Person · Regent of Bhopal, 1819 – 1837

Qudsia Begum

قدسیہ بیگم

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Widow of a nawab shot dead by a child, named Regent for her infant daughter in 1819, and the first of the four women who governed Bhopal for a century — removed in 1837 by an arrangement that gave her an estate and gave her son-in-law the throne.

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Regent, 1819 – 1837

"In 1817 Nazar Mahomed married Gohar Begum, the daughter of Ghos Mahomed Khan. He was accidentally shot on November 11, 1819, at Islamnaggar by his brother-in-law, Faujdár Mahomed Khán, a child about eight years of age. He left one child, the Sikandar Begum." The arrangement for the minority: "the widow of Nazar Mahomed was to be Regent during the minority."

She resisted a rival claimant in 1827, confined her own son-in-law after his 1835 marriage to her daughter, and fought him until the British intervened: "It was arranged that the Kudsíah Begum should resign the reins of government to the Nawáb, receiving an estate worth about £12,000 per annum." He was installed on 29 November 1837. The source is an 1870 sketch bound with her granddaughter Sikandar Begum’s own pilgrimage narrative, and it writes from the British side.

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