Fakir Azizuddin
Physician, foreign minister and confidant of Ranjit Singh, a Muslim who handled relations with the British and the Afghans.
Fakir Azizuddin was born in 1780 in Lahore, the son of a physician of the Bukhari Syed family. He became Ranjit Singh's personal physician, then his trusted adviser and his foreign minister.
He spoke and wrote Persian, Arabic and Punjabi and handled the Maharaja's relations with the British, the Afghans and the hill states. He negotiated the Treaty of Amritsar of 1809 and met the Governor-General Lord Bentinck at Ropar in 1831. Asked by Lord Auckland which of the Maharaja's eyes was missing, he famously replied that the splendour of his face was such that he had never looked closely enough to know.
His brothers Imamuddin and Nuruddin also held high office. He served the Maharaja's successors and died in 1845, a Muslim at the heart of a Sikh kingdom.
Fakir Azizuddin (Fakir Syad Aziz-o-Deen)National Army Museum, London · photo Wikimedia Commons (Wikimedia Commons) ↗