Awadh

Awadh, known in British records as Oudh, was a kingdom in the fertile plain between the Ganges and the Yamuna that became one of the great centres of north Indian culture in the eighteenth century. The region corresponds roughly to the ancient Kosala of Sanskrit and Buddhist texts, and it had been a province of the Mughal Empire. As Mughal authority collapsed after the death of Aurangzeb, its governor Saadat Khan made himself effectively independent in 1722, founding the dynasty of nawabs who ruled from Ayodhya and Faizabad and later from Lucknow. The nawabs kept a standing army, reformed revenue, and spent lavishly on architecture, poetry and music; Lucknow grew into a city of gardens, imambaras and the great Bara Imambara. Awadh remained formally a Mughal province but concluded a subsidiary treaty with the East India Company in 1801, ceding territory and accepting a British resident at court. Wajid Ali Shah, the last nawab, was deposed and his kingdom annexed by the Company in 1856, an act that became one of the grievances behind the rebellion of 1857. Awadh was the granary of northern India and its culture left a lasting mark on Urdu literature and Hindustani music.