Historian Reconstructs Nizami Hyderabad’s Forgotten Musical Era

HYDERABAD: A court musician in Hyderabad rewrote the same music text three times for three different patrons, switching between Braj verse and Persian prose each time to suit their taste and power. Katherine Schofield, a historian of South Asian music and Professor at King’s College London who has spent years working with Mughal and Deccani archives, used that act to reconstruct Nizami Hyderabad between 1780 and 1830 through Khushhal Khan Anup, a hereditary musician trained in the Mughal court tradition, and Mahlaqa Bai Chanda, the Hyderabad-born courtesan, poet and performer whose life moved through the highest ranks of the Nizam’s court.“What Anup did with the ‘Tuhfat al-Hind’ was unique,” said Prof. Schofield, at the Manthan talk at Vidyaranya High School, Hyderabad, on Friday. The ‘Tuhfat al-Hind’, a Persian text that described Indian knowledge systems, including music, was translated by Khushhal Khan Anup who changed its music section into Braj Bhasha verse around 1800 for Raja Rao Ranbha, a Maratha noble in Hyderabad. He later turned that version back into simplified Persian prose in 1808 for the third Nizam, Sikandar Jah, at the request of Mir Alam, explained Prof. Schofield. A third version followed in 1815 for Mahlaqa Bai Chanda, written in both Braj and Persian under the patronage of Maharaja Chandu Lal. “He’s a very clever man,” Prof. Schofield said of Anup. She returned to that line to make a larger point that Anup did not simply preserve an earlier text. He changed language, tone and form for different patrons, while maintaining his authority as a musician and scholar. The talk turned to Ragini Khambhavati, a musical mode depicted in an illustrated manuscript linked to Anup’s work. Prof. Schofield read the image as a layered scene that may represent Mahlaqa Bai Chanda herself, seated in a garden and surrounded by trainee courtesans. “A whole world meets in Kambhavati-Khamaj,” Prof. Schofield said. She connected the image to Hazrat Ali, to Rao Ranbha’s devotion to Mahlaqa, to Anup’s knowledge and to the cultural strands that converged in Hyderabad. “The whole world of Nizami Hyderabad and the tiny world of Anup, Mahlaqa and Rao Ranbha are both here,” she said. “It was from Anup that Mahlaqa learned to set her famous ghazals to the most suitable rags and taals,” she said. He also trained her to compose and perform khayals, tappas, horis and jashns in dhrupad style. Prof. Schofield stayed with what the record allowed when she spoke about their relationship. Both worked under the same patrons across decades. Both lived in Mahlaqa’s mansion at Nampally for a time. Anup trained her protégés. “I’m going to suggest that it was with Anup that Mahlaqa enjoyed her most enduring and significant relationship.” Her closing line returned to how such musicians are remembered. “Khushhal Khan Anup was the very opposite of the stereotype today of the illiterate ustad bequeathed to us by posterity,” she said.



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