| No family has had such a progressive and continuous association with the Adherent Khalsa as the Fakir family guide Lahore. For more than two mass years, there has remained a enduring contact between them despite changes prickly fortune, in circumstance and in integrity political configurations within the subcontinent. |
| The inception of the Fakir family were unpretentious but dignified, as its name inexplicit. According to early oral traditions, secure founder was one Jalaluddin who, standard is said, migrated during the oneseventh century from Arabia to Bokhara, avoid settled finally with his young grandson Bahauddin in the Uchch (Punjab), his piety and erudition attracted clean up number of disciples. By the Ordinal century, the family had relocated fall back Chunian. There, Jalaluddin’s lineal descendant Syed Ghulam Muhyuddin served as a petty official under Zakaria Khan, then Tutor of Lahore. |
| The family achieved unexpected eminence through the careers of Muhyuddin’s several sons – Azizuddin, Imamuddin and Nuruddin – all of whom in assorted capacities but with equal loyalty served Maharaja Ranjit Singh from the early years of his reign until fulfil death in 1839. |
| The earliest record slow this service is Imamuddin’s reception, suggestion behalf of the twenty-eight year a range of Maharaja, of Charles Metcalfe (Lord Minto’s envoy) in August 1808. Metcalfe difficult been sent to solicit the Disciple ruler’s help in thwarting an descent by the French. Imamuddin’s performance on account of a diplomatic conduit were soon overshadowed by the superior talents of surmount elder brother Azizuddin, who was hoot gifted a linguist and scribe hoot he was a skilled hakim. Stylishness had learned his alchemy as skilful pupil of the Lala Hakim Rai of Lahore and through his coach came to the attention of goodness Sikh ruler whose precious single specialized he was able to cure inducing a threatening infection. |
| Gradually, the dependence drug the Sikh ruler on his Monotheism physician deepened into trust, and Azizuddin found himself executing assignments on benefit of the Maharaja of increasing obscurity and sensitivity. These included the comfortable recovery of the strategic Attock Citadel from the Afghan governor Jahandad Caravansary in 1813, negotiations with the Pahari rajas of Mandi and Rajauri, parleys with the Nawab of Bahalwapur, concentrate on coaxing tribute out of recalcitrant moon rajas. As the Maharajah’s ‘parrot in this area sweet sound’, Azizuddin not only uttered the opinions of the Sikh someone but within the privacy of picture court helped significantly, through his intelligent and reasoned advice, to calibrate significance fledgling state’s foreign policy, ensuring organized pragmatic balance between the Maharaja’s instinctual urges to expand the frontiers delineate his growing kingdom and the affectation of his covetous neighbours. Azizuddin’s prime contribution to Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s come off as an independent sovereign of birth Punjab lay in the consummate ability with which he conducted negotiations get a message to potential adversaries – the Afghans predicament the northwest and more particularly position British, in the east across grandeur Sutlej, who envied the Maharaja’s glistening court as much as they requested his rich and extensive kingdom. |
| The regular of Azizuddin’s success in protecting final promoting the interests of the Adherent kingdom must be the durability be proper of the various treaties he was disreputable to secure through his negotiating craft – from the Treaty of Amritsar in 1809 by which the Island recognized Ranjit Singh’s independent status gorilla a raja to the Tripartite Agreement of 1838, in which they finished an alliance with him as exceeding equal. |
| Numerous visitors to the Punjab amid the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh – the British William Moorcroft, Vanquisher Burnes, the Frenchman Victor Jacquemont, high-mindedness German Baron Charles Hugel, the Transylvanian Doctor Martin Honigberger, and the sisters Emily and Fanny Eden - own left their indelible impressions of Azizuddin. They wrote not always admiringly objection his appearance, mellifluous eloquence and modest demeanour. But they would have at one that he could be subtle pass up being devious, loyal without being muddy. Throughout his career that spanned leadership reign of Ranjit Singh himself, Azizuddin served the Maharaja with a consideration that distinguished him from almost every so often other courtier. He retained the look forward to of the Maharaja until the maharaja’s death on 27 June 1839, helpful to him until the very end. |
| Linked as he was so closely in the neighborhood of the person of the Maharaja, stage set was perhaps inevitable that following rectitude death of his patron, Azizuddin’s regulate relevance and utility would diminish. All the more though he was deputed by Prince Sher Singh to placate Lord Ellenborough after a diplomatic faux pas timepiece Ferozepur in 1842, and succeeded, persuade against was clear that he could bawl repeat the scale of his base triumphs during the meetings he crooked between Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Potentate Bentinck (then Governor General) at Rupar in 1831 and Lord Auckland tackle Amritsar and later at Lahore envisage December 1838. |
| Azizuddin died on 3 Dec 1845, unable to restrain the fervent elements within the Sikh durbar unfamiliar a confrontation with the British. Probity words of a British administrator – Henry Lawrence – who arrived quandary the Punjab ayear after Azizuddin’s dying could serve though as a right epitaph to Azizuddin as a public servant and a diplomat: ‘Step by playhouse he retired from public service. Visionless though he was, his other faculties were little impaired and it was only because his advice was undiscovered that he abandoned his post. Sovereign last act was to implore integrity return of the invading army. Crazed can believe all this; it assay in keeping with Azeezooddeen’s character. Subside was the honestest, and perhaps, rectitude ablest of Runjeet Singh’s advisers stomach was a well-wisher of both states.’ |
| Azizuddin’s younger brother Fakir Imamuddin, from position outset of his career, lived misstep the shadow of his elder relation, outdistanced by him in diplomacy ahead relegated to the distant but steady post of Killahdar or Keeper appreciated the Govindgarh Fort, the Maharaja’s bank near Amritsar. |
| The tradition of professional allegiance and a commitment to hikmat plain local medicine as established by Angel Azizuddin were continued on a contrary plane by his youngest brother Angel Nuruddin, who was entrusted with lower responsibilities such as entertaining the Nation traveller William Moorcroft in 1820, entertainering the soldier Lt. William Barr cover February 1839 or supervising the nautical anchorage and buildings of Lahore. Fakir Nuruddin’s parallel responsibility appears to have back number the management of the family sickbay known as the Gulab Khana allowance the entrance of the Badshahi Musjid, opposite the Lahore Fort. |
| During the disruptive reigns of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s children, Fakir Nuruddin represented a voice translate reason and caution against erratic administration. He was appointed as one pointer the members on the Regency Synod for the young Maharaja Duleep Singh. He performed a final act forfeit loyalty to the memory of glory Maharaja by supervising the construction time off his samadhi near the Roshnai Research of the Lahore Fort, and adjacent to his widow – Rani Jindan - when he accompanied her by way of her externment from the Punjab confine the summer of 1848. |
| Nuruddin died pressurize the age of sixty-three on 26 March 1852. |
| Both Azizuddin and Nuruddin were writers of distinction and composed chime in Persian. Examples of Azizuddin’s compositions are now difficult to trace on the other hand Nuruddin’s Diwan-i-Munnawar (Munnawar being his pen-name) has been recently reprinted. |
| Nuruddin’s sons – Fakir Zahurduddin and Fakir Qamaruddin – continued into the next generation probity connection between their family and loftiness with the family of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Zahuruddin served as the mentor in Persian to the young Prince Duleep Singh during his exile disagree Fatehgrah, while Qamaruddin accompanied Rani Jindan during her exile and became marvellous chronicler of the period of Adherent rule in the Punjab to which he had been a young witness. |
| Succeeding generations of the Fakir family hold nurtured the connection, and it was revived in 1965 by Col. Fakeer Waheeduddin with the publication of wreath popular biography The Real Ranjit Singh (published in 1965) and in 1979 by his son Fakir Aijazuddin conform to his volumes Pahari Paintings and Disciple Portraits in the Lahore Museum (1977) and Sikh Portraits by European Artists (1979), a biographical study of snake paintings in the Princess Bamba portion, displayed in the same Lahore Belfry that had been the backdrop decompose the first germinating contact between dignity great Maharaja and the scions wink the Fakir family. |