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Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Mir Jumla (Mir Muhammad Said Ardastani)

A Persian merchant who became chief minister and army commander of Abdullah Qutb Shah of Golconda. He is known by the title of his office, Mir Jumla. He conquered the Karnatak south of the Krishna, including Gandikota and the diamond country of Cuddapah, and he leased the diamond mines. His quarrel with the king in 1655–56 brought the Mughal prince Aurangzeb to besiege Golconda. He then joined Mughal service as Mu'azzam Khan and died in 1663 after an expedition to Assam.

Mir Muhammad Said of Ardistan was the chief minister and general of Abdullah Qutb Shah of Golconda.123 He is known by the title of his office as Mir Jumla.123 Mir Jumla was the title of the chief minister of the Qutb Shahi kingdom, and several other men held it before him.123 In Mughal histories and European travel books the title stuck to him as a name.123

For the Telugu country he matters for two reasons.45 He conquered the Karnatak south of the Krishna.45 And his quarrel with his king brought the Mughals to Golconda in 1656.45

Origins

Archibald Constable edited Bernier’s travels in 1891.3 He gave the name as Mir Muhammad Said Ardastani.3 He wrote that Mir Jumla “was born in Ardistan near Ispahan, and came to India as the personal attendant of a Persian merchant”.3

The Kistna district manual of 1883 adds that his parents were so poor “that they with difficulty had him taught to read”.6 He came to Golconda as a clerk or servant to a diamond merchant.6 With the first money he made, “he purchased a place in the service of the king”.6

François Bernier knew the Mughal court.3 He said that “the Vizier’s lineage was not noble, but his talents were of the first order”.3 Jean de Thevenot was at Golconda in 1666.7 He heard that Mir Jumla was “the Son of an Oyl-man of Ispahan”.7 He also heard that his twenty mans weight of diamonds came from the plunder of the Karnatak.7

Minister and merchant

Bernier describes him as “an accomplished soldier, and deeply versed in business”.8 His huge wealth came from his office and from “his extensive commerce with various parts of the world”.8 It also came “by the diamond mines which he farmed under feigned names”.8 (To farm a mine was to lease it.) Bernier says it was usual “to count his diamonds by the sacks-full”.8

He kept his own troops, “with a corps of artillery composed principally of Franks or Christians”.8 The Kistna manual says that his ships sailed from the ports of the east coast.6 It says that “all the diamond mines were farmed by him under borrowed names”.6

The French jeweller Tavernier went to see him in 1652.9 He found that the king of Golconda bought nothing rare or costly that “Mir Jumla, who commanded his army and was the Prime Minister of his Court, had not first seen”.9

Tavernier watched Mir Jumla at work in his tent, with “the intervals between his toes full of letters”.10 He drew them out one by one and dictated replies to two secretaries.10 In the same sitting he tried and sentenced criminals.10

The conquest of the Karnatak

Inayat Khan wrote the official history of Shah Jahan’s reign.4 He calls Mir Jumla the man “in whose hands was the entire administration of Kutbu-l Mulk’s kingdom”.4 After a hard struggle with “the Karnatikis”, Mir Jumla had conquered a fort and a tract of country 150 kos long and twenty or thirty broad.4 It yielded forty lakhs of rupees a year and contained “mines teeming with diamonds”.4 None of the king’s ancestors had been able to take it.4

Tavernier reached Gandikota, in the Kadapa (then Cuddapah) hills, in September 1652.1112 This was eight days after Mir Jumla had taken it, after a three months’ siege.1112 He had the help of French, English, Dutch and Italian gunners.1112

There Tavernier saw a Frenchman from Bourges casting cannon for Mir Jumla.13 He made them from idols “which had been removed from the pagodas which his army had visited”.13 On his way north Tavernier noted that Cumbum had been a frontier town of Golconda “before the conquest of that of Carnatic by the army of Mir Jumla”.14 Bernier says that Mir Jumla “pillaged the whole of its ancient idol-temples, and thus increased his pecuniary resources to an incredible amount”.8

The quarrel with Abdullah and the siege of 1656

Inayat Khan says that Mir Jumla’s power, his conquests and his private army made him enemies at court.4 They turned the king against him, and he asked Prince Aurangzeb for protection.4 In 1655–56 Shah Jahan gave him a rank of five thousand and his son Muhammad Amin a rank of two thousand.4 He ordered the king not to stop them from coming.4

Abdullah then imprisoned Muhammad Amin and seized the family’s property.515 So Aurangzeb sent his son Muhammad Sultan against Hyderabad, and he followed him to besiege Golconda.515

The travellers give different causes:1617

  • Tavernier says that Mir Jumla was away “in the direction of Bengal” when enemies at court persuaded the king that he planned to put his son on the throne.1617 The son insulted the king, was arrested, and was imprisoned with his mother and sisters.1617 Mir Jumla was refused by the prince Shah Shuja and turned to Aurangzeb.1617
  • Bernier says the king’s anger broke out when he learned of “the improper intimacy subsisting between Emir-Jemla and the queen-mother”.18
  • Bernier also says that Mir Jumla himself proposed the plan to seize the king by a trick.1920 He offered to pay fifty thousand rupees a day towards the cost of the expedition.1920

Haig, writing in 1907, repeated the story of the queen-mother, though he misprinted the date as 1665–66.21

Mir Jumla arrived near Golconda while the siege was ending.2223 On the banks of the Husain Sagar he received the emperor’s farman (order) and robe of honour, and he was presented to Aurangzeb.2223 He was soon given the title of Mu’azzam Khan.2223 Tavernier believed that Mir Jumla “still retained some regard for the King” and helped to arrange the peace.24 See Golconda Fort.

In Mughal service

Bernier says Mir Jumla went to Agra and gave Shah Jahan “that celebrated diamond which has been generally deemed unparalleled in size and beauty”.25 He urged Shah Jahan to conquer Golconda, “whose precious stones were surely more deserving of his consideration than the rocks of Kandahar”.25

Tavernier says the great diamond came from the mine of Kollur on the Krishna.2625 His editor V. Ball corrected Tavernier’s slips over its weight and over who received it.2625 Ball identified it with the Koh-i-nur.2625 Constable’s note in Bernier records that Mir Jumla became governor of Bengal under Aurangzeb.3 He died in 1663 after an expedition against the kingdom of Assam.3

His hold on the Karnatak lasted longer than his service at Golconda.27 Jadunath Sarkar writes that the Qutb Shahi king long tried to keep in his own hands “the extensive jagir,—almost equivalent to a kingdom,—which Mir Jumla had won in the Karnatak”.27 During the Mughal war of succession the king seized Gandikota and Sidhout from Mir Jumla’s agents, until Aurangzeb took them back.27

Bernier found in 1667 that Mir Jumla’s son, then a Mughal officer, was still greatly respected in the Golconda kingdom, especially at Machilipatnam (then Masulipatam).28 His broker there “virtually acts as master of the port”.28 See Machilipatnam.

Footnotes

  1. Muhammad Qasim Ferishta, tr. John Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, Vol. III (1829), p. 329 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Ferishta, tr. Briggs, Rise of the Mahomedan Power, Vol. III (1829), p. 333 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. François Bernier, tr. Archibald Constable, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–1668 (1891), pp. 16–17 and notes (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11

  4. Inayat Khan, Shah Jahan-nama, in H. M. Elliot and John Dowson (eds.), The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, Vol. VII (1877), p. 108 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  5. Inayat Khan, in Elliot and Dowson, History of India, Vol. VII (1877), pp. 109–110 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 35 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  7. Jean de Thevenot, The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the Levant, Part III (English tr., 1687), p. 103 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1891), p. 17 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  9. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), p. 259 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  10. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), pp. 291–293 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), p. 284 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  12. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), p. 294 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  13. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), p. 290 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  14. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), p. 295 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  15. Elliot and Dowson, History of India, Vol. VII (1877), pp. 111–112 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  16. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, tr. V. Ball, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), pp. 164–165 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  17. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), pp. 166–167 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  18. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1891), p. 18 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  19. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1891), p. 19 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  20. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1891), p. 20 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  21. T. W. Haig, Historic Landmarks of the Deccan (1907), p. 182 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  22. Elliot and Dowson, History of India, Vol. VII (1877), p. 117 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  23. Elliot and Dowson, History of India, Vol. VII (1877), p. 119 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  24. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), p. 168 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  25. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1891), p. 22 and note (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  26. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. II (1889), p. 74 and note (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  27. Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Vol. IV (2nd ed., 1930), p. 405 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  28. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1891), p. 195 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

References

Sources (9)
  1. H. M. Elliot and John Dowson (eds.), The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period, Vol. VII (opens in a new tab), Trübner and Co., London, 1877, pp. 108–119. [Public domain]
  2. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (tr. V. Ball), Travels in India, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Macmillan & Co., London, 1889, pp. 164–170, 259, 284–295. [Public domain]
  3. Muhammad Qasim Ferishta (tr. John Briggs), History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India till the Year A.D. 1612, Vol. III (opens in a new tab), Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, London, 1829, pp. 329, 333. [Public domain]
  4. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (tr. V. Ball), Travels in India, Vol. II (opens in a new tab), Macmillan & Co., London, 1889, pp. 74. [Public domain]
  5. François Bernier (tr. Archibald Constable), Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656-1668 (opens in a new tab), Archibald Constable and Company, Westminster, 1891, pp. 16–22, 195. [Public domain]
  6. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Lawrence Asylum Press), 1883, pp. 35–36. [Public domain]
  7. Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Vol. IV: Southern India, 1645-1689 (2nd ed.) (opens in a new tab), M. C. Sarkar and Sons, Calcutta, 1930, pp. 405. [Public domain]
  8. T. W. Haig, Historic Landmarks of the Deccan (opens in a new tab), Pioneer Press, Allahabad, 1907, pp. 182–184. [Public domain]
  9. Jean de Thevenot, The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the Levant, in Three Parts: I. Turkey, II. Persia, III. The East-Indies (opens in a new tab), H. Clark for H. Faithorne, J. Adamson, C. Skegnes and T. Newborough, London, 1687, Part III, 103. [Public domain]

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