A silver seal made for Ghulam Rasul Khan Bahadur, Nawab of Kurnool (reg. 1823-39)South Deccan, dated AH 1239/AD 1823-24
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A silver seal made for Ghulam Rasul Khan Bahadur, Nawab of Kurnool (reg. 1823-39)
South Deccan, dated AH 1239/AD 1823-24
South Deccan, dated AH 1239/AD 1823-24
4 x 3.1 x 7 cm., 85 g.
Footnotes
The inscription reads:ghulam rasul khan bahadur 1239, "Ghulam Rasul Khan Bahadur 1239 (1823-24)".
It is very likely that the seal is that of the Nawab of Kurnool, Ghulam Rasul Khan Bahadur, made in the year he came to power, on the death of his brother Munawwar Khan. Ghulam Rasul Khan had been favoured at the expense of his brother by his father Alif Khan, who had requested permission from the British to create a seal for his son with the titleBahadur in 1813 (see Chandra Mallampalli,Race, Religion, and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family, Cambridge 2011, p. 82).
The rulers of Kurnool (and of other provincial courts south of Hyderabad) were originally Pathan and Afghans who had been in Aurangzeb's service, who made themselves nawabs in the south Deccan. Kurnool was the largest of these southern courts and was a centre of painting in its own right. See M. Zebrowski,Deccani Painting, London 1983, pp. 272-273 for a discussion; figs. 252 and 253 depict Ghulam Rasul Khan's immediate predecessor.