So it was at the age of twenty-six that Shah Alam, the eldest son of Alamgir II, suddenly found himself freed from the salatin ‘cage’ and appointed the heir apparent of the crumbling Empire. He was given the titles Ali Gauhar and Shah Alam, Exalted of Lineage, Lord of the World, and forced to take an interest in politics as well as his first and most personal passion of poetics.
