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NOTABLE FAMILIES OF BAHAWALPUR: Maulvi Ghulam Hussain Qureshi: Major Shamsuddin Muhammad Qureshi

The Derawar Fort has been a strategically important monument through the ages. It is considered to be better planned than any other forts in Pakistan. This fort was the seat of power of the Nawabs of Bahawalpur. Muhammad Bahawal Khan V was the second son by the second wife of Nawab Sir Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi IV. My great-great-grandfather, Maulvi Nabi Baksh served as tutor and advisor to Nawab Sir Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi IV and was later buried in Derawar. In 1899, when he was only fifteen, Nawab Muhammad Bahawal Khan Abbasi V ascended the throne of Bahawalpur following his father’s death. He reigned under a Council of Superintendence until he came of age and was invested with full ruling powers in a ceremony attended by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon himself, at Derawar Fort on November 12, 1903. Unfortunately on February 15, 1907, Muhammad Bahawal Khan Abbasi V died of illness on a ship while sailing off the coast of Aden. He was succeeded by his only male heir, Sir Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi V.

Sir Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi V was born in September 1904, in Derawer.  He became the Nawab on the death of his father when he was only three years old. A Council of Regency, with Sir Rahim Bakhsh as its President, ruled on his behalf until 1924. My great-grandfather, Izzat Nishan, Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Maulvi Ghulam Hussein Qureshi, a learned luminary, Founder of Jamia Abbasia in Bahawalpur, Home Minister of Bahawalpur State was appointed as tutor-cum guardian of Sir Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi V.

Even before Sadiq Mohammad Khan V wore the turban of chieftainship, he began to make his mark by continuing his father’s and grand sire’s superior building tradition. However, where his forebears built palaces, this remarkable and civic-minded ruler with his eye on educational development in his kingdom raised the Bahawalpur Central Library in 1924 and Sadiq Public School in 1953. While the library created a reading public, the school, functioning until now has produced some very fine women and men to lead in various fields. Sadiq Public School, Bahawalpur, is one of the premier educational institutions in the country. It was built on more than 450 acres by the late Nawab of Bahawalpur, Sir Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi V, and started functioning on 18th Jan 1954.

Biographical Encyclopedia of Pakistan: Edition 1960-61: Chief Editor: Khan Tahawar Ali Khan: Printed by Syed Ahmed Shah at Mahmud Printing Press, Industrial Colony, Gulberg, Lahore.