Tales from later Mughals

meet the expenses. The Red Fort was plundered by the
Marathas, Jats, Euhellas, Nadir Shah, and Ahmad Shah Abdali
who not only took away the accumulated treasury of the
Mughal rulers but also dug the walls and floors of the Fort in
search of buried wealth. Ghulam Qadir Euhella did not even
spare the books of the royal library and sold them in the
markets.
As a result, royal families lived in poverty and
deprivation. Two foreign women who visited the Red Fort
and met the royal family depicted the pathetic condition of
their life. Fanny Parks in Wanderings of a Pilgrim in search
of a Picturesque observed that the part of the palace where
the royal family lived had lost all its past glory. The ceiling
and the floor of the hall presented a melancholy look.
Princess Hidayatun Nisa, instead of awarding a necklace of
costly pearls, put a garland of flowers around her neck, just
to follow the tradition of the great Mughals.
Another woman, Mrs Hassan Ali, a British woman
who was married to a Muslim noble of Lukhnow writes in
Observations of the Mussulmans of India "I was grieved to
be obliged to accept the Queen`s parting present of an
embroidered scarf, because I knew her means are
exceedingly limited compared with the demands upon her
bounty; but I could not refuse that which was intended to do
me honour at the risk of wounding those feelings I so greatly
respected. A small ring of trifling value was placed by the
Queen on my finger, as she remarked, `to remind me of the
giver`."
Great Empires during their glorious days used to
build great monuments in order to show their grandeur and
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