The book "Mehboob-us-Siyar" is an excellent narrative on the life and time of VI Nizam, Mir Mehboob Ali Khan, who ruled the Hyderabad State from 1869 to 1911. The book is a printed version of a manuscript, which is one hundred and twenty years old and scribed by the author himself. The manuscript is one of the prized possession of the A.P.G. Oriental Manuscripts Library, Hyderabad. The manuscript contains a lucid eye-witness account on the personality of the Asafjahi king and intimate details of the period.
Mohammed Abbas Rafat Sherwani, the author of this manuscript was a renown historian and a prolific writer. Abbas Rafat Sherwani was the son of Allama Ahmed Bin Mohammed Yamani alias Sherwani who originally hails from yaman in South Arabia. Ahmed yamani's ancestors later migrated to sherwan in Iran. Ahmed Yamani was a erudite scholar both in the Arabic and Persian. Most probably he entered India in the late Eighteenth century. His reputation as an accomplished scholar from Iran, attracted the attention of East India Company. The company invited the newly arrived scholar to Calcutta and requested him to join their educational institute "Madrasa-e-Aliya" and teach Arabic and Persian language to their administrative cadre. Subsequently his fame reached Lucknow. Ghazi-ud-din Haidar (1814-1827), whom the Company had recently awarded title of the king, otherwise known as Nawab Vizir, requested the East India Company to transfer the services of Allama Ahmed Yamani to his Court. After arrival to Lucknow his fortune changed and Ghaziuddin Hyder elevated hirn to higher position. In 1826 he married the daughter of an amir Rukn-ud-Dowhah Syed Ismail Khan Mashhadi. In due course he was blessed with a son Mohammed Abbas Rafat Sherwani, who is the author of the manuscript "Mehboob-us-Siyar", He had inherited much of his father's erudition. He showed precocity from his early childhood. Very soon he acquired proficiency in various disciplines. After the death of his father in 1840, he began searching for suitable employments and reached Delhi, the capital of the declining Mughals. He soon attracted the attention of old Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. Zafar liked the young man and included him among his courtiers and bestowed the title of Abul Fazal-e-Dauran. In Delhi he also became the disciple of famous Urdu poet Mirza Nausha, Asadullah Khan Ghalib. It appears, Abbas Rafat Sherwani was caught in the turbulent outrage of 1857. To save himself from the mass carnage, he took shelter in Bhopal, which was relatively a safe-place and a Muslim State. There he secured employment under Nawab Sikander Jahan Begam and her husband Nawab Jahangir Muhammed Khan. Abbas Rafat Sherwani was appointed as a Supervisor on the construction of a Jama-e-mosque Bhopal. It seems, he accomplished the job so well, that his name was inscribed, on the foundation plaque, attached to the mosque. In 1868 Nawab Shah Jahan Begam ascended the throne of Bhopal, on the death of her mother Queen Sikandar Jahan Begam. The New Queen of the Bhopal was herself a good poet and writer. She had compiled in Urdu three volumes, history of Bhopal, entitled "Taj-ul-Iqbal". Rafat Sherwani was assigned the translation of her long poem from Urdu to Persian, and a short version in Urdu entitled "Khulasat-ul-Hall-e-Bhopal". Meanwhile a new department called Tanzeemat-e-Shahjahani" was established for the development and planning of Bhopal, Abbas Rafat Sherwani was its first director, he served on this post for sixteen years. Abbas Rafat Sherwani was a man of many accomplishments, as a writer he wrote sixty books on Literature, Linguistics, History, Culture and Politics. He was a good poet also and wrote poetry in Persian and Urdu, he left a collection of his poems which remained unpublished.
Abbas Rafat Sherwani, first visited Hyderabad in 1846, during the reign of Afzal-ud-Dowlah the fifth Nizam. During this visit he met many nobles and other eminent persons and gathered relevant information for a book on Hyderabad state and its ruler. He wrote the book in Persian entitled "Bagh-e-Char Chaman: Tareekh-e-Deccan" which was later printed in Lucknow. Since he was advised to rewrite the same book in Urdu, the present manuscript is the translated version of the earlier book, it deals more with the Asafijahi kings, largely a biographical memoir of the most popular ruler, Mir Mehboob Ali Khan and named it "Mehboob-us-Siyar". The book is descriptive in the portrayal of the Nizam VI and provides glimpses of the culture in the second half of the nineteenth century. It could be consider as the only intimate biography of a Asafjahi king, written by a contemporary writer.
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