Thursday 15 March 2018

Tafazzul Husain Khan, the Nawab of Farrukhabad, 1857



H.G.Raverty saw Nawab Taffazul Hussain Khan in 1857 and gives the following description of him;

" Little did I imagine, whilst stationed in the Punjab a few years since, that I should behold the last of the Nawabs of Farrukhabad, escorted by a party of my own regiment, conducted, on foot, with fetters on his legs, through the streets of Nassick, in Western India (where I then was stationed in command of a detachment), on his way to undergo perpetual banishment at Makka, for the share he took in the massacre at Farrukhabad, during the late rebellion in India. He had been sentenced to death; but his punishment was commuted to perpetual exile, in any place he might select. He chose Makka in Arabia, where, I have since heard, he subsists on alms. I spoke a few words to the wretched man at Nassick; the first he had heard in kindness, he said, for many long days. He appeared to be any thing but what one might expect, from all that has been proved against him. He was rather fair, slightly made, and about thirty years of age. To me, he appeared very wretched, and heart broken. He was only an Afghan in name: the centuries of admixture of Indian blood, by intermarriage with the people of the country, had left little of the Afghan blood remaining."


Nawab of Furrakhabad, 1857 (c). Watercolour painting by unknown artist. Source



2 comments:

  1. My mothers father is a pashtun from buner
    his wife my grandmother was a rohilla
    her mother was the grand niece of Tafazzal Hussain khan

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