The Last Mughal

Synopsis

At 4 p.m. on a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, 'No vestige should remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.' Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, a talented poet, and a skilled calligrapher. But while Zafar's Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, Zafar nevertheless succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history. Then, in 1857, Zafar's flourishing capital became the centre of an uprising that reduced his beloved Delhi to a battered, empty ruin. When Zafar gave his blessing to a rebellion among the Company's own Indian troops, it transformed an army mutiny into the largest uprising the British Empire ever had to face. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad: a fight to the death between two powers, neither of whom could retreat.

The Last Mughal is a portrait of the dazzling Delhi Zafar personified, the story of the last days of the great Mughal capital and its final destruction in the catastrophe of 1857. William Dalrymple's powerful retelling of this fateful course of events is shaped from groundbreaking material: previously untranslated Urdu and Persian manuscripts that include Indian eyewitness accounts, and the records of the Delhi courts, police, and administration during the siege. The Last Mughal is an extraordinary revisionist work with clear contemporary echoes. It is the first account to present the Indian perspective on the siege, and has at its heart the stories of the forgotten individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.

Reviews

Max Hastings, The Sunday Times

“Dalrymple is an outstandingly gifted travel writer and historian who excels himself in his latest work. One of its many merits is that it calls upon hitherto unpublished Urdu and Persian material in Indian archives to tell the story from an Indian as well as a British perspective. This is an angry book as well as a very good one.”.

Dominic Sandbrook, The Evening Standard

“The Last Mughal is much more than the biography of one man. It is the story of a city, Delhi, teeming with conmen and holy men, hawkers and prostitutes. It is also a lament for the lost world of the Mughals, a genuinely multicultural synthesis of Indian and Islamic traditions, from music to miniature painting. Above all, it is a terrific retelling of the event that ended Zafar’s reign - the Indian mutiny of 1857, “The Raj’s Stalingrad.” He has found a wonderful treasure trove of documents at the Indian National Archives and thanks to these rich sources The Last Mughal brims with life, colour and complexity, and it will make the most jingoistic reader think again about the effects of British rule on India…. This is an outstanding book, distinguished by its painstaking research, narrative flair and imaginative sympathy. Dalrymple writes with a burning anger, but never loses sight of his obligation to the reader. The result is one of the best history books of the year.”

David Robinson, The Scotsman

“Scotland’s finest travel writer is emerging as India’s most dazzlingly original historian… what Edward Gibbon was to ancient Rome, William Dalrymple will be to the magnificent Mughals.”

Mike Dash, The Sunday Telegraph

“This fine book…[was] made possible by some dazzling detective work in Indian archives. It has become a commonplace for historians of the Mutiny to bemoan the lack of sources on the rebel side with the result that the most scrupulous accounts of 1857 betray a British bias. Dalrymple, though, has tracked down swathes of unseen masnuscripts that makes possible the first proper retelling of the Indian side of the great rebellion. As a vivid portrayal of Delhi under siege, the book is unmatched; as an account of life in the invested city it is revolutionary. And as an elegy for the last of the Great Mughals – banished to far-off Rangoon and buried in an unmarked grave – it is deeply humane.”

Aamer Hussein, The Independent

“Diligently researched and densely informative… Dalrymple’s recreation of the city of Delhi under siege forms the monumental backdrop to the tragic figure of the Last Mughal… [and] gives us a fuller picture of the devastation of Delhi than has ever before been presented in English. Dalrymple’s work laments the loss of an elegant tradition, a celebration of what was lost, the tone changing from epic to elegy and back.”

Michael Binyon, The Times

“William Dalrymple brilliantly evokes the tense equilibrium on the eve of the Indian Mutiny, and with pace and panache, leads us to the explosion… Dalrymple’s towering achievement in providing almost hourly detail lies in his sources. Drawing widely on Persian and Urdu manuscripts, he narrates the chaos through memoirs, letters, official reports and a sweeping understanding of Indian and Muslim cultures. Dalrymple tells the story of the British retribution with anger and horror.”

Lucy Moore, The Daily Mail

“Dalrymple, using for the first time a dazzling array of primary sources in Urdu as well as in English, places Delhi squarely in the centre of the uprising… He is at his best in pre-Mutiny Delhi and brilliantly recreates a typical pre-Mutiny day. Dalrymple began working on the Last Mughal in 2001, and it is informed throughout with poignant awareness of contemporary events. His final words are a bleak warning, and one can only hope that the Last Mughal finds its way onto the bedtime tables of current world leaders.”

Sara Wheeler, The Daily Telegraph

“An exhaustive, deeply informed and compelling new book, bulging with scholarship. The strength of this book lies in the breadth of its quotations from unpublished primary sources. In deploying his material, Dalrymple shows he has the two essential gifts of the historian: a grasp of detail, and an ability to see the big picture. Dalrymple writes with unfaltering elegance and clarity [in this]… challenging, impressive book.”

Jo Johnson, Financial Times

“The story of the Indian Mutiny has been told many times in many ways. Few have managed to evoke as well as William Dalrymple what life was like on both sides of the divide. Dalrymple’s narrative is artfully divided between descriptions of the besieged court ensconced at the Red Fort and the harried forces of the British gathered on the ridge. Thanks to an understanding of India gained during a 20-year familiarity with Delhi, and an indefatigable persuit of primary sources, Dalrymple has produced a finely balanced account of the greatest armed challenge faced by any European power during the 19th century, and of the bloodthirsty revenge the British exacted on those who dared to rise up against them.”

Rachel Aspden, The Observer

“Dalrymple argues convincingly for the contribution of colonialism to the rise of religious radicalism in India... A skilfully written, impeccably researched history.”

Sebastian Shakespeare, The Literary Review

“What marks out William Dalrymple out among other contemporary historians of India is his relish for the subject. His love of the country permeates every page of this new book… Drawing on 20,000 unused papers languishing in the Indian National Archives, Dalrymple has unparalleled access to eyewitness accounts, notes scribbled by spies, and petitions to the King. His research has been prodigious, his enthusiasm is infectious and he is an incomparable guide. Dalrymple writes with great verve, clarity and style.”

Amartya Sen

"William Dalrymple’s captivating book is not only great reading, it contributes very substantially too our understanding of the remarkable history of The Mughal empire in its dying days, and also to the history of Delhi, of India, of Hindu-Muslim collaboration, and of Indo-British relations in a critically important phase of imperialism and rebellion.  It is rare indeed that a work of such consummate scholarship and insight could also be so accessible and such fun to read.”

C. M. Naim, Professor Emeritus, South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago

“An outstanding book: meticulously researched, it makes full use of an extraordinary number of previously unexplored sources in British and Indian archives. Its author displays  exemplary fairness and empathy in his judgments on events and people and in his selection of episodes. And finally, Dalrymple is as attentive to literary style as he is to historical research. The book’s brisk narrative quickly grips our attention and holds it to the end. This is well-reasoned history at its enjoyable best.”

C A Bayly, Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge

“The Indian rebellion of 1857–8 and the deposition of the last Mughal Emperor were events of epochal importance. William Dalrymple tells this dramatic and tragic story with literary elegance, erudition and a wealth of new material.”

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, author of Avadh in Revolt and Mangal Pandey

“William Dalrymple’s new book is an invaluable addition to the literature on the revolt 1857. It looks at the uprising in Delhi largely on the basis of sources which have not previously been read by any historian. He brings alive those fateful months of 1857, and in the process recreates also the outstanding literary achievements of the dying Mughal court. It is a poignant story, extremely well narrated with much new facts and analysis.”

Harbans Mukhia, Emeritus Professor of History, JNU

“William Dalrymple’s latest work, The Last Mughal, is the most definitive account of events centred on Bahadur Shah Zafar and the great Indian mutiny in and around Delhi in 1857–58. Based upon an immense amount of empirical research, often unearthing archival material hitherto untouched by historians, Dalrymple achieves an admirable balance between fairness and a moving empathy with the subjects of his book. Dalrymple brings home the overwhelming grandeur of the tragedy enacted in those fateful months and its aftermath.”

Michael H. Fisher, Danforth Professor of History, Oberlin College, USA

“Dalrymple’s extensive and innovative archival research has enabled him to present a striking new perspective on the tragic events of 1857 as centred on Delhi. Drawing upon hitherto largely untapped records and sources, Dalrymple has insightfully and engagingly recovered the history of the rising religious passions and racial hostility that swept away the highly cultured Shahjahanabad of Bahadur Shah Zafar.”

David Arnold, Times Literary Supplement

“[Dalrymple] builds an urban narrative as evocative as Richard Cobb’s depiction of Revolutionary Paris . . . There is so much to admire in this book–the depth of historical research, the finely evocative writing, the extraordinary rapport with the cultural world of late Mughal India. It is also in many ways a remarkably humane and egalitarian history . . . This is a splendid work of empathetic scholarship. As the 150th anniversary of the uprising dawns there will be many attempts to revisit these bloody, chaotic, cataclysmic events; but few reinterpretations of 1857 will be as bold, as insightful, or as challenging as this.”

Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Guardian

“Brilliantly nuanced . . . Dalrymple has here written an account of the Indian mutiny such as we have never had before, of the events leading up to it and of its aftermath, seen through the prism of the last emperor’s life. He has vividly described the street life of the Mughal capital in the days before the catastrophe happened, he has put his finger deftly on every crucial point in the story, which earlier historians have sometimes missed, and he has supplied some of the most informative footnotes I have ever read. On top of that, he has splendidly conveyed the sheer joy of researching a piece of history, something every true historian knows . . . I had thought that Dalrymple would never surpass his performance in writing From the Holy Mountain, but The Last Mughal has caused me to think again.”

Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman Books of the Year.

“William Dalrymple continues to scale new heights. The Last Mughal is a moving and totally engrossing account of the life of the unfortunate and tragic emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. It should shame all those belligerent neo-con historians who claim that colonialism was a good thing for the colonised- if they had any shame left.”

Diana Athill, Guardian Books of the Year.

“William Dalrymple’s Last Mughal describes the siege and destruction of Delhi in 1857, drawing largely on hitherto untranslated material from the National Archives of India and using the voices of people who were there. It is a book as important as it is impressive.”

Mukund Padmanabhan, The Hindu

“Dalrymple narrates the story of Delhi’s capture and fall with a rare humanity, a zest that is infectious, and in a prose that is handsome, sure-footed and flowing with breezy purpose. Few writers understand as well as Dalrymple that the function of history is not merely to inform but also to engage and entertain . . . The book provides a fascinating account of the last days of Mughal Delhi . . . [and] these personal stories add up in some incalculable way to provide a picture of Mughal Delhi that is intimate and meaningful . . . When the British defeat [Zafar] and strip him of his kingship, they do more than just end the Mughal dynasty; they destroy a form of Indo-Islamic civilisation. In many ways, this splendid book is a stirring lament for this loss.”

Khushwant Singh, Outlook India

“[The Last Mughal] shows the way history should be written: not as a catalogue of dry-as-dust kings, battles and treaties but to bring the past to the present, put life back in characters long dead and gone and make the reader feel he is living among them, sharing their joys, sorrows and apprehensions . . . Dalrymple’s book rouses deep emotions. It will bring tears to the eyes of every Dilliwala.”

Swapan Dasgupta The Telegraph

“The Last Mughal is narrative history at its very best… a gripping story seen through the eyes of the Britons and Indians who were caught up in the maelstrom. At the same time the book provides larger insights into the nature of the uprising… Dalrymple’s account is both evocative and sensitive.”

Rasheeda Bhagat, The Hindu Business Line

“Dalrymple recaptures the dying moments of Mughal glory with the sensitivity and scholarly flair of a master storyteller, and it is difficult to read some sections with dry eyes . . .What sets The Last Mughal apart from other accounts of Mughal history, particularly Mughal Delhi, is a sketch of a colourful, vibrant city seen from the eyes of the trader, the hakim, the dancing girl, Ghalib, and of course the British administrators . . . Zafar’s character is sketched with honesty, without making him out to be demon or the saint some accounts attempt to do . . . But ultimately it is the creation of an authentic account of Mughal history for which Dalrymple deserves the utmost praise. Whether it is description of palace life with all the intrigues and counter-intrigues between Zafar’s wives, the clash of Muslim ideology with the new Christian values, or the massacre of the British men, women and children, the looting and violence that took place in Delhi during the mutiny, the events come alive in Dalrymple’s narrative . . .”

Pavan K Varma, DNA

“Monumental… painstaking… attractive… sympathetic and very accomplished. The Last Mughal will remain a book with lasting value for three reasons. Firstly, it a vivid portrait of a remarkable man who lived through a fascinating period of history. Secondly, it is the most meticulous work as yet on 1857 in Delhi. |And finally it is proof once again of Dalrymple’s ability to write history in the most gripping manner.”

Irfan Husain, Dawn

“Meticulously researched, sympathetically argued and written with great verve and fluency… a labour of love. What is particularly striking in The Last Mughal is the extraordinary range of sources Dalrymple has consulted.”

The Economist

“A riveting account . . . It is neither wholly a biography of Zafar, nor solely the story of the siege and capture of Delhi. Instead Mr. Dalrymple charts the course of the uprising and the siege, weaving into his story the unfolding tragedy of Zafar’s last months. The animating spirit of the book is Delhi itself . . . It is here that the originality of [Dalrymple’s] new book lies.”

S. Prasannarajan, India Today

Dalrymple brings out the poignancy and pathology of a Mughal Lear with the ease and élan of a master storyteller . . . In The Last Mughal, history is human drama at its elemental best . . . History ceases to be a dead abstraction on his pages [but instead] an enduring enchantment.”

Mushirul Hasan, The Indian Express

“If you have not already read this book, please do so. William Dalrymple, who has already established his credentials as a powerful writer, skilfully unfolds the life history of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal, against the backdrop of 1857 Rebellion and the Mughal empire’s disintegration. His is a painstakingly researched book with plenty new insights.”

Edward O’Hare, Village Magazine

“Piece by piece, Dalrymple uncovers the mosaic of Bahadur Shah's life, obscured by a century-and-a-half of destruction... William Dalrymple is one of the greatest living authorities on Indian history and The Last Mughal completes the final chapter in the story of a wise and noble dynasty.”

Nyanjot Lahiri, Hindustan Times

“A compelling, vivid account of the 1857 resistance… different and delightful… A powerfully vivid and tactile retelling of the story [in which] the breathless and brutal pace of action is craftily combined with insights into the religious and class elements underlining it…. It is the untidiness of the unfolding drama which makes it extraordinarily human. Instead of black and white categories, we encounter a gamut of various shaded tones. [Finally] the book captures the tragedy of a mutilated Mughal capital and its butchered populace.”

Simon Scott Plummer, The Tablet

“Fascinating… Drawing on virtually untapped sources in Delhi, Lahore and Rangoon, above all in the National Archives of India [Dalrymple] uncovers first and foremost the Indian side of this momentous story… In Dalrymple, the Indian mutiny and the concomitant collapse of the Mughal dynasty have found a worthy chronicler. He has unearthed a mass of information which has filled out the Indian side of the story and he expresses his learning in elegant prose. Above all he has an abiding love for the theatre of action, Delhi.”

Bhupesh Bhandari, Business Standard

“William Dalrymple tells things as they happened. His last two books mark his transformation from a riveting travel writer to a historian of repute. It is difficult to think of anyone else who has done it so admirably. He writes with an umatched passion for India and is still objective in his observations… A story of sadness, intrigue and retribution.”

John Zubrzycki, The Australian

“An extraordinarily detailed and highly readable portrait of the last tragic months [of Mughal Delhi]. It is also a lament for a lost Islamic civilisation at its most tolerant and pluralistic… Dalrymple brings the Uprising alive from Indian and British perspectives… A monumental work that breaks new ground in the study of one of the most important episodes in Indian history. Its lessons about the dangers of aggressive Western intrusion and interference in the East are as pertinent today as they were 150 years ago.”

Bookseller

‘Another superb piece of Indian and imperial history’

Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times Books of the Year

‘A natural-born storyteller, Dalrymple recounts the dramatic history of Mughal Delhi before, during and after the 1857 Indian mutiny with such brio and passion thatIt is impossible not to be won over’

Hephzibah Anderson, Daily Mail Books of the Year

‘Extensively researched yet eminently accessible, it draws on fresh material to arrive at a new and startlingly contemporary perspective’

PC Alexander, The Asian Age

“William Dalrymple’s Last Mughal was undoubtedly the best book I read this year. I was immensely influenced by his unique method of presenting facts and the painstaking and time-consuming research that he has put into his work. Dalrymple is one of the greatest historical writers of our time, and this book will surely go down as his best so far.

Alex Stewart, Traveller

“Vivid and ambitious revisionist history that upends traditional perceptions of the period. Diligently researched, this an angry and excellent book. Detailed yet accessable the dramatic and tragic story of a city that Dalrymple clearly loves is recounted with pace and panache, combining the tension of a good novel with the archival sleuthing of a true historian.”

Nick Smith, Geographical Magazine.

“Excellent- Dalrymple’s best book. Not only is it a fascinating biography of Zafar, it is a portrait of this crumbling city that Dalrymple clearly knows inside out, and confirms the author’s position as the foremost expert on India of his generation.”

First City

“Extremely well researched and vividly imagined, with a keen sense of drama and a perceptive grip of character. An entire period comes alive- atmospheric and immediate, elegiac, tragic and a thumping good read.”

Jairam Ramesh, The Hindu Books of the Year

“The best book of 2006- history at its archival yet lucid best. Dalrymple combines meticulous research with a wonderful writing style. He captures the zeitgeist of both pre and post 1857 brilliantly. More than anything else he has produced a book that is not just about the past, but that has contemporary significance as well. If only other Indian historians - both at home and abroad- emulated him, history would be both educative and evocative, both enlightening and entertaining.”

Hari Menon, Elle

“Easily Dalrymple’s most ambitious, compelling and unusual book. Here are the stories of real people who populated those tumultuous times- heroes and villains, saints and debauches… The Last Mughal is Dalrymple’s saddest and loveliest work to date.”

Suresh Menon, Deccan Herald

“By keeping the Emperor in his sights at all times, Dalrymple gives the narration a wide-angled sweep. And by describing the stories of ordinary men, he gives it an intimacy that derives from detail. The form, therefore, is as fascinating as the content. Dalrymple has written a masterpiece that scores on two other fronts all historians dream of – original research and fresh insights. The Mutiny Papers which he discovered at the National Archives gives him accesss into daily lives, while by gently pointing out the similarities between then and now, he gives his history a contemporary feel.”

Good Book Guide

“Mesmerising … gripping and beautifully written”

David Robinson, The Scotsman Books of the Year

“William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal (Bloomsbury, £25) started a projected four-volume history of the Mughal Empire by looking at how it ended, in the bloody repression following the 1857 Indian Mutiny. There have, of course, been countless histories of the Mutiny - the greatest threat the British faced at the height of their powers - but, astonishingly, Dalrymple's is the first to make extensive use of records showing the Mughal side of the story. There are plenty of contemporary echoes in this tale of a western power imposing its might on an Islamic society, alienating it so comprehensively that moderates turn into fundamentalists. That, and the scholarship, are two reasons to read it. But there's an even more compelling third: Dalrymple writes with a brio rare among academic historians. Here is history almost novelistic in its vividness, wonderfully embodying both our closeness to, and radical distance from, the past. Alone among his peers, Dalrymple is producing the kind of work that, in scale, ambition and style, is like an oriental version of Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

Brian Urqhart, The New York Review of Books

“ In his wonderful new book, The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple has not just revised forever the old British story; he has matched it with an equally full account from the Indian side. His book, without any sign of strain or artificial connections, deals with a historical tragedy on several very different levels and is a compulsively readable masterpiece. The Last Mughal not only describes Britain's worst and bloodiest imperial crisis. It revives the memory of a rich Muslim-Hindu culture that vanished forever in the bloodbath of 1857. It is a detailed and intensely human history of a desperate and brutal campaign. And it is, in the best sense of the word, a thriller in which all the characters inexorably interact to produce a dreadful denouement. Every chapter of The Last Mughal has historical echoes that are still desperately relevant today. ”.

David Washbrook, Biblio

“ Dazzling… Utilising Urdu records from the Mughal court, which have not figured in previous histories, Dalrymple paints an interior portrait of the ‘old’ city during what proved to be its final weeks of agony… He superbly recounts the day-to-day struggle for the ridge… [and] tells a dramatic story with full attention to the drama. Particularly impressive is his command of detail and the wide array of characters whom he introduces, whetting our appetite for more knowledge. Dalrymple’s access to the Mughal court’s Urdu records enables him to paint a far more sympathetic and nuanced picture of the ‘rebel’ position, and life inside the besieged citadel, than we have possessed before. It rescues 1857 from the hands of imperial apologists and nationalist hagiographers alike. The Last Mughal is a major contribution to academic, as well as to so-called ‘popular’, history. ”

Tobin Harshaw, New York Times Book Review

“While Zafar is the title character of The Last Mughal, his life is just the thread along which Dalrymple continues to explore a theme that has fascinated him for two decades: the utter collapse of relations between the British and the inhabitants of their Indian dominions … Dalrymple excels at bringing grand historical events within contemporary understanding by documenting the way people went about their lives amidst the maelstrom. His coup in researching was his uncovering some 20,000 personal Persian and Urdu papers written by Delhi residents who survived the uprising.”.

Alex Travelli, New York Sun

“ It seems almost unfair for a book with such a fine sense of plot, physicality, and even humor to contain primary research as well … This is] serious scholarship, still blessed by Dalrymple’s gift for finding eye-catching transitions, strong characters, and a knack for turning tracts of historical documentation into a roaring good story … He brings to light invaluable material … Anyone reading The Last Mughal today, especially readers with no prior interest in the Mughals or the Mutiny, will find much to ponder in relation to America’s ongoing adventures in the same neighborhood … An] excellent history. ”.

Publishers Weekly (starred)

“ In time for the 150th anniversary of the Great Mutiny, the uprising that came close to toppling British rule in India, Dalrymple presents a brilliant, evocative exploration of a doomed world and its final emperor, Bahadur Shah II … [Dalrymple] has been immeasurably aided by his discovery of a colossal trove of documents in Indian national archives in Delhi and elsewhere. Thanks to them Dalrymple can vividly recreate, virtually at street level, the life and death of one of the most glorious and progressive empires ever seen. That the rebels fatefully raised the flag of jihad and dubbed themselves ‘mujahedin’ only adds to the mutiny’s contemporary relevance. ”.

Robbie Hudson, The Sunday Times

“ Dalrymple brings the city brilliantly to life with the help of a mass of Indian sources unused by previous historians, and then, just as brilliantly, describes the horror of the mutiny and the subsequent siege of Delhi … Dalrymple’s gripping narrative closely follows protagonists on both sides, from the great poet Ghalib who survived because he wrote an ode to Victoria, to the blackly hilarious John Nicholson — “I’m sorry gentlemen to have kept you waiting for your dinner, but I have been hanging your cooks.” With great skill he recreates the mosaic of individual motivations. ”.

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