Hazarduari Palace Museum: One of the 7 wonders of India By Reshmi Chakravorty Most of India's best-known palaces are named after the cities or towns where they stand. This one is different – Murshidabad's Hazarduari Palace, is named after the number of doors it has. Therefore it's called “Hazarduari”, should strictly speaking be thousand (“hazar” being thousand, and “duar” being door). This, incidentally, is not the only reason to visit this stunning palace - if you wish you can spend your entire day counting each door, but do set aside a few hours to admire the amazing museum that is a part of the palace! The Hazarduari Palace in Murshidabad (West Bengal) was designed in 1837 by General Duncan McLeod of the Bengal Engineers for Murshidabad's Nawab Najim Humayun Jah. An imposing three-storied rectangular building, it lies amidst sprawling gardens (covering a total of 41 acres) and is a fairly unblemished example of Italian-style architecture. The palace consists of 8 galleries and 114 rooms, with a colonnaded façade, a domed tower, high windows, beautifully ornate pillars and more, all of it a befitting venue for the Nawab's durbar,which was held here. Read more: http://bit.ly/TjuA5y

" Italian-style architecture " ?? ... Something of a terminological & historical faux pas ...

Hello, Does anybody known Murshidabad well enough to know where "Mooty Zee" was in or near Murshidabad? It appears in a letter written on December 21st 1779 that I recently found by surgeon John Stormont about one of my ancestors who was taken ill. I would also be interested to know if Mir Jaffar's or the Begums palace from that period survives, or the early East India Company Houses? Regards Nick Balmer

Amazing architecture...A wonder that reminds the dawn of Mughal era and rise of British Raj!

@ Nick. I think the Mooty Zee you refer to could well be the Moti Jheel, (Lake of Pearl, loosely translated). British spellings, often followed their way of pronouncing an Indian name. As for your second query, yes, Mir Jafar's dwelling survives, though in colossal ruins and is known as Jafarganj (also cemetery) and is about half a mile or so away from the hazar duari. Its gate, the namak haram deorhi ( the traitor's gate) is well known locally.

@Nick. A little write-up on the Moti Jheel, i picked off the net. I thought the dates, as well as the association with begum might be of interest: This beautiful horseshoe shaped lake was excavated by Nawazesh Mohammad, the husband of the famous Ghasseti Begum. In the palace adjoining it (now in ruins) Lord Clive celebrated the acquisition of the Dewani of Sube Bangla (Bengal, Bihar & Orissa) in 1765. Moti Jheel was the home of Warren Hastings when he became the Political President at the Durbar of the Nawab Nazim ( 1771 - 73 AD ). Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teinmouth, also lived here. Moti Jheel is also known as the "Company Bagh", due to the fact of it having been in the occupation of the East India Company. The only old building existing is the Mosque of Shahamat Jang.

Hello Ashish, Thank you so much for this fascinating information. I think you are almost certainly collect that the modern name is Moti Jheel. John Stormont was a surgeon to the EIC officials at Murshidabad and I have found his note to the authorities reporting that Edward Baber(my 5x great uncle who was head of the Provincial Council was so ill that he would have to go back to Britain. The letter is filed with several others in the British Library which go into a lot of detail about Edward's illness. He had some sort of fever that came in August and lasted until November for several years. It had recurrent crisis of fever ever fortnight, and I suppose that it was probably malaria. Edward Baber was negotiating on behalf of Warren Hastings with the Begum who is probably Ghasseti Begum you refer to. I wonder if it was mosquito breeding in the lake that was the vector for his illness? I have transcriptions of several letters Baber wrote quite probably from the palace to Hastings about the progress of the negotiations. Lots more survive, but I haven't had the opportunity to transcribe those. If ruins of the palace survive, it looks like Murshidabad has to go on the ever growing list of places that I would like to visit in India one day. John Shore is an "old friend" of mine. I have found a lot of his correspondence. It is fascinating, but as it is not central to my research sadly I have not transcribed any examples.

Ashish, I went and looked are the draft of the book I am slowly writing and I just found the following text of a letter I transcribed several years ago, which was written by Edward Baber to David Anderson. It is dated 31 Dec 1774 from "Mootajill" which must be your Moti Jheel. Dear Sir, I have had the pleasure to receive your letter dated the 24th and shall be glad to see you here, as soon as your business will admit of your coming— I will take care of your furniture etc. But with regard to apartments it is not in my power – and I give you early Notice—that you may have opportunity of making your own Bundabunt in Calcutta – The Gent’n of the Council of Revenue – behaved very ill to us in this respect—last year. They (advised?) that one of the members should live at Mortajul & 2 at Cossemir -- & one be allowed House Rent to him where he lived— Now 2 members live in the fort—another has for (lived?) for himself – and None lives at Cossemir—There are apartments there which according to the former orders you should have – But I would advise your speaking to the Governor. I am Dr Sir Mootajill Your very obed’t & Hble Servt 31 Dec 1774 Edw Baber From British Library. Add Man 45431, Anderson Papers. Volume XV. Folio 87. David Anderson had been appointed to Moorshidabad in December 1774. A lot of the other letters relating to the Begum are marked as being written at Moidapoor. Can you recognise that name? What would that be today? Is that at or near Mursidabad, or is it some way away? Did the Begum have more than one palace perhaps? Regards Nick Balmer

my family seat

Hello Nick. Several interesting possibilities arose from your last mail. Will shortly write to you after I confirm a few hunches. One question though. The letters related to the begum and moidapoor; were these written by company officials or the begum?

Syed Haider Abbas Meerza: As a scion of the Murshidabad royal family...what are your insider's views to these posts and comments?

Syed Haider Abbas Meerza. Sir, do you trace your ancestry to the nawab family through the line of Major general Iskander Ali Mirza ?

Ashish Chakravarty: Looking forward for your further discoveries on this subject. : )

@Ashish. Through His Highness the Nawab Nazims fourth son Kaiwan Qadr Ahmed Ali Meerza, whose son was Syed Abul Hasan Meerza whose son was Syed Farrukh Meerza, SQA, CSP, my paternal grandfaher.

Syed Haider Abbas Meerza- Honorable Sir, Are you planning to claim the rightful possesion of the property and thus status?

@RBSI interesting. i believe they are talking about motijheel. i have heard lots of stories about the place. what exactly do you want me to comment about? the malaria?

Hello Ashish, This is the sort of correspondence that I have been finding concerning the Begum. It is all official so far. My primary aim has been to try to understand what my ancestors were doing in India. But as I soon found out, I have also to try to understand the events they were involved in, if I am to understand what the letters are referring to. This is an enormous task in itself. The letters are individually catalogued in many files. These files or bound books of letters typically have from 300 to 600 handwritten letters in each. Perhaps 3 to 5 are of direct interest to my research, however the other letters are often absolutely fascinating and they have the power to drag my attention away from my primary purpose. Here is an example of the sort of thing you find. It is Warren Hastings writing about Edward Baber, who appears to be helping the Begum make her case. Interestingly this note suggests that the Begum was writing (or at lease dictating) to the EIC. It is very likely that copies of translations of these letters survive. “ I send you enclosed a letter from the Begum, but for want of a memorandum I really cannot tell whether it is for yourself or the company, but I know it is to be sent to you. – I am ashamed of my own forgetfulness, -- or rather of these instances of a suspension of memory. The enclosed letter from Baber will tell you that her Thereeta is for the co. What Baber alludes to in & begs of his letter I will explain. I desired him to tell her that if she wished to succeed in the co. her letter should be dictated by herself to her moonshee, & written word for word in her own language, because it would then have a strong impression of her feelings, would be more likely to be true. – She has been cruelly used, & unhappily possesses a spirit that doubles the effect of every indignity that she suffers. She sends all her grievances to me, and continues to implore my support, although she knows, and I openly tell her that I can afford her none: but I peach patience to her, & bid her look to a better period that I hope is shortly approaching, that promises to redress all her wrongs as soon as I have power to address them. From these assurances she derives a comfort." I have no idea what a Thereeta is. Do you happen to know? Regards Nick Balmer

Nick. Wow, clearly you have been researching on the subject for a while now. Mine though is more of a passing interest, since i too trace my origins to that part of India. So you'll have to excuse the lack of scholarly rigour and detail. anyway, i was just checking up on your earlier mail, so here goes.

The Cossemir mentioned in your great x5 uncle"s letter could have been kasimbazaar. or cossimbazar/cossembazar as it was spelt then. your transcribes suggest that mr. baber was in the habit ( as was common then) of abbreviating names and such. so could it be that the you read cossem br as cossemir ? esp as cossembazar though absolutely adjacent to murshidabad ( one stop earlier by train), was an english settlement even before murshidabad. and now the interesting part. it seems one of the causes for the downfall of the town was, incessant cases of malaria.

cossimbazar is not just close to murshidabad, it is virtually a stone's throw from moti jheel. also it seems, warren hasting's first wife is buried there. a piece of trivia here; the 'Banderbunt' in your transcription of mr. baber's first letter would be the hindustani word bandobast, or arrangements. it was one of the hindustani words frequently used by the english.

The Ghaseeti begum trail, i shall pick up tomorrow. you must be well aware of her involvement in the conspiracy to overthrow Siraj-ud-daulah, along with Mir Jafar ( who she later fell out with )

On Moidapoor. there was indeed a town by that name. also known as maidapur and here's a little something off the net on that : Maidapur. Village in the Sadar subdivision situated three miles east of Berhampore. In the eighteenth century this place, situated on the high, road from Calcutta to Murshidabad, was almost a suburb of Murshidabad. Orrne speaks of civilians having their country houses here before the battle of Plassey, and about 1768 the Chief of Cossimbazar made it his residence, at least for a time.

hope that helps, regards, ashish

Hi Nick, just came across several references of a certain Edward Baber, in one of the books i was consulting. It deals with the case of EIC versus William Bolts. And is a general study of the British in Bengal. Edward Baber appears as the acting Clerk of the Peace, and had an important role in the proceedings. Would you know anything about this ? the case came up in calcutta on 27th may, 1768.

his is one amazing discussion going on here. Thank you Ashish Chakravarty...it is indeed rare to find a match for Nick Balmer when it comes to delving deeper into the subject of his interest. Unlike anyone else, Nick has a letter from his direct ancestor to prove his point! That makes it as daunting as it is interesting. Challenge yourselves gentlemen...this is a fascinating thread and we are listening. : )

Ashish Chakravarty : There is a possibility that the place was earlier known as Cosiimbir, 'bir' being a forest area or 'paada', the latter being hamlet in bengali.. With the rapid industrialisation of Murshidabad by the British, it changed to Cossimbazar. Only a conjecture...

@arindam. Interesting and of course a possibility. The books I have though draw a blank on that. Most references I have found do refer to it as cossimbazar. Will check earlier references. Wonder what Nick thinks.

And thanks dear moderator, for the well-timed picture uploads. :)

I have read the we had tracts of land in midnapore alongwith other places like birbhum, santal parganas and the likes in tail-male

Nick Balmer : thareeta may be khareeta in urdu which i think means the person who writes the letter or the one who delivers it.

Wonderfully stimulating discussion here! I have, buried somewhere in my junk, an old map of Cossimbazar. By the way, the architectural style of the Hazarduari is more neo-classical (Graeco-Roman) than Italian I should have thought.

J.J : I made the very same point at the top of the thread ( " Italian-style architecture " ?? ... Something of a terminological & historical faux pas ...). ' Italian style-architecture' is probably most closely associated with rather unpleasant, modern concrete and metal monstrosities !

JJ & JC, you may be right about the architecture. However I have distinct memories of the 'guides' of hazar duari talking about Italian style architecture. This is pre ASI. Wonder what they say now. And how did the this Italian style bit creep into its story. Incidentally the Wikipedia states that it is an Italian-style palace built in the Doric style. Go figure.

A.C. : The ' Italian architecture' canard is just a piece of sloppy research on the writers behalf. Although ' Italia' is a word that has been used to designate the ' Italian ' peninsula for many hundreds of years, it was never a unified country as such. The Hazarduari - having been built in the 1830s - pre-dates the modern Italian nation-state by at least thirty years .

Julian I'm sorry I missed seeing your comment right at the top! But yes, there's little (if any) 'Italian' there. And as you correctly point out, there was no amorphous monolithic 'Italy' in the early 1800s. Parenthetically, the architecture of the Indian Museum in Calcutta (by William Granville I think) has been described, probably correctly, as Tuscan - which certainly makes better sense than Italian!

... Quite ....

In fact, considering the widespread prevalence of the neo-classical style in Bengal - even a cursory viewing of all the 'rajbaris' (palaces) of the zamindars all over Bengal will show how common this architecture was - maybe these architectural splendours should be nomenclatured as "Bengal Colonial"!

... I'm not so sure that the Indian authorities and intelligentsia, with their fondness for wearing a 'politically-correct' straight-jacket would approve of an architectural term along the lines of the " Bengal Colonial ", J.J. ( regardless of how accurate such a term might be !)... Furthermore, much of the outstanding neo-classical architecture that was put up during the 19th century in Bengal (and elsewhere in India) has been consciously allowed to crumble into decay and dust - and there seems to be no great desire or urge to preserve that which remains... ... the fusion of East and West has, of course, left us with one great architectural tradition : the Indo-Saracenic (or the Moghul-Gothic as it is sometimes known)...

Actually...'Bengal Colonial' is an excellent description!

Hasn't the state of ' Bengal ' itself recently fallen victim to the Indian governments predilection for changing geographic terms that are thought to retain ' colonial ' associations ? ... Even though the name ' Bengal ' clearly pre-dates the arrival of Europeans by many centuries ?... Or was this proposal over-turned ?

You definitively don't know Italy, mr. Craig. Without italian architects, who reinterpreted the classical past, your colonial style could have been a reinterpretation of french gothic.

Palladio and so on , Signor Di Franceso ? I was not seeking to diminish the significance of the pioneers of the 16th century - merely questioning the extent to which we might describe such figures, and their work, as being authentically ' Italian ' rather than ' neo-classical' ....

Julian, to say that the name Bengal predates the arrival of Europeans would be a bit of a sweeping statement. Not to make too fine a point, it was the Persian and Arabic writers ( outsiders) who started to use something like that name. And sometimes in reference to a smaller region or like the Portuguese later who called the port town of Chittagong as Bengala. Earlier travellers, including Marco or Ibn Batuta too refer to tracts of land or ports or townships by that name, following the ancient practice of calling a whole region by the name if the principal city or port. The point is that it was never the name of a region that the local population called it by. The region did not have an unified name, different regions being known by different names, through different points in time. Gaur, Samatata, varendra-pundra-vardhana, rarh,Lakhnaoti etc. The epic Mahabharata, and Kalidadasa's Raghuvansa mention Vanga, but that is clearly a small part of what became Bengal.

Chroniclers from the Middle East gave it a name that was adopted and spread by the early Europeans. That is the story, as far as the name goes. The present mess that you mentioned, is of course all our own :)

James Joyce, in my very limited understanding of architectural styles, I would say that Bengal Colonial sounds splendid. Got a real ring to it.

Doesn't it now, Ashish Chakravarty? Have been rolling it on my tongue, and it IS splendid (as indeed all the examples thereof)! I would go so far as to say that it is even justifiable: no other province/state/city in the country has such a wondrous concentration of visual poetry in pediment and column (be they Doric, Ionian or Corinthian), the very essence of English classical heritage transported here to Bengal. The other provinces were too mongrelised - Portuguese strains in western India, the Muslim influence in the south. Speaking of which, Julian, I'm not sure I find much either by way of aesthetic or by way of recommendation in the so-called Indo-Saracenic. I think it's a case of the Churchillian 'neither the one thing nor the other'.

And one of the reasons (if not the only one) for my dislike of Lutyens's/Baker's New Delhi is precisely this Indo-Saracenic business. Trying to be too many things, and eventually being a grotesquerie.

A.C. ~ Re: ' Bengal ' ....I stand corrected in my orthopedic shoes... J.J. ~ Re: ' grotesquerie' . I take your point - but - am not sure if I agree...

@ Julian Craig & James Joyce. Reviving this thread, as something interesting came up on the architecture style story. Just came across a description of the hazar duari in 'the masnud of Murshidabad', first published in 1905. The writer, or rather compiler, Purna Ch. Majumdar, has this to say : ' The Palace, called the Burra Kothee or Hazardooari, is a large and imposing pile of buildings in the Italian style, the proportions of which are preferred by some to those of the Government House at Calcutta.' The Masnud is a much respected source of information on Murshidabad, and is relic in itself. So the canard is a rather old one. Still wonder how it started. Possible that the distinctions were coined later ? That a broad simplistic definition sufficed then ?