A few years ago, I came across a very interesting piece of information about Tipu Sultan, the legendary ruler of Mysore. The writer claimed that the ancestors of Tipu Sultan had moved to the Deccan from Punjab. But neither the details nor the source of this information was given, nor did the writer mention the location in Punjab from where they came. However, it was not something that I, being from Punjab myself, could ignore or forget. Hence, I kept looking for the answers and finally, a few months ago, I found a book in Urdu "میسور کا شیر" (The Lion of Mysore), written by Prof. Dr. Attash Durrani. It is a good book and certainly one of the best written in Urdu on Tipu Sultan. But the real revelation in this book for me was the information about the family origins of Tipu Sultan.
I have translated a few passages from this book, where the writer has discussed the origin of Tipu Sultan's family:
The most important points in the biography of Sultan is Tipu's name, family and ancestors, about which the difference of opinion is so great that without discussing them this book would be incomplete.
Professor Narinder Krishan Sinha, Calcutta University has written in his book Haider Ali (first published in 1941):
"There is no iota of doubt that Hyder Ali's parents and family members were inhabitants of a village in Punjab and their worldly influence was considerable"
Similarly:
"Haider Ali's great grandfather was Sheikh Wali Mohammad Qureshi, who during the reign of Mohammad Adil Shah (1627 - 1656), due to certain circumstances, from the near Delhi (Punjab), migrated from his homeland and came to Gulbarga (Kalaburagi)".
According to Wilks (Colonel Mark Wilks (1759 – 19 September 1831):
"Haider Ali's great grandfather / ancestor's name was Sheikh Behlol, who was an inhabitant of a village in northwestern Punjab. He came to Delhi from Punjab. His two sons Mohammad Ali and Mohammad Wali also accompanied him. From Delhi both settled at Alwand, Gulbarga. Where Mohammad Ali's was married to the daughter of a hermit in a monastery".
Similarly:
"A prominent trader of Madras Maulana Mohammad Ali M.A. Cantab. writes that Haider Ali's ancestor was a Sufi saint Mohammad Behlol from Punjab. His son Mohammad Ali came to Gulbarga and settled here permanently. Haider Ali was his grandson."
OR
"Haider Ali's ancestors came to Delhi during the reign of Mohammad Ibrahim Adil. After Delhi, Sheikh Ali Mohammad stayed in Gulbarga. At the same place, at the monastery of Banda Nawaz Gesoo Draz he married Majeeda Begum, the daughter of a hermit. Four sons were born to them. Haider Ali was a Qureshi by race."
According to Colonel Boring:
"Haider Ali's ancestors were inhabitants of a village in northern Punjab and belonged to a branch of Rajputs. Their ancestor was a sufi saint Behlol. Mohammad Behlol's two sons Mohammad Ali and Wali Mohammad migrated to Gulbarga from Punjab."
Mohammad Bangalori writes"
"Some English historians have written about Haider Ali of obscure and of low ancestry. They are totally wrong in their thinking. Haider Ali's family belongs to a branch of Rajputs of Punjab."
The writer of History of Jhang has declared his ancestor Sheikh Mohammad Behlol a resident of Jhang and has written that during his lifetime his two sons Mohammad Ali and Wali Mohammad went to Gulbarga. Sheikh Behlol's tomb is in the village Behlol of Chiniot. Sheikh Behlol belonged to a sub-clan Supra of Rajputs and was the mentor of Shah Hussain of Lahore of the Chishti order.
Now, once it was established that Tipu Sultan's family belonged to Punjab and even the name of the place became known to me, it was not difficult to investigate the matter further. As soon as I got an opportunity, I visited Tibba Shah Behlol on 13th July 2022. This village is seven kilometers from the famous town of Pindi Bhattian (of Dulla Bhatti fame), and just six kilometers from the interchange of the same name on the M2.
First, we reached the tomb of Hazrat Shah Behlol Daryai, located about 2.5 kilometers west of the village, in open lush green fields. A few houses exist nearby, and a graveyard also surrounds the tomb. It is a large, beautiful building, built in the traditional way: a square structure with a large dome, surrounded on all four sides by a veranda with arches and pillars.
The dargah was almost empty. A caretaker informed us that a fair had been held just a couple of days earlier, and by then all the devotees had left. He confirmed that Sheikh Shah Behlol was an ancestor of Tipu Sultan of Mysore. For further information, he advised us to meet the descendants of Shah Behlol living in the nearby town of Tibba Shah Behlol.
We then visited the home of one such descendant, Mian Qamar Mumtaz, who received us warmly. He is a Sales Manager in a property development project. He accompanied us, and we also met his father, uncles, and a few cousins. They confirmed their family’s connection with Tipu Sultan and were understandably proud of this fact. However, they mentioned that at present they have no contact with the descendants of Tipu Sultan, who mostly live in Kolkata.
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Hazrat Shah Behlol Zakria Daryai
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In his book میسور کا شیر – The Lion of Mysore, Prof. Dr. Atash Durrani gives the year of this family’s migration to the Deccan as 1620. The head of the family was Wali Muhammad Khan, a Sufi, who came and stayed at the mausoleum of the famous saint Hazrat Banda Nawaz Gesu Daraz in Gulbarga, during the reign of Mehmood Adil Shah (1627–1656). He was well received by the caretaker of the shrine and later married his daughter to Muhammad Ali Khan, the son of Wali Muhammad Khan.
After his father’s death, Muhammad Ali migrated to Bijapur (Vijayapura). He did not stay there for long and eventually settled in Kolar, further south. He died in 1697 and was buried in Kolar. He was the father of Fateh Muhammad, who was born in Kolar in 1684, and the grandfather of Hyder Ali.
Hyder Ali’s father, Fateh Muhammad, was born in 1684 during the reign of Aurangzeb, at Doddaballapura, a city 50 km north of Bengaluru. He died in battle in 1729 and was buried near his parents in Kolar. At that time, he was in the service of the Subedar of Sira as a Faujdar. A military commander of considerable stature, he was granted Kolar, a city 45 km east of Bengaluru, as a jagir by the Raja of Mysore (Mysuru).
While looking for more information, I came across a video on YouTube about the tombs of Hyder Ali’s family in Kolar. Hyder Ali’s grandfather Muhammad Ali’s grave also exists in the same complex. This confirms that the name of Fateh Muhammad’s father was indeed Muhammad Ali Khan. Muhammad Behlol, a stepbrother of Nawab Hyder Ali, is also buried in the same complex, his name further suggesting the family’s connection with Shah Behlol of Tibba Shah Behlol.
Hyder Ali was born around 1720 in a village called Budikote, 25 km south of Kolar. He rose to the most powerful position in the state of Mysore. In 1761 he became the Chief Minister, hence the de facto ruler of the state. He took the state to its zenith and enlarged it many times by the time of his death in 1782. He died in Chittoor and was buried in Srirangapatna.
Sultan Fateh Ali Tipu was born on 1 December 1751 at Devanahalli, a fort 25 kilometers north of Bengaluru. He assumed the rule of Mysore in 1782 after the death of his father, Hyder Ali. He was a great warrior and an able administrator. Had he enjoyed peace and more favorable circumstances, he would have made the state of Mysore a highly developed and prosperous one. He died fighting the forces of the East India Company in his capital, Srirangapatna, in 1799. He was buried alongside his father and mother in the tomb that he himself had constructed in the early 1780s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnRHgYCoTwc&t=336s
After the martyrdom of the Sultan, his family was moved to Vellore, a town nearly 300 kilometers east of Srirangapatna. In July 1806, three battalions of native troops of the British East India Company stationed at Vellore Fort mutinied, but the uprising was soon suppressed. The British suspected Tipu Sultan’s family of complicity in the conspiracy and exiled the entire clan to Kolkata, the capital of the East India Company. In Kolkata, Tipu’s sons lived for a long time in relative comfort, though under many restrictions. Tipu had 12 sons, and therefore a large number of his descendants still live in Kolkata.
As I mentioned earlier, the family living in Tibba Shah Behlol has no contact with the other branch of the family in Kolkata. In this context, Mian Qamar told me a story: Shah Behlol showed his displeasure at the departure of his sons and remarked that their children and his own would never meet again. Sources mention that Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Wali, his two sons who reportedly left for Gulbarga, did so during his lifetime. So it is possible that Shah Behlol was unhappy about leaving them in faraway places with an uncertain future.
According to the inscription on his tombstone, Hazrat Shah Behlol’s year of death is given as 983 AH, which corresponds to 1575 AD. However, other sources, such as Tazkira Auliya Jhang, give the year of death as 1039 AH (1630 AD). This latter date seems more accurate, as it allows the events to be placed in proper chronological order. Otherwise, 983 AH leaves a significant gap between his death and the later developments. As for Shah Behlol’s descendants at Tibba Shah Behlol, they themselves have no clear idea about the matter.
Nevertheless, these few facts establish without any doubt that the ancestors of Tipu Sultan came from Tibba Shah Behlol around 1620 and settled in the southern parts of present-day Karnataka. William Dalrymple, in his recent book The Anarchy (2019), also writes that Tipu Sahib’s family came from Punjab. An excerpt from Tazkira Auliya Jhang is available at the following link, giving some details about the family of Tipu Sultan:
https://www.facebook.com/645813895871774/posts/678516742601489/
While writing this article, I thought it would be interesting to establish a link between the two branches of this family at Tibba Shah Behlol and Kolkata. Indeed, it is surprising that even in this age of modern communication, it has not yet been done. Anyway, it is never too late.
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