The Emperor Who Never Was

by Supriya Gandhi

  44. Shitab Khan Mirza Nathan Ala-ud-Din Isfahani (fl. 1624), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, MS Persan suppl. 252. Translated as Bahāristān-i-Ghaybī: A History of the Mughal Wars in Assam, Cooch Behar, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa during the Reigns of Jahāngīr and Shāhjahān, 2 vols., trans. Moayyidul Islam Borah and Suryya Kumar Bhuyan (Gauhati, Assam: Narayani Handiqui Historical Institute, 1936), 2: 691.

  45. Shitab Khan, Baharistan, fols. 306b–307a; translation, 2: 728.

  46. Shitab Khan, Baharistan, fol. 308b; translation, 2: 733.

  47. Shitab Khan, Baharistan, fols. 309a–309b; translation, 2: 735.

  48. Ghulam Husain Salim Zaidpuri (d. 1765), Riya#u-s-Salā%īn: A History of Bengal, trans. Abd-us-Salam (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1902), 198–199.

  49. Shitab Khan, Baharistan, fol. 319a; translation, 2: 762.

  50. Shitab Khan, Baharistan, fol. 309b; translation, 2: 735–736.

  51. Jawhar Aftabchi, Tazkirat-ul-vaqiat in Three Memoirs of Humáyun, ed. and trans. Wheeler Thackston (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2009), 127 (Persian); 111 (translation).

  52. Mirza Nathan, Baharistan, fol. 319b; translation, 2: 763.

  53. Mirza Nathan, Baharistan, fol. 320a; translation, 2: 764. Nawab Shahnawaz Khan (d. 1758), Maasir-ul-umara, ed. Maulvi Abd-ur-Rahim, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1888), 1: 811.

  54. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 469; translation, 425.

  55. Mirza Nathan, Baharistan, translation, 2: 780.

  56. Muhammad Hadi Kamwar Khan in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 479–480; translation, 434.

  57. Findly, cited in note 58, argues that this was at Nur Jahan’s instance.

  58. “Dar an asna Mahabat Khan fusun kard / hama-yi farman-i shah az dil birun kard,” Kami Shirazi, in Waqai-uz-zaman (Fath nama-i Nur Jahan Begam): A Contemporary Account of Jahangir, ed. and trans. W. H. Siddiqi (Rampur: Rampur Raza Library, 2003), 103. I have slightly adapted Siddiqi’s translation. For a diametrically opposed view, see Kroniek, 200–202, 230, 238; translation, 75–77, cf. 91, 96. The “Indian historian” at the basis of the anonymous Dutch Kroniek was a partisan of Mahabat Khan. The entire episode features in Findly, Nur Jahan, 260–274, though she does not draw upon Shirazi. Munis Faruqui offers the most extensive analysis so far of Kami Shirazi’s poem, and the poet’s own positionality in the context of the erosion of Jahangir’s power. See Munis Faruqui, “Erasure and Exaltation: The Coup of 1626 and the Crisis of Mughal Imperial Authority,” in Ebba Koch with Ali Anooshahr (eds.), Mughal Empire, 64–81.

  59. Thomas Roe, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, ed. William Foster, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1899), 1: 262; also cited in Findly, Nur Jahan, 263.

  60. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 485; translation, 438.

  61. Kami Shirazi, Waqai, 107.

  62. “Wali chun waqt nazuk bud an dam / nakard izhar shah az besh w-az kam,” Kami Shirazi, Waqai, 129.

  63. Kami Shirazi, Waqai, 137.

  64. “Pas an kih az ghazab chun sher-i ghurran / rawan shud fil-i Begam ru ba maidan,” Kami Shirazi, Waqai, 158–159. I have altered Siddiqi’s translation here.

  65. Kami Shirazi, Waqai, 153.

  66. Mutamad Khan, Iqbal-nama, 273; Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 479–480; translation, 434.

  67. Account drawn from Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 494–495; translation, 445–446. For an account using Mutamad Khan’s Ahwal, see also Nicoll, Shah Jahan, 144.

  68. Mutamad Khan, Iqbal-nama, 273–274.

  69. “Kih hasti tu sharik-i man ba shahi,” Kami Shirazi, Waqai, 211. For a fresh and in-depth study of Nur Jahan, arguing that she should be seen as Jahangir’s co-ruler in her own right see Ruby Lal, Empress:The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018).

  70. Mutamad Khan, Iqbal-nama, 273–274.

  71. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 496; translation, 447–448.

  72. Faruqi, Princes, 254.

  73. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 500; translation, 449–450.

  74. Lahauri, Badshah-nama, 1: 393.

  75. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 500; translation, 450, also Nicoll, Shah Jahan, 144.

  76. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 499; translation, 448. Cf. Kroniek, 216–217; translation, 84.

  77. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 505; translation, 453.

  78. William Foster, Early Travels in India, 1583–1619 (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), 243.

  79. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 501; translation, 450.

  80. The Arabic term given is da-uth-thalab, “the ailment of the fox,” from the Greek alopecia. Mutamad Khan, Iqbal-nama, 291–292; Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 508; translation, 455–456. For the identification with syphilis (atishak), see Shahnawaz Khan, Maasir, 1: 155.

  81. Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 509; translation, 456. See also the description of Jahangir’s death in Kroniek, 226–227; translation, 89.

  82. Mutamad Khan, Iqbal-nama, 297–298; Qazwini, Badshah-nama, British Library, MS Or. 173, fol. 113b.

  83. Qazwini, Badshah-nama, fol. 115b.

  84. The above account draws on Qazwini, Badshah-nama, fols. 116a–116b; Abd-ul-Hamid Lahori (d. 1654), Badshah-nama, ed. Maulvi Kabir-ud-Din Ahmad, Maulvi Abd-ur-Rahmin, and W. Nassau Lees, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1867–1872), 1: 74–75; Mutamed Khan, Iqbal-nama, 296–297; Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 511; translation, 458.

  85.A Descriptive List of Farmans, Manshurs, and Nishans addressed by the Imperial Mughals to the Princes of Rajasthan, ed. and trans. Nathu Ram Khadgawat (Bikaner: Directorate of Archives, Rajasthan, 1962); translation, 69, no. 63. Also, Sayyid Akbarali Ibrahimali Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Manohar, 1989–1995), 1: 137.

  86. Mutamad Khan, Iqbal-nama, 303.

  87. Mutamad Khan, Iqbal-nama, 303; also Muhammad Hadi in Jahangir, Tuzuk, 514; translation, 460.

  88. “Shudash lauh-i khatir zi andesha pak / k-az zada-yi sher shud besha pak,” Hadi Hasan quotes an excerpt from Qudsi’s unpublished Zafarnama-i Shahjahani in Mughal Poetry: Its Cultural and Historical Value (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2008), 41–42. I have altered his translation.

  89. Shahnawaz Khan, Maasir, 1: 812.

  90. Munis Faruqui’s Princes looks comprehensively at the princely institution in Mughal India, arguing that its pattern of open-ended succession was a source of strength for the empire.

  91. Shah-Jahan receives his three eldest sons and Asaf Khan during his accession ceremonies, Rajab 1, 1037 (March 7, 1628), Abd-ul-Hamid Lahori, Padshah-nama, Royal Collection Trust, Royal Library, Windsor Castle, MS 1367, f. 50b; reproduced in Milo Cleveland Beach and Ebba Koch, King of the World. The Padshahnama: An Imperial Mughal Manuscript, the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), plates 10–11.

  3. Youth, 1628–1634

  1. For a brief account of the Khan-i Khanan’s architectural legacy in Burhanpur, see George Mitchell and Mark Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 53. For Abd-ur-Rahim’s circle of patronage, see Chhotubhai Ranchhodji, ‘Abdu’r-Raḥīm Khān-i-Khānān and His Literary Circle (Ahmedabad: Gujarat University, 1966).

  2. Mughal princes generally moved into their own quarters upon reaching their early teens. See Munis Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 70.

  3. See Francisco Pelsaert, Remonstrantie, in De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over Mughal Indië, 1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979), 285; translated in Jahangir’s India, the Remonstrantie of Francisco Pelsaert, trans. W. H. Moreland and P. Geyl (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1925), 38.

  4. Mirza Amin Qazwini, Padshah-nama, British Library, MS Or. 173, fol. 175a; Abd-ul-Hamid Lahori, Badshah-nama, ed. Maulvi Kabir-ud-Din Ahmad, Maulvi Abd-ur-Rahmin, and W. Nassau Lees, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1867–1872), 1: 259.

  5. Fergus Nicoll, Shah Jahan: The Rise and Fal
l of the Mughal Emperor (London: Haus, 2009), 177.

  6. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 1: 385.

  7. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 233b. While my translation is independent, it resembles the one in Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Mughal and European Documentary Sources, ed. and trans. Wayne Begley and Ziya-ud-Din Desai (Cambridge: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989), 15.

  8. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 1: 386.

  9. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 1: 386–388.

  10. Mumtaz Mahal, Khulasa-i ahwal-i Bano Begam, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Persian 90, fol. 8b.

  11. Mumtaz Mahal, Khulasa-i ahwal, fol. 13a.

  12. Sayyid Akbarali Ibrahimali Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Manohar, 1989–1995), 2: 54.

  13. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 232b–233a.

  14. Kalim, Padshah-nama in Taj Mahal, 34.

  15. An imperial edict dated December 28, 1633, grants four properties to Jai Singh, Taj Mahal, 34,169–171, and Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 53–54.

  16. For instance, Jai Singh tried to hold up the transport to Agra of marble intended for the tomb’s construction. See the imperial edict to Raja Jai Singh dated November 14, 1632, in Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 49.

  17. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 240a. For extracts from the chronicles of Qazwini, Lahori, and Kamboh regarding the transport of Mumtaz Mahal’s body and the initial foundations of the tomb, see Taj Mahal, 41–44.

  18. See Begley and Desai’s detailed discussion of the identifiable architects working on Mumtaz Mahal’s mausoleum in Taj Mahal, xli–xlix. While Qazwini initially reported the tomb’s projected cost of twenty lakhs, Kamboh, writing at the end of Shah Jahan’s reign, provides the figure of fifty lakhs, which more accurately represents the actual cost.

  19. The most comprehensive study of the tomb is Ebba Koch and Richard André Barraud,The Complete Taj Mahal: And the Riverfront Gardens of Agra, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006).

  20. Abd-ur-Rahman Chishti, Mirat-ul-makhluqat, Aligarh, MS 21 / 343, fol. 1b.

  21. Abd-ur-Rahman Chishti, Mirat, fol. 3a.

  22. Abd-ur-Rahman Chishti, Mirat, fol. 4a.

  23. For translations of two treatises attributed to Muin-ud-Din Chishti, see Carl Ernst, “Two Versions of a Persian Text on Yoga and Cosmology,” in Sufi Meditation and Contemplation: Timeless Wisdom from Mughal India, ed. Scott Kugle (New Lebanon, NY: Omega Publications, 2012), 167–169, 181–192.

  24. Simon Digby, “Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537 A.D.): The Personality and Attitudes of a Medieval Indian Sufi,” Medieval India: A Miscellany 3 (1975): 1–66, 37.

  25. Digby, “ʿAbd al-Quddus,” 38–50.

  26. For details of Khwaja Hasan’s ties to Mirza Hakim, see Munis Faruqui, “The Forgotten Prince: Mirza Hakim and the Formation of the Mughal Empire in India,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48.4 (2005): 487–523.

  27. David Damrel, “The ‘Naqshbandi Reaction’ Reconsidered,” in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in South Asia, eds. David Gilmartin and Bruce Lawrence (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 176–198, 185. See also Arthur Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997).

  28. Digby, “ʿAbd al-Quddus,” 33, 36.

  29. Buehler, Sufi Heirs, 68.

  30. Muhammad Masum, Maktubat, lithograph (Karachi: Lala Muhammad Khan, n.d.), 170, letter 54.

  31. Muhammad Masum, Maktubat, 36, letter 11.

  32. Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A History of Sufism in India, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1978–1983), 2: 288.

  33. Abd-ur-Rahman Chishti, Mirat al-Asrar, fol. 508a. For a broader look at this work, and at Abd-ur-Rahman Chishti’s relationship with the court, see Muzaffar Alam, “The Debate Within: A Sufi Critique of Religious Law,Tasawwuf and Politics in Mughal India,” South Asian History & Culture 2 (2011): 138–59.

  34. Mirza Muhammad Tahir Inayat Khan (d. 1670), Mulakhkhas-i Shahjahan-nama, ed. Jamil-ur-Rahman (Delhi: Rayzani-i Farhangi-i Jumhuri-i Islami-i Iran, 2009), 89.

  35. Arthur Buehler, Revealed Grace: The Juristic Sufism of Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2012), 51.

  36. Rizvi, History of Sufism, 2: 288–289.

  37. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 260a.

  38. For a redaction of Umar’s letter and its use in formative Hanafi law, see Abu Yusuf (d. 798), Kitab-ul-kharaj (Beirut: Dar-ul-Marifa, 1979), 140–141. For a treatment of the so-called covenant, see A. S. Tritton, The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects (London: Cass, 1930), 5–17, 37–38. For the early Arabic accounts on Umar, see also Heribert Busse, “ʿOmar b. al-Ḫaṭṭāb in Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 5 (1984): 73–119.

  39. Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 52–53, §§ 48 and 53.

  40. The text introducing the album is printed in Dara Shukoh, “Muraqqa-i Dara Shukoh aur uska Muqaddima,” ed. Muhammad Abdullah Chaghtai, Oriental College Magazine (Lahore) 13.3 (1937): 97–103. The album is held in the British Library, Add. Or. 3129. For an inventory of the album, see Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1981), 72–81; see also Milo Beach, The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India, 1600–1660 (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1978), 77.

  41. For a description of the dispersed muraqqa album dated 1611–1612, made for Prince Khurram before his accession as Shah Jahan, see Beach, Grand Mogul, 74. It is also possible that Dara Shukoh’s siblings compiled albums that did not survive the ravages of time or have suffered neglect. An early twentieth-century source suggests that an album sponsored by Aurangzeb as a prince was housed in the collection of the Murshidabad nawabs. See Purna Chundra Majumdar, The musnud of Murshidabad (1704–1904) being a synopsis of the history of Murshidabad for the last two centuries, to which are appended notes of places and objects of interest at Murshidabad (Murshidabad: Saroday Ray, 1905), 83. As the library is currently closed to researchers, it has not been possible to verify the manuscript’s existence.

  42. Stuart Cary Welch, Emperor’s Album: Images of Mughal India (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987), 18–19.

  43. Abu-l-Fazl (d. 1602), Ain-i Akbari, ed. Heinrich Blochmann, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Calcutta Baptist Mission Press, 1872–1877), 1: 111–112; translated as The Ā’īn-i Akbarī, trans. Heinrich Blochmann, ed. Douglas Craven Phillott, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1927–1949), 1: 103, §34.

  44. Dara Shukoh, “Muraqqa,” 101.

  45. See, for example, Shah Quli Khalifa Muhrdar (d. 1558), “Shah Tahmasp Album İÜK F.1422,” in Wheeler M. Thackston, Album Prefaces and Other Documents on the History of Calligraphers and Painters (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 3.

  46. Dara Shukoh, “Muraqqa,” 102.

  47. I follow the new dating of the album advanced by John Seyller, cited in Jeremiah P. Losty, “Dating the Dara Shikoh Album: The Floral Evidence,” in The Mughal Empire from Jahangir to Shah Jahan: Art, Architecture, Politics, Law and Literature, eds. Ebba Koch and Ali Anooshahr (Mumbai: Marg Foundation, 2019), 246–87, 246n1.

  48. Losty contends that Khurram and Salim’s albums also had “relatively simple” contents. Losty, “Dara Shikoh Album,” 247.

  49. According to Falk and Archer, “the entire contents are of a serene and feminine nature,” Indian Miniatures, 73.

  50. Dara Shukoh Album, British Library, Add. Or. 3129, fol. 2a.

  51. See Jeremiah P. Losty, “The Dara Shikoh Album: A Reinterpretation,” unpublished article, available on Academia.edu, delivered at the Institute for Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, “The Mughal Empire Under Shah Jahan (1628–58): New Trends of Research, Vienna” (May 2014), 1–30, 12–17.

  52. For Chitarman, see Losty, “A Reinterpretation,” 11–12.

  53. For these interpretations, see Losty, “A Reinterpretation,” 22�
�26.

  54. Muhammad Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, ed. Muhammad Yunus Jaffery (Delhi: Rayzani-i Farhangi-i Jumhuri-i Islami-i Iran, 2009), 80.

  55. Peter Mundy (d. 1667), Travels, ed. Richard Carnac Temple, 4 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1907–1925), 2: 207–208.