Where are the descendants of Mughals today?

Question

As per Wikipedia...

The last Mughal emperor was deposed in 1858 by the British East India company and exiled to Burma following the War of 1857 after the fall of Delhi to the company troops. His death marks the end of the Mughal dynasty.

Where are the descendants of Mughals today? Are they still as wealthy as they were once?

Answer 1

No one knows where they are.

Professor Aslam Pervez, an historian of Bahadur Shah II's reign and a founding member of the Mughal Trust, told The Daily Telegraph:

"There are so many people who claim to be descended. The Mughals were scattered, many ran away from Delhi, to Hyderabad, after the mutiny and no-one knows who went where," he said.

Due to the nature of the deposition of the dynasty, after a violent struggle which saw the massacre of the Royals by the British at the end like the cold-blooded murder by British Commander of the sons of the deposed Emperor:

The princes were mounted on a bullock-cart and driven towards the city of Delhi. As they approached the city gate, a crowd of people again started to gather around them, and Hodson ordered the three princes to get off the cart and to strip off their top garments. He then took a carbine from one of his troopers and shot them dead before stripping them of their signet rings, turquoise arm bands and bejewelled swords. Their bodies were ordered to be displayed in front of a kotwali, or police station, and left there to be seen by all. The gate near where they were killed is still called the Khooni Darwaza, or 'Bloody Gate'.

It makes sense that other descendants would have thought it best to flee and spend their days in anonymity for fear of retributions. Pictured below, The Bloody Gate of Old Keep of Imperial City of Delhi, where the corpses of the slain Princes were left to rot, maintained today as a historical artifact.

Same article also reported:

Many are believed to have fled to Calcutta, where 70 descendants have been traced by the trust, and Aurangabad where a further 200 are believed to live. Others are believed to be living in Pakistan and Burma.

Some of them are living in considerable poverty. One woman, Sultana Begum, who claims to be the widow of Mirza Mohammed Bedad Baqht, Zafar's great-grandson, offers a 400 Rupee (£5.40) a month state pension as evidence.

It appears that Government of India recognizes claim of Sultana Begum as authentic as evident by the payment of token pension to her:

“I get a pension of Rs 400 from the government of India due to the family lineage,” she said. “I sometimes do odd jobs like wedging stones in bangles for Rs 20 or 25 a day.” Her husband, Mirza Mohammad Bedad Baqht used to deal in semi-precious stones.

There are currently efforts underway in India, as stated above, to trace the lost Imperial family by private NGOs. The organizations claim that they have successfully found out 70 lost descandants of Mughals in Calcutta, Bengal state and 200 other descendants in city of Aurangabad alone.

Officially, the Timurid/Khandan-e-Timur/Timuriyan (خاندانء تیموریان‎‎) aka Gorkaniyan/Khandan-e-Gorkaniyan (خاندانء گورکانیان‎‎) aka Mughal dynasty/Khandan-e-Mughliya (خاندانء مغليہ) ended with the Indian war of independence and the dynasty no longer formally exists and has no head of dynasty unlike many other deposed dynasties which still survive e.g. Osmanlı Hanedanı/خاندان آل عثمان/Ottoman Dynasty.

Answer 2

1. Bahadur Shah Zafar breathed his last at 5 a.m. on the morning of Friday, 7 November 1862. He used to live in confinement in Rangoon under the supervision of Captain Nelson Davies with his two wives(Begum Zeenat Mahal and Begum Taj Mahal) and sons(Mirza Jawan Bakht by Begum Zeenat Mahal and Mirza Shah Abbas by one of Zafar's concubines Mubarak un- Nissa) and daughter in law Nawab Shah Zamani Begum ( married to Mirza Jawan Bakht).
2. After Zafar's demise his family were allowed to leave the prison enclosure and to settle somewhere in the Rangoon cantonment in 1867.
3. Begum Zeenat Mahal died in 1882 and was buried in Rangoon near Zafar's final resting place.
4. Mirza Jawan Bakht died in 1884 due to a severe stroke and followed Zeenat Mahal into the grave aged 42 years.
5. Mirza Shah Abbas married a daughter of a Muslim merchant of Rangoon, his descendants still live in Rangoon today.
6. There's a good probability that descendants of Jawan Bakht and Shah Zamani Begum might have survived and have been living in Rangoon.
7. Zafar had 16 sons and 31 daughters. Though fate of his sons is known but those of his daughters is largely unknown.

Reference : The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple

Answer 3

Here is a link to the Royal Ark site, specifically the detailed and hopefully accurate genealogy of the Mughal dynasty, including some descendants to the present day.

http://www.royalark.net/India4/delhi.htm1

It is an interesting fact that some members of the Mughal Dynasty were allegedly descended from European royalty. King of Kings Ismail I (1487-1524), founder of the Safavid Dynasty of Persia, was the maternal grandson of Despina Khatun or Theodore Megale Komnene, daughter of Emperor John IV of Trebizond. And there were marriages between the Safavids and members of the Mughal Dynasty.

Answer 4

You may refer to the following article -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2424410/The-Mughal-emperor-ancestor-Sultana-Begum-forced-live-slum-washes-street-struggles-feed-children.html

• Sultana Begum, 60, married the great-grandson of Bahadur Shah Zafar
• After ruling India for 300 years, he was overthrown by Britain in 1857
• Descendants of the last Mughal emperor survive on a pension of £60
• Their home is a two-room hut in a bleak shantytown in Kolkatta