lit a candle 10h ago14 years old when he took the musnad. Read about Khairpur years ago, didn't expect to see it end this way.
Their story
George Ali Murad Khan II, known in Pakistan as His Highness Mir Ali Murad Khan Talpur II, was the eighth and last ruling Mir of Khairpur, the princely state in upper Sindh that his Talpur forebears founded in 1783. He came to the throne at 14 in July 1947, weeks…
George Ali Murad Khan II, known in Pakistan as His Highness Mir Ali Murad Khan Talpur II, was the eighth and last ruling Mir of Khairpur, the princely state in upper Sindh that his Talpur forebears founded in 1783. He came to the throne at 14 in July 1947, weeks before the partition of British India, and for almost eight decades afterwards he was the last surviving ruler of any of the former princely states of the subcontinent. He died on 5 October 2026 at a private hospital in Sukkur, aged 93. His younger son, Prince Mir Mehdi Raza Talpur, confirmed the death.
He was born on 29 June 1933 in Brighton, Sussex, England, the only child of Mir Faiz Muhammad Khan II Talpur, who had become Mir of Khairpur in 1935, and his wife Dulhan Pasha Begum, a daughter of the Paigah noble Nawab Muin ud-Daula of Hyderabad. His childhood was shadowed by his father's ill health. When the boy was nine months old his father accidentally shot him; the bullet passed through his stomach and right lung and left through the back of his right shoulder, and he survived. His father was never given full ruling powers, was ordered to live outside the state and settled in Poona, while ministers ran Khairpur.
On 19 July 1947 his father abdicated, and on 24 July 1947 the 14 year old was installed on the musnad at Faiz Mahal, the Talpur court in Khairpur Mirs. Because he was a minor, a regency council of close relatives governed in his name. When Britain left India in August 1947, Khairpur briefly became independent. On 3 October 1947 the regent and chief minister, Mir Ghulam Hussain Khan Talpur, signed an instrument of accession to Pakistan on his behalf, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah accepted it on 9 October. Writer John Zubrzycki has recorded that the young prince was away on a trip to Kashmir when the document was signed. Khairpur and Bahawalpur were the first two princely states to join Pakistan, and Khairpur mattered because a large stretch of the Lahore to Karachi railway, and canals feeding southern Sindh, ran through it. That same year the photographer Margaret Bourke-White photographed the boy prince holding a sword for LIFE magazine.
He was educated at St Bonaventure's High School in Hyderabad, Sindh, and at Aitchison College in Lahore, and in 1950 he left for the United Kingdom to study at the University of Cambridge. In 1949 the Government of Khairpur Act created a 15 member legislative assembly elected by universal adult suffrage, the first such elections in the subcontinent, although real power rested with a chief minister. On 16 September 1951 Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan invested the 18 year old Mir with full ruling powers and the regency was dissolved.
His powers were steadily reduced. A supplementary instrument in 1949 handed Pakistan control of the state's armed forces, and a 1953 law, passed over his strong reservations, turned Khairpur into a province run by a centrally appointed chief minister. In May 1954 the assembly rejected a merger with Sindh, but on 10 November 1954 it voted to unite with Pakistan, and about ten days later he signed the merger agreement that ended his sovereignty. Khairpur was absorbed into the province of West Pakistan under the One Unit scheme on 14 October 1955. His family has long said the state's original agreement with Jinnah was not honoured after Jinnah's death.
He remained a leading figure in Khairpur for the rest of his life. He held the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel in the Pakistan Army, was president of the Khairpur Welfare Trust from 1955 and served as vice chairman of the Sindh Wildlife Management Board from 1986 to 1994. His most lasting work was conservation. He founded the Mehrano Wildlife Refuge near Kot Diji in 1968, a privately protected riverine forest that shelters blackbuck, hog deer, Indian gazelle and migratory birds, and he banned hunting there except of jackals and an annual cull of wild boar to protect neighbouring farms. He lived at Faiz Mahal and at Takkar Bungalow on the hill at Kot Diji, and every Muharram he hosted public majlis gatherings, keeping up the Shia religious traditions of the Talpur house.
He married first, at Sadiqgarh Palace in Bahawalpur in 1958, Sahibzadi Ghulam Saddiquah Begum, eldest daughter of Nawab Sir Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi V, the Amir of Bahawalpur; they divorced. His second wife, Aelya (Alya) Talpur, known as Begum Sahiba, was a daughter of the religious scholar Allama Rasheed Turabi. She died in Karachi on 7 February 2019. He is survived by their sons, Mir Abbas Raza Khan Talpur and Mir Mehdi Raza Khan Talpur, and their daughter, Zahra. The cause of his death has not been made public.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), 24 News HD, BBC Urdu, Dawn, The Friday Times, Daily Times, Newsline, Royal Ark (Christopher Buyers) and the sources cited on this page. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“The decision of whether to remain independent or join India or Pakistan was a burden thrust upon him at a young age.”
His son Mir Mehdi Raza Talpur, describing his father's position in 1947, to Newsline (republished by Ali Bhutto, 2017).
“There was immense pressure on the family, from the British, to join Pakistan, as they felt it would be beneficial for us.”
Mir Mehdi Raza Talpur on the 1947 accession, Newsline (2017).
“After Jinnah's death, however, things started to change. The state's status changed and it was snatched by the government in 1955.”
Mir Mehdi Raza Talpur on the end of Khairpur state, Daily Times, 22 April 2018.
“Mir Ali Murad Khan II remained the final ruler of the State of Khairpur.”
24 News HD report of his death, 5 October 2026.
Photos
1George Ali Murad Khan, the boy Mir of Khairpur, in 1947
Dec 1947 · by People Forever
Khairpur merged in '55, he outlived the state by 70 years.