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Asaf Jahi dynasty

Muslim dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of Hyderabad from 1734 to 1948

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ16962165
Source-derived summary

The Asaf Jahi is a Muslim dynasty that ruled the Hyderabad State. The family came to India in the late 17th century and became employees of the Mughal Empire. They were great patrons of Indo-Persian culture, language, and literature, and the family found ready patronage.

The dynasty was founded by Mir Qamar-ud-Din Siddiqi, a Viceroy of the Deccan—(administrator of six Mughal governorates) under the Mughal emperors from 1713 to 1721. He intermittently ruled after Aurangzeb's death in 1707 and under the title Asaf Jah in 1724. The Mughal Empire crumbled and the Viceroy of the Deccan, Asaf Jah I, declared himself independent, whose domain extended from the Narmada River in the North to Trichinopoly in the South and Masulipatnam in the east to Bijapur in the west.

History

Nawab Khwaja Abid Siddiqi, the grandfather of the first Nizam, was born in Aliabad near Samarkand in the kingdom of Bukhara in modern-day Uzbekistan. His father, Alam Shaik, was a well-known Sufi and celebrated man of letters. Khwaja Abid's mother was from the family of Mir Hamdan, a distinguished Syed of Samarkhand. The first Nizam's mother was the daughter of Sadullah Khan, the Grand vizier (1645-1656) of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Asaf Jahi dynasty” as muslim dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of Hyderabad from 1734 to 1948. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1713, 1721, 1707, 1724—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Asaf, Jahi and dynasty can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as muslim dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of Hyderabad from 1734 to 1948. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16962165. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1713, 1721, 1707 and 1724.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Asaf Jahi dynasty”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Asaf Jahi dynasty primary sources, Asaf Jahi dynasty archive and Asaf research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Asaf Jahi dynasty”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Asaf Jahi dynasty” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.