Place · princely palace · Pakistan
Noor Mahal, Bahawalpur
A palace built between 1872 and 1875 for Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan IV of Bahawalpur, designed by an English engineer and executed in an Italianate neoclassical manner with Islamic detail — corner towers, a colonnaded front, imported Italian marble and English ironwork. It is the clearest surviving statement of what a princely state on the Cholistan edge wanted to look like once it had a British political agent: European in form, and paid for by desert revenue and the Sutlej canals.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 29.379, 71.668
Worth knowing
The Nawab's wife is said to have spent a single night in it and refused to return because she could see a graveyard from her balcony, so the palace was used for durbars and guests rather than as a residence.
Connections (2)
- Patronage networkDerawar Fort
Derawar and Noor Mahal are the two faces of the Bahawalpur Nawabs. Derawar is the dynasty's desert authority — forty bastions in the Cholistan, holding the caravan route and the family graves, in use from the eighteenth century. Noor Mahal, built between 1872 and 1875 for Sadiq Muhammad Khan IV, is what the same family built once a British political agent was resident and the Sutlej canals were paying: Italianate, neoclassical, designed by an English engineer and furnished from Europe.
- AnalogueHazarduari, Murshidabad
Two palaces built by Indian princes to European designs within about fifteen years of each other, at opposite ends of the subcontinent. Hazarduari at Murshidabad went up in the 1830s for the Nawab of Bengal, Greek Revival by a Company engineer, after the Nawabs had lost everything but the title. Noor Mahal at Bahawalpur was built 1872–75 for a Nawab who still had revenue, Italianate and neoclassical by an English engineer. Both are a princely state photographing itself in the architecture of the power that had reduced it.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Noor Mahal”. Bahawalpur state records; Pakistan Army Bahawalpur garrison heritage documentation.
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