It took two years, some luck, and dollops of providence for Maxime Knudsen to discover the graves of his great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, Fayz un Nissa, in Hyderabad. The six graves of his grandfather and his family were easy to find at the cemetery attached to St. George’s Church in the Abids area. They have been restored after an eight-year effort by a conservation architectural firm.
“But the hunt for the grave of Fayz un Nissa was like something from Indiana Jones, as I carried a sling bag and roamed the various cemeteries in Hyderabad,” says Mr. Knudsen, a financial analyst from Abu Dhabi, who is in the city searching for the graves of his storied family in Hyderabad.
A part of the process of the hunt is author and historian William Dalrymple, who is helping Mr. Knudsen locate the graves. Fayz un Nissa or Fayz Baksh, as she is sometimes known, has found mention in the latter’s book The White Mughals. She was adopted by Mughal emperor Shah Alam-II, who reigned from 1759 to 1806, and was married to General William Palmer. The couple settled down in Hyderabad after stints in Lucknow, Gwalior, and Pune. The book devotes a couple of pages to the couple and shows the luminous 1786 painting titled The Palmer Family, by artist Johann Zoffany.
