Nawab Qasim Jan was acourtier in the royal courts ofMughalDelhi.[1] According to some sources he came fromYarkand and first lived inLahore, attached to the court of theGovernorMoin-ul-Mulk in the 1750s, thereafter he moved to Delhi and joined the Mughal court underemperor,Shah Alam II (r. 1728–1806).
Soon he was given the title ofNawab andKhan, and given the region of Hateen nearGurgaon and thereafter he built his home close toRed Fort, inBallimaran,Delhi, in the lane that is still known as Gali Qasim Jan, and also built mosque nearby known as Qasim Khani Mosque.[1] He had two brothers, Alam Jan and Arif Jan,[2] whose son, Ahmad Baksh Khan, later founded theprincely state ofLoharu (now inBhiwani district) in 1806.[3] Noted Urdu poet,Mirza Ghalib was married to Umrao Begum, daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh Khan (younger brother of the first Nawab ofLoharu, Ahmad Baksh Khan);Ghalib ki Haveli, the poet's residence in Delhi, was in Gali Qasim Jan and is now a museum.
His son, Nawab Faizullah Beg, was a courtier during emperorBahadur Shah Zafar's reign, and built a complex later known as Ahata Kaley Sahab, so named after saint Kaley Khan, who lived here for a while, after whom Delhi'sSarai Kale Khan is also named. The complex was later acquired by Bunyadi Begum, poetMirza Ghalib's sister-in-law, and housed the poet after he was released fromdebtors' prison.[1][4]
Some of the prominent people who are linked to Qasim Jan lineage are Nawab ofLoharu, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed andMirza Ghalib, whereas his own descendants[citation needed] were: