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Third son of Ghulam Mohy ud-Din and the youngest brother of Faqir
'Aziz ud-Din, was one of the prominent Muslim courtiers serving
the Sikh sovereign Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his successors. In
1801, when Ranjit Singh assumed the title of Maharaja, Nur ud-Din
was appointed hakim or physician to the court and put in charge
of dispensaries in the city of Lahore. He also performed protocol
duties on behalf of the State. Foreign travellers such as Moorcraft,
Jacquemont, Burnes, Wolff, Hugel and Fane, whom he received on behalf
of the Maharaja or whom he otherwise met on State occasions, have
paid tributes to his outstanding abilities. Hugel, for instance,
described him as "an upright yet versatile courtier, who has
acquired the respect of the natives and the strangers." Nur
ud-Din was indeed a versatile man who was entrusted by Maharaja
Ranjit Singh with diverse responsibilities such as the administration
of the capital, superintendence of artillery stores, and commissariat
arrangements for visiting dignitaries. He was at times also assigned
to important administrative responsibilities outside the capital.
In June 1810, he took Wazirabad and was soon after appointed governor
of Gujrat. In the beginning of 1817, he was sent to settle the Ramgarhia
territories seized by Ranjit Singh towards the end of 1816. In 1827,
he went to Kapurthala on a mission to restore normal relations after
a temporary estrangement between Ranjit Singh and the local chief,
Fateh Singh Ahluvalia.
Even after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Fagir Nur ud-Din
retained his position of eminence at the court. At the conclusion
of the first Anglo-Sikh war, he was one of the signatories, on behalf
of the State, to the Treaty of Lahore, 9 March 1846, and to the
Articles of Agreement, 11 March 1846. He was appointed a member
of the Council of Regency formed, under the treaty of 16 December
1846, to conduct the administration of the country during the minority
of Maharaja Duleep Singh. The Council ceased to exist with the annexation
of the Punjab to the British dominions on 29 March 1849. Nur ud-Din's
jagirs of the annual value of Rs 20,885 were confirmed to him by
the British. Nur ud-Din died at Lahore on 26 March 1852. He was
survived by four sons: from his first wife, Zahur udDin (1824-1893),
who was for a time tutor to Maharaja Duleep Singh, and Hafiz ud-Din
(1835-1899), and from the second, Shamas ud-Din (1825-1872) and
Qamar ud-Din (1826-1910), who travelled with his father as escort
to Maharani Jind Kaur when she was exiled to Banaras. Like his brother
'Aziz udDin, Nur ud-Din was a man of learning. He was also a poet
and left a collection of verse.
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