Person · r. 1565 – 1588

Murtaza Nizam Shah I

مرتضیٰ نظام شاہ اول

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Ferishta’s chapter calls him “Diwana, or, the Madman”: a boy king whose mother governed from behind a curtain, who unseated her at fourteen, took Berar, and was suffocated in a bath-house on his son’s order.

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His mother’s regency, and its end

“As this Prince ascended the throne during his minority, his mother, Khoonza Sooltana, became for six years regent and manager of the affairs of the kingdom”, sitting “daily in durbar, transacting public business, behind a curtain”. In AH 977 on the march against Bijapur he “gained over the principal nobles, and sent Hubbush Khan to inform the Queen that it was his pleasure she should no longer engage in public affairs” — she rode out “armed with a bow, a sword, and dagger”, and “was, however, seized, after a short resistance”.

The parricide

His son Miran Husain “caused the King to be put into a warm bathing room, and closing fast the doors and windows, so as to exclude the air, he lighted a great fire underneath, and the King was speedily suffocated. This parricide was perpetrated in the year 996.” Briggs’s margin prints 1567 against that Hijri year, an evident misprint for 1587–88; the succession record carries the correction. He “reigned twenty-four years and some months”; his bones were later taken to Karbala.

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