High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Paigah or the Shums ul Umra family was the Premier nobility of the Hyderabad State. They were richer and had larger estates than the average Indian Maharajah, they maintained their own court, their own extraordinary palaces, and their own twelve-thousand-strong private army. Paigah was often referred to as a State within a State comprising 23 taluks, 1,273 villages and covering an area 4,134 square miles (11,000 km2) with a population of 774,411 (as per 1901 census).