Empress
Page 19
Until the break between Nur and Shah Jahan was too obvious to ignore, courtiers and critics had somehow digested the rise of the empress. They accepted her issuing edicts, striking coins, and sitting in the jharokha, even as some of them silently lamented her authority. But once she and Shah Jahan were publicly in opposition, condemnatory statements on her character and the dangers of her womanly wiles began to emerge. She had sowed the seeds of dissension within the royal family. What else was this but fitna?
The Mughals lost the fort at Kandahar. Official records show that Shah Abbas of Iran personally led the Safavid Army, but Jahangir’s memoir is murky when it comes to Shahryar’s leadership of the Kandahar campaign. One entry seems to make clear that Shahryar was named commander of the Mughal troops, but another passage suggests that Shahryar traveled only partway to Kandahar and then another commander, Khan-i Abdul Jahan Lodi, actually led the troops into battle.
Nur and Jahangir were unhappy with the loss, though probably not surprised. The Mughals had been forced by circumstances to launch their campaign in the dead of winter. The heavy cannons that would ensure victory needed to be dragged through treacherous passes by thousands of bullocks and several elephants, but that was impossible during the season of snows. The Mughal troops could carry only lighter cannons, which put them at a great disadvantage against the Safavids. The ill-prepared Mughal garrison surrendered, perhaps even before the Mughal reinforcements arrived. Kandahar was no longer under Mughal control; it had become Safavid.
After the confrontation outside the gates of Fatehpur-Sikri and the arrest of his envoy, Shah Jahan retreated with his troops to a series of spots in western and central India. Imperial spies and soldiers followed his movements closely and engaged in occasional skirmishes. Though Jahangir was still in poor health, he insisted on setting out in early February 1623 to confront his son. The imperial retinue stopped in Punjab, where many officers who’d been serving under Shah Jahan in the south came over to Jahangir’s side; he promoted many to higher ranks. The emperor was pleased with the expansion of his forces: By late March 1623, some 25,000 men had gathered to fight the prince. Jahangir and his entourage marched with them until Jahangir, exhausted, returned to Agra. He left Mahabat in command.
Shah Jahan’s forces and the imperial army came face-to-face near Delhi. Mahabat sent a tactful message to Shah Jahan suggesting that if he’d return to the Deccan, steps would be taken to ensure his landed rights and other privileges. Shah Jahan declined and in the battle that followed, Mahabat drove away Shah Jahan’s forces. The prince took shelter in the fort of Mandu, the place in western India from which he had launched his career in the Deccan, and tried to reopen negotiations with Mahabat. But the imperial forces attacked Mandu, and Shah Jahan fled once again. Short of resources and plagued by desertions—like the esteemed elderly general Abdur-Rahim, who had abandoned Shah Jahan and rejoined the imperial troops under Mahabat—the prince next made his way to Asir, a hill fortress outside Khandesh on an important route between Hindustan and the Deccan, where a cousin-in-law of Nur’s was in charge. The empress sent orders that the bastion was to be reinforced to keep Shah Jahan out, but Nur’s relative surrendered the fortress to the prince without opposition. Yet when Mahabat and the strong imperial forces reached Asir, Shah Jahan once again lost heart and retreated.
In April of 1623, Jahangir received Parvez while the royal retinue was en route to Ajmer, where they would stay for five months. “I took my favored son in the bosom of yearning and affection,” Jahangir wrote.16 At that moment, Jahangir did indeed seem to favor the rather feckless Parvez, not only over Shah Jahan but over Shahryar as well. The next month, Jahangir ordered Parvez to join Mahabat—to whom he’d given the sobriquet “The Trustworthy One of the State”—in leading imperial troops in pursuit of Shah Jahan. The emperor made a list of loyal nobles who were to accompany the two commanders, men to whom the emperor gave robes of honor, royal elephants, horses, and money.
Shah Jahan had several skirmishes with Mahabat and Parvez in various locations, each of them ending with Shah Jahan fleeing and the imperial forces giving chase. By November 1623, the rebellious prince had made his way by a circuitous route to the eastern provinces, Orissa, Bengal, and Bihar, which would become his new base of support, a source of fresh funds, recruits, horses, and artillery. Bengal was particularly profitable, given its abundance of rivers, immense rice-growing capacity, and large supplies of elephants.
In the eastern provinces, Shah Jahan focused on gaining the support of groups that felt alienated from the Mughal center, winning them over by awarding titles, lands, and administrative appointments. He gave offerings to custodians of Muslim shrines, bestowed massive endowments on Sufi families, and visited the tomb of Bahram Sakka, the Sufi saint who was an important influence on Nur when she was a young woman and continued to hold considerable significance for both Nur and Jahangir. He courted local Muslim leaders, praying at the site of a footprint alleged to be that of the Prophet Muhammad.17
With money from his eastern supporters, Shah Jahan built up his supplies of gunpowder, lead, iron, stone shot, and corn. The landholding elite of the region furnished more troops; some provided whole armies at short notice.18 The landlords were also key suppliers of boats, indispensable to any expedition in the riverine provinces. Thanks to a wide network of local pacts, the prince’s regional authority grew stronger. He was even able to gain the backing of the Portuguese, who had often tangled with Jahangir over territory on Hindustan’s west coast; they ferried supplies for the prince as he advanced westward into Bihar and Allahabad.
In early 1624, Mahabat was in the Deccan drumming up support against Shah Jahan among the very leaders with whom the prince had once fought on behalf of the emperor, the heads of independent states resisting Mughal dominance. He even opened negotiations with the Mughals’ enemy Malik Ambar, who offered Mahabat cooperation on the condition that the affairs of his area be left in his charge. Sensing that Ambar had larger ambitions, Mahabat instead chose an alliance with the shah of the state of Bijapur. Then Jahangir sent a message ordering Mahabat north to Allahabad. Shah Jahan had moved up the Ganga and taken the riverside fort of Allahabad and all nearby boats. Mahabat suspended his work in the Deccan, appointing a reliable officer to take charge there, and proceeded immediately to the northeast. Mahabat, Parvez and their troops arrived and camped across the river from Shah Jahan. Nur and Jahangir, who had traveled to Kashmir, followed developments from there.
Several of Shah Jahan’s advisers warned him against engaging with the imperial forces, which far outnumbered his. He sent the women of his harem, who’d been traveling with him—always camped a good distance from any battle—to the nearby fortress at Rohtas for extra safety. Then he moved his troops seventy-five miles east to Banaras. Parvez and Mahabat followed him to the banks of the river Tons. More men deserted Shah Jahan. The prince’s commanders were divided on the question of fighting the imperial army, now comprising nearly 40,000 skilled horsemen and foot soldiers. The princely army barely numbered 7,000.
Shah Jahan saw no option but to fight. He arrayed his forces with himself in the center, as Parvez and Mahabat assembled their troops. The head of the imperial artillery moved his heavy weapons forward and fired what sounded like a thousand cannonballs as the imperial soldiers attacked Shah Jahan’s forces from all directions and brought down the commander at their head. The prince’s left wing crumbled. Shah Jahan and his right wing, no more than 500 horses, pressed on. Many men were slaughtered on both sides. Imperial commanders presented Parvez with the heads of nobles who supported Shah Jahan.
A musket ball hit Shah Jahan in the head, but he survived. Carried back to camp by his men, he sent a message to his trusted lieutenant Abdullah Khan, still fighting with the right flank of the prince’s forces. Shah Jahan wrote to Abdullah that although he and his men were outnumbered and things looked bad, it was best to put their trust “in divine grace,” and attack the imperial center with the few forces they had le
ft. “Whatever will be, will be.” Abdullah replied that it was too late for either offense or defense to be of any help, and that such maneuvers were often counterproductive. It was wiser, he said, to reassess the situation and retreat from the battlefield.19 Shah Jahan seems to have acceded to Abdullah’s wishes; the prince’s forces, outmatched and subdued, retreated, and the imperial army entered the prince’s camp. Shah Jahan mounted his horse; a devoted servant held the reins and led the wounded prince away. Mahabat and Parvez didn’t pursue the defeated rebel—most likely on the emperor’s orders. Though Jahangir was enraged at Shah Jahan, he still wanted his son alive so that he might come to his senses, repent, and eventually take the throne. Leaving his favorite wife, Arjumand, and his newly born fifth son in the citadel of Rohtas, Shah Jahan retreated toward the Deccan, beyond imperial control.
In early October 1625, while the royal couple was in Kashmir, Jahangir received a letter from Shah Jahan in the Deccan. Ill and wishing to apologize to his father for past offenses, he expressed his deep regrets and begged forgiveness. The emperor replied that he would forgive Shah Jahan if he surrendered the Rohtas Fort and sent his sons Aurangzeb and Dara Shukoh to live with Jahangir. Shah Jahan agreed.
FOURTEEN
The Rescue
In the spring of 1626, Jahangir, Nur, and the royal retinue were back on the road, traveling from Lahore to Kabul. Servants had raised the colorful tents of the vast imperial camp on both banks of the Bahat River, now called the Jhelum, wide, swift, and fed by many tributaries.
On the quiet morning of March 16, the emperor’s longtime supporter Mahabat, until then steadfastly loyal, despite his grievances, entered the lightly guarded imperial compound accompanied by a large contingent of Rajput warriors. Mahabat burned with rage. Jahan gir, he felt, had behaved in a way that besmirched the honor of his family. Mahabat and his men passed the harem tents and approached Jahangir’s quarters. At sword-point, Mahabat kidnapped Jahangir, taking the emperor and a few retainers by elephant to a bivouac a few miles beyond the royal camp. Then Mahabat ordered his troops to burn the wide bridge to the other side of the river, where most of the royal tents were pitched, to thwart any rescue attempts. The narrow makeshift bridge they erected in its place was closely guarded.
Later that day, two veiled women emerged from the harem and stepped onto the hastily constructed new bridge. The Rajput guards didn’t give them a second look, and the pair passed easily to the other side.
After crossing the river undetected, a disguised Nur and her head eunuch, Jawahir Khan, hurried to the tented quarters of her brother Asaf Khan, on the bank opposite Jahangir’s pavilion. The empress immediately summoned a council of principal nobles and officers.
Meanwhile, Mahabat, holding the emperor prisoner, realized, as his agitation subsided, that he had neglected to take the empress captive. By the time he became conscious of his folly, it was too late. She had already escaped across the river.
In her brother’s tent, Nur rebuked a council of distinguished nobles, declaring that it was through their inattention that the emperor had been kidnapped by Mahabat: “You have been disgraced before God and the people by your own actions. The best tactical plan is to array our forces tomorrow, cross the river … overthrow the miscreants, and do ourselves the honor of kissing the ground as slaves of His Majesty.”1 All present agreed with the empress.
The trouble between Mahabat and Emperor Jahangir had begun more than a year earlier, after Jahangir appointed Mahabat the governor of Bengal. Mahabat failed to send the emperor a promised number of elephants captured in Bengal; he also began holding back a huge amount of money from the imperial treasury, the emperor’s share of taxes and revenues he’d taken from jagirdars, official landowners, whom he now oversaw as governor.
Despite this misbehavior, Jahangir had turned to Mahabat when trouble flared again in the Deccan. Malik Ambar had defeated the combined forces of the Mughals and the Shah of Bijapur, occupying several areas and laying siege to Ahmadnagar and Burhanpur. In late 1625, Jahangir, alarmed, ordered Mahabat and Prince Parvez to head south immediately with a unit of imperial soldiers to relieve the Mughal forces in the Deccan.
While Mahabat was away, Jahangir, already angry about the missing revenues and elephants, was further irked to learn that Mahabat had married his daughter to the descendant of an eminent Sufi without first asking Jahangir for the customary imperial blessing. The emperor sent for the young man; his hands were bound to his neck and he was taken bareheaded—and thus publicly dishonored—to the prison in Lahore. Jahangir directed his master of ceremonies to confiscate whatever gifts and cash Mahabat had given his son-in-law and deposit them in the imperial treasury. Then the emperor ordered Mahabat’s daughter to appear in court. Her father, away in the south, knew nothing of these developments.
Jahangir called Mahabat back from the Deccan in early 1626, commanding him to appear at court with the elephants and the taxes he owed. Mahabat replied by messenger that he had already sent the elephants to the court; as to the revenue, he made various excuses for not delivering. Jahangir sent a loyalist, Khan-i Jahan Lodi, to take over from Mahabat as commander of Mughal troops in the Deccan. Parvez was unhappy with the change, and refused the help of Khan-i Jahan Lodi in negotiations with Deccan states. Before he left for the north, Mahabat tried to turn Parvez against the emperor; he “cast a spell and erased the influence of royal command from his heart.”2 We don’t know how strong that spell was, or how long it lasted, for Parvez disappears from the record until his death later that year.
Immediately after he summoned Mahabat, Jahangir set off on a journey to Kabul, accompanied by Nur, Asaf, Shahryar, Ladli, the inner circle of nobles and royal women, servants, and soldiers. Mahabat was on his way north from the Deccan to the traveling court when he found out that the emperor had arrested his son-in-law and ordered his daughter to appear in court—acts that he considered a vile attack on his daughter’s reputation, and his own. His anger was fed by his profound dislike of Nur Jahan’s family, disgust at the extent of their power, and lingering fear of Asaf Khan. Along the route north, he stopped to gather troops in Rajasthan, home of the Rajputs, the valiant warrior class, among whom Mahabat had strong political allies. He was married to an Indian Muslim woman from Mewat, a state bordering Rajasthan that had its own large population of Rajputs. He told the Rajput fighters, known for their strong views on the honor of women, about what had happened to his daughter. “She is our daughter,” the Rajputs told Mahabat, and “as long as we live, we do not send her [i.e., to appear before the king].”3 “A large contingent of Rajput soldiers vowed loyalty to Mahabat; of the 6,000 men who eventually went north to the court with him, 4,000 were Rajputs, the rest Indian Muslims, Afghans, and Mughals. Mahabat’s brother and his son also joined the troops. Rage had set Mahabat on this course, but it’s not clear what he intended to do with this army, or whether he had any coherent plan at first.
Mahabat reached Lahore in the early spring of 1626, not long after the royal party left for Kabul. Nur’s brother Asaf further upset Mahabat by sending him a humiliating order to pay the money he owed and produce the missing elephants before he’d be allowed to appear before the emperor at the royal encampment. But humiliating the disloyal commander wasn’t all that Asaf had in mind. From allies in Lahore, Mahabat learned that Asaf planned to take Mahabat prisoner when he caught up with the cavalcade.
Mahabat’s fury and fear surged. He began to set in motion a plot to kidnap the emperor. He directed one of his trusted lieutenants to move ahead with 1,000 mounted men to protect the bridge over the Bahat, where he knew the royal retinue would camp. As a cover, he sent a message to a court official saying this lieutenant was coming with his men to join the imperial army.
In the royal camp, Asaf had indeed concocted a scheme to capture Mahabat. The commander would be allowed to pay his respects to Jahangir, after which the emperor would lead him onto the royal barge, where guards would hold him. Imperial soldiers would then tear up the bridg
e so Mahabat’s men couldn’t rescue him. Believing that Mahabat didn’t represent much of a threat, and certainly not expecting him to arrive with a large army, Asaf moved his household, the traveling treasury and armory, and most of the imperial soldiers to one side of the river and left Jahangir on the other side. A small number of intimates, dignitaries, eunuchs, and servants stayed on with Jahangir, and a few guards remained at the entrances and exits to the camp, the emperor’s pavilion, and the harem, which included Nur’s tents.
Mahabat had sent spies ahead to observe the royal camp. When they reported back that Asaf had moved across the bridge from Jahan gir and left the emperor lightly guarded, Mahabat decided to act. He rode to the camp with his troops, stationed a large number of men at the bridge, left others on the perimeter ready for battle, and marched foot soldiers into the royal camp. Then, accompanied by a hundred or more Rajput foot soldiers armed with spears and swords, he rode past the harem to Jahangir’s royal pavilion, where he alighted from his horse.
One of the dignitaries who’d stayed with the emperor, paymaster Mu’tamad, emerged from the pavilion wearing a sword and warned Mahabat about the impropriety of approaching the emperor accompanied by soldiers. “Adab nist?”4 he asked in Persian. Where is your etiquette? He told Mahabat to wait until his presence was announced to the emperor. Mahabat ignored him and strode to the door of the private bath where Jahangir usually held secret discussions with special dignitaries. His men began tearing down the boards that the imperial doorkeepers had put up for security.