Muḥammad Shāh

▪ Mughal emperor

in full  Nāṣir-ud-dīn Muḥammad Shāh  

born Aug. 7, 1702, Ghaznā, Afghanistan

died April 6, 1748, Delhi [now in India]

 ineffective, pleasure-loving Mughal emperor of India from 1719 to 1748.

      The son of Shāh Jahān, Muḥammad Shāh was made emperor in 1719 by the powerful Sayyid brothers, ʿAbdullāh and Ḥusayn ʿAlī, who had killed the emperor Farrukh-Siyar. In 1720 the assassination of Ḥusayn ʿAlī and the defeat of ʿAbdullāh at the battle of Hasanpur (southwest of Delhi) liberated Muḥammad Shāh from effective Sayyid control. In 1721 he married the daughter of Farrukh-Siyar. After Niẓām-ul-Mulk Āṣaf Jāh, who was the court-appointed vizier, had left court in disgust in 1724, the provinces steadily slipped out of imperial control: Sādāt Khān became practically independent in Oudh; the Afghan Rohilla tribesmen made themselves masters of Rohilkhand (southeast of Delhi); Bengal paid only an annual tribute to Delhi; and the leaders of the Marāṭhā, under the peshwa Bājī Rāo, made themselves lords of the regions of Gujarāt, Mālwa, and Bundelkhand and, in 1737, raided Delhi. In 1739 Nāder Shāh of Iran took advantage of Mughal neglect of the North-West Frontier areas (now in Pakistan) to rout the Mughals at Karnāl and occupy Delhi. In March 1748 Muḥammad Shāh defeated the Afghan ruler Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī, at Sirhind, thus achieving a success in his final years.

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