A CERTIFIED COPY (FARMAN) OF A LETTER FROM PRINCE HAIDER, THE SON OF TIPU SULTAN OF MYSORE, REQUESTING MILITARY HELP FROM FATH ALI SHAH QAJAR
Iran, 12 Muharram 1222 AH (22 March 1807 AD)

Persian and French manuscript on joined paper, 21ll. of black ink nasta’liq script to the page, on the verso the seal impression of Mirza Mohammad Shafi’ dated 1219 AH (1804), folded, 72.8cm x 39.5cm.

Provenance: the present letter comes from the archives of the French legation in Istanbul (part lot 389, Christie’s South Kensington, London, sale 9084, 3 May 2001).

The text in French in sepia ink reading: Copie d’une lettre du successeur de Tipoo Sultan au Chahzadeh du Corassan, remise le 3 (?) Juillet 1807/ expedie le 17 Juillet par Mehdy Bey a M. Bouteurs.

Following his father’s death during the fall of Seringapatam in 1799, Prince Haidar Ali’s (1771-1815) failed uprising in 1806 against the Company troops led him to a renewed search for allies. The present document’s original version was carried back to Iran by Mohammad Nabi Khan, Fath Ali Shah’s ambassador to the Governor-General of India in 1807. The prince’s pleas ‘to send an army of your panther-like ferocious, tooth-bearing angry lion-like Qizilbash’ fell on deaf ears. The document, however, was a relevant chess piece in what was soon to become the polygonal Great Game around India, Iran, Britain, Russia, and France. Its importance does not lie in Mysore history, but in the fact that the Iranians deemed it useful to ‘leak’ to the French in Iran, in all original details including the exact location of the prince’s seal, certified by the seal of the prime minister on the verso, who personally delivered it to the French envoy. It reveals a degree of Iranian potential control in the affairs of India at a time of European conflict. History does not record frissons of excitement in the French camp in Tehran upon receipt of the letter: Napoleon defeated Russia in 1807, and the French idea of invading India with Persian and Afghan assistance vanished into thin air, but the Great Game was afoot.