[3] He assumed the throne with the aid of the British East India Company, outmanoeuvring his younger brother Saadat Ali who led a failed mutiny in the army.

[4] The other challenge to Asaf's rule was his mother Umat-ul-Zohra (better known as Bahu Begum), who had amassed considerable control over the treasury and her own jagirs and private armed forces.

In the aftermath of Saadat's revolt, Asaf sought to restructure the government, particularly by appointing nobles favourable to his cause and British officers to his military.

The Asafi Imambara is a famed vaulted structure surrounded by beautiful gardens, which the Nawab started as a charitable project to generate employment during the famine of 1784.

It is said that Nawab Asaf employed over 20,000 people for the project (including commoners and noblemen), which was neither a masjid nor a mausoleum (contrary to the popular contemporary norms of buildings).

On the night of every fourth day, the noble and upper-class people were employed in secret to demolish the structure built, an effort for which they received payment.

The Rumi Darwaza, which stands sixty feet tall,[7] modeled (1784) after the Sublime Porte (Bab-iHümayun) in Istanbul, is one of the most important examples of the exchange between the two cultures.