What the Chain Shows, Counted
The record this archive holds for Savanur is a chronicle read page by page from the Bombay Gazetteer's own Dhárwár district volume — not a regnal list assembled from memory but a family history followed reign by reign across pages 792 to 804 [6], [9], [11], [14], [15], [18], [20]. Read straight through, from Abdul Rauf Khan's move to Savanur — dated only by the section's own running head, 'SÁVANOR NAWÁB, 1700' [5] — to a six-year-old boy's installation in 1868, it gives fourteen men across fourteen transfers of authority: one founding grant and thirteen further successions.
Counted from that chain: seven of the thirteen successions passed as ordinary inheritance from a dead ruler to a son or a next-in-age brother [9], [10], [14], [16], [17], [19]. The other six were: a usurpation put down by the usurper's own brothers [11]; a brother's restoration to the headship of the family [12]; an outside power's installation of a favoured son over an absent elder brother [15]; that same brother's own reclaiming of the throne soon after, an interval no page opened for this essay assigns a date to; a chiefship deliberately held vacant until a pregnant widow's child proved to be a daughter [18]; and a minor's installation under a grandfather's guardianship [20]. Ordinary inheritance was the more common outcome at Savanur — but not by very much, and it still included a Nawab killed on someone else's battlefield and a state still governed through a British-superintended divan roughly a century and three-quarters — 168 to 188 years, depending on which volume's founding date is used — after the founding grant.
A Family Three Courts Deep Before Any Throne
Savanur's own throne was the family's fourth flag, not its first. The Bombay Gazetteer's history of the state opens not with a coronation but with a genealogy: 'The Sávanur family is said to belong to the Moyanna tribe of Patháns. As far as is known from their family records, twenty generations passed between Abdul Karim Khán, the first Malik or head of their villages in Kábul, and Bahlole Khán, the founder of the family in the Deccan. Malik Awtan Khán, the fifteenth in the line, entered Hindustán in the train of Timur's army. Doda Khán the seventeenth in descent first changed the title of Malik for that of Nawáb and rose in importance at the Imperial Court' [6]. Descendants served the Mughal court, then entered Bijapur's own service, where Abdul Karim Khan — the eventual founder Abdul Rauf Khan's own father — rose to command Bijapur's armies against the Marathas: 'On the death of Ali Adil Shah II. in 1672 Abdul Karim Khán was appointed governor of the Bombay Karnátak, Sunda, and the Konkan, but the jealousy of the regent Kháwas Khán prevented him taking the appointment. In his wars with Shivaji he suffered defeats and had to return to Bijápur in disgrace. Taking advantage of the unpopularity attaching to the regent Kháwas Khán owing to his alliance with the Moghals, Abdul Karim procured the regent's assassination and succeeded to the chief power in the state, which he held till his death in 1678' [7]. A separate volume of the same Gazetteer, read independently for this essay, records the same man holding a different governorship at almost the same date: 'About the same time (1673) Abdul Karim Khán, the ancestor of the present Nawáb of Sávanur, on behalf of Bijápur, was appointed chief captain against the Maráthás and governor of the province or sarkár of Bankápur' [3] — a year after, not before, the Bombay Karnátak appointment named above, and a different office (Bankapur and the captaincy against the Marathas, rather than the Bombay Karnátak, Sunda and Konkan), which this essay does not attempt to reconcile into a single continuous governorship.
How Abdul Karim Khan's son Abdul Rauf Khan secured Savanur's own founding grant is itself disputed on the very page that records it. Abdul Rauf Khan entered Aurangzeb's own service and received the assignment of Bankapur, Torgal and Azamnagar that became Savanur's territory [4], [1], [21]. A footnote to that same passage records two rival accounts of how: 'According to the Nawáb's account Abdul Ráuf Khán married Aurangzeb's daughter and received these districts in jágir. According to other local accounts he received these districts valued at £17,500 (Rs. 1,75,000) for the support of 4000 horse' [8] — a marriage into the imperial house, or a cash-and-cavalry contract; the Gazetteer prints both without choosing, and no other page opened for this essay resolves it.
Twelve Sons, Two Six-Month Reigns, and a Killing
Abdul Rauf Khan 'died [in 1715] leaving twelve sons. The two eldest Abdul Fatch Khan and Abdul Muhammad Khan came to the throne one after the other each for six months' [9] — the chronicle gives no cause for either short reign's end, only the arithmetic of two brothers dividing a single year of rule between them. The third son, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, held Savanur for five years by comparison, 'acting under the orders of the Moghal Viceroy of the Deccan,' resisted at times by the desai of Shirhatti and forced at another to surrender the fort of Misrikota: 'still he must have been generally successful as at his death in 1721 he left his successor' [10].
That successor did not hold the throne long. 'In 1721 Ghaffar died leaving three sons Abdul Majid Khan, Abdul Suttar Khan, and Karim Khan, the second of whom usurped the succession but was displaced and put to death by the other two brothers' [11]. 'Majid Khan then became the head of the family' [12] — restored, by the record's own logic, as the eldest son reclaiming a headship a younger brother had seized, rather than a usurper himself. He held it for thirty years, until he too died away from Savanur, fighting for Muzaffar Jang against rebel troops near Kadappa: 'some of his troops who were cutting to pieces the body of Majid Khan the Nawab of Savanur which lay dead on the ground' [13]. Three of the chain's first five Nawabs after the founder — Fateh Khan, Muhammad Khan and Suttar Khan — left the throne quickly, for a reason the chronicle names for only one of them: a usurpation ended by fratricide, though no page opened for this essay dates how soon after Suttar Khan's seizure that end came; Savanur's calmer stretches came only once this opening violence had run its course.
Thirty Years, Then a Rival Backed From Outside
Abdul Hakim Khan, Majid Khan's son, inherited a state already reduced — he 'had not long succeeded before he had to face a formidable confederation and to give up much of his possessions' [14] — yet he held Savanur for forty-four years, into 1795, the chain's longest reign before the British period. His death opened the only succession in this chain an outside power decided outright: 'In 1795 Abdul Hakim died, and, as his eldest son Abdul Kheir Khan lived with his brother-in-law Tipu at Seringapatam, the Peshwa recognized his second son Husain Mia and gave him in jagir the town and district of Savanur yielding a yearly revenue of £4800 (Rs. 48,000)' [15]. The Marathas seated a younger son because the elder was, by marriage, inside a rival court's household — the same Tipu whose forces, on the family's own later account, had earlier 'entirely stript' Savanur 'of its possessions,' forcing the Nawab to seek the Peshwa's protection in the first place [21].
The reversal that followed is real but undated by anything opened for this essay. Abdul Kheir Khan did return to hold Savanur — it is his own son who inherits it in 1827 [16] — but no page-image source turned up in this archive's own research, and none found in a wider search of its holdings, prints a year or an instrument for how or when Husain Mia was displaced and his elder brother installed in his place. The record is honest about the gap rather than inferring a date across it.
Three Short Reigns and a Chiefship Held for a Daughter's Birth
'Abdul Kheir Khán died on the 3rd of November 1827, leaving five sons all by nika or left-hand marriages of whom Abdul Feyáz Khán succeeded him and died within three months. Manawar Khán the next in age succeeded' [16] — the third of the chain's short reigns measured in months rather than years, after Fatch Khan's and Muhammad Khan's own six months apiece.
His death produced the chain's most deliberate delay. Manawar Khan too died without an heir: 'On the 17th of August 1834 the Nawáb Manawar Khán died leaving no issue' [17]. 'As his widow was pregnant, the question of succession was kept over until the birth of a daughter, when the late chief's brother Abdul Dullel Khán, a man of high education and remarkably elegant manners, was raised to the chiefship' [18]. The state waited on the sex of an unborn child before naming its ruler — a designation, not an inheritance, and one the record ties explicitly to that single fact rather than to any rivalry or contest.
A Boy of Six, and the Chain the Bombay Gazetteer Leaves Open
Abdul Dullel Khan held Savanur twenty-eight years, dying in August 1862 'at the age of about fifty-five,' succeeded by 'his eldest surviving son Abdul Kheir Khan, who, after a career of extravagance that materially involved the estate, died of the effects of dissipation on the 11th of May 1868' [19] — the chain's only ruler whose own conduct, rather than an external contest, is blamed for the state's decline. His own son inherited a minority: 'a boy not quite six years old, was installed as his successor, and was placed under the guardianship of his grandfather Muhammad Ghous Khan... Till 1883 when he was given charge, the state was managed by a divan acting under the direct superintendence of the Collector and Political Agent at Dharwar. The Nawab died in August 1884' [20] — a single year after finally ruling in his own right.
The Bombay Gazetteer, printed in 1884, ends there; a separate volume, Aitchison's Treaties, read independently for this essay, carries the same family two successions further: 'He was succeeded by his son, Abdul Dalil Khan, who died in 1884 without male issue, and was succeeded by Abdul Tabriz Khan. On this succession a nazarana of Rs. 28,790 was levied. Nawab Abdul Tabriz Khan died on the 26th July 1892, and was succeeded on the 30th January 1893 by his son, Abdul Majid Khan, who was born on the 7th October 1890. During the latter's minority the State is administered by the Diwan under the supervision of the Collector as Political Agent' [22]. A nazarana levied 'on this succession' — a fee this archive's other Nawabi records associate with a claim outside the direct line — marks the 1884 transfer to Abdul Tabriz Khan as something other than a plain father-to-son handover, though no page opened for this essay names his exact relation to his predecessor. Abdul Majid Khan's 1893 installation is the last point at which any source opened for this essay can name a ruling Nawab of Savanur; the state's accession to the Dominion of India on 8 March 1948 [2] falls fifty-five years past the edge of what this chain, however far it can now be extended, actually traces.
Dates in this essay
The polity register dates Savanur's founding to 1680, per the Imperial Gazetteer's account of Abdul Rauf Khan's grant from Aurangzeb [1]. This essay's own chain is read from a different volume — the Bombay Gazetteer's Dhárwár district compilation — which narrates the same grant only as following Abdul Rauf Khan's entry into the emperor's own service, without a stated year for that entry or for the move to Savanur itself, and gives the section's own running head as 'SÁVANOR NAWÁB, 1700' [5]. Both years are carried in content/DATE-CONVENTIONS.md; this essay follows 1700, its own source volume's working date, rather than silently picking one.
Manawar Khan's 1828 accession is undated to the day by any page opened for this essay, fixed only relative to Abdul Feyaz Khan's three-month reign after their father's death on 3 November 1827 [16]. Abdul Dullel Khan's own accession carries no year at all in any page opened here: Manawar Khan died 'on the 17th of August 1834' [17], and the chiefship was then 'kept over until the birth of a daughter' before Dullel Khan was raised to it [18] — an interval of unstated length, not a dated 1834 succession.
The gap between Husain Mia's 1795 installation and Abdul Kheir Khan I's return to the throne is not a contested date but an absent one: no page opened for this essay prints a year for the reversal.
Abdul Khair Khan's 1866 adoption Sanad and his death in May 1868 are two dated steps in a single appointment, not a contested pair — Aitchison's Treaties prints both on the same page without tension [22].
No page opened for this essay dates how soon after Abdul Suttar Khan's seizure of the succession in 1721 his brothers displaced and killed him; the Bombay Gazetteer states only that Ghaffar Khan died in 1721 leaving three sons, the second of whom usurped and was then put down, with no interval given [11].
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
What relation, if any, Abdul Kheir Khan I bore to the throne between Husain Mia's 1795 installation and his own eventual accession — no page opened for this essay, and none found in a wider search of this archive's own holdings, names a year or an instrument for the reversal.
Whether Abdul Rauf Khan secured Savanur's founding grant by marrying a daughter of Aurangzeb, as 'the Nawab's account' has it, or by a cash payment for 4,000 horse, as 'other local accounts' have it — the Bombay Gazetteer's own footnote prints both without choosing, and no other page opened for this essay resolves it.
What relation Abdul Tabriz Khan (Aitchison's Treaties, succeeded 1884) bore to his predecessor Abdul Dalil Khan — a nazarana of Rs. 28,790 was levied 'on this succession', which this archive's other Nawabi records associate with a claim outside the direct line, but no page opened here names the exact tie.
Who, if anyone, ruled Savanur between Abdul Majid Khan's installation as a minor in 1893 — the last ruler any page opened for this essay can name — and the state's accession to the Dominion of India on 8 March 1948, a gap of fifty-five years.
Whether the twenty generations the Bombay Gazetteer's own family history claims between the Sávanur family's first Kabul-based Malik and Bahlole Khan, the line's founder in the Deccan, can be dated at all — no page opened for this essay assigns a year to any of them before Abdul Karim Khan's 1673 Bijapur-service appointment.
How long Abdul Suttar Khan held the usurped succession before his brothers displaced and killed him — the Bombay Gazetteer names the fact of his death at their hands but gives no interval, and no other cited source dates it either.