Sake Dean Mahomed - Early Life

Early Life

"so long as the Sepoy's maintain their formations, which they call `lines,' they are like an immovable volcano spewing artillery and rifle fire like unrelenting hail on the enemy, and they are seldom defeated.”

Born in 1759 in Patna, Bihar, then part of the Bengal Presidency, Sake Dean Mohamed came from Buxar. His father was in the employment of the East India Company. Some claim his ancestors rose in the administrative service of the Mughal Emperors. Sake Dean Mahomet also asserted that he descended from Persian and Turk immigrants drawn to India via Iran in the seventeenth century by the lure of honorable service to the Mughal Empire. He had learned much of Mughal Alchemy and understood the techniques used to produce various Alkali, soaps and Shampoo. He later described the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and the cities of Allahabad and Delhi in rich detail and also made note of the faded glories of the Mughal Empire.

Sake Dean Mahomed grew up in Patna. Mahomet's father died when Mahomet was young. He was then taken under the wing of Captain Godfrey Evan Baker, an Anglo-Irish Protestant officer at the age of 10. He served in the army of the British East India Company as a trainee surgeon and honorably served against the blemishing Marathas. Sake Dean Mahomed also mentions how Mir Qasim and most of the entire Bengali Muslim aristocracy had lost their famed wealth and complained regarding Shuja-ud-Daula and his campaign against his Rohilla allies and how Hyder Ali defeated the British during the Battle of Pollilur. Mahomet remained with Captain Baker's unit until 1782, when the Captain resigned. That same year, Mahomed also resigned from the Army, choosing to accompany Captain Baker, 'his best friend', to Britain.