Aurangzeb, still inexperienced, did not have a significant role in the expedition. He arrived after the imperial army had already driven Jajhar Singh and Bikramajit out of the Chauragadh fortress. The raja and his son were eventually murdered by Gond tribesmen in the jungle where they had fled. Court chroniclers recounted with gusto the cruelties that Jajhar Singh and his men inflicted on their womenfolk, killing or wounding them or forcing them to commit suicide lest they be captured by the enemy. As a price for their father’s sedition, Jajhar Singh’s male descendants were forced to renounce their faith and to convert, as were the surviving women in the household.
When Shah Jahan was on his way toward the city of Orchha with Aurangzeb, he ordered his army to destroy the grand Chaturbhuj temple built by Bir Singh Bundela, adjacent to the royal palace.26 The destruction did not claim the entire edifice.27 But through desecrating the temple, Shah Jahan stamped out the most important symbol of the Bundela ruler’s sovereignty. It was turned into a mosque. The emperor’s men also recovered the considerable wealth that Jajhar Singh had stashed away.
Mughal chroniclers interrupt their account of the Orchha campaign with interludes featuring descriptions of the area’s natural beauty. In his numerous missives to his father, Aurangzeb described the delights of the Bundelkhand landscape—its rivers, lakes, and little pools; its gardens, meadows, mountain peaks, and plains; and the abundant wildlife available for hunting.28 The emperor accompanied by his other children took a detour to enjoy these sights. It is telling that this scenic terrain is likened to Kashmir, even though the lush foliage and climate could not be more different. The imperial party spent four days at a magnificent waterfall near Dhum Ghat.29 This episode of repose offers a vivid example of the ways in which, for Mughal royals, hunting and sightseeing, as well as the memorialization of these acts in prose or poetry, served to mark their possession of conquered territories.
When not at war, Shah Jahan often took care to ensure that non-Muslims could go about their daily business without obstruction. Only recently, in December 1634, had he issued a decree allowing the sounding of a gong in the Madan Mohan temple at Vrindavan for the sake of “divine worship.”30 Surviving records attest that he also protected the interests of Shantidas Sahu, an influential Jain purveyor of jewels to the court. In August 1635, he sent a decree to the officers of Ahmedabad, instructing them to ensure that nobody interfered with Shantidas’s shops, gardens, or mansions. Like many other decrees of Shah Jahan, it carries Dara Shukoh’s seal at the back, which certifies that a copy was sent to Afzal Khan, an Iranian nobleman who had been close to the emperor since Shah Jahan was a prince.31 This exemplifies how Dara Shukoh was involved with the minutiae of governance, albeit from his imperial perch.
Soon after his first Deccan expedition, Aurangzeb started coming more and more into his own. Later that year, in July 1636, Shah Jahan appointed him governor of the Deccan. As his father had done years earlier, Aurangzeb would hone his administrative and military skills dealing with the empire’s turbulent southern frontier. The next summer, in May 1637, Aurangzeb was granted leave to come to the court in Agra, as his marriage had been finally arranged. The bride, named Dilras Bano, was actually Shuja’s wife’s niece. Dilras Bano’s father, Shahnawaz Khan, was the son of Mirza Rustam Safavi, whose daughter Shuja had wed. The festivities followed the pattern of Dara Shukoh’s and Shuja’s marriages, but they were significantly smaller in scale and grandeur. Following custom, the wedding began with the henna ceremony in the imperial bathhouse and ended with Aurangzeb receiving his father in his own residence. Since Jahanara had released considerable monies from her own funds for her two other brothers’ weddings, Shah Jahan contributed ten lakhs for this occasion.32
A year and a half after his first marriage, Aurangzeb married again. He’d already had a child with Dilras Bano, a daughter born in February 1638 called Zeb-un-Nisa, the “ornament among women.” But this time, Aurangzeb wed a Rajput princess, the daughter of the raja of Rajouri, a hill-state in present-day Jammu. His bride, later known as Nawab Bai, belonged to the Jarral clan of Rajputs, who were converts to Islam, but preserved their Rajput identity. There were pragmatic reasons for this union. After all, Shah Jahan, too, had sealed multiple marriage contracts to forge political alliances. There had been no Mughal emperor since Akbar, who had not married a Rajput princess, though Aurangzeb’s siblings had not yet done so. Most of the time, these marriages took place just as a Rajput ruler was being inducted into Mughal imperial service. But in this case, although there was no ongoing campaign in Rajauri, it was to prove an expedient match. Rajauri was located in a strategic area, which Mughal emperors invariably passed through en route to Kashmir. The union with Nawab Bai soon produced a son, Muhammad Sultan, born at the end of 1639.33
Meanwhile, sorrow once again struck Dara Shukoh and Nadira. In July 1638, Nadira had given birth to another son, who was named Mihr Shukoh, the “sun’s splendor.” Three-year-old Sulaiman Shukoh now had a brother. A month later, the four of them set off with the emperor on an extended trip that would eventually take them to Kashmir. Not even two days into the journey, the baby died.34 After the death of Dara’s firstborn, the prince had plunged into a severe illness. This time we do not hear how Dara, let alone Nadira, dealt with the loss. But we do know that around this period, Dara immersed himself in the study of practical philosophy and mysticism.
The prince, now in his mid-twenties, had not yet returned to meet the Qadiri Sufis of Miyan Mir’s lineage. But he had not forgotten them all this while. Though he did not now have a living teacher, he made sure that throughout his peregrinations and royal duties he continued to pursue his own religious studies. He had been perusing the biographies of Sufi mystics in Persian compendiums called tazkiras, which assemble narrative accounts of these saints and arrange them either chronologically or according to their orders and lineages. It occurred to Dara that he, too, might compile his own book of saints’ lives. He may have shared this idea with his sister, Jahanara. Or perhaps it was her suggestion that he write a tazkira. Or maybe her own reading and writing planted the seed of scholarship in his mind, for she, too, was working on a book.
In preparation, both brother and sister immersed themselves in Sufi literature, reading widely from what had by then been established as a Sufi canon. Dara read from such classics as the esoteric Quran commentary by the Sufi Sulami of Nishapur; the Kashf-ul-mahjub (The Unveiling of the Concealed), a biographical manual on Sufism by Hujwiri, a great mystic from Ghazni, whose shrine in Lahore still attracts throngs of devotees; the tazkira of saints by the renowned Iranian poet and biographer Farid-ud-Din Attar; a range of works by Ghazali, the influential Iranian Sufi, theologian, and jurist; and the Nafahat-ul-uns (Breaths of Intimacy), a sprawling tazkira by Jami, who was an enormously prolific poet and scholar based in Herat. The prince was not an uncritical reader; in fact, he noted gaps and chronological inconsistencies in some of the saints’ biographies that he read and vowed to improve on these in his own compilation.35
Jahanara mentions that her brother gave her a copy of the Nafahat-ul-uns at a time when she was faced with a temporary parting from him and in need of succor. She also indicates that she read the Akhbar-ul-akhyar by Abd-ul-Haqq, the illustrious Qadiri hadith scholar who had established his own educational complex in Delhi. Perhaps she obtained from the imperial library the very copy that the author had presented to her grandfather, Jahangir, when she was very young. Among other works, she read Abu-l-Fazl’s Akbar-nama, which includes short notices on the empire’s saints. She also closely followed her brother’s ongoing writings and must have shared his library.36
Elite Mughal women were no strangers to education. There are court paintings of the period featuring girls or young women studying with a male teacher.37 The princess would have received a solid education in Persian and Arabic from her governesses, who, in her adulthood, now assisted her in her administrative duties. They included the aforementioned Huri Khanam, her childhood nurse, and Sati-un-Ni
sa Begam.38 Jahanara was thus fully equipped to embark on these intellectual and spiritual explorations.
Though Dara Shukoh does not tell us about the actual process of reading and writing, we can glean some clues from Jahanara’s autobiography. The brother and sister composed their respective volumes during a time of intense movement and travel—from Agra, to the city of Shahjahanabad that was being planned north of Delhi, to Lahore, to Kabul, then back to Lahore. Jahanara started her readings of saints’ lives in earnest on her way to Kabul from Lahore, but Dara had been on this path for a while. Their libraries would have accompanied them, and they must have picked up new books along the way and had scribes create new copies of especially rare or valuable works. Dara regularly provided his sister with books, she tells us. While they rested between journeys in their palatial tented complexes, they read, meditated, wrote, and discussed. Jahanara suggests that she might even have browsed through books on saints’ lives while traveling in her palanquin: “I kept busy with divine remembrance, rosary-telling, and reading the lives of shaikhs and thus passed the stations on the way to Kabul,” she writes.39
But time and again, the siblings’ other responsibilities punctuated their spiritual and intellectual labors. Both Dara Shukoh and Jahanara had to serve and assist their father and prepare for the numerous ceremonial occasions that court life entailed. Dara Shukoh was not away in the field like Shuja and Aurangzeb were, but he came very close to setting forth on his first military expedition.
Qandahar, always a trouble spot in Mughal-Safavid relations, had suddenly flipped back into Mughal hands. In March 1638, Ali Mardan Khan, the Persian commander who had fallen out with the reigning emperor of Iran, Shah Safi, gave Qandahar over to Shah Jahan and defected to the Mughals. Shah Jahan was jubilant but justifiably concerned that Shah Safi would launch an attack to retrieve the garrison town. He sent Shuja to Kabul with an army. The prince waited there, and when no attack seemed forthcoming, was recalled back to court. Then, in early 1639, intelligence reports intimated that Shah Safi was planning an invasion. This time, it was Dara Shukoh’s turn to be dispatched to Kabul. The emperor would join him later. If need be, Dara would himself lead the army to Qandahar.
Jahanara, who remained with her father, was consoled by her brother’s regular letters. While he marched northwest, he met Sufis, including Shaikh Daulat Gujrati and a reclusive young ascetic, Hajji Abdullah. As she followed in his path, she, too, met these same holy figures. When she reunited with Dara in Kabul, they continued their conversations about books and shaikhs. She sensed her heart growing cold to the world and its seemingly useless activities. Then she began to feel increasingly unwell: “This was the time of my youth but I saw the strength of my limbs decline day by day and was often in pain. I knew that my outward strength was diminishing hour by hour.” Jahanara drew a modicum of comfort from a saying of the Prophet that enjoined, “Die before dying.” This she understood as an injunction to bind the heart more firmly to the divine essence than to finite existence.40
To Jahanara’s great relief, the Qandahar expedition was called off. A famine in Kabul meant that there would not be enough food for the troops. The imperial family turned back and headed for Lahore. Dara and his sister continued to read, talk, and write, each putting together an impressive work requiring considerable research.
In a remarkable coincidence, Dara Shukoh and Jahanara completed their books on the same day. The siblings both mention the same date for the composition of their works: the twenty-seventh of Ramazan, 1049, which corresponds to the twenty-first of January 1640. By then they were in Lahore with their father and would all soon head to Kashmir after the Eid festivities. The twenty-seventh of Ramazan, we recall, was the Night of Power and Destiny, a date charged with religious significance. It would be hard to find a more auspicious day to finish a book. This striking concurrence further suggests the close alignment between the siblings’ spiritual quests.
The scope of Jahanara’s and Dara’s works differed, however. The princess called hers Munis-ul-arwah (Confidant of Souls) after, she says, a book by Muin-ud-Din Chishti with a similar title. This is a shorter work than Dara’s and it focuses on Chishti saints alone. Jahanara first gives a fairly lengthy biography of Muin-ud-Din Chishti and then provides brief sketches of five other saints from his order. She frequently quotes sayings and conversations attributed to these Sufi masters. At this point, unlike Dara, she did not have any affiliation with the Qadiris. Her piety was directed toward the Chishti order alone.
Dara Shukoh entitled his book Safinat-ul-auliya (The Ship of Saints). Literally, the word safina means a ship, but it came also to signify an anthology, often of poetry, for its all-encompassing size, and his title evokes both senses of the word. With over four hundred biographical notices of saints, it has a wider sweep than his sister’s book. Like all such tazkiras, the choices that the prince made about whom to incorporate and how to label particular figures reveal that the Safinat-ul-auliya is not a merely neutral spread of information. Dara’s classification includes four major Sufi orders: the Qadiris, Chishtis, Kubrawis, and Suhrawardis. Dara also has a larger miscellaneous category for those who cannot be categorized by a single order. Further, he lists only three Indian Qadiri saints, including Miyan Mir, in his section on Qadiris, placing other Indian initiates of the order in the miscellaneous section or ignoring them altogether. The prince also entirely leaves out the more somber Naqshbandis from his collection.41
At the end of his book, Dara appends biographies of women mystics, beginning with those from the Prophet’s own family and ending with Bibi Jamal Khatun, Miyan Mir’s sister. This was also relatively standard in tazkiras, but in light of Dara’s affinity with his sister, this may have had a special resonance, showing that women, too, could attain this special spiritual state.
Dara Shukoh introduces himself in the Safinat-ul-auliya as “Muhammad Dara Shukoh, Hanafi, Qadiri.” Hanafi, because he identified as a Sunni rather than a Shia Muslim, and most Sunnis in the subcontinent followed the legal school of the eighth-century jurist Abu Hanifa. Qadiri, because he had come to think of himself as a Sufi in the Qadiri lineage of Miyan Mir. Throughout the work, the prince refers to himself in the third person as “this faqir,” literally meaning “a poor person,” but also denoting a Sufi dervish. Though this kind of self-deprecation was common in Persian prose writing, it was by no means necessary for a prince and certainly reflects his personal choice. The prince writes explicitly in the introduction that he considers himself to be one of the group (taifa) of Sufis.42
It is very rare indeed to find a copy of one of Dara’s books from his lifetime, and rarer still to find one actually written in his own handwriting. The Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna has what looks like a very early manuscript of the Safinat-ul-auliya, with the prince’s own annotations and emendations.43 The British Library in London also holds an autograph copy of Munis-ul-arwah, in Jahanara’s distinctive, large hand, each page bordered with stylized flowers rendered in gold.44 Only a handful of manuscripts survive of the Munis-ul-arwah, but there are countless copies of the Safinat-ul-auliya in Persian collections all over the world. This indicates that Dara’s book later circulated far more widely than his sister’s. At the time of writing, though, the siblings’ main audience seems to have been each other.
While Shah Jahan’s eldest two children were absorbed in composing their books, the emperor himself had been engaged in shaping his own kind of literary project by proxy, through his historians. Around the year 1638, he dismissed Qazwini. The chronicler had just completed a mammoth account of the first ten years of Shah Jahan’s reign. Rumors floated of the superior literary skills of another scholar, Abd-ul-Hamid Lahori, who had been leading a relatively anonymous life in Patna when he was summoned to Shah Jahan’s court. Lahori recalls that the emperor was looking for someone who could emulate the Akbar-nama, which Abu-l-Fazl composed for Shah Jahan’s grandfather Akbar. He also cites the Akbar-nama’s manner of “stringing together heart-pleasing expres
sions” and the “vividness and freshness” with which it was “embroidered.”45
It appears, though, that the emperor was looking for more than a skilled wordsmith. Instead of having Lahori pick up from where Qazwini left off, he ordered the scholar to rewrite the first ten years. Moreover, Shah Jahan had recently changed the calendar system used by his court. Qazwini’s history relied on the “divine era” solar calendar instituted by Akbar, a system that began at Nauroz, the spring equinox, and had 365 days in the year. This time, Shah Jahan had Lahori use the Islamic hijri calendar, which was lunar and had approximately ten fewer days in each year. The emperor had ordered work on its calculations some years earlier.
What motivated the emperor to make this change? Historians have tended to attribute the new calendar to Shah Jahan’s growing religious conservatism.46 The other changes he enjoined upon Lahori also bolster this view. For instance, Lahori expunges key details in Qazwini’s account of the care with which the emperor oversaw the work of his court’s visual artists. They still continued to produce magnificent paintings, though.47 Was Shah Jahan trying to appease the ulama? But this would be too simplistic an explanation. It is hard to gauge precisely the extent of the religious scholars’ influence and the nature of their inclinations. We cannot rule out that Shah Jahan, ever in close communication with his eldest son and daughter, was undergoing his own parallel form of pious self-fashioning, just as they were, in a process that also took the form of engaging with Sufi authorities.
On the eighth of February 1640, shortly after completing their books, Dara and Jahanara left Lahore for Kashmir. Their official role there was to accompany the emperor, but they also intended to visit Miyan Mir’s successor, Mulla Shah, hoping that he might impart to them some further knowledge. Jahanara, for her part, had of late been troubled by thoughts about her mortality. A spiritual teacher, she thought, would help: “My blessed life, every breath of which is precious and dear, the passing of which cannot be recovered, was wasted in nothingness and fruitlessness. My age was twenty-seven. Perforce, when I turned my attention to the real matter, that is reaching God, I desired to grasp the holy hem of a perfect spiritual master …”48 Her brother appears to have had similar aims.
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