Two days after the birth anniversary of Shakespeare and Wordsworth was the death anniversary of Shah Nazar Khan, the man who cast the Zamzamah about which Rudyard Kipling observed in his novel, “Kim”: “Who hold Zamzamah, that fire-breathing dragon, hold the Punjab; for the great green bronze piece is always first of the conqueror’s loot”. Nazar Khan, an Armenian Christian, cast many great guns for the latter Mughals, but the Zamzamah he cast for Ahmed Shah Abdali (also known as Durrani because of a pearl bequeathed to his mother by a dervish, who predicted that like the precious stone the fame of the child would spread far and wide) . Working first at Agra and then in Delhi, where he stayed in special quarters in the Red Fort, Nazar Khan had as his assistants the gun makers of Mohammad Shah Rangila, who could have defeated Nadir Shah had he followed their advice and marched out to meet the invader at least 100 miles from Delhi. What was worse was that in a drunken state Mohammad Shah Rangila rebuffed Ustad Nazar Khan himself as a heretical Armenian. From that time the ustad planned to teach him a lesson but since Mohammad Shah died, he could not keep his word and decided to make the dandy emperor’s heirs pay for the insult.
Leaving Delhi secretly by night, he rode to Panipat and thence in disguise to Lahore, where he sought an audience with Abdali. Glad to acquire his expertise, the man who succeeded the Persian Nadir Shah as Afghan warlord and was ravaging Delhi for long, decided on installing Shah Alam as Mughal emperor, entering into a pact with Nawab Vazir Shuja-ud-Daulah of Oudh for the purpose. His biggest opportunity came when the Third Battle of Panipat was fought in 1761 with the Maratha confederacy opposing Abdali and the Nawab Vazir. Shah Alam stayed out of the conflict as he was still at Allahabad, where he signed the famous Dewani of Bengal with the British. But the invading force proclaimed him as proxy emperor. It was at this battle that the Zamzamah, cast by Nazar Khan for Abdali at Lahore, was used for the first time and rightly enough, in keeping with its fame, wrought havoc in the opposing force of the Marathas, with the Jats of Suraj Mal deciding to stay away as their guerrilla tactics were not adopted. The Afghans pursued their opponents up to Delhi and as far away as Bharatpur, where Mahadji Scindia nearly got killed by a gigantic Afghan. He fell into a ditch which gave him a lifelong limp. Taking him for dead his adversary rode away.
Long after the battle, Nazar Khan is said to have returned to Delhi, working for Shah Alam. Some say he stayed in Kutcha Ustad Hamid though it is more plausible that the master gunsmith resided in Kishanganj, which had a sizable number of Armenian residents. He died in 1784 (the year one’s ancestor was born and also William Fraser). Why he was buried in Agra is explained by the story that he wanted to rest in the Martyrs’ Cemetery there along with other notable Armenians, among them Abdul Hai, Akbar’s Minister for Justice, the emperor’s adopted brother, Mirza Zulqarnain and Khoajah Mortiniphus, a rich merchant and a great philanthropist.
Father, who traced his grave with difficulty as the epitaph was in Armenian and Persian, with the help of a translation by a Jesuit priest, quoted it as follows:
“This is the tomb of Ustad Shah Nazar Khan, the son of Allaverdy of Qaiquli, who was an expert in the casting of guns and who departed to the Lord with a good faith on the 25th of April in the year 1784”. The Persian inscription is on the white headstone while the tomb itself is of red sandstone. The Armenian Christians had names similar to those of Muslims. The Ustad also cast a twin of the Zamzamah which was lost after falling into a river following a ferocious battle waged by Ahmed Shah Abdali. But the Zamzamah could not be transported to Kabul by him and later fell into the hands of Mahraja Ranjit Singh, who used it at the siege of Multan and acquired the name of Bhangianwali Toph. The 14.5 ft-long gun, with a 9.5 inch bore is now parked in front of Lahore Museum, where Benazir Bhutto went to see it out of curiosity. Its possessors hold part of the Punjab, while the other half is an Indian State without the gun, to give a partial lie to Kipling’s contention that “who hold the Zamzamah hold, the Punjab”.
The author is a veteran chronicler of Delhi.
