Following the assassination of his father, Alamgir II in AD 1759, Shah Alam became emperor of India. In 1765 he presided over a ceremony which made Robert Clive (an army officer of the East India Company) the diwani (chancellor with permission to collect revenue) of Bengal. This ceremony inducted Clive into the Mughal hierarchy and made him the effective ruler of the highly profitable province.

For much of Shah Alam’s reign he was at the mercy of various factions. In 1788 he was blinded by his chief minister Ghulam Qadir. His reign saw great changes and by his death he was little more than a figurehead in a dominion increasingly controlled by the British. In 1803 Lord Lake took Delhi for the British. Shah Alam was given the title ‘the King of Delhi’, with a Company allowance of over £100,000 a year as well as the right to revenue from a handful of districts. Shah Alam’s authority was reduced to the Red Fort and the immediate surrounding area. However, regional leaders continued to give their allegiance to him, coins were struck and Friday prayers said in his name until his death. He was succeeded by Akbar Shah II, who was the penultimate Mughal emperor.