I thought I’d pick up from where I’d left last week in connection with the Akbarabadi Masjid. The man pictured above is Mirza Elahi Baksh and is surrounded by his sons. Elahi Baksh was a Shahzada (prince) of the Mughal family and by the time this picture was taken in the 1860s he was recognised as the titular head of the Mughals in Delhi. This was in large part because he supported the British government during the Rebellion of 1857 and well, the rest of the Mughals either fled, were murdered or deported such as Bahadur Shah, the last emperor.
What does this have to do with the Akbarabadi Masjid? Well, in the 1860s, local newspapers reported that Elahi Baksh had claimed compensation for its destruction to the tune of 3 lakh rupees. Allegedly, he had earlier asked for the rubble to made over to him for the construction of a new mosque. That’s not all, it was also alleged that as the property of his ancestors, Elahi Baksh claimed possession of Humayun’s Tomb, the Qutub, Lal Bangla (the mausoleum of the erstwhile Mughal Emperor Jahandar Shah’s consort, Lal Kunwar) and the Madrassa of Ghaziuddin, then known as The Delhi College! This was wishful thinking of course but Elahi Baksh did receive a pension from the government which included several villages on the outskirts of Delhi.
As I mentioned in a previous post, ‘compensation’ was the name of the game in the 1860s, and meant everything from a reward for service during the Rebellion to renumeration for material losses sustained during the same. Chancers masqueraded as claimants and Elahi Baksh’s story is but one of several from the time.
As the Akbarabadi Masjid is long gone and we don’t have any photographic evidence of it, here is a drawing featured in ‘Asar us Sanadid’ (Vestiges of the Great), a guidebook by the famous Delhiwala, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. This was first published in 1847.
See you next Friday.
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