A hundred sepia-tinted photographs, some arranged on the floor and some on easels inside Tahniyat Mahal of Chowmahalla Palace complex brought alive the fairy tale life of Mahbub Ali Khan, the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, on his 150 birth anniversary.
“In 1979 Basalat Jah (Mahbub Ali’s son) became our neighbour in Himayatnagar and I persuaded him to share some of the photographs for the sake of posterity. And that can be considered as the genesis of this photo exhibition,” says Muhammad Safiullah of Deccan Heritage Trust.
The photographs, many of them clicked by Bourne and Shephard (which closed down recently), Raja Deen Dayal and some from private collections show a slice of life that made Mahbub Ali’s life the stuff of legends. The earliest photograph is that of a toddler with a crown in 1870, about the time he was made the king after the death of his father Afzal Ud Dowla. Then there is a photograph of the king as a doting father with mutton chop beard holding on to Basalat Jah and Salabat Jah as they restlessly peer around.
Mahabub Ali was known for his eccentricities and one of them being roaming around incognito to find out about the well being of the citizens of the kingdom. “This, I think, is a rare photograph which actually shows Mahbub Ali in disguise after a nightly visit to the city,” says Mr. Safiullah, pointing to a photograph with a man wrapped up in a chador surrounded by a large number of elegantly dressed people. Another rare photograph shows Saifabad palace built during Mahbub Ali’s time with a boat tethered close by in the Hussainsagar Lake.
