Akbar II as Pretender: A Study in Anarchy

Extract

Akbar Shāh, son of the Mughal emperor Shāh 'Ālam II, was elevated to the throne of Delhi as pretender eighteen years previous to his accession as Akbar II, and money was struck in his name. The addition of another claimant to the dynastic list was communicated in a joint paper by Mr. S. H. Hodivala and myself, which appeared in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for the year 1922, and to which I invite reference. I had found a copper coin of Aḥmadābād mint bearing the name of Akbar Shāh and date A.H. 1203, which made me conjecture whether Ghulām Qādir Khān, the “unspeakable Rohilla”, raised another prince to the Mughal throne after the puppet Bedār Bakht (A.H. 1202–3), who might or might not be identical with the Akbar Shāh, eldest surviving son of Shāh 'Ālam II, who succeeded his father in the regular way as Akbar II in the year A.H.. 1221 (A.D. 1806). I put the matter to Mr. Hodivala, a leading authority on Mughal history, and his reply was that “it has not yet been possible to find an absolutely complete and satisfactory solution of the problem connected with the Akbar Shāh coins of A.H. 1203, but there would seem to be fairly good grounds for answering the question in the affirmative”. The fullest account of the transactions which led to the deposition and blinding of Shāh 'Ālam II is in the 'Ibratnāmah (Book of Warning) of Faqīr Khairu-d-dīn Muḥammad, but this work closes soon after recounting the terrible cruelties practised on the Emperor Shāh 'Ālam and his family by the infamous Ghulām Qādir, whose atrocities the author describes at length.