Excerpt from Elihu Jan's Story: Or the Private Life of an Eastern Queen Elihu Jan is not a fictitious character. She was brought up in the Court of Lucknow from her seventh year, as related in the first chapter of the following work. She was for many years hookah attendant to the queen of Oudh, and of course thus became acquainted with much that happened in the palace. After the mutiny, she was first an ayah in the household of Mr. Johannes, the wealthy merchant of Lucknow, and subsequently entered my wife's service in the same capacity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ... 178 CHAPTER XVI. CONCLUSION. Oudh became a kingdom in 1814. Before that, its sovereigns were styled nawabs. The first king, Ghazee-ood-deen Hyder, reigned from 1814 to 1827, and left in the treasury, at his death, ten millions of pounds sterling. His son, Nussir-ood-deen Hyder, some of whose doings are recorded in the 'Private Life of an Eastern King, 'reigned from 1827 to 1837, and left in the treasury at his death about 700,000/. He had squandered not only the regular annual income of the kingdom on his pleasures and favourites, but also 9,300,000/. of the treasure accumulated by his father--that is, about a million a year in addition to the ordinary annual income. Nussir-ood-deen Hyder was succeeded by his uncle, Mohamed Aly Shah, who reigned from 1837 to 1842, and left behind him in the treasury about 800,000/. His son, Umjid Aly Shah, consort of that queen whose life is illustrated in these pages, reigned from 1842 to 1847, and left behind him in the treasury 1,360,000/. He was succeeded by his son Wajid Aly Shah, now the ex-king of Oudh, who reigned till the annexation of the country to the British dominions in India in 1856. The account given by Elihu Jan, in the foregoing pages, of the palace life of Umjid Aly Shah and Wajid Aly Shah, the two last kings of Oudh, is simple, plain, and unvarnished. In the present chapter I propose to illustrate the same life from other sources, and chiefly from Sir W. Sleeman's 'Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh, ' which was published in London in 1858. Sleeman, having been resident at the court of Lucknow from 1849 to 1856, had of course the best opportunity of becoming acquainted with the state of the palace, and the ordinary life of its principal inmates. But his work was intended to serve a.