If real estate is included, Nizam Seventh’s total net worth is around £187 billion today. He had enough money to feed the whole country, but he liked to live frugally.
In the history of India, there was a period of about 400 years when the country was under the yoke of the Mughal Empire. For administrative purposes, the Mughal kings divided India into various regions and appointed a manager, such people called Nawab. Among them, some prominent Nawabs such as Nawab of Oudh, Nawab of Arcot, Nawab of Hyderabad.
The Nawabs of Hyderabad were the Nizam (which existed from the 18th to the 20th centuries) – the richest family of all the Nawabs and sometimes even richer than the Mughal court of the time. Whenever the Mughal court was in financial difficulty, they appealed to the Nizam family of Hyderabad for help. The Nizam were also so loyal to the Mughal empire that, despite the decline of the Mughal dynasty in the 18th century, the Nizam never intended to overthrow it.
The huge fortune of the Nizam family came from the Golconda diamond mine, the only diamond mine in the world at that time. The seventh and last Nizam of Hyderabad was Mir Osman Ali Karan. This man was once famous as a wealthy king but had an oddly frugal lifestyle.
Nizam the Seventh (April 6, 1886 – February 24, 1967) was the 7th King of Hyderabad, India . He ascended the throne in 1911 and is known around the world as the richest king of all time.
Today, Hyderabad is the financial and commercial city of India, located in the state of Telangana, serving as the capital of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states.
Before being an Indian city, Hyderabad was once a wealthy state, ruled by the House of Nizam (1724-1948) . Among them, the most prominent is the Seventh Nizam (April 6, 1886 – February 24, 1967) who ascended the throne in 1911.
Nizam Seventh.
Like previous generations of Nizam, the Seventh Nizam was rich in “cracking puzzles”. However, his wealth is so much that if calculated by today’s value, he must be twice as rich as billionaire Jeff Bezos – CEO of Amazon.
At that time, the amount of gold he owned was about 100 million pounds, and the amount of jade was 400 million pounds. Converted to British currency today, they fall into the range of £50 billion.
In the palace of the Seventh Nizam, gold and jade piled up. Years of fear of mutiny, this king sent a convoy of trucks into the backyard, ordered the soldiers to bring all the gold and jewels to the trunks of the trucks. Swirling around but the world was still peaceful, Nizam VII ordered to bring gold and jade into the palace, discarding the rusty and damaged trucks.
The seventh Nizam’s desk was also full of gold and jade. He was so indifferent to them that he took a 185-carat diamond, the size of an ostrich egg, and stuffed it into a sock to make a paperweight.
The diamond is used to make… paperweights.
If you include real estate, the total wealth of Nizam VII, the king of Hyderabad is about 187 billion pounds (about 233 billion USD) in today’s value.
In the palace of the Seventh Nizam, there are always 3000 strong young guards patrolling and guarding. Every time the king stepped out of the door, there was immediately a Rolls-Royce supercar, ready to pick up. In the car, the 100% gold silk seats shine and he has 50 of these cars.
The servants of the Seventh Nizam are divided into groups, in charge of different jobs. The group serving drinks consists of 28 people, only having to do one job is to carry the glass and pour water for the king to drink. There are 38 people in the lamp cleaning group, year-round and month-round just dusting off the chandeliers. The Seventh Nizam loved to eat walnuts, so he also set up an army to break the shells and get the nuts every day.
The total number of soldiers and servants in the palace of the Seventh Nizam was 12,000. They all had to do only one duty: to serve the king 24/7.
Private life, Nizam Seventh has 4 queens, 42 concubines. They bore him a total of 34 children. The famous king loved his wife, worked hard all night, so he was always in a lethargic state during the day.
Every year, the Seventh Nizam organized four banquets, inviting all the Hyderabad nobles to participate. Party guests are required to express their heart with… material. The king personally went around, receiving everyone’s “sincere intentions” .
Occasionally, the Seventh Nizam ordered to bring all the gold and jade out to clean and polish. It took three days for the servant to finish. When he hired experts to assess gold, silver and gems from the Netherlands, this person demanded a payment of £ 25,000. Because the amount of gold and jade was so large, it took a whole year to check all the turns.
The amount of gold and jade Nizam Seventh possesses is equivalent to £ 50 billion today.
With this super power, the Seventh Nizam can certainly live in extreme luxury. But since he turned forty years old (40), he suddenly became surprisingly frugal.
Every week, Nizam VII only allows himself to spend exactly 1 pound. He ate super frugally, only daring to smoke the cheapest cigarettes. A good bow is just a tin plate. Once, the Seventh Nizam sent a servant to the market to buy new blankets, telling him not to pay more than 25 rupees in advance. Because the merchant demanded 35 rupees per blanket, the servant returned empty-handed.
In addition to eating frugally, the Seventh Nizam also wore rags. Although he had a dressing room half a mile long, filled with luxurious clothes of all kinds, he wore the same clothes all year round. Only when the shirt and pants on his body were torn, the king reluctantly changed into another suit.
Unlike the Seventh Nizam who endured hardship, his 34 children “played to the end”. Every time the king’s father’s birthday, they hunted for “delicious dishes and strange things” from the four corners of the world, then tried to find a way… to ask for money.
To the extreme, Nizam VII had to open a new bank account at Westminster Bank (a branch of NatWest Bank, London in India), deposit 1 million pounds, to let the princesses and princes withdraw installment payments.
But the Seventh Nizam did not send money for long when in 1947, the British colonialists were forced to withdraw from India. For the rest of his life, he stood still, fearing that the new government would take the money away.
On February 24, 1967, Nizam VII died, Hyderabad held a national mourning. The Indian government did not touch that 1 million pounds, but his descendants competed with each other to “crush their heads”. It was not until 2017 that the inheritance litigation came to an end. The winner of the lawsuit is the royal brother Muffakhan (both are over 80 years old).