The town of Arcot, tucked into the Palar river valley of present-day Tamil Nadu, does not look like the capital of a once-mighty kingdom. Yet for nearly 165 years, this town — and the broader territory known as the Carnatic — was the seat of one of South India’s most consequential Muslim dynasties. The Nawabs of Arcot were governors who became sovereigns, sovereigns who became pawns of European colonial rivalry, and ultimately a royal house that outlived its own kingdom. Their story weaves together the decline of the Mughal Empire, Maratha military ambition, French and British imperial competition, and the slow absorption of South India into colonial rule. Understanding them is essential to understanding how modern Tamil Nadu came to be.
What Was the Carnatic?
Before the Nawabs, it helps to understand the geography they governed. The Carnatic — a term Europeans applied to the region stretching between the Eastern Ghats and the Coromandel Coast — was not a neat, bounded territory. It extended from the Krishna River in the north to the Kaveri River in the south, bounded on the west by the Mysore kingdom and Dindigul. The northern portion fell under Mughal influence and was called the Mughal Carnatic; the southern portion, with its Maratha fortresses at Gingee and Ranjankudi, was sometimes called the Maratha Carnatic.
This was rich, strategic land. Its coastline held Fort St. George at Madras — the anchor of British commercial ambition — and Pondicherry, the jewel of French India. Whoever controlled the Carnatic controlled access to the most valuable stretch of India’s southeastern coast. That is precisely why so many powers fought over it.
The term “Arcot” itself is said to derive from the Tamil words Aaru Kaadu, meaning “Six Forests,” reflecting a region once believed to be lush woodland inhabited by sages and seers. By the eighteenth century, it was anything but tranquil.
Mughal Origins: How the Nawabship Was Born (1690–1710)
The story of the Nawabs of arcot begins not in Tamil Nadu, but in Delhi, with the ambitions of Aurangzeb’s southern campaigns.
Towards the close of the seventeenth century, Aurangzeb reduced the Carnatic by force, and in 1692 appointed Zulfikar Ali Khan as Nawab of the Carnatic, with his seat at Arcot — a reward for his victory over the Marathas led by Rajaram I. Zulfikar Ali Khan was not a native southerner. He was the son of Nawab Azad Khan, the wazir of the Mughal Empire, and his family had served successive Mughal emperors before him. His appointment was purely administrative — a governor sent to hold a distant province in the emperor’s name.
Zulfikar was soon recalled to Delhi, and in 1703, his able general Daud Khan was appointed in his place. Daud Khan resided for a time in Gingee, and then in Arcot, which later became the permanent capital of the Carnatic Nawabs. Daud Khan’s relationship with the British East India Company was tense. In 1702, as the Mughal Empire’s local Subedar of the Carnatic, he besieged and blockaded Fort St. George for more than three months; the governor, Thomas Pitt, was instructed by the East India Company to seek peace. Despite this friction, Daud Khan also enjoyed cordial moments with the Company when it suited both sides.
In 1710, Daud Khan was recalled to Delhi. His civil officer, Sayyid Muzaffar, assumed power under the name Saadatullah Khan. He is considered the first regular and acknowledged Nawab of the Carnatic, and it was he who gave a hereditary character to the office. This was a crucial step: the governorship was transitioning into something closer to a hereditary kingship, even as it formally remained under Mughal authority.
The Nawayat Phase: Building an Independent State (1710–1744)
The Nawabs of Arcot reign can be divided into two broad phases — the Nawayat (1710–1744) and the Wallajah (1744–1855). The Nawayat period was one of struggle and state-building, defined by a family that was simultaneously asserting independence from Delhi and fending off powerful neighbours.
Saadatullah Khan (1710–1732): The First Independent Nawab
Saadatullah Khan governed for over two decades and left a lasting imprint on how the Nawabship functioned. He moved the court from Gingee to Arcot, a relocation that gave the dynasty its enduring name. His administration consolidated the Nawab’s authority over a fragmented landscape of local nayaks and zamindars who had long exploited the chaos of Mughal-Maratha conflict. He had no male heir, which would soon create a crisis.
Dost Ali Khan (1732–1740): Ambition and Catastrophe
Saadatullah’s brother Dost Ali Khan succeeded him and proved to be a ruler of considerable ambition. His successor Dost Ali conquered and annexed Madurai in 1736, extending the Carnatic’s reach deep into the Tamil south. But expansion came at a cost. The Marathas under Rahoji Bhonsle, who had long nursed grievances over Tanjore, were watching.
In 1740, the Maratha forces descended on Arcot. They attacked Dost Ali Khan at the pass of Damalcherry, and in the war that followed, Dost Ali, one of his sons Hasan Ali, and several prominent figures lost their lives. On 20 May 1740 at Ambur, the Maratha armies killed Dost Ali Khan, and his son-in-law Chanda Sahib was imprisoned and sent to Poona. It was a catastrophic defeat that shattered the Nawayat line’s hold on power.
The Turbulent Succession (1740–1744)
What followed was a period of brutal instability. Rahoji Bhonsle made peace with Dost Ali’s son Safdar Ali and recognised him as the new Nawab in August 1740. But Safdar Ali’s rule was brief and violent. Shortly afterwards, in 1742, Nawab Safdar Ali was assassinated at the instigation of a treacherous relation, Murtaza Ali, the Killedar of Vellore.
The Nizam of Hyderabad now stepped in. In 1743, Nizam al-Mulk Asaf Jah I marched into Arcot with an armed force of 280,000 men to oust the Marathas and subdue the Nawayat. He passed the throne of Carnatic to Muhammad Said, the young son of the murdered Nawab Safdar Ali. By appointing a minor and installing his own regent, the Nizam effectively made himself the kingmaker of the Carnatic.
Soon after, the young prince was killed in an altercation. The regent Anwar-ud-din Khan was absolved of blame and confirmed in his position by the Nizam in 1744. With this, the Nawayat line was finished, and the Wallajah era — destined to be far more consequential — began.
The Wallajah Phase Begins: Anwaruddin Khan and the French Threat (1744–1749)
Anwaruddin Muhammad Khan was a man of Central Asian ancestry, his family having migrated from Turan to Hindustan during Aurangzeb’s reign. The father of Anwaruddin Khan, the first Wallajah Nawab, was the first of his line to hold office in India — as a religious teacher at Aurangzeb’s court. From this modest beginning, the family had risen remarkably fast.
As Nawab, Anwaruddin faced a new and unfamiliar kind of threat: European colonial rivalry. The French at Pondicherry, under the brilliant and calculating Governor Dupleix, were actively seeking to install a friendly ruler in the Carnatic. Their candidate was Chanda Sahib — Dost Ali’s son-in-law who had been released from Maratha captivity. The British at Madras backed Anwaruddin.
The confrontation came swiftly. Chanda Sahib invaded Arcot with French support. The two armies met at Ambur on 3 August 1749, and in the battle, Anwaruddin was killed. Chanda Sahib was declared the Nawab of Arcot.
The city of Arcot was taken in August 1749. Anwaruddin’s eldest son, Mahfuz Khan, was taken prisoner, while the second son, Muhammad Ali, escaped to Trichinopoly, where he established a resisting army and declared himself the new Nawab of Carnatic.
The stage was now set for one of the defining confrontations of eighteenth-century Indian history.
The Siege of Arcot and Robert Clive (1751): A Turning Point
The conflict between Muhammad Ali and Chanda Sahib was not just a succession dispute. It was a proxy war between Britain and France for control of the Indian subcontinent.
The British forces supported Muhammad Ali, recognising him as the Nawab of Arcot. Robert Clive, who had risen from an ordinary writer in the East India Company to a position of military influence, induced the Governor of Fort St. David at Cuddalore to agree to a daring diversionary attack on Chanda Sahib’s possessions in Arcot.
In September 1751, Clive led a small force of roughly 200 British soldiers and 300 Indian sepoys and seized the fort at Arcot almost without resistance. What followed was a fifty-day siege by Chanda Sahib’s forces. Clive and his garrison held out, turning a desperate gamble into a legend. The siege broke Chanda Sahib’s prestige and shifted momentum decisively toward the British and their candidate.
After several clashes, Chanda Sahib’s forces and his French allies were expelled from Arcot, and Wallajah was officially declared Nawab. Chanda Sahib was later captured and executed by the Raja of Tanjore in 1752. The French position in the Carnatic never fully recovered.
Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah: The Long Reign and Its Contradictions (1749–1795)
Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah was the most consequential — and most complicated — of all the Arcot Nawabs. He was born on 7 July 1717 in Delhi. His father, Anwaruddin Muhammad Khan, was the Nawab of Carnatic, and his mother Fakhr un-nisa Begum Sahiba was the niece of a Persian nobleman.
Wallajah’s reign lasted nearly half a century, and it was defined by a deepening, ultimately fatal, dependence on the British East India Company.
The Alliance with the British
On 26 June 1753, Wallajah supported British forces against the French, assisted by Mysorean troops. He also met with British commander Stringer Lawrence to discuss their alliance. The British were victorious, maintaining their influence in Trichinopoly.
This alliance gave Wallajah security, but it came with invisible chains. Every British military expedition fought on his behalf added to a mounting debt that he could never repay. He borrowed heavily from British merchants and financiers, mortgaging future revenues against present survival.
Chepauk Palace and Cultural Flourishing
Amid the wars and debts, Wallajah invested in architecture and culture. In 1764, after the Carnatic Wars, Wallajah wanted to construct a palace within the boundaries of British Fort St. George as his residence and a symbol of closer ties with the East India Company. Due to space restrictions, this plan was abandoned, and instead, Wallajah constructed a palace in Chepauk, completed in 1768. Built by the engineer Paul Benfield, it was one of the first buildings in India to be designed in the Indo-Saracenic style. Chepauk Palace — now home to the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association — remains one of Chennai’s most distinctive landmarks.
After the construction of this palace, Wallajah moved the capital from Arcot to Chepauk, which served as the capital of the arcot nawabs until 1855.
Hyder Ali and the Wars with Mysore
Wallajah’s ambitions frequently outpaced his resources and his reliability as an ally. His breach of promise in failing to surrender Tiruchirappalli to Hyder Ali in 1751 was at the root of many confrontations between Hyder Ali and the British. When Hyder Ali swept into the Carnatic towards Arcot on 23 July 1780 with an army estimated at 86,000 to 100,000 men, it was not the Nawab but the British who had provoked Hyder Ali’s wrath, by seizing the French port of Mahé which was under his protection. Much of the ensuing war was fought on the Nawab’s territory.
The Carnatic was ravaged. Villages were burned, agricultural land was abandoned, and the population suffered enormously. By the time Hyder Ali died and his son Tipu Sultan continued the fight, the Carnatic had become a theatre of sustained destruction.
The Debt Trap
By the 1780s, the Carnatic Sultanate was in deep debt from previous conflicts. Wallajah’s alliance with the British had a profoundly negative impact on the East India Company’s own finances as well. The British Parliament, alarmed by the entanglement, began scrutinising the relationship more closely. Edmund Burke’s famous speeches in Parliament naming the Nawab’s creditors — particularly Paul Benfield — exposed how deeply private British financial interests had embedded themselves into the governance of South India.
Wallajah died on 13 October 1795, leaving a kingdom that was sovereign in name but already hollowed out in practice.
The Final Nawabs: Decline and Annexation (1795–1855)
The Wallajah dynasty continued after Muhammad Ali, but each successive reign was shorter and more constrained than the last.
Umdat ul-Umra (1795–1801)
Umdat ul-Umra, Wallajah’s eldest son, inherited the title but found himself in immediate conflict with the British. His reign lasted only six years. The British, now fully in control of the Carnatic’s revenues and military, had little patience for a Nawab who sought to carve out independent space. Arcot was absorbed by the British colonial government in 1801, due to violation of the treaty of 1792. The British used alleged secret correspondence with Tipu Sultan as justification to effectively end the Nawab’s political authority. After Umdat ul-Umra’s death in 1801, the British assumed direct administration of the Carnatic.
Azimuddaula (1801–1819) and Azam Jah (1819–1825)
The Nawabs who followed were little more than pensioners of the British government. Azimuddaula and Azam Jah held the title without power, their revenues fixed by treaty and their movements subject to British oversight. The Carnatic was governed from Madras; the Nawab’s palace at Chepauk was a gilded cage.
Ghulam Muhammad Ghous Khan: The Last Nawab (1825–1855)
The thirteenth Nawab, Ghulam Muhammad Ghous Khan, was born in 1824 and died without a natural heir on 7 October 1855. The British, applying the Doctrine of Lapse — the same policy used to annex Jhansi, Satara, and Nagpur — refused to recognise an adopted successor and extinguished the Nawabship altogether.
Ghous Khan’s uncle Azim Jah was created the first Prince of Arcot (Amir-e-Arcot) in 1867 by Queen Victoria and was given a tax-free pension in perpetuity. The kingdom was gone; the title survived, stripped of territory and sovereignty but preserved as a ceremonial honour.
The Two Carnatic Wars: European Rivalry and Indian Sovereignty
No account of the Arcot Nawabs is complete without examining the Carnatic Wars — three rounds of conflict between Britain and France, fought largely on Indian soil and with Indian casualties.
The First Carnatic War (1746–1748)
Triggered by the War of Austrian Succession in Europe, this conflict saw French forces capture Madras in 1746 before the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle returned it to Britain in 1748. The Nawabs were peripheral players; the Europeans were testing their strength.
The Second Carnatic War (1748–1754)
From a European perspective, this period has been referred to as the Second Carnatic War. The Wallajah, Nizam Nasir Jang, and the English in Madras were on one side, while the Nawayat, Muzaffar Jang, and the French in Pondicherry were on the other. The Siege of Arcot (1751) was its defining episode. British victory cemented Wallajah’s position and broke French momentum in South India permanently.
The Third Carnatic War (1756–1763)
This conflict, an extension of the Seven Years’ War in Europe, ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Britain emerged dominant; France was confined to Pondicherry with no military presence. The Carnatic was now firmly within the British sphere of influence, and the Nawabs were increasingly British clients rather than independent rulers.
Legacy and Living Descendants
The dynasty did not vanish with the abolition of the Nawabship. The Princes of Arcot — the title created for the family by Queen Victoria — have continued as a recognised family in independent India.
His Highness Nawab Mohammed Abdul Ali has been the eighth Prince of Arcot since 1993. He served as Sheriff of Chennai for two terms, from 1984–1985 and again from 1988–1989. He is recognised by the Government as the First Nobleman in the Muslim community of South India and holds a rank equivalent to that of a state cabinet minister, officially recognised by the President of India as the Prince of Arcot. He is the founder secretary-general of Harmony India, an association promoting communal harmony, secularism, and national integration founded in 1990.
The family’s principal residence is the Amir Mahal palace in Triplicane, Chennai — a quieter but still dignified echo of the Chepauk Palace their ancestors built.
Architecture, Culture, and the Nawabs’ Urban Legacy
The Arcot Nawabs were more than political figures. They were patrons of architecture and contributors to the urban fabric of what is now Chennai.
Chepauk Palace remains their most visible architectural legacy, its Indo-Saracenic towers and arched facades embedded in the city’s identity. The Nawabs also built mosques, supported Sufi shrines, and presided over a court culture that blended Persian literary traditions with South Indian sensibility. Their patronage extended to Hindu temples as well — a reflection of the pragmatic pluralism that any ruler of the Carnatic had to practice.
Wallajah Mosque, also known as the Big Mosque, in Triplicane — built by Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah in 1795 — is another enduring landmark. Its white minarets and classical proportions have made it one of Chennai’s most photographed mosques.
The history of the Arcot Nawabs is not merely a tale of succession and warfare. It is a lens through which several larger stories come into focus.
It shows how the decline of the Mughal Empire created a vacuum that regional powers — Hindu, Muslim, and European — rushed to fill. It illustrates how European colonial ambitions in the eighteenth century were not inevitable; they depended on finding, cultivating, and often manipulating local allies. It demonstrates how debt can be as effective a weapon of empire as any army. And it offers a detailed, ground-level view of what the transition from Mughal governance to British colonial rule looked like for the people who lived through it in the Tamil country.
The Nawabs of Arcot were neither heroes nor villains in any simple sense. They were ambitious men operating in a world of impossible choices, surrounded by rivals who were always stronger, always more numerous, and always more willing to break a promise. That they held on for as long as they did is, in its own way, remarkable.
A Complete Chronological List of the Nawabs of Arcot
Nawayat Phase
- Zulfikar Ali Khan — 1692–1703 (First Mughal appointee)
- Daud Khan — 1703–1710
- Saadatullah Khan — 1710–1732 (First acknowledged independent Nawab)
- Dost Ali Khan — 1732–1740
- Safdar Ali Khan — 1740–1742
- Muhammad Said — 1742–1744
Wallajah Phase
- Anwaruddin Muhammad Khan — 1744–1749
- Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah — 1749–1795
- Umdat ul-Umra — 1795–1801
- Azimuddaula — 1801–1819
- Azam Jah — 1819–1825
- Ghulam Muhammad Ghous Khan — 1825–1855 (Last Nawab)
Princes of Arcot (post-1867)
- Azim Jah — First Prince of Arcot, created 1867
- (Successive princes to the present)
Conclusion
From Zulfikar Ali Khan’s appointment by Aurangzeb in 1692 to the quiet death of the last Nawab in 1855, the rulers of Arcot presided over one of the most turbulent and transformative eras in South Indian history. They built palaces, lost battles, made alliances, broke promises, and eventually ran out of room to manoeuvre as the British East India Company consolidated its grip on the subcontinent. What they left behind — in stone, in street names, in the very layout of Chennai — is a reminder that this was once a land where a Muslim dynasty from Central Asia ruled the Tamil country, and where European rivals fought bitterly for the right to replace them.
Their story deserves to be read, taught, and remembered.