Mukarram Jah was born to Azam Jah, who was the son and heir of Osman Ali Khan, the last reigning Nizam of Hyderabad state, and Princess Durru Shehvar, who was the daughter of Abdulmejid II, the last Caliph of the Ottoman Empire. Jah studied at the Doon School in Dehradun and at Harrow and Peterhouse in Cambridge, England.
Additionally, he attended the London School of Economics and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
As a close friend of India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Jah stated in 2010 that Nehru wanted him to become his personal envoy or the Indian ambassador to a Muslim country. It has been documented that he was quite close to the Nehru family and had proposed the creation of an automobile unit in India long before the iconic Maruti car was conceived. In Hyderabad, he had a large collection of cars and repaired them himself.
During Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s reign as Prime Minister of India, Asaf Jah Viii Nawab Mir Barkat Ali Khan Makarram Jah Bahadur spent a brief period in the Teen Murti Bhawan, where the then Prime Minister kept him as his Special Envoy.
The Government of India also conferred the rank of Honorary Lieutenant in the Indian Army on Asaf Jah VIII.
Chowmahalla and Falaknuma, his two main palaces in Hyderabad, have been restored and opened to the public, the former as a museum illustrating the Nizam era and the latter as a luxury hotel. A decade of renovations culminated in the opening of the Taj Falaknuma Palace Hotel in February 2010.
Until the 1980s, Mukarram was the richest man in India, like his father. He lost some assets to divorce settlements in the 1990s, however. It is still estimated that he has a net worth of $1 billion
His full official title was: His Exalted Highness Prince Rustam-i-Dauran, Arustu-i-Zaman, Wal Mamaluk, Asaf Jah VIII, Muzaffar ul-Mamalik, Nizam ul-Mulk, Nizam ud-Daula, Nawab Mir Barakat Ali Khan Siddiqi Bahadur, Sipah Salar, Fath Jang, Nizam of Hyderabad and Berar.”
It was said that Jah married five women, the first of whom was a Turkish noblewoman. He reportedly divorced her because she refused to relocate from Hyderabad palace to a sheep station in the Australian outback. He later married a former BBC employee and air hostess. In 1992, after her death, he married Miss Turkey Manolya Onur. He married two more times, to a Moroccan woman and a Turkish woman.
Mukarram Jah, 89, passed away on Thursday (January 12) in Istanbul, Turkey.
On Tuesday, the family will allow his mortal remains to be kept at Hyderabad’s Chowmahalla palace. “As per his desire of being laid to rest in his homeland, his children are scheduled to travel to Hyderabad with the mortal remains of the late Nizam on Tuesday, January 17 2023”
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