Why history forgot Hazrat Mahal: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones on Awadh’s rebel begum

Twelve years later, she has returned to her story in a new book, Hazrat Mahal: The Rebel Begam of Awadh.

Reconstructing the begum’s life, however, was not easy. A massive cyberattack on the British Library in October 2023 restricted access to East India Company records for months. Llewellyn-Jones instead turned to older accounts. One crucial source was Qaisar-ul Tawareekh: The History of the King, written by Kamal-ud din Haider, a former employee of Wajid Ali Shah who later fell out with him. “I knew Urdu, and that helped. I could pick out verbatim quotes from his text,” she says.

After weeks and months of reading and rediscovering, Llewellyn-Jones pieces together the story of Awadh’s rebel begum.

The annexation of Awadh

At the beginning of February 1856, Wajid Ali Shah ruled over a kingdom of 24,000 square miles and a population estimated at between five and ten million people. By the end of the month, it was all gone. Llewellyn-Jones details the upheaval in her interview.

“The British took over immediately, erecting an electric telegraph between Lucknow and Cawnpore (Kanpur), connecting the city to the wider imperial network. People don’t seem to realise its importance, but the new communication system allowed the British to liaise with Calcutta and elsewhere,” she says.

Then came changes to Lucknow itself. Mosques were demolished to widen streets, one Muslim madrasa was shut down and Christian missionary schools were established in its place. Hazrat Mahal condemned these measures in her proclamation, particularly the destruction of places of worship and the spread of Christian education. “And then together with the land grab, that seemed to be the final straw,” Llewellyn-Jones says.

“The defence of Lucknow was the begum’s primary concern in the early weeks of 1858, but other towns in Awadh needed support, too,” she adds.

Yet governing a kingdom whose monarch had been exiled was far from straightforward.

Wajid Ali with one of his wives and daughter (1850, Wikipedia)

Beneath the common fight against the British, rival factions under Hazrat Mahal jostled over wages, status and power. According to Llewellyn-Jones, the British were seemingly unaware of these conflicts at the time. “Information was difficult to obtain during the siege and later, through the winter of 1857-58, when only a relatively small British force remained on the outskirts of Lucknow,” she says.

The taluqdars were among Hazrat Mahal’s important allies, but their motivations were often tied to their own survival. The British land settlement following the annexation threatened their holdings, taxed landowners heavily, stripped some of their land and, in certain cases, imprisoned them. “It was this desire to hold on to their land which was one of the main forces in supporting the Begum,” remarks Llewellyn-Jones.

At the same time, some taluqdars remained ambivalent about Hazrat Mahal’s regency, insisting that Wajid Ali Shah, now in Calcutta, was their only legitimate ruler. The begum also faced hostility closer to home, including from some of the king’s other wives, whom Llewellyn-Jones describes as “really quite nasty and sarcastic towards her”.

But perhaps the most volatile force in Awadh was the army. Wajid Ali Shah’s forces had been disbanded after his departure; roughly half were absorbed into a new irregular force, leaving around 30,000 armed men without jobs or pay, roaming the region disgruntled and uncertain of their future.

Put together, Llewellyn-Jones argues, the picture was far more chaotic than she had initially imagined. “Looting had begun in Lucknow on an unprecedented scale…it seemed that whenever people were disgruntled, they’d go on a loot. It wasn’t an easy transition to British rule, but it wasn’t an easy transition to rule by Hazrat Mahal.”

An ‘elusive’ Begum

Much about her origins remains uncertain. She is believed to have arrived at the court of Wajid Ali Shah through Amman and Imaman, sisters and singers from Farrukhabad, around 130 miles from Lucknow. She was introduced to the king in 1843 and was pregnant by the beginning of the following year.

“People have speculated on where she might have come from,” the author notes. “There’s a suspicion that she came from Farrukhabad,” largely because of her connection to the two singers from the city. They came from a musical family, and, as Wajid Ali Shah was deeply fond of music and dance, he brought them into his court. Whether they brought Hazrat Mahal with them from Farrukhabad or found her in Lucknow, however, remains unknown.

The Begum was described as an aurat khanagi, or a woman of the house, a term Llewellyn-Jones notes referred to as a high-class prostitute. “She is an elusive person”.

Begum Hazrat Mahal (Wikipedia)

A woman who seemed to emerge from nowhere and disappear into obscurity, Hazrat Mahal remained a shadowy figure even during the 1857 uprising, when she challenged the East India Company and British forces.

One fascinating discovery the author reveals in her interview is the evidence she uncovered over the past two decades of a substantial African population in and around Lucknow. This included enslaved people brought to India by Arab traders and mercenaries recruited by Wajid Ali Shah.

Against this backdrop, the claim that Hazrat Mahal’s father was African or of African descent is less surprising. “We do know that her father was an African slave or of African descent,” she opines.

Her mother, however, was a domestic servant employed by a Muslim nobleman.

The fall of Lucknow, the flight to Nepal

Hazrat Mahal became especially notorious in February and March 1858 as British forces returned to Lucknow and recaptured the city after two weeks of fierce fighting. With the Qaisarbagh palace in Hazratganj taken by British troops, she and her supporters retreated towards the northeast of Awadh, where British control remained limited.

“She kept fighting the British until the very end,” reiterates the author.

This continued resistance was another reason the British vilified her. According to Llewellyn-Jones, a campaign was launched to discredit the Begum, including the false rumour that her son, Birjis Qadr, had not been fathered by Wajid Ali Shah but by Mammu Khan, one of her chief advisers.

Yet Llewellyn-Jones finds evidence of a more complex and capable leader. Another rebel leader, the maulvi Ahmad Ullah Shah, repeatedly disrupted her efforts, even fighting against her own men. Rather than have him killed, Hazrat Mahal summoned him to the palace, met with him and negotiated a settlement. “I thought that was pretty impressive! She was obviously a very good conciliator and administrator.”

But the struggle was becoming increasingly difficult. By September 1858, her forces had dwindled to an estimated 5,000. Eventually, she crossed into Nepal, where she lived in exile and largely disappeared from the historical record.

“She disappears into Nepal, where we know very little about her,” Llewellyn-Jones says.

A rebel denied a legacy 

The begum was once dismissed as an “unscrupulous woman” who led a failed revolt before disappearing so completely that, when news of her death was announced, a government official reportedly had to ask who she was.

“It was only after Independence that Hazrat Mahal slowly found her place in India’s history, helped in part by her descendants, who pressed the new government to recognise her fight against foreign rule,” Llewellyn-Jones says.

The lament echoes in a powerful argument in the book’s closing chapters. “The Hindu rani [Lakshmi Bai] was killed in battle by the British in 1858 and was immediately mythologised as the potent symbol of defiance; a martyr in the fight for independence, something which Hazrat Mahal was unable to claim.”

Her legacy was eventually acknowledged. Jawaharlal Nehru asked the Indian embassy in Kathmandu to search for the begum’s grave. They subsequently found and identified it at the Hindustani Masjid in Baghbazar, a busy commercial area of the city.

With this book, the author hopes to contribute to another such effort.