Shah Alam II was the Mughal emperor whose reign became a study in political irrelevance — blinded by the Rohilla chief Ghulam Qadir in 1788, pensioned by the Marathas after Patparganj in 1803, then handed to the British following Lake's Delhi campaign that same year. The Maratha Confederacy struck coins in his name for decades not out of loyalty but because invoking the emperor's authority lent a veneer of legitimacy to their own fiscal operations across central India.
The near half-century span of this type reflects how durable that fiction proved to be.
Shah Alam II was the Mughal emperor whose reign became a study in political irrelevance — blinded by the Rohilla chief Ghulam Qadir in 1788, pensioned by the Marathas after Patparganj in 1803, then handed to the British following Lake's Delhi campaign that same year. The Maratha Confederacy struck coins in his name for decades not out of loyalty but because invoking the emperor's authority lent a veneer of legitimacy to their own fiscal operations across central India.
The near half-century span of this type reflects how durable that fiction proved to be.