Tragic news from Old Delhi: the dome of the Masjid Mubarak Begum (aka the Rundi ki Masjid) just collapsed....

Mubarak Begum was wife of Sir David Ochterlony. She started off a Brahmin girl in Pune; found her way to Delhi where she converted to Islam & married Ochterlony, who built her the last great Mughal tomb, Mubarak Bagh. She then remarried a noble who fought vs the British in 1857.

In middle age Mubarak Begum became very grand and demanded to be referred to as Lady Ochterlony. Sadly her social mountaineering gave her a bad name in Shahjahanabad where her mosque was commonly known as the Rundi ke Masjid.

The elderly Sir David Ocherlony however worshipped Mubarak Begum and built her the last great Mughal tomb, Mubarak Bagh.

After Ochterlony's death, Mubarak Begum remarried a noble who fought vs the Brits in 1857, a conflict which destroyed Mubarak Bagh, only fragments of which survive. Her Haveli remained a place of high Mughal culture & here Fahatullah Baig set The Last Mushairah of Dehli.

How Old Delhi's Randi ki Masjid got its name https://www.cntraveller.in/story/old-delhi-randi-ki-masjid-got-name/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Was Mubarak Begum- aka Generallee Begum, Lady Ochterlony-
among the dancing girls in this celebrated image of Sir David Ochterlony at home in the British Residency in Delhi the early 1820s?

The next British Resident at the Mughal court after Ochterlony, Alec Seton, also in the Residency, by the same Delhi artist

Mubarak Begum's story resembles that of Bani Thani, the slave girl bought in Chandni Chowk in 1739 by the Maharajah of Kishengarh or the Begum Sumru who rose to be the queen of Sardhana: remarkable women, sold into slavery in the Anarchy, who rose through fortitude to high rank.

By the end of her life, Mubarak Begum had taken the title Qudsia Begum, previously that of the Emperor’s mother, & so poweful did she become that one observer remarked that Ochterlony’s Begum ‘is the mistress now of everyone within the walls’. She was clearly a remarkable woman.