Sardhana
| Sardhana | |
|---|---|
| [[Image:|250px| ]] | |
| Presidency: Bengal | |
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| Present Day Details | |
| Place Name: | Sardhana |
| State/Province: | Uttar Pradesh |
| Country: | India |
| Transport links | |
Sardhana is situated twelve miles north-west of Meerut city.
The East India Company seized the kingdom of Sardhana on the death of the Begum Sumru of Sardhana in 1836. Born 1751 she became the bibi of German mercenary Walter Reinhardt, known as "Sombre" (Indianised to "Sumru", or "Somru") after his severe expression. When the Mughal emperor gave Reinhardt a large estate in the Doab north of Delhi, his begum went with him and turned the village of Sardhana into their capital, with a ruling class drawn from both Mughal noblemen and more than 200 French and central European mercenaries of mixed Jewish and Catholic extraction. After Sombre's death, his begum ruled in his stead, partly from Sardhana and partly from her large Delhi palace. She converted from Islam to Catholicism and built the largest cathedral in northern India. [1]
Spelling variants
Sardhana, Sirdana, Sirdanah
External links
- Sardhana Wikipedia
- The Church Basilica of Our Lady of Grace, Sardhana The Old Palace of the Begum Sumru served as a school at times, and it was with boys from here that St Peter’s College, Agra started as an orphanage in 1846.
Historical books online
- "Sardhana Town" Imperial Gazetteer of India, Volume 22, page 105.
- Fiction: A Freelance in Kashmir: A Tale of the Great Anarchy by Lieut.-Colonel G F MacMunn c 1914 Archive.org. Includes the Begum Somru.
References
- ↑ "The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Sombre by Michael H Fisher" by William Dalrymple 31 July 2010. Retrived 7 July 2016