Tipu Sultan #2 - The Origins Of Haider Ali

Quiz Question - Connect Haider Ali with Madhavan and Jyotika

To understand Tipu Sultan, it is essential to understand his father. That’s the approach Vikram Sampath takes, and I agree. Someone’s early childhood and patterns of interaction in their young days determine more about them than anything else.

The Sources Used

Vikram Sampath uses three main sources to inform his opinion of Haider Ali’s early life.

The first is the Nishan-i-Hydari, an elaborate biographical study of Tipu Sultan’s family. This is written by Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani, a courtier at Tipu Sultan’s court from 1781 to 1786. He wrote this in 1802, after the Fall of Seringapatnam in 1799 when Tipu was killed and his family was imprisoned in Vellore.

The second is Historical Sketches Of The South of India In An Attempt To Trace The History Of Mysore by Colonel Mark Wilks. Mark Wilks has an interesting background. He joined the Madras Army and trained at Fort St. George. He picked up Persian and translated Persian poetry into English. I wonder about the quality of translation, but it seems highly celebrated. He worked alongside General James Stuart during the Storming of Seringapatnam (in what capacity? I don’t know), and subsequently, in 1803, he was appointed the Resident at Mysore. His nephew, Mark Cubbon, became the commissioner of Mysore, and Cubbon Park is named after him.

Anyway, Mark Wilks seems to have had a lot of friends in Mysore who shared their impressions of Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan with him. Vikram Sampath calls his book one of the “most celebrated accounts” on the history of Mysore.

The third is Lewin Bentham Bowring, who served as Commissioner of Mysore 1862-1870, and wrote the book Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan And The Struggle With The Musalman Powers Of The South in 1893, after he retired. So his account probably has few contemporary eyewitnesses, but has the benefit of distance and the dust settling. This is the Bowring after whom the exclusive private club Bowring Institute is named. Membership even today costs Rs. 20 Lakh.

The Ancestors of Haider Ali

Kirmani says that Haider Ali was of Quraysh descent - Arab clans that historically controlled Mecca and its Ka’aba. Haider Ali’s ancestor Wali Mohammed came to Aland in Gulbarga from Delhi during the time of Mohammed Adil Shah, the Sultan of Bijapur, and married his son Mohammed Ali into one of the families adhering to the Banda Nawaz dargah there.

However, Wilks says the earliest recorded ancestor of Haider Ali was an Afghani named Mohammed Bhehlol, who moved to Aland with his two sons Mohammed Ali and Mohammed Wali, and Mohammed Ali was married into one of the devotees of Banda Nawaz.

Bowring traces a similar ancestry, and adds that court historians always felt the need to say their kings descended from the highest social groups in the Islamic world to legitimize their dynasty and reign. A more recent account in 1951 from Mohibul Hasan also suggests this ancestry was made up to add legitimacy.

In any case, Mohammed Ali had a wife whose family was devoted to the Banda Nawaz dargah, and they lived in Gulbarga during the reign of Ali Adil Shah II (1656-72) The wife’s brothers were all working in the Bijapur army. At sometime in the 1680s, after his father died, Mohammed Ali decided to move to Bijapur, presumably to be close to his wife’s family.

But in 1685, Aurangzeb invaded Bijapur and resoundingly won. All seven brothers of Mohammed Ali’s wife were killed, and the wife, depressed, decided to refuse food and water to end her own life as well. Mohammed Ali worried he’d be killed too and decamped to Kolar further south.

Kolar was part of the Sira subah (province), and Aurangzeb by now had appointed Qasim khan as the governor of Sira. Under him was Shah Muhammed Dakhni, and Mohammed Ali entered his service. Life was peaceful again. He had four sons by now (by the same wife? Did she heal from her PTSD?), one of whom was Fatteh Mohammed.

Fatteh Mohammed had three kids who all died at young age. At this point, an Arab immigrant, Mir Akbar Ali Khan was traveling from the Konkan to Arcot with his family. He was robbed and murdered along the way. Fatteh Mohammed came across this family, decided to take care of them, and asked to marry their daughter.

In 1697, Mohammed Ali died, and Fatteh Mohammed moved to Arcot where he became a jamadar under Nawab Saadatullah Khan of Arcot.

He rose from commanding 200 infantry and 50 cavalry to 600 infantry, 50 cavalry and 50 rocket-men. Life was good. And then there was the battle in Gingee, where the Nawab defeated and killed the Rajput jagirdar Tej Singh (Desingu raja… like that song with Madhavan and Jyotika, yes, we will come back to this). For his great performance in this battle, Fatteh Mohammed was presented with an elephant and a pair of kettledrums. I’m not sure why the kettledrums are an honor, but good for him.

Just like how you quit right after a promotion at Oracle to join a startup based in your hometown, Fatteh Mohammed quit Arcot to move back to Sira and work under the Nawab of Sira, Dargah Quli Khan.

He was sad because he had no children, so he married his wife’s sister and had three kids - Shahbaz, Wali Mohammed, and Haider Ali. Wali Mohammed died at age 2. Haider Ali’s birth had bad portents - astrologers said this baby was unlucky and would bring death upon his father. But if you’ve been struggling for kids all your life and finally have three, of which one dies, you’re not going to infanticide the third one. So Haider was allowed to live.

This kind of lucky break would be a defining feature of Haider’s life going forward.

Fateh Mohammed, however, wasn’t as lucky, with the prophecy forcing itself true.

What followed was Oracle taking over PeopleSoft and firing all its employees. Nawab Dargah Quli Khan was killed in battle, and his son Abdul Rasul Khan succeeded him. Buuut another claimant, Tahir Khan, staked his claim, which was bad enough, but to make things worse, Tahir Khan came with the support of the Nawab of Arcot.

In a pitched battle that makes Larry Ellison seem like a nerd (the analogy breaks down here and merges into reality because we’re talking about actual war), Fatteh Mohammed and Abdul Rasul Khan fought Tahir Khan, who was supported by the Nawab of Arcot. I’m sure Fatteh Mohammed wished he had stayed back in Arcot at least a few times because the Sira side got butchered badly, and Fatteh Mohammed was killed.

When I look at the list of Sira Subahdars on Wikipedia, they change every year or two. What was Fatteh Mohammed thinking? This was like joining Yahoo as CEO’s assistant, but instead of being fired, you were fired from a cannon.

Subahdars of Sira vs CEOs of Yahoo

Now Abbas Quli Khan, the son of Abdul Rasul Khan, probably blamed Fatteh Mohammed for his father’s death. He was left with just Doddaballapura after his father’s rout. I know I’d be mad, too, if I was stuck in Doddaballapura.

What he did was to go harass the grieving family of Fatteh Mohammed in Devanahalli, saying he had left behind debts. They obviously couldn’t pay up, so he plundered his entire property. There seems to have been some intense hatred in here, because he didn’t stop there. He went on to take Shahbaz and Haider, who were eight and four, and put them inside a kettledrum and beat it to torture them.

The mother of the boys, Majeeda Begum, escaped and went to her husband’s nephew Haider Sahab, who was working for the Mysore government in Bangalore. He took her with him to the capital, Srirangapatna, with an urgent appeal to the Maharaja of Mysore.

The Maharaja wrote a strongly worded letter to the Nawab of Sira (Tahir Khan, I suppose). He was probably happy to kick Abbas Quli Khan when he was down, and strongly reprimanded him. The Maharaja then cleared Fatteh Mohammed’s debts to people in Sira, and assured the boys a job in his services when they were of age.

Until then, they lived with their cousin Haider Sahab, who worked in the Mysore government, and learned all the soldiering arts that seemed to be their family trade.

But early scars like this don’t leave you. Haider Ali had no interest in education and remained illiterate all his life. He preferred sports and fun. He was ‘indolent and hedonistic’ in his pursuits. Wilks says Haider Ali would waver between wild hedonism and extreme abstinence and exertion.

As they grew up, Haider and his brother Shahbaz worked as soldiers in Mysore under Katti Gopalraje Urs (I notice the clan of the current Maharaja of Mysore use the same suffix in their names, any connection?), then the Nawab of Chittoor, but finally, the Nanjarajayya, the Chief Minister of Mysore was very impressed with Haider Ali, and took him into the Mysore army.

Phew. There. Now let’s go into sidetracks that this story brought up.

Arcot? Desingu Raja?

This song kept playing in my head the whole time, so you should listen to it too:

When we read The Beautiful Tree, the province of Arcot came up. Arcot keeps coming up in references the older folks at home made.

And, remember Marudhanayagam, the ill-fated Kamal Haasan movie? It’s based on a commander who was employed by the Nawab of Arcot and the East India Company to put down the Palayakkarar (Polygar) revolt. The only legacy of the movie is this iconic image that will have future generations scratching their heads:

Yes, that is indeed Queen Elizabeth with Kamal Haasan, and Karunanidhi. She launched the shoot of this movie. If this isn’t the biggest love letter to the freaking British Raj, I don’t know what is.

So. Arcot. It’s the anglicization of Arkad. That’s a name I’ve heard in Tamil rhymes for kids. The Nawab was called the Nawab Of The Carnatic. What is Carnatic now? I only know the music. Maybe a map will help.

So. Carnatic is much of present-day Tamil Nadu, and the areas which were called Thondai Nadu under the Cholas. Cool.

What follows is stuff I’ve gleaned in several minutes of reading, so corrections welcome. Chhatrapati Shivaji conquered the fort of Gingee (which is a day’s journey from Thiruvannamalai) from the Bijapur Sultan. It’s surrounded by hills on three sides and a river on the fourth, so it’s very fortified. Years later, the Marathas kept escaping to the Nayak fortifications in the Carnatic as Aurangzeb tried to stamp them down, so after the Siege of Gingee, when Aurangzeb tried to smoke out Chhatrapati Rajaram, Aurangzeb appointed the first Nawab of the Carnatic, who ruled from Arcot (two days north from Gingee), and was under the Nizam of Hyderabad.

Arcot is apparently a strategic location, because it’s in the middle of the trade route between Madras and Mysore. Anyway, we can assume that the Nawab of Arcot was the representative of the Mughals in the Carnatic.

As for Desingu Raja, there’s probably more to the story than what’s on Wikipedia, but it seems like Aurangzeb gave his father the fort of Gingee to command. He left heavy debts on his death. His son, Tej Singh came from Bundelkhand to Gingee to take over the fort as his hereditary right. The Nawab of Arcot didn’t want him there, and the debt had something to do with why (this seems iffy, I’d like someone to give me more info). Anyway, Desingh had only a small army and couldn’t hold out against the Nawab’s army, and was killed in battle in 1714.

This was the battle that Fatteh Mohammed distinguished himself in. I’m not sure why this was so important.

But, now we know why Arcot was a big dog and keeps coming up in accounts of South India.

Other thoughts

Seems like entire clans of people exclusively worked as soldiers generation after generation. And, they just moved between armies and kingdoms with no real concern for who the rulers were. And it wasn’t even like one family was devoted to just one king or kingdom - Fatteh Mohammed worked for the Nawab of Sira, as well as the Nawab of Arcot, and his nephew for the Maharaja of Mysore. Earlier still, they worked for the Sultan of Bijapur, and probably some kingdom in Punjab and Delhi. In the case of the family Fatteh Mohammed married into, they were Arabs traveling to work for the Nawab of Arcot.

When this is the case, can people really be faulted for working for the East India Company? It was just yet another player in India. When their soldiers figured out their designs for India, they plotted and mutinied in 1857. And then the British decided to stop recruiting from those communities that revolted, like the Bhumihar Brahmins, to which group Mangal Pandey belonged to.

Part of this was also how the hierarchy of administration worked, and how land grants and taxes worked. For the average villager, his immediate village head had more of an impact on his life than whoever was several rungs above him. Land grants and taxes funded education, arts, salaries and grants for the unfortunate irrespective of who the top dog was. Struggles for control of a Jagir or a Nawabship made little difference, just as patent wars between Apple and Samsung make little difference today. Skilled soldiers, just as programmers today, joined whoever offered them a better position, and did their best.

Another aspect here is finances and debts. They seem to play a big role in wars starting or rulers changing. But typically we never hear about the finances of rulers when we read history.

How do these finances work? Is there a book just on finances and accounts of Medieval India? Is most war just collecting unpaid taxes/tributes?

Next Week…

Next week, we’ll look at the history of Mysore up to this point and how it viewed itself as the Mughals warred with the Marathas. Arcot shows up a lot more as we talk about how the Carnatic wars affected Mysore, and had Haider Ali rise to prominence.

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