Empire of the Moghul: The Serpent's Tooth
Page 34
Aurangzeb’s refusal to enter an underground chamber in Dara’s new mansion for fear of being murdered was reported by a courtier. Clearly some sort of showdown occurred since the sources agree that in the aftermath of Jahanara’s accident, Aurangzeb lost his father’s favour and relations between them soured. Lahori wrote somewhat obliquely that Aurangzeb had fallen ‘under the influence of ill-advised and short-sighted companions’. More specific clues are offered in a letter from Aurangzeb to Jahanara written some years later in which he stated that ‘I knew my life was a target [for rivals]’. Plainly, the person he suspected of plotting against him was Dara, their father’s favourite and in Aurangzeb’s eyes a religious heretic. Accounts agree that Jahanara interceded on Aurangzeb’s behalf with Shah Jahan.
Chapter 12
Shah Jahan did despatch Aurangzeb to Gujarat and give the Central Asian command to the younger, less experienced Murad.
Chapter 13
When Murad failed to advance on and capture Samarkand, Shah Jahan did turn to Aurangzeb who also failed in what was the first major setback of Shah Jahan’s reign.
Chapter 14
Kandahar had been lost to the Persians in Jahangir’s reign then regained by Shah Jahan in 1638. In February 1649, the city fell to the armies of Shah Abbas II and Shah Jahan’s subsequent attempts to retake – one under the command of Dara Shukoh – all failed. Kandahar was never again in Moghul hands.
Chapter 15
At the height of battle Aurangzeb was indeed observed unfurling a mat to kneel down and pray.
Foreign travellers like François Bernier recorded rumours that Jahanara had lovers on whom Shah Jahan wrought a terrible revenge, for example ordering one to be boiled alive in a cauldron. There is, however, no evidence that Jahanara, denied the chance to marry, took lovers.
Chapter 16
Inayat Khan recorded that Shah Jahan fell seriously ill in December 1657. His three younger sons, in their distant provinces, indeed began plotting how to seize the throne. None allowed emerging proof that Shah Jahan was in fact recovering to destroy their momentum. Manucci – a supporter of Dara – later claimed that Aurangzeb ordered any letters reaching the Deccan suggesting that Shah Jahan still lived to be burned and their bearers immediately beheaded.
Chapter 17
Murad indeed ordered his forces to plunder Surat so he could raise a large army to support his bid for the throne. He also murdered his finance minister, Ali Naqi – an act that would later prove his downfall.
Dara’s son Suleiman and the Rajput general Jai Singh of Amber defeated Shah Shuja at Bahadur near Benares in February 1658, after which Shah Shuja retreated along the Ganges. Suleiman could not resist giving chase.
Aurangzeb and Murad routed the imperial Moghul forces commanded by Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar at Dharmat on 15 April 1658.
Chapter 18
Dara tried to stop Aurangzeb and Murad from getting their armies across the Chambal river but they were too quick for him and crossed using a little-known and unguarded ford.
Chapter 19
The pivotal battle of Samugarh, east of Agra, took place on 29 May 1658. Dara indeed dismounted from his elephant at a critical moment when the battle was going in his favour. Manucci, who was fighting with Dara’s forces, wrote: ‘This was as if he had quitted victory.’ The story of Khalilullah Khan’s defection is true.
Chapter 20
A distraught Shah Jahan sent orders to the Governor of Delhi to throw the imperial treasury open to Dara. In fact Dara fled Agra just in time. The next day, riding out of Agra to join Dara, Manucci found Aurangzeb’s troops blocking the road. They told Manucci that the government had already changed hands and ‘Aurangzeb was the victor’.
Malik Jiwan did owe his life to Dara but betrayed him to Aurangzeb. The story of how Dara’s wife Nadira offered a raja water to drink with which she had washed her breasts is true, though it was not Malik Jiwan but another ruler earlier in her and Dara’s flight. Nadira died of exhaustion and dysentery.
After their capture, Aurangzeb paraded Dara and Sipihr in rags on a filthy elephant through the streets of Delhi. Frenchman Bernier witnessed the ‘disgraceful procession’.
In reality, Dara was beheaded in his cell, not in public, in late August 1659. His tomb is on the platform surrounding Humayun’s tomb in Delhi.
Chapter 21
There is clear evidence that Roshanara had early allied herself with Aurangzeb and was one of his chief sources of information about what was happening at court, especially in the period of Shah Jahan’s illness.
Aurangzeb did cut off the water supply to the Agra fort.
Manucci recounts that a vengeful Aurangzeb sent Dara’s head to Shah Jahan.
Chapter 22
Aurangzeb indeed captured Murad through subterfuge and dispatched him on one of four elephants sent to the four points of the compass to hinder Murad’s supporters from following him. Murad was later executed on the charge of having murdered his finance minister, Ali Naqi.
Aurangzeb first declared himself emperor in a simple ceremony on 21 July 1658. Nearly a year later, on 5 June 1659 – a day deemed auspicious by his astrologers – he held a second and far more elaborate ceremony.
Chapter 23
The story that Shah Jahan ground up his pearls rather than surrender them to Aurangzeb is true. It is my suggestion that Shah Jahan tried to save Suleiman’s life. Whatever the case, he didn’t succeed. Aurangzeb ordered Suleiman Shukoh to be fed daily on pousta which first turned him into a zombie and eventually killed him. Aurangzeb kept Dara’s other son Sipihr in prison for many years and then married him to one of his daughters.
Shah Shuja was last heard of in the lands of the pirate king of Arakan, east of Bengal, where most believe he perished.
Chapter 24
Jahanara was her father’s companion throughout his imprisonment.
Shah Jahan never saw Aurangzeb during his imprisonment although during the first year of Shah Jahan’s incarceration father and son exchanged letters, full of reproaches on Shah Jahan’s side and pious self-justifications on Aurangzeb’s. In one letter Aurangzeb wrote, ‘I was convinced that Your Majesty loved not me’ – a clue to his long-standing sense of alienation.
The only evidence that Shah Jahan wished to build a black marble Taj Mahal as his own tomb comes from Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Tavernier who wrote that ‘Shah Jahan began to build his own tomb on the other side of the river but the war with his sons interrupted his plan.’ Shah Jahan had previously counterpointed white marble buildings with black ones. If he had wished to build his own Taj Mahal the place he would surely have chosen would have been his mahtab bagh, or moonlight garden. Archaeologists have found no foundations for such a building in the mahtab bagh yet the idea would not have been out of keeping with Shah Jahan, a man who saw art on a grand scale. Also, he loved to contrast white marble with black. This is exemplified by his building of a counterpointing black marble pavilion in the Shalimar Gardens in Srinagar in Kashmir in 1630, just before Mumtaz Mahal’s death. The Taj Mahal also contains much black marble. For example the joints between each of the white marble blocks of the four minarets are inlaid with it, the low wall around the mausoleum plinth is inlaid with the same material and the mausoleum itself has black marble in its framing and calligraphy – what better transition to a black Taj over the water? However, we shall probably never know the truth. What is clear is that he did not intend to be buried in the Taj Mahal, which he designed for Mumtaz alone. Her sarcophagus lies on the central axis of the complex, his is squashed in to one side, the only asymmetrical element in the whole design. It encroaches on the black and white tiled border surrounding Mumtaz’s tomb while lacking one of its own. Again, for more details see A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time.
Shah Jahan died in the Agra fort in the early hours of 22 January 1666. Aurangzeb did not sanction a grand state funeral but ordered his father to be laid quietly beside Mumtaz in the crypt of the Taj Mahal.
Main Ch
aracters
Shah Jahan’s close family
Mumtaz Mahal (formerly Arjumand Banu), Shah Jahan’s wife
Jahanara, eldest surviving daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz
Dara Shukoh, eldest surviving son of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz
Shah Shuja, second surviving son of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz
Roshanara, second surviving daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz
Aurangzeb, third surviving son of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz
Murad, youngest surviving son of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz
Gauharara, youngest surviving daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz
Nadira, Dara Shukoh’s wife
Suleiman, Dara Shukoh’s elder son
Sipihr, Dara Shukoh’s younger son
Jahangir, Shah Jahan’s father
Akbar, Shah Jahan’s grandfather
Humayun, Shah Jahan’s great-grandfather
Khusrau, Shah Jahan’s half-brother and Jahangir’s eldest son
Parvez, Shah Jahan’s half-brother and Jahangir’s second son
Shahriyar, Shah Jahan’s half-brother and Jahangir’s youngest son
Mehrunissa (known also as Nur Jahan and Nur Mahal), Jahangir’s last wife and aunt of Mumtaz Mahal
Asaf Khan, father of Mumtaz Mahal and brother of Mehrunissa
Jani, Khusrau’s widow
Ismail Khan, Jani’s nephew
Imperial household and members of the court
Satti al-Nisa, Mumtaz’s confidante and later Jahanara’s friend
Aslan Beg, Shah Jahan’s elderly steward
Tuhin Roy, Moghul ambassador to Shah Abbas of Persia
Ustad Ahmad, architect of the Taj Mahal
Nasreen, Jahanara’s attendant formerly in Roshanara’s employ
Ali Naqi, revenue minister of Gujarat
Shah Jahan’s chief commanders and officers
Ashok Singh, Rajput prince and friend of Shah Jahan
Nicholas Ballantyne, Englishman and former squire to the English ambassador to the Moghul court
Kamran Iqbal, commander of the Agra garrison
Ahmed Aziz, commander in the Deccan
Abdul Aziz, son of Ahmed Aziz
Zafir Abas, Ahmed Aziz’s second-in-command
Mahabat Khan, Shah Jahan’s commander-in-chief early in his reign
Malik Ali, Shah Jahan’s master of horse
Sadiq Beg, Baluchi veteran.
Rai Singh, a Rajput and one of Shah Jahan’s chief scouts
Suleiman Khan, an officer
Raja Jaswant Singh of Marwar
Khalilullah Khan, an Uzbek veteran
Raja Jai Singh of Amber
Dilir Khan, an Afghan general
Raja Ram Singh Rathor, a Rajput ruler
Others
Malik Jiwan, betrayer of Dara Shukoh and his son Sipihr
Makhdumi Khan, governor of the Agra fort and Shah Jahan’s jailor
Itibar Khan, Aurangzeb’s chief eunuch and later Shah Jahan’s jailor