~ Zafar ~

Bahadur Shah Zafar was the last Mughal emperor, and one of the most talented, tolerant and likeable of his remarkable dynasty.

Born in 1775, when the British were still a coastal power clinging to the Indian shore :

he lived long enough to see his dynasty reduced to humiliating insignificance, and the British transform themselves from

simple traders into the most powerful military and economic force India had ever seen.

Zafar came late to the throne, succeeding his father only in 1838 when he was in his mid-60s, and when it was already too late

to reverse the inexorable political decline of the Mughals.

But despite this he succeeded in creating around him a court culture of unparalleled brilliance, and partly through his patronage

there took place in Delhi a last great literary renaissance.

While Zafar was himself a mystic, poet and calligrapher of great charm and accomplishment, his greatest achievement

was perhaps to nourish the talents both of Urdu's supreme love poet :

Ghalib, and his great rival Zauq.

A portrait of Bahadur Shah Zafar in the Delhi Book

                     

It is more than ironic, therefore, that the most complete and remarkable pictorial record that exists of the last days of Mughal Delhi,

known as The Delhi Book, comes from the patronage not of Zafar, nor of the Mughal Court itself,

but from Zafar's would-be nemesis,

the notably unimaginative British resident (or ambassador), Sir Thomas Metcalfe.

A book of illustrations painted in the 1840s captures the Indian capital, Delhi, in all its glory shortly before

the 19th Century's biggest anti-colonial revolt -

and the British bombardment, looting and sacking that followed.