Tipu Sultan’s delegation to Istanbul
Posted by Labels: Istanbul, Mysore Sultans, Tipu Istanbul, Tipu Ottoman, TurkeyThe Embassy headed by Ghulam Ali
As the 8th decade of the 18th century
was drawing to a close, Fateh Ali, a.k.a. Tipu Sultan was left in a quandary.
The Maratha wars had been raging and things were not going too well. The years
of conflict finally ended with Treaty of Gajendragad in March 1787, as per
which Tipu returned territory captured by Hyder Ali, to the Maratha Empire.
Tipu agreed to pay four-years of tribute arrears amounting to 48 Lacs while the
Marathas agreed to address Tipu sultan as “Nabob Tipu Sultan Futteh Ally Khan”
and recognized his kingdom. Why would this address be so important to Tipu?
We saw in the previous article introducing Hari Singh (see link),
the detail of how Hyder Ali rose from the position of a lowly soldier, to eventually
overthrow the Wodeyars of Mysore and usurp their throne. Hyder, then marshaling
support the Ali Raja and the Moplahs, decimated Kolathunadu and Central
Malabar, ending with the Calicut Zamorin committing suicide in 1766 and
becoming the master to those areas. But the wars were not kind to Hyder, and he
passed on, soon after. During the final years of his reign Hyder Ali did
consider to send an embassy to the Ottoman Sultan, but that never materialized.
Leaving behind his governors and administrators to mop up
tax revenue and continue the search for larger treasures secreted in temples,
Hyder’s successor Tipu Sultan kept himself busy in Mysore and the Deccan,
fighting alternating wars with more powerful Maratha and British armies. Things
did not look good and that was when Tipu decided to seek support from the
powerful Sultan Abdul Hamid at Constantinople or Istanbul. In addition to this,
he needed a lot of money to fight these wars and pay the Marathas, and knowing
that Travancore had it, his next plans were to raid Travancore where he felt
the fleeing Malabar princes had hid their treasures. We will for now focus on
Tipu’s attempts at wooing the Ottoman Sultan to his side.
The undeclared purpose
If one were to review the political situation of that time, they
would not fail to see the declining Mughal empire, the rise of the Marathas, and
observe the English and the French vying to achieve economic successes by
aligning with one king or the other, waiting for an opportunity to settle down
and annex power using legal and not so legal means. The smaller powers in
Deccan and the Tamilakam were key to the rise of the Mysore sultans but we can see
that the Nawabs of Arcot and the Carnatic as well as the Nizam of Hyderabad, with
their alignment with the British, were proving to be the biggest tumbling blocks
for Hyder who had already annexed Mysore and Malabar. Travancore was always in
the plans, but being a bit distant, was not urgent.
The Nizam was legally the Viceroy of the Deccan, while the
Nawab of the Carnatic, the Nizam’s dependent state had also received a Walajah
title. The legal sovereign was the Mughal ruler Shah Alam and the
aforementioned rulers were his representatives. Joining them was the Marathas
who had also obtained their sanads (legal backing) from the Mughals. The Mysore
rulers were nominally under the Nizam, while the Travancore king was technically
a tributary of the Nawab of the Carnatic, the Nawab Wallajah.
Haider was not in the bigwigs list even in the late 1770’s, and
was mentioned only as a Zamindar reporting to the Mysore Raja. Even after Hyder’s
demise, the Nizam continued to mention him only as his ‘late’ servant, rankling
Tipu who by then possessed not only greater power, but also a larger domain. He
was considered a usurper with no legal titles and was placed well below the
titled Nizam and the Nawab. Tipu was thus known to the world only as Fath Ali
Khan, not a nawab or a sultan and was hell bent on legalizing his position, but
realized that if he approached the Mughals in Delhi (the titular and religious
head of Muslims), he would only be titled as a subordinate of either the Nizam
or the Nawab of Arcot. This was not a feasible solution because he was fighting
both of them and in addition, they were allied to his enemy - the British.
The fact of the matter was that while Hyder was a dalawa of
the Mysore Raja and briefly the Nawab of Sira (Carnatic-Balaghat), Tipu had illegally
dethroned the Mysore Raja to take over power. He tried hard to get the Nawab of
Arcot’s title transferred to him by repeated overtures on the administration in
Delhi using French influence, but it did not work as the British (Maj Brown)
had a greater clout with the Shah. The desire to be an independent Raja, thus, seemed
hopeless for Tipu. He tried to force the Marathas and the Nizam whom he had
military successes against, to recognize him, but that was also not successful,
only the Marathas agreed to call him Tipu Sultan.
He finally decided to simply declare his independence, but for
that to be valid, he had to gain recognition from a much higher authority. He
tried corresponding with Zaman Shah, the ruler of Afghanistan as well as Karim
Khan of Iran. The next was to approach the Ottomans at Constantinople (now
Istanbul), who were the Khalipha’s or Caliph, the custodians and protectors of
the two holy mosques at Medina and Mecca.
Recall that the cooperation between Malabar and Constantinople
dates back to the Portuguese days and we had studied about how an Ottoman naval force was sent out to battle with the Portuguese. The Ottoman Sultan did try to
help and so that was the new route taken by Tipu.
While this is believed to be Tipu’s primary purpose, other
researchers conclude that Tipu actually executed a multi-pronged mission, where
he would seek recognition not only from the Afghans, the Persians and the
Ottomans, but also the French and if possible, the English. Honor and ijjat or
prestige was paramount in any Islamic tradition and leaving behind his legacy
as an illegal usurper was a stain what Tipu considered an honorable and deeply
religious reputation.
However, I must in all fairness add here that Islamic
researchers are divided in their opinion about the purpose of the Constantinople
mission, with Irfan Habib questioning IH Qureshi’s contention that recognition
from the Ottomans was Tipu’s primary aim. Irfan suggests that this was not
documented as a purpose in the detailed written instructions and for that
reason, may not have been the purpose. I tend to agree with Quereshi’s outlook.
The stated purpose
After a probing mission in 1786 in order to lay the
groundworks for the departure of a larger embassy, Tipu deputed the larger one
in 1787, the subject of this article. The stated purpose was to obtain firmans
to establish factories in Ottoman domains in order to sell his produce (in
return he would give them ports on the Malabar west coast i.e. Mangalore). Another
was to obtain recognition or title confirmation for Tipu himself and the third
was to obtain military support to fight the English. Additionally, the embassy
was to strengthen the relations with the Emir of Oman and obtain concessions
from the Shah of Persia. The embassy was headed by Tipu’s confidante, Ghulam
Ali Khan, who unfortunately was ailing and had to be carried in a palanquin during
this trip. The most active envoy was one Nurullah Khan, and the scribe being
Abdul Qadir who penned the formal report titled Waqai-i manazil-i Rum, covering
the embassy’s trip, but only until they left Basra for Istanbul. The rest of
the trip is detailed only in the records kept by the Turks, since the second
part of Qadir’s report is missing. The embassy was meant to call on the
Ottomans, then proceed to France and later England. Note here that in the
various chronicles, Constantinople (Yesterdays Istambul and today’s Istanbul) is
called the Sublime Porte (Bab-i-Ali, the imperial gate to the Topkapi palace at
Istanbul) and Turkey was known by the name Rum (Turkish empire).
The mission and its plight
The ambassadors left Seringapatanam in Nov 1785, then sailed out from the Mangalore port of Tadri in March 1786 when the winds were in favor, in four ships, totaling to about 900 people. A huge number of gifts were on board, a lot of trade material, so also four elephants (one each for Turkey, France, Britain and the last for sale to recoup the expenses for the journey). After a very stormy journey and the loss of one of the elephants, the ships arrived in Muscat roughly a month later. Things were not going quite well already and a few men vamoosed, fleeing back on other cargo ships returning to Bombay. After selling some of the produce and visiting other islands, they reached Basra in August, losing one of the four ships and many men. Two more elephants died and almost all the presents for the Ottoman Sultan had been lost. The ailing Ghulam Ali had to be carried all the way in a silver chair or palanquin. Anyway, after a year and a large amount of tribulations, in Feb 1787, a group of 400 men escorted by some 200 sepoys left Basra for Istanbul via Baghdad, reaching there on 25th Sept 1787, sans all the elephants who had died due to the heat by this time and hardly any gifts (save a gold and wood pulpit and two Urdu speaking birds)! In Oct, they met the Grand Vizier without ceremony and a month later on Nov 5th, the Sultan Abdul Hamid.
To convince the Sultan, Tipu argued that about 10,000 Muslim
children had been forcibly converted to Christianity and that many mosques and
Muslim cemeteries had been destroyed and turned into Churches. In view of this
and his religious responsibility, he said, he opted for jihad and had already won
many victories against the Christians. The Turks were not committal and
demurred.
Tragedy continued for the Indians when plague broke out in
Istanbul and many of the 400 camped there succumbed to its vagaries. By Jan
1788, the number had dwindled from 400 to 70. The reminder of the motely group
moved to Uskudar and it was then that they found that Tipu had already sent
another mission to France and so a second Indian mission rerouted from Istanbul
was not ‘quite’ welcome in France, so they decided to go back home. After a
final meeting with the Sultan in March, they sailed to Alexandria, then south
over the Nile to Cairo, and later moved to Jeddah. After completing pilgrimages
at Mecca and Medina (where again they ran into problems and were nearly robbed
off all their belongings), they sailed back, reaching Calicut in Dec 1789. From
there they sped to meet Tipu who was battling at the Travancore lines and gave
him a report. One item gifted to Tipu by Sultan Abdul Hamid was a jeweled
sword, was that the one captured by the Travancore Nairs? Food for thought.
The Mark Wilks (History of Mysore p.p. 361-367) description
of this embassy is overtly critical of Tipu, full of ridicule, and thus not
reliable or factual, but there are some additional aspects detailing the
misfortunes faced by the embassy at Istanbul and the cold reception they got
from the Turks.
Curiously, the Turks on the street thought that this huge
bunch of Indians led by their portly leader (Ghulam Ali) on a throne carried by
12 men, were soldiers from India who had come to fight for the Ottomans,
against Russia! Moreover, the Turks were interested in formal discussions only
when they heard about territory on offer to Turkey. Just imagine if Mangalore
had been taken by the Turks! The Vizier felt insulted to see Tipu offering
Mysore troops to keep Basra safe, when Tipu himself was requesting support to
fight the English!
The outcome
The 5 years had taken a terrible toll, only one boat
survived the voyage, many hundreds of personnel were lost, and all they got was
an approval permitting Tipu to assume a ruler’s title, strike coins and have Khutba’s
recited in his name. The Turks could not provide material support, military
assistance or any trade permits due to their own difficulties, what with the
Russia – Austria allied forces which were poised to attack the Ottomans. Tipu’s
offer to complete the canal project at Najaf, started by the Nawab of Oudh, and
all the other idealistic plans such as the exchange of ports, military
exchanges etc. were put aside for future consideration. Also, the Sultan
advised him to maintain peace with the British. In fact, Britain was busy
mediating peace between Turkey and her enemies. The Ottoman Sultan therefore,
was in no mood to help Tipu and lose British friendship. But Tipu Sultan was
allowed to have his name included in the Khutba (Friday sermon). The Muayyadu’l-Mujahidin
is a collection of fifty-two Khutbas read each week in Tipu’s kingdom.
However, no document or firman has ever been documented,
confirming Tipu’s investiture, perhaps it was alluded to in the Sultan’s reply titling
Tipu as Tipu Sultan and taken note of by a reporter who published - Golam Alley Beg died in that country and another man
returned having accomplished his means (sic) and he also procured from the
Sultan the title of King and permission to hold (sic) a mint and to have the
Khutba read in his name. Ghulam Ali did not die there, he returned
to India.
While some historians insist that Tipu was more interested
in trade and cooperation, I find the claim dubious. Did Tipu believe that the Ottomans, so distant
geographically would be interested in establishing themselves in the port of
Mangalore? Similarly, for Tipu to maintain a unit in Basra without his own navy
was tough. Yes, the Turks could have provided the requested craftsmen and
military support, but that was about it, for neither Tipu nor the Ottoman Sultan
had a good navy at that juncture to control the flow of goods between Malabar and
Basra.
But the very fact that Tipu sent such a big mission to
Turkey, the fact that he obtained some kind of investiture etc. had an effect
on the English, who started viewing him in a different light. He did win many
wars, he was trying to reach out, far and wide and had the support from the
French. Their ally the Nizam felt belittled, for Tipu had been recognized by
someone superior to their suzerain, the Mughal emperor. The reverse effect of
this all was the determined effort by the British eagerly supported by Tipu’s
domestic rivals the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nawab of Arcot.
Aftermath
After the debacle at the Travancore lines and a retreat due
to the rains and problems at home, Tipu had to contend with the British in the
third Anglo Mysore war. In the end he was forced to sign a treaty and delivered
his sons to be held as hostages, till Tipu paid a huge war indemnity. And thus,
Tipu formally tied up with Napoleon and the French, and we studied about his alliances and the Jacobian club earlier. Napoleon on the other hand planned to
take India after the conquest of Egypt and ally with the Mysoreans and the Marathas,
though he wrote to Tipu thus: "You have already been informed of my
arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible army,
full of the desire of releasing and relieving you from the iron yoke of
England." But as we know, France lost the naval battle at Egypt. In spite
of the British victory in this battle, the campaign was a strategic success for
France and Napoleon was free to continue the war in the Middle East returned to
Europe personally unscathed, though he dropped his plans to go on to India.
Even though the subject topic has been dealt with, I must add
a bit of the continued correspondence between Tipu and the Ottoman Sultan Selim
III, who succeeded his uncle Abdul Hamid. Napoleon had taken Egypt, but stooped
short there and did not continue on to India. Tipu succeeded in drawing
military trainers and mercenaries into his fighting forces. But to go all out
and win against the canny British, he once again decided to ask for support
from the Ottoman Sultan. Around the same time, the British also contacted the
Sultan who was their ally and asked him as the ‘acknowledged Head of the
Mohammedan Church’ to advise Tipu not to fight the British and break away from
the French. Accordingly, the Sultan, allied with the British, replied Tipu, criticizing
the French action in Egypt and emphasized that the true aim of the French was
to take India and colonize the whole Muslim world.
In reply to this communication, Tipu Sultan wrote twice to
the Ottoman Sultan in a manner which apparently did not please Selim III. In
his second letter Tipu stated that if the French were the enemies of Islam and
the Sultan, Muslims should not be friendly with them. But since the British
were the invaders in his country, he could not be expected to change his
attitude towards them. With that the frail relation between Mysore and the
Ottomans was broken.
The end game
The British marshaled support from the Nizam and the Marathas and as a final ploy delivered the Caliph’s (Sultan Selim’s) letter imploring Tipu not to fight the British. When Tipu scoffed at it, the war horns were sounded and the attack on Seringapatanam, the 4th Anglo Mysore war took place where Tipu was killed.
Some books mention that Ghulam Ali died in Istanbul, well, Ghulam
Ali Mir Noor Khan, the ( called lame, langda, gumchi) Sirdar who headed the team,
had the last laugh. He was a shrewd diplomat alright, in 1792 he accompanied
Tipu's hostage sons, Abdul Khaliq and Maizzuddin, to Madras. After the 1799 Mysore
defeat and Tipu’s demise, Ghulam Ali Khan ‘the traitor’ became a pensioner of
the British, receiving 3000 star pagodas per annum, was appointed as the Munsif
of Krishnagiri in 1816; retired in 1854; and died at Krishnagiri in 1863 at the
age of 105; to be buried on the southern side of Shahi Masjid Fort.
In spite of all this, the Ottoman’s did end up getting
connected by marriage to the wealthy Nizam of Hyderabad. Moazzam Jah
the son of the last Nizam married Princess Niloufer, the last Ottoman princess
in Nov 1931. On the same day, Jah's elder brother Azam Jah married Niloufer's
cousin Durru Shehvar. These weddings were held as "union of two great
dynasties" by contemporary records and many believed that the alliance
between the Nizam and the deposed Caliph could lead to the emergence of a
Muslim ruler who could be acceptable to the world powers in place of the
Ottoman sultans.
References
Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernization Under
Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan
History of Tipu Sultan - Mohibbul Hasan
Maysor Sultani tipu ile Osmanli Padişahlarindan i Abdülhamid
ve 111. Selim Arasindaki Mektuplaşma - Hikmet Bayur
Tipu Sultan’s Embassy to the Ottoman Court – Syed Tanvir
Wasti
Arabs and Euro-Asian maritime contacts – AK Pasha
Attempts to use the Ottoman Caliphate as the legitimator of
British rule in India - Azmi Ozcan
Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy: Islam and Kingship in a
Hindu Domain -Kate Brittlebank
Waqai-i manazil-i Rum: Tipu Sultan's mission to
Constantinople - Mohibbul Hasan
Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400-1800 -
Muzaffar Alam, Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Note: Sultan Abdul Hamid addresses Tipu as follows: Janab
imarat maab aylat nisab hukumat iktisab daulat intisab nasir ur islam was
muslimin aun ul-ghusat wal mujahuddin hami-yi il mamalik I patan was Hindustan
ali-ushan Tipu Sultan. The Daulta intisab part approximates a proper royal
title according to Prof Muzaffar Alam.
14 comments:
Thank you. An unbiased informative account- a rare commodity nowadays.
thanks orang bintulu..glad you liked it.
Please provide the references for the word stated Mir Ghulam Ali as traitor, with few references and a play from girlish Karnak that he was loyal and a relative to tipu sultan from one of his wife and a prominent sayyid. For more clarification you can write to me on “muju09384@gmail.com”.
Thanks Mujahid,
it comes from here, please check the article.
https://www.deccanherald.com/content/376321/a-traitors-tomb.html
He is cast as a traitor or Namak Haram for moving to the British side, of course.
@Maddy : thanks for an update, but this article has no source of determining him as an impostor.
@Maddy : thanks for an update, but this article has no source of determining him as an impostor.
@Maddy : thanks for an update, but this article has no source of determining him as an impostor. Though many of the gazetteers are showing him as a power of tipu and relative too.
@Maddy : thanks for an update, but this article has no source of determining him as an impostor. Though many of the gazetteers are showing him as a power of tipu and relative too. Appreciate if you could share with me any source of him related to his lineage. Thanks
Can’t help you there Mujahid, perhaps more of oral history as they call it , anyway I will check a bit more.
Meanwhile another article provides another angle to his life, quite unbelievable
https://www.therahnuma.com/mir-ghulam-ali-the-indian-who-ended-frances-1000-year-old-monarchy-for-tipu-sultan/
Mujahid,
If you read the Waqai-i- manzil by Mohibbul Haasan (pg1) and Irfan Habib's State & diplomacy (pg62) you will find that Ghulam Ali Langra was put in jail and then released after his return from Istanbul. Later on, after the fall of Seringapatanam, he was granted a pension in 1799 by the British and you will find many references to his pension, entreaties by his wife Sara Begum to the British for its reinstatement etc in the 'guide to the N Arcot records'. That he was provided a large and handsome pension by the British would have meant that Ali had helped the British somehow, and this led to the conjecture by his detractors that he was a traitor.
For exact details of the treachery, see page 320 of Mohibul Hasan's History of Tipu Sultan.Ed2, 1971, page 320 (earlier editions do not have this para)
Harris informed Ghulam Ali Khan, mir sudur that if he helped the English in securing the surrender of Mysore forts, the Governor-General would confirm him in his jagir in perpetuity that he had held under Tipu and would also, in addition, grant him adequate compensation. Ghulam Ali Khan, thereupon, issued orders to the commandants to surrender their forts to the English. Gooty and Hulal alone resisted but were captured. Ref W.P., B.M. 13728, Harris to Wellesley, May 18, 1799, ff. 98a-b
Thanks Maddy was informative, appreciate if you could share the details of his lineage/descendants. As I believe there were 2 ghulam ali in tipus court and till the fall of tipu he was very much involved in their court matters.
Thanks
Some other time, my friend- he is at the extreme periphery of my present interests, these studies take a lot of time, as you know! Maybe there is another Ghulam Ali, as you believe!
Thank you for giving us wonderful information about Tipu Sultan Coins. Your blog benefits people who want to know about historical Tipu Sultan Coins.
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