Picture this, Sept. 13 -- the world's richest man, worth more than 2% of America's GDP, shuffling through his opulent palace in threadbare cotton pyjamas and a crumpled cap. This was no eccentric affectation. It was a day in the life of Mir Osman Ali Khan, the seventh and last Nizam of Hyderabad-a ruler whose contradictions were as spectacular as his wealth.

When Time magazine put him on its cover in February 1937, it wasn't merely for his headline-grabbing $2 billion fortune-greater than the combined wealth of the Rockefeller family and Andrew Carnegie. It was for the paradox he embodied: a man who could bankroll Britain's war chest with a $100 million donation yet personally mend his own clothes; who built hospitals and universities bu...