White Mughals
File:White mughals pic.jpg
AuthorWilliam Dalrymple
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistorical novel
PublisherPenguin (Non-Classics)
Publication date
29 March 2002
Media typePrint (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages512 pp (Paperback edition)
ISBNISBN: 014200412X Parameter error in ((ISBNT)): invalid character


White Mughals is a 2002 history book by William Dalrymple.

Dalrymple's fifth major book is a work of social history about the warm relations that existed between the British and some Indians, in the 18th and early 19th century, when one in three British men in India was married to an Indian woman.

At the heart of the book is the story of a marriage, which saw a British dignitary East India Company resident of Hyderabad, Captain James Achilles Kirkpatrick, convert to Islam and marry a woman of royal Mughal descent Khair-un-Nissa, a Hyderabadi noblewoman. As the British resident of Hyderabad, he is shown to balance his sympathetic attitude to the Nizam of Hyderabad and his employers the East India Company.

Like ''From the Holy Mountain'', the book deals with the relationship of Christianity and Islam and emphasizes the surprisingly porous relationship between the two in pre-modern times.

The love affair between the and is central to the theme of the book. One of their children was Noor un-Nissa, Sahib Begum, later christened Kitty Kirkpatrick.

The book also deals with the interracial liaisons between English officers, such as Major-General Charles Stuart, and Indian women, and the geo-political situation of late 18th century India.