Reign
Emperor Akbar Shah II presided over an empire titularly large but in effect limited to the Red Fort in Delhi alone. The cultural life of Delhi as a whole flourished during his reign. However, his attitude towards East India Company officials, especially Lord Hastings, to whom he refused to grant an audience on terms other than those of subject and sovereign, although honourable to him, increasingly frustrated the British, who regarded him as merely their pensioner. The British therefore reduced his titular authority to 'King of Delhi' in 1835 and the East India Company ceased to act as the mere lieutenants of the Mughal Empire as they did from 1803 to 1835. Simultaneously they replaced Persian text with English text on the company's coins, which no longer carried the emperor's name. The British encouraged the Nawab of Oudh and the Nizam of Hyderabad to take royal titles in order to further diminish the Emperor's status and influence. Out of deference, the Nizam did not, but the Nawab of Awadh did so. However, Akbar Shah II's prestige was honored in Sindh, particularly when the Mughal Emperor issued a Firman in the year 1783, which designated Mir Fateh Ali Khan Talpur as the new Nawab of Sindh, and mediated peace particularly after ferocious fighting and the defeat of the ruling Kalhora by the Talpur tribes.
Akbar Shah II appointed the Bengali reformer Ram Mohan Roy, to appeal against his treatment by the East India Company, Ram Mohan Roy then visited England, as the Mughal envoy to the Court of St. James, conferring on him the title of Raja. Ram Mohan Roy submitted a well argued memorial on behalf of the Mughal ruler, but to no avail.
His grave lies, next to the dargah of 13th century, Sufi saint, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki at Mehrauli, Delhi in a marble enclosure, along with that of Bahadur Shah I (Shah Alam I) and Shah Alam II.
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Famous quotes containing the word reign:
“No one would have doubted his ability to reign had he never been emperor.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)
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—Earl Felton, and Richard Fleischer. Captain Nemo (James Mason)
“The reign of imagagology begins where history ends.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)