered the life of his household with the strict rod of a puritan. These qualities he seems to have inherited from his mother, who was the Sayyid-born daughter of a pious Shaikh of Gulbarga. He married Zeb-un-nisa (popularly known as Sultan Begam), a daughter of the wazir Qamruddin. Their son was Shihābuddin, who afterwards gained the titles of Imād-ul-mulk, Ghāzi-ud-din Khan Bahādur, Firuz Jang, Mir Bakhshi, Amir-ul-umara, Nizām-ul-mulk Asaf Jāh, and finally in June 1754 became the wazir of the Empire. Born at Narwar in June 1737, Imad was brought up by his pious father with incredible strictness; he spent his days exclusively with tutors and *mullahs* and the Muslim Sabbath with eunuchs, being never allowed to mix with boys of his own age or to attend any performance by dancing girls, though this was the universal amusement of all classes in that age and almost a matter of course at every social gathering. The result was that his intellect passed through a forced precocious flowering. He mastered several languages, including Turkish, and learned to write with neatness the seven different styles of Arabic penmanship. As a scholar, he was versed in many branches of knowledge and a poet of some note in his time. His intellectual attainments, however, did not weaken his power of action. Unlike his passive retiring father, he was brave in battle, enterprising in action, and a born leader of men in a degree surprising in a lad not yet out of his teens. But all these splendid gifts were vitiated by an utter lack of the moral sense, a boundless ambition, a shameless greed of money, and a ferocious cruelty of disposition that made him one of the monsters of Delhi history. His father's simplicity of life and aversion to pleasure had accumulated a vast hoard out of which seventy lakhs in cash and jewels were utilised by Imad most wisely and successfully in his war with Safdar Jang [Imād, 61-62; Siyar, iii. 46.]