noun
definition
A Muslim official in South Asia acting as a provincial deputy ruler under the Mughal empire; a local governor.
definition
Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Polyura.
Examples of nawab in a Sentence
On the dismemberment of the Delhi empire, it was seized by Safdar Jang, the nawab wazir of Oudh, by whose grandson it was ceded to the East India Company by the treaty of 1775.
The chief, whose title is nawab, is a Mahommedan, of Afghan descent.
His pecuniary bargains with Shuja-ud-Dowlah, the nawab wazir of Oudh, stand on a different basis.
The district was acquired by the East India Company under the treaty with Nawab Mir Kasim in 1760, and confirmed by the emperor Shah Alam in 1765.
The nawab's officers fired upon a British boat, and forthwith all Bengal was in a blaze.
At the same time the nawab made a grant to the company of the zamindari rights over an extensive tract of country round Calcutta, now known as the district of the Twenty-four Parganas.
The superior lordship, or right to receive the quit rent, remained with the nawab; but in 1759 this also was parted with by the nawab in favour of Clive, who thus became the landlord of his own masters, the company.
On the west the shahzada or imperial prince, known afterwards as the emperor Shah Alam, with a mixed army of Afghans and Mahrattas, and supported by the nawab wazir of Oudh, was advancing his own claims to the province of Bengal.
In 1761 it was found expedient and profitable to dethrone Mir Jafar, the nawab of Murshidabad, and substitute his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, in his place.
It appears never to have been completed; and when Jean Baptiste Tavernier visited Dacca (c. 1666), the nawab was residing in a temporary wooden building in its court.
But there was a traitor in the Mahommedan camp in the person of Mir Jafar, who had married a sister of the late nawab, Ali Vardi Khan.
The town of Arcot, together with the whole of the territory of the Carnatic, passed into the hands of the British in 1801, upon the formal resignation of the government by the nawab, Azim-ud-daula, who received a liberal pension.
Calcutta was recovered with little fighting, and the nawab consented to a peace which restored to the company all their privileges, and gave them compensation for their losses of property.
Chittagong was ceded to the East India Company by Nawab Mir Kasim in 1760.
In 1756 the old nawab died, and was succeeded by his grandson Surajud-Dowlah, a young madman of 19, whose name is indelibly associated with the tragedy of the Black Hole.
The entire duties of administration were suffered to remain in the hands of the nawab, while a few irresponsible English traders had drawn to themselves all real power.
It was this exemption, threatening the very foundations of the Mussulman government, that finally led to a rupture with the nawab.
He won the good-will of his employers by devoting himself to the improvement of their manufacturing business, and he kept his hands clean from the prevalent taint of pecuniary transactions with the nawab of the Carnatic. One fact of some interest is not generally known.
As an independent measure of economy, the stipend paid to the titular nawab of Bengal, who was then a minor, was reduced by one-half - to sixteen lakhs a year (say 160,000).
Clive selected it, on account of its commanding position, as the cantonment for the brigade of troops lent him by the nawab of Oudh.
It has a magnificent palace, which is visible from far across the Bikanir desert; it was built in 1882 by Nawab Sadik Mahommed Khan.
The evidence now available seems to show that Warren Hastings did his best throughout to rescue the nawab from his own incapacity, and was inclined to be lenient to the begums.
A treaty with the nawab of Oudh was signed here by Warren Hastings on behalf of the East India Company in September 1781.
Amir Khan, by far their most powerful leader, accepted the conditions offered to him; and his descendant is now Nawab of the state of Tonk in Rajputana.
In 1774 the nawab concluded with the government of Calcutta a treaty of alliance, and he now called upon the British, in accordance with its terms, to supply a brigade to assist him in enforcing his claims against the Rohillas.
From this time the history of Bijnor is uneventful, until the Mutiny of 1857, when (on the ist of June) it was occupied by the nawab of Najibabad, a grandson of Zabita Khan.
In spite of fighting between the Hindus and the Mahommedan Pathans the nawab succeeded in maintaining his position until the 21st of April 1858, when he was defeated by the British at Nagina; whereupon British authority was restored.
Upon that prince throwing himself into the hands of the Mahrattas, the place was resumed by the British in 1771 and again transferred to the nawab of Oudh, by whom it was finally ceded together with the district to the British in 1801, in commutation of the subsidy which the wazir had agreed to pay for British protection.
The same word is found in Nazim, applied to the Nawab of Bengal, and in Nizamat, the old term for criminal jurisdiction.
It contains several interesting ancient tombs, and at Nawab Hat, some 2 m.
At the beginning of the 18th century it appears as a kind of military fief held under the nawab of Murshidabad by one Asadullah Pathan, whose family had probably been its chieftains since the fall of the Pathan dynasty of Bengal in 1600.
These lions at one time were almost extinct, but after being preserved since about 1890 by the Nawab of Junagarh, they have once more become comparatively plentiful.
When the British declared themselves heir to the nawab of the Carnatic at the opening of the 19th century, they had no adequate experience of revenue management.
The other was Saadat Ali Khan, a Persian, and therefore a Shiah, who was appointed subandar or nawab of Oudh about 1720.
The Carnatic, or the lowland tract between the central plateau and the eastern sea, was ruled by a deputy of the nizam, known as the nawab of Arcot, who in his turn asserted claims to hereditary sovereignty.
There he proceeded to organize an army, drilled and equipped after European models, and to carry on intrigues with the nawab wazir of Oudh.
His trained regiments were defeated in two pitched battles by Major Adams, at Gheria and at Udha-nala, and he himself took refuge with the nawab wazir of Oudh, who refused to deliver him up. This led to a prolongation of the war.
Shah Alam, who had now succeeded his father as emperor, and Shuja-udDaula, the nawab wazir of Oudh, united their forces, and threatened Patna, which the British had recovered.
Meanwhile the council at Calcutta had twice found the opportunity they desired of selling the government of Bengal to a new nawab.
Oudh was given back to the nawab wazir, on condition of his paying half a million sterling towards the expenses of the war.
A puppet nawab was still maintained at Murshidabad, who received an annual allowance of about half a million sterling; and half that amount was paid to the emperor as tribute from Bengal.
Thus was constituted the dual system of government, by which the British received all the revenues and undertook to maintain an army for the defence of the frontier, while the criminal jurisdiction vested in the nawab.
In Indian phraseology, the company was diwan and the nawab was nazim.
At about the same time the province of the Carnatic, or all that large portion of southern India ruled by the nawab of Arcot, and also the principality of Tanjore, were placed under direct British administration, thus constituting the Madras presidency almost as it has existed to the present day.
In the extreme south the titular nawab of the Carnatic and the titular raja of Tanjore both died without heirs.
Ever since the nawab wazir, Shuja-ud-Dowlah, received back his forfeited territories from the hands of Lord Clive in 1765, the very existence of Oudh as an independent state had depended only upon the protection of British bayonets.
In 1765, after the battle of Buxar, when the nawab of Oudh had been decisively defeated and Shah Alam, the Mogul emperor, was a suppliant in the British camp, Lord Clive was content to claim no acquisition of territory.
The whole of Oudh was restored to the Nawab, and Shah Alam received as an imperial apanage the province of Allahabad and Kora in the lower Doab, with a British garrison in the fort of Allahabad.
Warren Hastings augmented the territory of Oudh by lending the nawab a British army to conquer Rohilkhand, and by making over to him Allahabad and Kora on the ground that Shah Alam had placed himself in the power of the Mahrattas.
In 1801 he obtained from the nawab of Oudh the cession of Rohilkhand, the lower Doab, and the Gorakhpur division, thus enclosing Oudh on all sides except the north.