Or 16285 (Oriental Manuscripts, British Library)

A calligraphed letter from Navvāb Shāh Jahān Baygum, announcing her recent enthronement as Queen of Bhopal, following the death of her mother Sikandar Baygum, and inviting the recipient of the letter and his wife to her coronation ceremony one month later, on 4 Shavval 1285/18 January 1869; this would have been immediately after the end of the three days of ‘Īd al-Fiṭr. Apart from his gender, there is no internal evidence as to the identity of the person addressed, although he may well have been the ruler of one of the neighbouring kingdoms.

Shāh Jahān Baygam was the third of four women to rule Bhopal, the second largest princely state in India. Her mother, Navvab Sikandar Begum (1816-1868), wrote an account of her Hajj journey a few years earlier, which was translated into English for the benefit of the British agent at Bhopal and published in 1870. See Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, ed., A Princess’s Pilgrimage: a pilgrimage to Mecca (1863-1864), Markfield, UK: Kube; New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2007. For a perceptive review of this work, see Bruce King, ‘From Mecca to Dhaka’, in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 44:2, pp. 205-211.

Begins: Ṣāḥib-i mushfiq-i mihrabān-i mukhliṣān sallamah Allāh ta‘ālà Ba‘d-i ta’sīs-i asās-i khulūṣ-i qadīm ... al-Ḥamd li-Llāh va l-minna ki az maḥkama-’i rafī‘-i ṣadr-i manī‘ al-qadr manẓūrī-i jānishīnī-i mukhliṣa bar manṣab-i ṣadr-ārā-yi riyāsat-i Bhūpāl

Ends: Ānshafīq ham ma‘ah mīmṣāḥiba masḥaqqa bi-maqdam-i sharīf zīb va zīnat-i maḥfil afzūda mukhliṣa-rā mamnūn-i minnat va marhūn-i ishfāq farmāyand... shādkām farmūda bāshand Ziyāda chi bar ṭirāz Muvarrakha yakum-i Ramażān-i sana 1285 hijrī...

Bhopal, India. 1 Ramażān 1285/16 December 1868.

Calligraphic nasta‘līq. 11 lines. Surface stamped lozenges of gold leaf and sprinkled with silver. Thin, brittle light beige paper, with slight damage in the form of small losses of paper along the one vertical and three horizontal folds. 1 folio. 488 x 222 mm. Old seal impression of Shāh Jahān Baygum, dated 1265/1848-9.

Purchased at Bonhams sale, 12 October 2006, Lot 55.