The Last Mughal: The Fall Of A Dynasty Delhi 1857 – Paperback

In this evocative study of the fall of the Mughal Empire and the beginning of the Raj,
award-winning historian William Dalrymple uses previously undiscovered sources to
investigate a pivotal moment in history.

The last Mughal emperor, Zafar, came to the throne when the political power of the
Mughals was already in steep decline. Nonetheless, Zafar—a mystic, poet, and calligrapher
of great accomplishment—created a court of unparalleled brilliance, and gave rise to perhaps
the greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history. All the while, the British were
progressively taking over the Emperor’s power. When, in May 1857, Zafar was declared the leader
of an uprising against the British, he was powerless to resist though he strongly suspected that
the action was doomed. Four months later, the British took Delhi, the capital, with catastrophic
results. With an unsurpassed understanding of British and Indian history, Dalrymple crafts a
provocative, revelatory account of one the bloodiest upheavals in history.