The Emperor Who Never Was
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56. For a reconstructed map of Agra’s waterfront mansions in relation to the fort and Mumtaz Mahal’s mausoleum, see Ebba Koch, Complete Taj Mahal, 30–31.
57. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 82.
58. Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhas, 148.
59. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 97.
60. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 1: 453–454.
61. Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 229–231.
62. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 96.
63. Lahori, Padshah-nama, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 1005025.v (fol. 120b) and RCIN 1005025.w (fol. 121a).
64. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 97.
65. Francisco Pelsaert, Remonstrantie, 248; translation, 3; Joannes De Laet, De imperio Magni Mogolis (Leiden: Elzeviriania, 1631), 43–44; translated as The Empire of the Great Mogol, trans. J. S. Hoyland (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons, 1928), 39–40n51.
66. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 98.
67. Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhas, 146.
68. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 98–99.
69. Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhas, 146
70. Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhas, 147.
71. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 100.
72. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 114.
73. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 144.
74. This description is drawn from the illustration of the event in Lahori, Padshah-nama, Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, MS 1367, fol.134a; 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), plate 29.
75. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 146–147.
76. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 148.
77. Cited in note 74 above.
78. Ascribed to Hamid-ud-Din Khan (fl. 1660), Ahkam-i Alamgiri, ed. Jadunath Sarkar, 2nd ed. (Calcutta: Sarkar and Sons, 1926), 1–2; translated as Anecdotes of Aurangzib, trans. Jadunath Sarkar (Calcutta: Sarkar and Sons, 1912), 23–24.
79. “Az an rakhna k-az naiza shud dar sarash / birun raft masti kih bud dar sarash,” Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 152.
80. “Chu nabuwad pasandida-yi purdilan / kih girad yaki ra do tan dar miyan // zi ruy-i muruwwat azu dast dasht / ba chang ham awurd, khweshish guzasht // ba taklif-i fitrat daleri namud / ba sinni kih taklif bar way nabud,” Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 152–153.
81. Alexander Dow (d. 1779), History of Hindostan, 3 vols., 3rd ed. (London: John Murray, 1792), 3: 158–159.
82. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 299b.
83. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 302a.
84. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 3.
85. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 9.
86. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 2: 10.
87. Dara Shukoh, Sakinat-ul-auliya, ed. Tara Chand and Muhammad Riza Jalali-Naini (Tehran: Muassasa-i Matbuati-i Ilmi, 1965), 48.
88. This is mentioned in a biographical note on the saint and not the main chronology of the court events, Lahori, Badshah-nama, 1: 329–331.
89. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 49.
90. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 1: 330.
91. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 1: 331.
92. “Ham khuda mi khwahi ham dunya-i dun / in khiyal ast o muhal ast o junun,” Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 50.
93. Lahori, Badshah-nama, 1: 65, 334.
94. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fols. 333b–334a.
95. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 51–52.
96. “An Shah Jahan o ma do kas shah [o] gada / yak roz nishastim bar do takht-i huda // u bar takht-i shah jahani binishast / ma bar takht-i marifat-i zat-i khuda,” Tawakkul Beg Kulabi, Nuskha-yi ahwal-i shahi, British Library, MS Or. 3203, fol. 12a.
97. “Panja dar panja-yi khuda daram / man chih parway-i Mustafa daram,” Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 29a. This is also cited in Fatima Zehra Bilgrami, “A Controversial Verse of Mulla Shah Badakhshi (a Mahdar in Shahjahan’s Court),” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 34.1 (1986): 26–32, 27. The author also draws on Tawakkul Beg’s Nuskha in her book reconstructing the details of the various Qadiri banches in early modern India. See Fatima Zehra Bilgrami, History of the Qadiri Order in India: 16th-18th Century (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 2005).
98. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 29a.
99. Bakhtawar Khan, Mirat-ul-alam, 2: 442.
100. Rafat Mashood Bilgrami, Religious and Quasi-religious Departments of the Mughal Period, 1556–1707 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1984), 48.
101. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 30b.
102. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 31a.
4. Discipleship, 1634–1642
1. Muhammad Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, ed. Muhammad Yunus Jaffery (Delhi: Rayzani-i Farhangi-i Jumhuri-i Islami-i Iran, 2009), 148.
2. Mirza Amin Qazwini, Padshah-nama, British Library, MS Or. 173, fols. 310b–311a.
3. “Saba dar damanash zan mi khiramad / kih natawanad ba balayash baramad … dar in rah murgh natawanad paridan / ba miqraz-i par in rah ra buridan,” cited in Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 311a.
4. For the place of Kashmir in the Indo-Persian literary imagery, see Sunil Sharma, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), esp. 125–166, and Anubhuti Maurya, “Of Tulips and Daffodils: Kashmir Jannat Nazir as a Political Landscape in the Mughal Empire,” Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 15 (2017): 37–44.
5. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 309b.
6. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 314b.
7. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 316a.
8. Tawakkul Beg Kulabi, Nuskha-i ahwal-i shahi, British Library, MS Or. 3203, fol. 31a.
9. For the religious and intellectual world of Mubad Shah’s teacher Azar Kaiwan, see Daniel Sheffield “The Language of Paradise in Safavid Iran: Speech and Cosmology in the Thought of Āẕar Kayvān and His Followers.” In Alireza Korangy and Daniel Sheffield (eds.) There’s No Tapping around Philology, (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), 161–183.
10.Dabistan-i mazahib, ed. Rahim Raza-zada Malik, 2 vols. (Tehran: Kitabkhana-i Tahuri, 1983), 1: 155. Here the Dabistan notes that Banwali travelled to Kashmir in 1044 AH (1634 / 5). For further details on the Dabistan and debates surrounding its authorship, see M. Athar Ali, “Pursuing an Elusive Seeker of Universal Truth: The Identity and Environment of the Author of the Dabistān-i Mazāhib,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 9.3 (1999): 365–373; Aditya Behl, “Pages from the Book of Religions: Comparing Self and Other in Mughal India,” in Notes from a Mandala: Essays in Honor of Wendy Doniger, ed. Laurie Patton and David Haberman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010), 113–148. A discussion of the complex codicological tradition of the Dabistan is included in Irfan Habib, “A Fragmentary Exploration of an Indian Text on Religion and Sects: Notes on the Earlier Version of the Dabistan-i Mazahib,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 61.1 (2000 / 1): 474–491.
11. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 64b–65a. For more on Banwalidas, see Supriya Gandhi, “The Persian Writings on Vedānta attributed to Banwālīdās Walī” (forthcoming).
12. Dara Shukoh, Sakinat-ul-auliya, ed. Tara Chand and Muhammad Reza Jalali-Naini (Tehran: Muassasa-i Matbuati-i Ilmi, 1965), 54.
13. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 55; and Abd-ul-Hamid Lahori (d. 1654), Badshah-nama, eds. Maulvi Kabir-ud-Din Ahmad, Maulvi Abd-ur-Rahmin, and W. Nassau Lees, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1867–1872), 1: 329.
14. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 54.
15. On the canonical tradition of cleansing the Prophet’s heart as part of the apocalyptic miraj-cycle, see Frederick Colby, Narrating Muḥammad’s Night Journey, Tracing the Development of the Ibn ʿAbbās Ascension Discourse (New York: State University of New York Press, 2008), 58 n. 28, 197; see also Brannon Wheeler, Moses in the Quran and Islamic Exegesis (London: Routledge, 2002), 119, 181–182, notes 1, 5.
16. For a range of early exegetical opinions concerning the first revelations to the Prophet on Lailat-ul-Qadr, see, Abu Jafar Tabari, Jami-ul-bayan an tawil-il-Quran, ed. Abdullah Turki, 26 v
ols. (Cairo: Dar Hijr, 2001), 24:542–544, Quran 97:1.
17. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 55.
18. Qazwini, Padshah-nama, fol. 317b.
19. Sunil Sharma kindly shared with me his unpublished translation of the Sahibiya. All translations are my own, unless otherwise stated. See Jahanara, “Risala-i Sahibiya,” ed. (with Urdu translation) Muhammad Aslam, Journal of Research Society of Pakistan 16 (1979): 78–110.
20. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 380.
21. On Jahangir’s throne, see Catherine Asher, Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 101–102.
22. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 379–380.
23. “Zihi farkhunda takht-i padshahi / kih shud saman ba tayid-i ilahi / falak rozi kih mikardash mukammal / zar-i khurshid ra bigudakht awwal,” Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 380. Also quoted in Hadi Hasan, Mughal Poetry, 58. I have adapted Hasan’s translation.
24. See the introduction to the translation of Mirza Muhammad Tahir Inayat Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan. trans. A.R. Fuller, ed. W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), xvii–xix.
25. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 396–397.
26. Lahori, Padshah-nama, 1: 121–122. For a description of the temple, see Heidi Pauwels, “A Tale of Two Temples: Mathura’s Kesavadeva and Orchha’s Caturbhujadeva,” South Asian History and Culture 2.2 (2011): 278–299, esp. 282–284.
27. Asher, Architecture, 164.
28. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 429.
29. Tabatabai, Shahjahan-nama, 431.
30. Sayyid Akbarali Ibrahimali Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2 vol. (New Delhi: Manohar, 1989–1995), 2: 56.
31. Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 57.
32. Mirza Muhammad Tahir Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhas-i Shahjahan-nama, ed. Jamil-ur-Rahman (Delhi: Rayzani-i Farhangi-i Jumhuri-i Islami-i Iran, 2009), 280–281.
33. Jigar Mohammed, “Mughals and the Jammu Hill States (1556–1707),” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 64 (2003): 450–465, 454. Jigar Mohammad erroneously dates Aurangzeb’s marriage to 1644. It has to have occurred prior to 1639, as his son with Nawab Bai, Muhammad Sultan, was born then.
34. Lahori, Padshah-nama, 2: 101.
35. Dara Shukoh, Safinat al-auliya, lithograph (Lucknow: Nawal Kishore, 1872), 216.
36. My discussion of the books that Jahanara read is based on Jahanara’s Munis-ul-arwah, an edition of which is included in Qamar Jahan Begam, Princess Jahān Ārā Begam: Her Life and Works (Karachi: S. M. Hamid Ali, 1991), 2–93.
37. For example, see Yedda Godard, “Un Album de portraits des princes timurides de l’Inde,” Athar-e Iran 2 (1937): 179–281, fig. 19. The image, now located in the Gulistan Palace of Tehran, was painted by Govardhan. It features a princess and attendants studying with a bearded religious scholar. It is part of an album compiled by the Iranian ruler Nasir-ud-Din Shah from miniatures brought by Nadir Shah after his sack of Delhi in 1739.
38. Jahan Begam, Princess, 5. For Huri Khanam as Jahanara’s “nurse” and her powerful status at the court, see the description in The English Factories in India, ed. William Foster, 13 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906–1927), 10: 74–3, letter to Surat from William Jesson, English factor in Agra, December 4, 1654.
39. Jahanara, Sahibiya, 98.
40. Jahanara, Sahibiya, 97–98. This quoted excerpt draws on Sunil Sharma’s unpublished translation of the text.
41. For an examination of the omissions, with regard to Dara Shukoh’s treatment of Qadiris, see Bruce Lawrence, “Biography and the Seventeenth Century Qadiriyya of North India,” in Islam and Indian Regions, eds. Anna Dallapiccola and Stephanie Zingal-Avé Lallemant (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993), 399–414.
42. Dara Shukoh, Safina, 12–13.
43. The title page has “qabalahu Muhammad Dara Shukoh” and the manuscript contains glosses in his hand. Dara Shukoh, Safinat-ul-auliya, Khuda Bakhsh Library, Patna, MS HL 200, fol. 1a.
44. Jahanara, Munis-ul-arwah, British Library, Or. 5637, fols. 122b–123a.
45. Lahori, Padshah-nama, 1: 10.
46. See, for instance, Stephen Blake, Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony, and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal and Ottoman Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 131.
47. Ebba Koch, “The Hierarchical Principles of Shah-Jahani Painting,” in The King of the World. The Padshahnama: An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, ed. Milo Cleveland Beach and Ebba Koch (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 130–142, 132.
48. Jahanara, Sahibiya, 23. I have adapted Sunil Sharma’s unpublished translation here.
49. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 38a–38b. Lahori corroborates the fact of their meeting in Padshah-nama, 2: 333.
50. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 39a–39b.
51. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fol. 39b.
52. Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 39b–40a. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 5. Dara mentions a special spiritual experience on the night of Dhu-l-Hijja 12 (April 4).
53. Jahanara, Sahibiya, 101; Tawakkul Beg, Nuskha, fols. 41b–42a. Tawakkul Beg also refers to Jahanara’s composition of the Sahibiya here. While some have doubted the Sahibiya’s authenticity, this corroborates Jahanara’s authorship.
54. Album of Mughal portraits housed in Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, RCIN 1005038.bb (fol. 54a). There is also a portrait of a standing Mulla Shah in the Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet, MA 1651.
55. For a discussion of this particular portrait and a different interpretation of Jahanara’s visual engagement with Mulla Shah’s painted image, see Afshan Bokhari, “Masculine Modes of Female Subjectivity: The Case of Jahanara Begam,” in Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia, ed. Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 166–202, 182–187.
56. Often, in paintings with both Mulla Shah and Miyan Mir, it is Miyan Mir, the older pir of the former, who uses the yogapatta or ascetic’s sash.
57. Jahanara, Sahibiya, 103.
58. Jahanara, Sahibiya, 106–107. For the painting, see British Museum, 1949,0212,0.5. The tree here resembles a plane tree, commonly featured in Mughal paintings, rather than a mulberry tree.
59. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 167–168.
60. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 5.
61.“Shah Jahan-i alam-i tan nist shahi / Shah-i Jahanast ku shuda shah jahan-i dil / Sahibqiran-i awwal o sani qarin-i chist / Dara Shukoh-i ma shuda sahibqiran-i dil,” Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 179–180.
62. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 177.
63. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 178.
64. Quoted in Bikrama Jit Hasrat, Dārā Shikūh: Life and Works (Calcutta: Visvabharati, 1953), 91.
65. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 190.
66. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 186.
67. Jahanara, Sahibiya, 109. The date is Ramazan 27, 1051 (December 30, 1641).
68. “Baz chun jan o dilam betab hast / baz chun chashman-i man bekhwab hast // ishq-i Panjabam namuda be qarar / zankih naqsh-i dost dar Panjab hast // chun ba pa dakhil shawam dar shahr-i u / sakhtan az sar qadam zih adab hast // Kaaba-i man jannat-i Lahaur dan / sajda-i man suy-i an mihrab hast // ta kunam anja tawaf-i pir-i khwesh / jan-i be aram chun simab hast // Qadiri ra Kaaba Darapur shud / k-andar an bisyar fath-ul-bab hast,” Dara Shukoh, Diwan, ed. Ahmad Nabi Khan (Lahore: Research Society of Pakistan, 1969), 71–72, §41. A note by the editor states that according to one manuscript Darapur is glossed as the place in which Miyan Mir’s tomb was located.
69. “Chun khuda o sahib-i man pir hast / Kaaba-i man hazrat-i Kashmir hast / har kih Shah ra did Kaaba ra na just / dar nigah-i ruyash in tasir hast / daman-i Shah ra bigir ai Kaaba ro / Kaaba ra pas chun tu daman gir hast,” Dara Shukoh, Divan, 67. The word khuda, which in classical Persian literally means “lord,” is also often used as an epithet for God.
70. Lahori, Padshah-nama, 1: 291.
71. Quran 8: 17. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 185–186.
72. Jalal-ud-Din Suyuti (d. 1505) and Ja
lal-ud-Din Mahalli (d. 1459), Tafsir-ul-Jalalain, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dar-ul-Khair, 2002),179. For more, see Tabari, Jami, 11:82–87.
73. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 193.
74. Lahori, Padshah-nama, 292–295.
75. Lahori, Padshah-nama, 297.
76. Dara Shukoh, Sakina, 185–186.
77. Roger Savory, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 231.