page_title: Muhammad Shah
section_title: Cultural developments
hierarchical_section_title: Muhammad Shah / Reign / Cultural developments
caption_attribution_description: English: Baagh e Naazir was built by Muhammad Shah Rangila's Khwaja Sara ( Chief Eunuch) in the year 1748. this garden contained a number of pavilions, the most notable among which was made of red sandstone . Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's seminal work on the monuments of Delhi , Aasar us Sanadeed , contains a description and a sketch of the monument as it appeared in 1854.
context_page_description: Nasir-ud-Din Muḥammad Shah was Mughal emperor from 1719 to 1748. He was son of Khujista Akhtar, the fourth son of Bahadur Shah I. With the help of the Sayyid brothers, he ascended the throne at the young age of 17. He later got rid of them with the help of Asaf Jah I – Syed Hussain Ali Khan was murdered at Fatehpur Sikri in 1720 and Syed Hassan Ali Khan Barha was fatally poisoned in 1722. Muhammad Shah was a great patron of the arts, including musical, cultural and administrative developments. His pen-name was Sadā Rangīla and he is often referred to as "Muhammad Shah Rangila", also sometimes as "Bahadur Shah Rangila" after his grand father Bahadur Shah I.
  Although he was a patron of the arts, Muhammad Shah's reign was marked by rapid and irreversible decline of the Mughal Empire. The Mughal Empire was already decaying, but the invasion by Nader Shah of Persia and the subsequent sacking of Delhi, the Mughal capital, greatly accelerated the pace. The course of events not only shocked and mortified the Mughals themselves, but also other foreigners, including the British.
context_section_description: While Urdu (derived from Zuban-i Urdū-yi Muʿallá or in local translation Lashkari Zaban, shortened to Lashkari) was already in use before Muhammad Shah's reign, it was during his reign that it became more popular among the people and he declared it as the court language, replacing Persian. During Muhammad Shah's reign, Qawwali was reintroduced into the Mughal imperial court and it quickly spread throughout South Asia. Muhammad Shah is also known to have introduced religious institutions for education such as Maktabs. During his reign, the Quran was translated for the first time in simple Persian and Urdu. Also, during his reign, the formal Turkic dress, normally worn by the high Mughal nobility since Mughals originally hailed from Samarqand, was replaced by the Sherwani.
  Mohammad Shah was a patron of the performing arts, almost at the cost of administrative priorities, paving the way for the disintegration of governance. While Mughal political power did decline in his reign, the Emperor encouraged the arts, employing master artists such as Nidha Mal (active 1735–75) and Chitarman, whose vivacious paintings depict scenes of court life, such as Holi celebrations, hunting and hawking. The Mughal court of the time had musicians such as Niyamat Khan, also known as Sadarang, and his nephew Firoz Khan (Adarang), whose compositions popularised the musical form of Khyal.Niyamat Khan composed Khyal for his disciples and he never performed Khyal. This key component of Indian classical music evolved, ascended and received princely patronage at the court of Muhammad Shah.
caption: Baagh e Naazir was built by Muhammad Shah the year 1748.
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