Accession of Muhammad Shah

November 15, 1719

Four Mughal emperors had died in twelve years; another, Muhammad Shah, Rangila, pleasure-loving and poetic, took the throne in Delhi. Under him the empire would suffer invasion, provincial breakaway, and the loss of the Peacock Throne. Yet Delhi's poets, Mir and Sauda, produced Urdu's golden age amid the collapse, as if compensating.