A Jaghire, Not a Throne
Kurnool was never founded as a kingdom; it was granted as a reward. After Aurangzeb's armies broke Deccan resistance south of the Krishna in the late seventeenth century, one of his generals, Ghiyás-ud-dín Khán, took the town and fort of Kurnool, and the territory was then given away rather than kept — "through the intercession of Ghiyás-ud-dín Khán, the Kurnool territory was conferred as a jaghire upon Dáúd Khán, a Patan general of great talent, who had rendered important military services to Government" [1]. The Manual dates this only to "the latter part of the seventeenth century" [1]; the Imperial Gazetteer is more exact about the conquest, dating Ghiyás-ud-dín Khán's capture of Kurnool to 1687 and placing the grant to Dáúd Khán only "shortly afterwards" in the same passage [15]. A rival tradition, printed in Wikipedia's rulers table, opens the line in 1674 under a "Khizr Khan Panni" [17], a name and date neither opened source here corroborates; the archive follows the Gazetteer's 1687 as the founding year (see Dates in this essay, below).
Dáúd Khán did not die in his new seat. Sent by his Mughal superiors against the rebellious governor of Burhanpur, "as he approached the city he was resisted by the governor Husain Ali's troops and killed on the spot. His body was dragged around the city walls by the tail of an elephant" [2]. The jaghire's first holder held it only long enough to be sent back to imperial service and die in it — a reminder that the grant had made him a Mughal officer with an estate, not yet an independent ruler.
The Stratagem, and a Battle That Was Not His Own
Dáúd Khán's brother did not wait for a fresh sunnad. "On Dáúd Khán's death, his brother Ibráhím Khán, accompanied by a few followers, quietly proceeded to the fort of Kurnool, which was then governed by a killadár named Iras Khán on behalf of the Imperial Government, and took possession of it by a stratagem. Having thus introduced a band of armed men into the fort, Ibráhím announced his succession to the jaghire of Kurnool and demanded the keys of the fort" [3]. The seizure preceded any formal recognition: he took the fort first, and only then did he announce his succession and demand the keys. It is the chain's first usurpation, and it set the house's pattern of force preceding paperwork.
Ibráhím Khán then died in someone else's war. He had attached himself to Mubáraz Khán, the Mughal governor of Hyderabad, and "Ibráhím Khán joined Mubáraz Khán and took part in the memorable battle of Chakarkeli fought on the 22nd Mohurrum, Hijiri 1137 (24th September A.D. 1724). Ibráhím Khán, like his master Mubáraz Khán, died in this battle, and the victorious Asaf-Ja assumed the government of Hyderabad" [3]. This is the encounter better known outside Kurnool as the Battle of Shakar Kheda, fought, by the wider record, on 11 October 1724 between Nizam-ul-Mulk and Mubariz Khan, ending, in that record's own words, with "Nizam-ul-Mulk emerged victorious despite facing significant challenges. The battle ultimately led to the demise of Mubariz Khan" [19] after which the victor "established autonomous rule over the Deccan region" [20]. The two accounts agree on the year and the outcome, and disagree only on the day — a discrepancy of weeks between an estate chronicle and a national-history source, not a dispute over which year the battle fell in. For Kurnool, the significance is local rather than imperial: the second Nawab died fighting a fight that was Hyderabad's founding battle, not his own, and left the jaghire to be inherited rather than seized for the first time.
Two Ordinary Successions
Only twice in the whole line did the jaghire pass the way a jaghire is supposed to. "Ibráhím Khán left two sons, Rahmatulláh and Alif Khán. Rahmatulláh proceeded to Aurangabad, and the younger son, Alif Khán, succeeded to the jaghire in 1137 Hijiri (A.D. 1724), and wrote to Asaf-Ja, promising his allegiance and praying for a recognition of his title to the State" [4]. Alif Khán ruled nine years and "died of illness in Hijiri 1146 (A.D. 1733). He left two sons, Himáyat Khán and Rahmat Khán. Himáyat Khán succeeded to the jaghire" [5] — the second and last ordinary inheritance the chronicle records.
Even this pair was not without cost. The Manual's account of Himáyat Khán's end is oblique rather than stated outright: describing a campaign against the Hyderabad commander Mír J'afar Jang around 1751, it records that "Mír J'afar Jang, in pursuing him, came up with the Nabob of Kurnool, who, finding he could not escape, faced back with a handful of troops and pushed on towards the elephant of his enemy... A thousand weapons were aimed at the nabob, who was instantly cut to pieces" [6], and the very next sentence refers to "the wife of the late Nabob Himmat Khán Bahádúr" [6]. The identification of the slain, unnamed "Nabob of Kurnool" with Himáyat Khán — printed elsewhere as "Himmat Khán Bahádúr" — is a strong inference from adjacent sentences, not a direct statement, and is recorded here as such rather than as settled fact.
Exile and Return, 1752
Himáyat Khán's death opened the jaghire to outsiders for a year, and then to his own brother. "In 1752 Ranmas Khán, alias Munauwar Khán Bahádúr, brother of Himmat Khán, who had gone to Arcot, returned to seize his ancestral estate... An amicable arrangement being then made with the Nizam's Government, the fort of Kurnool was evacuated by Muhammad Álam, and Munauwar Khán entered Kurnool and assumed the government" [7]. This was neither inheritance nor usurpation in the ordinary sense: Munauwar Khán had a hereditary claim, but he pressed it from exile against a sitting deputy of the Nizam, and only a negotiated withdrawal, not a will, put him in the fort. He then held the state for forty years, until "in 1792 Munauwar Khán died" [8].
Designation Becomes the Rule — and Its Cost
With Munauwar Khán's death, the house adopted the practice that would eventually break it: naming an heir by paternal choice rather than by birth order. "His eldest son resided at Hyderabad, where his father had procured for him from the Nizam a small jaghire... His second son, Hasan Ali Khán, he set aside as incompetent to rule and nominated his third son Aluf Khán, who had just returned from Seringapatam, as the future nabob. This nomination was carried out, and messengers were despatched to Hyderabad to procure confirmation of his title" [8]. Aluf Khán ruled twenty-three years and "died in 1815" [9].
He had learned his father's habit and pushed it further. Rather than settle the succession on his own eldest son, Munauwar Khán II, "the nabob had six sons, of whom Gulam Rasul, the sixth son, was his favorite" [10], and "these favors the Nabob Aluf Khán disingenuously construed as permitting him to nominate Rasul Khán as the future nabob, and openly declared him in Kurnool as heir apparent, using the British name in support of his proceedings, and confined his eldest son, Munauwar Khán, the rightful heir" [10]. The arrangement did not survive him. "One of his younger sons, Muzaffar Khán, usurped the power to the exclusion of Munauwar Khán, the nominee of Government. A detachment of troops was therefore sent from Bellary... Muzaffar Khán was taken prisoner and kept under surveillance" [11]. With the usurper removed, "the rightful heir, Munauwar Khán, now assumed the principality and ruled peaceably for eight years" [12] — the British restoring, in effect, the ordinary line of inheritance that Aluf Khán's own favoritism had tried to set aside.
The Same Man Passed Over Twice
Munauwar Khán II "died of illness in 1823 after a reign of eight years" [12], and the succession reopened the very quarrel his father had started. "During Munauwar Khán's lifetime the claims of his brother Dáúd Khán to succeed him were preferred to those of other brothers... The choice, however, fell upon Muzaffar Khán. Muzaffar was then at Ádóni, but before leaving the British territory he murdered his wife at Ádóni and was made prisoner. He was in consequence confined in the fort of Bellary and died in 1879, after a long imprisonment of fifty-six years. His brother Ghulam Rasul Khán, who had been destined by his father Aluf Khán for the musnud in preference to his eldest son, was now raised to the throne" [13]. Whether this Muzaffar Khán is the same man who had usurped the jaghire in 1815 and was "kept under surveillance" [11] is not restated by the chronicle across the two episodes; the family position described — a younger son of Aluf Khán, passed over more than once — is consistent with a single man twice disqualifying himself, but the identification is not made explicit on the page and is recorded here as likely rather than certain.
Set against the full chain, the pattern is stark. Counting from Dáúd Khán's founding grant, eight further transfers of power are recorded before the state's end: two ordinary inheritances (Alif Khán in 1724, Himáyat Khán in 1733); two usurpations (Ibráhím Khán and Muzaffar Khán); one return from exile (Munauwar Khán I in 1752); one paternal designation over elder brothers (Aluf Khán in 1792); one installation by an outside power, the East India Company, restoring a passed-over heir (Munauwar Khán II in 1815); and one brother's accession after the chosen heir's own disqualification (Ghulam Rasul Khán in 1823). Only a quarter of the successions the archive can date passed the way a hereditary jaghire is supposed to pass.
The Fort Surrenders, 1839
Ghulam Rasul Khán, the sixth son his father had once favoured for the succession, came to the throne after his brother Muzaffar Khán disqualified himself by murdering his wife and being made a prisoner; he held Kurnool for sixteen years before the Company moved against him directly rather than through a rival claimant. A British commission arrived at the fort in September 1839: "the members of the commission arrived at Kurnool on the 12th September 1839... called upon the Nabob to hand over the fort to them. The Nabob was at first disinclined to yield, but seeing that the commission was firm in their demand, he evacuated the fort on the 18th October" [14]. Wikipedia's parallel account frames the same episode as open conflict: "a war broke out between the British Indian Army and the kingdom and continued for six days until the king was detained on 18 October" [18] — the two sources agree only that the fort fell on that date: the Manual's own narrative runs from the commission's arrival on 12 September to the evacuation five weeks later, a longer interval than the six-day war Wikipedia describes beginning 12 October, and the discrepancy between the two timelines is not resolved here. The Imperial Gazetteer records the annexation in the same terms from the wider district's perspective, though only to the year: "the Nawab rebelled and his territory was annexed by the British" in 1839 [16]. Ghulam Rasul Khán himself was sent to Trichinopoly, where, in a final irony the Manual records without comment, "he began to attend a Christian chapel, and one day, while returning from it, he was assassinated by his own servant, whom he had the day before charged with theft" [14].
A century and a half after Aurangzeb's general took the fort for the Mughal crown, it was surrendered a last time — not to a rival claimant with his own stratagem, as Ibráhím Khán had once used against Iras Khán, but to a government that had already spent two decades installing and removing the Nawabs of its own choosing. The house that began by force ended by administration; what it never quite managed, across a century and a half and nine holders of the musnud, was to pass the jaghire from father to eldest son without a war, an exile, or an outside power's intervention standing somewhere in the way.
Dates in this essay
The archive dates the Kurnool Nawabi 1687–1839, per content/DATE-CONVENTIONS.md and the polity register row kurnool-nawabs: 1687 is the Imperial Gazetteer's own date for Ghiyás-ud-dín Khán's conquest of Kurnool for Aurangzeb (vol. 16, p. 33); that same source dates the jagir's grant to Dáúd Khán only 'shortly afterwards,' not to 1687 itself. The archive's own page-image chain (the Manual of the Kurnool District) tells the same grant without a year, only 'the latter part of the seventeenth century.' Wikipedia's rulers table gives 1674 under 'Khizr Khan Panni' — a name and date neither the Manual nor the Gazetteer corroborates — and is recorded as the alternative rather than the essay's date.
1839 is the settlement that ended the polity — the fort's surrender to a British commission on 18 October 1839 (the Manual, p. 41, and Wikipedia; the Imperial Gazetteer, vol. 9 p. 320, gives only the year of the annexation, not the day) — not Ghulam Rasul Khan's later assassination in exile at Trichinopoly.
Dáúd Khán's and Ibráhím Khán's own accession and death years are not printed in the Manual beyond 'the latter part of the seventeenth century' for the founding grant and 24 September 1724 (22 Muharram 1137 AH) for Ibráhím Khán's death at the Battle of Chakarkeli/Shakar Kheda; the wider historical record dates the same battle to 11 October 1724 — a difference of weeks within the same year, not a contested year.
Himáyat Khán's death is given no explicit year in the Manual; it is placed 'c. 1751' by inference from the surrounding narrative of Mír J'afar Jang's campaign, and his identity with the unnamed 'Nabob of Kurnool' killed in that fighting is itself an inference (see openQuestions).
Where authorities disagree about when a state began or ended, the archive follows one rule — a polity is dated from the assumption of sovereign power in its own capital, and to the settlement that extinguished it — and records the alternatives rather than hiding them.
Open questions
Whether the 'Nabob of Kurnool' cut to pieces fighting Mír J'afar Jang's forces near Ráyachóti (c. 1751) is indeed Himáyat Khán: the Manual never names him directly in that passage, and the identification rests on the next sentence's reference to 'the wife of the late Nabob Himmat Khán Bahádúr.'
Whether the Muzaffar Khán who usurped the jaghire in 1815 and was 'kept under surveillance' is the same man passed over again in 1823, who murdered his wife at Ádóni and was imprisoned until his death in 1879: the chronicle does not restate the identification across the two episodes, though the family position — a younger son of Aluf Khán — is consistent with a single man.
The exact founding year of the Nawabi remains unresolved between 1687 (Imperial Gazetteer) and 1674 (Wikipedia's 'Khizr Khan Panni'); no page image opened for this archive corroborates the 1674 date or that name.
Neither Dáúd Khán's nor Ibráhím Khán's accession or death years are printed in the sources read for this essay beyond the approximations given; a more precise Mughal-administrative record, if one survives, has not been located.
The Manual's own narrative (commission arrives 12 September, evacuation 18 October — five weeks) and Wikipedia's framing (a six-day war beginning 12 October) describe the run-up to the fort's surrender differently; this essay records both without reconciling them.