From riches to rags, eighth Nizam of Hyderabad moved to WA (2024)

Mir Barkat Ali Khan, eighth Nizam of Hyderabad: October 6, 1933 – January 15, 2023

The life of Mir Barkat Ali Khan (known as Mukarram Jah), who has died in Istanbul at the age of 89, was an extraordinary tale of reversal of fortune. No one understood the highly developed hierarchies of India better than the imperialist, class-conscious British who set about dividing the maharajahs into classes, measuring the rank of their state by the firing, on all formal occasions, of gun salutes – descending in odd numbers from 21 to nine. Hyderabad, the wealthiest and most populous, was a 21-gunner; in fact, the only one.

Three-year-old Mukarram Jah was present at the silver jubilee of his grandfather, the seventh Nizam, in 1937 when the cannon fired. That booming symbolic tribute to a prince of the raj terrified the little boy so much that his grandfather ordered that they cease – at number 17 (putting them on par with Jodhpur – Marwar). What three-year-old would not be frightened by cannon fire? But this was no ordinary child.

His name meant Bounty of God, Blessed by Allah, and heritage weighed heavily on his tiny Sherwani’d shoulders. Through his Indian grandmother, he was a descendant of the prophet Mohammed; through his Turkish mother, a descendant of the first and last caliphs. He was an offspring of the union of the two greatest Muslim dynasties of their time, and his grandfather’s hope was that he would succeed him in Hyderabad, and reclaim the Caliphate.

At the urging of his beautiful cultivated mother, the Princess Durru of Shehvar, and against the wishes of his grandfather, Jah was sent to Doon School (a Himalayan Gordonstoun), then to Harrow with King Faisal of Iraq and his cousin King Hussein of Jordan. He read English and history at Peterhouse, and Cambridge and Sandhurst followed. His first headmaster reported to the viceroy that he did not seem to know what was going on around him. His mother despaired of his obsession with machinery.

In 1958 Jah met British-educated Esra Birgin, Turkish daughter of a research chemist, and they married secretly at the Kensington Registry Office the following year.

Soon after, Jah’s grandfather, like his fellow Islamic potentate the Aga Khan, disinherited his drinks-and-dancing-girls son and heir in favour of Jah.

Jah’s grandfather, the seventh and, in a real sense, the last, Nizam, Osman Ali Khan, was a fascinating figure. Despite decades of opium addiction and a sexual appetite of Biblical proportions (people would hide their daughters as he passed on his visits to his mother’s tomb), he was a deft politician who supported Britain through both wars and extracted some recognition and concessions in doing so.

Before the Second World War the seventh Nizam was said to be the richest man in the world. The New York Times said that ‘his pearls alone would fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool’. He used the wondrous 185-carat Jacob diamond as a paperweight. And yet he wore a 50-shilling suit and haggled with stall keepers over the price of soft drink.

A Muslim, he kept the peace with his overwhelmingly Hindu subjects – until partition and accession robbed him of his power. In 1956, even Hyderabad ceased to exist as a state. It became Andhra Pradesh.

At his death in 1967, the old Nizam left four wives, 40 concubines, 33 children and a staff of 10,000. There were 300 cases of champagne from the 1930s, all undrinkable; of 60 cars, only four could be driven. There were rooms full of pearls, emeralds and diamonds.

Young Jah, the new Nizam, brought in his own guards, but the looting began almost immediately and continued for decades. On April 6, 1967, a Mughal-style darbar was held to install him. It was to be the last of its kind in India. At the end of the ceremony, the Oldsmobile that was to carry the royal couple broke down. Amid the solemn ritual, the exotic splendour and a crowd of tens of thousands shouting “long live the Nizam”, all Jah could think of was how he could fix the imported V8.

Five years later, the old Nizam’s teeming beneficiaries were still contesting the 54 trusts he left behind. In 1970, Indira Gandhi had stripped the 279 remaining princes of their privy purses and titles.

Overwhelmed by his lot, Jah flew to Western Australia and fell in love with its openness and space. The landscape reminded him of the Deccan. He bought Murchison House Station, 160 kilometres from Geraldton, and, at 200,000 hectares it was bigger than most nine-gun princely states. “Abu Bakar [the first caliph] was a shepherd, so I see no reason why I shouldn’t be one,” he once told a reporter. He would wear an Akubra hat, a dusty blue boiler suit and R.M. Williams work boots.

Esra was appalled by the informality and isolation and returned to London after nine days. The locals treated and greeted him as would be expected. He wasn’t met with the deepest bow and salutation “Your Exalted Highness” but “How yer doin’, Jah?” He loved the West Australians for this.

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Some even called him Charlie. But then, royals were not such a rarity in that part of the world. Prince Len and Princess Shirley lived nearby at Hutt River Province. For some decades they managed to make quite a prosperous principality of their holdings while Jah was squandering or being robbed of his.

Jah claimed to have personally graded 3000 kilometres of roads and fence lines, while he relied on managers to run his business affairs, as he did in India. Projects were abandoned midstream, managers were regularly replaced. He would drive across Australia and then charter a Lear jet to get home.

In 1979, Jah married Helen Simmons, a former flight attendant from Perth, where he’d bought Havelock House. She filled it with antiques from his palaces, bringing some of Hyderabad to West Perth. Simmons converted to Islam and changed her name to Ayesha. In 1987 she contracted AIDS after an affair, and died a few months later.

He would wed, wed, and wed again: in 1992, Manolya Onur, a Miss Turkey 1976; a fourth marriage to Jameela Boularous, a former Miss Morocco; and, finally in 1994, Turkish Princess Ayesha Orchedi.

By 1992, Murchison was strewn with abandoned graders, tractors, and cars. A rescue package was put together after the company owning Murchison was placed in liquidation. Jah was then forced to sell Havelock House and his yacht.

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By 1996, Jah felt cursed and left Murchison and his machinery and fled to his mother’s homeland – and a modest two-bedroom flat at Antalya, on Turkey’s southern coast. It was here that distinguished Australian journalist John Zubrzycki found Jah and from that meeting his biography, The Last Nizam (2006), came the first full-length look at an extraordinary life of loss, a contemporary account in its historical context. Somehow one appreciates the loss more by knowing how it all had been won.

As Jah lived quietly looking over the Mediterranean, he partly reconciled with Esra, giving her authority to act for him in Hyderabad in an attempt to stem the plunder and neglect, saving some of his heritage for their children. She would oversee the renovation and lease of the Falaknuma Palace to the Taj group of hotels and a remarkable transformation of Chowmahalla Palace into a museum.

Jah spent his final years in Istanbul with a carer. He is survived by his heir, Azmet, and a daughter, Shehkyar, by Esra; Azam, his son by Helen (another son predeceased him); and a daughter, Niloufer, by his fourth wife Manolya Onur.

Azmet becomes the ninth – but titular – Nizam.

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