Ghazi ud-Din Khan Feroze Jung III

Feroze Jung III or Nizam Shahabuddin Muhammad Feroz Khan Siddiqi Bayafandi also known by his sobriquet Imad-ul-Mulk, was the grand vizier of the Mughal Empire.

He was the son of Ghazi ud-Din Khan Feroze Jung II and a grandson of the founder of the Asaf Jahi dynasty, Nizam-ul-Mulk, Asaf Jah I. After the death of his father in 1752, he was recommended by Nawab Safdar Jung to be appointed as Mir Bakhshi (Pay Master General) and received the titles of Amir ul-Umara (Noble of Nobles) and Imad ul-Mulk (Pillar of the Realm).

A controversial figure, Imad is well known for deposing, imprisoning and blinding Mughal emperor Ahmad Shah Bahadur, assassinating emperor Alamgir II, and torturing their family members including future emperor Shah Alam II.

He was declared to be an apostate by various Islamic scholars, including Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, and Durrani emperor Ahmad Shah Abdali.

Feroz Jung was raised under the scrutiny and austerity of his father Ghazi ud-Din, spending his days under the care of tutors and mullahs, and allowed the company of only eunuchs on Fridays. He was never allowed to mix with children of his own age or attend performances by musicians or dancing girls. He was appointed to the Mughal court by his father Feroze Jung II in 1752. The historian William Dalrymple describes the result as a "precocious intellectual achievement...undermined by unbounded ambition and profound immorality that led to his turning on all who helped him, starting with his patron Safdar Jang."

Safdar Jang, the Nawab of Awadh, and Wazir-ul-Malik-i-Hindustan (Prime Minister of Hindustan), had intervened to secure Feroz Jung's estates after the death of his father and had appointed him the imperial paymaster at the age of sixteen. The French military commander Jean Law described that Safdar Jang regarded Feroz Jung "like his own son and could scarcely have imaged that he was actually nursing a serpent at his breast."

Emperor Ahmad Shah Bahadur chose Feroz Jung to counter the powerful Safdar Jang. He formed a coalition with Hafiz Rahmat Khan Barech and Qudsia Begum, the emperor's mother to outmaneuver Safdar Jang out of the court.

According to Dalrymple, in 1753, a "civil war between the old vizier and his teenage replacement raged across the suburbs of the city for six months, from March to November, with the old and new cities of Delhi held by rival factions." Safdar Jang's Old Delhi stronghold was looted and destroyed, never to recover. According to the Mughal historian Ghulam Hussain Khan, "Old Delhi, which used to be even wealthier and populous than the new city, Shahjahanabad, was plundered and sacked so thoroughly that an infinity of people lost their consorts and children, and were totally ruined, besides numbers that were massacred." Safdar Jang would be forced to retreat to Awadh and would never recover, dying less a year later, due to the "shock and grief at his fall."