Mukarram Jah Bahadur, formally known as Nizam Mir Barkat Ali Khan Siddiqi Mukarram Jah Asaf Jah VIII, who was the titular 8th and last Nizam of the former princely state of Hyderabad in India, passed away in Turkey on January 12, 2023 at the age of 89. He was laid to rest with state honours next to his father Azam Jah in Istanbul, Turkey.
Though Mir Osman Ali Khan was the paternal grandfather of the late Nizam, Mukarram Jah became the successor of Sultan Abdulmajid II, the last Ottoman Caliph, who was Mukarram Jah’s maternal grandfather. Osman Ali Khan, the grandfather of Mukarram Jah, was the world’s richest man at one time. The Ottoman Caliphate was totally abolished in 1924 while the Turkish Grand National Assembly had ended the Ottoman Sultanate two years before.
Using force against the political independence and territorial integrity of the state of Hyderabad, India invaded the princely state in September 1948, ended its independent status and also divided the state among three new states. Mukarram Jah was given the title of Nizam after his grandfather made Mukarram Jah heir, while his reign reached its end when an amendment in Indian constitution abolished privy purses in the early 1970s, spelling the end of the princely order. From that moment forward, he would be known merely as the titular Nizam of Hyderabad.
The disciples of the ideology of Kemalism, known as Kemalists, put Abdulmajid II, along with his entire family, on a train to Europe where they lived in poverty. To get them out of abject penury, Nizam Osman Ali Khan issued a monthly pension of £300 to the heir to the Ottoman sultans. In a little while, this support soon transformed into familial relationships. The wedding of Azam Jah and his younger brother Moazzam Jah was solemnised to Princess Durre Shehvar and Niloufer, the last Ottoman Calipwh’s daughter and niece, in 1931. On that momentous occasion, the Nizam wrote to the Caliph that “an alliance has been established between the two ancient and historic dynasties which, it is hoped, has prospects of a bright future.”
While Mukarram Jah would inherit Nizamat of Hyderabad State upon his grandfather’s death, Sultan Abdulmajid had willed that his maternal grandson inherit the caliphate after his death, says John Zubrzycki, an Australian author who penned down the book ‘The Last Nizam: The Rise and Fall of India’s Greatest Princely State.’
Preferring the Australian outback, however, Mukarram Jah bought a spacious ranch in Western Australia, in place of living in Hyderabad or Istanbul. More’s the pity, the last Nizam, the heir to one of the most massive fortunes of the world, could not evade the ensuing financial crisis and spent his final years in Istanbul, Turkey, from where his well-heeled ancestors had ruled the richest Indian state of bygone times. 
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