Thread by @oolabmys

With Zafar's departure, there was complete collapse of the fragile court culture he had faithfully nourished and exemplified. As Ghalib noted: 'All these things lasted only so long as the king reigned.' By the time of Zafar's death, much of his palace, the Red Fort, (1/4)

had already been torn down, along with great areas of the Mughal Delhi he loved and beautified. Meanwhile the great majority of its leading inhabitants and courtiers - poets and princes, mullahs and merchants, Sufis and scholars - had been hunted down and hanged, or (2/4)

else dispersed and exiled, many to the Raj's new, specially constructed gulag in the Andaman Islands. Those who were spared were left in humiliating and conspicuous poverty. As Ghalib, one of the few survivors from the old court, lamented, 'The male descendants of the (3/4)

deposed King - such as survived the sword - draw allowances of five rupees a month. The female descendants if old are bawds, and if young, prostitutes.

The Last Mughal
William Dalrymple

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