Page 88

Gold coin of Shah Jahan, A.H. 1066 (A.D. 1655–6).

Chapter 4 – Shah Jahan the Magnificent – 1628–1658 A.D.

Like his father, Prince Khurram, who ascended the throne as Shah Jahan in January, 1628, was the son of a Rajput princess, a daughter of the rana of Marwar, and had more Indian than Moghul blood in his veins. From what has been recorded of his previous history, as one “flattered by some, envied by others, loved by none,” in Sir Thomas Roe’s words, one is prepared to find a haughty, reserved man, wrapped in political intrigues, personally indifferent to creeds and scruples, and disposed to favour his mother’s race. In every one of these respects Shah Jahan refutes prophecy. All his former cold severity seems to have melted when once he had made a clean sweep of his rivals, and after his accession the new emperor was the most accessible though the most stately of monarchs. He discontinued the obnoxious ceremonial of

Page 89

prostration before the throne, upon which Jahangir had laid great stress; and his unfailing kindness and benevolence, joined to a gracious publicity and display, endeared him to the people. He was the most popular of all the great Moghuls, though not specially the idol of the Hindus. There was a tinge of intolerance in his perfectly orthodox, if not very ardent, profession of Sunni Mohammedanism, and this slightly bigoted twist was encouraged by his ever-beloved wife, Arjumand Banu, known as Mumtaz-i-Mahal, “the elect of the palace,” the mother of his fourteen children, whose exquisite monument, the Taj at Agra, still witnesses to her husband’s devotion. Good Moslem as he was, Shah Jahan was a man of sound judgment and knowledge of the world, and he was the last king to dream of letting religion override statesmanship. Many of his generals were Hindus, and his great minister, Sa’d-Allah, though converted, was a Hindu by birth. Jesuit missionaries still laboured at Agra, where their tombstones may still be seen in the “Padre Santo,” and where, as Bernier records, they had a large and very fair church, with a great steeple and bell, which might be heard all over the town in spite of the Moslem’s prejudice against the devil’s musical instrument. Nevertheless, this toleration did not extend to the Portuguese of Hugh, whose piracy led to their destruction in 1631, save such as were sent as prisoners to Agra, where the church was then partly destroyed in the temporary excitement of fanaticism.

The “result of all the popularity and good statesmanship

Page 90

of Shah Jahan – for in his father-in-law Asaf Khan, and Mahabat (who died in 1634), and Ali Mardan he had counsellors as wise and upright even as Sa’d Allah – was a reign of extraordinary prosperity. The French traveller Tavernier writes of the gracious rule of the emperor that it resembled “that of a father over his children,” and testifies to the firm administration of justice and the universal sense of security. A Hindu contemporary almost outshines the Moslem and Christian eulogists in extolling the equity of the government, the wise and generous treatment of the cultivators, the probity of the law-courts, and the honesty of the exchequer personally audited by this magnificent paragon of monarchs. There is, no doubt, exaggeration in these panegyrics. Shah Jahan knew how to tickle the imaginations of his subjects by gorgeous pageants and profuse expenditure, and he could be good-natured and generous when it did not interfere with his personal comfort. But he was too shrewd a man to pamper the people, and his expensive tastes demanded so much money that there must have been severe pressure on the taxpayers, who naturally had no voice in revising the eulogies of contemporary chroniclers.

That such was the case may be gathered from the observations of Mandelslo, who ranks quite as high, as an intelligent traveller, as the more famous Della Valle. He was a native of Mecklenburg, and was educated as a page at the court of the Duke of Holstein. When this potentate in 1633 despatched an embassy to “the Great Duke of Muscovy and the King of Persia,” Johann

Page 91

Entrance gate to the Taj Mahal, Agra.

Page 92

Blank page

Page 93

Albrecht von Mandelslo, then only nineteen, begged to be allowed to accompany the ambassadors and explore the distant countries to which they were accredited. He was attached to the embassy as a “Gentleman of the Chamber,” and was even granted leave to pursue his travels further, when the ambassadors’ business was accomplished. Accordingly, when their Excellencies the Sieurs Crusius and Brugman departed from Isfahan in the beginning of 1638, Mandelslo pushed on to India by way of Persepolis, Shiraz, and Gombroon, where he took sail in an English ship, the “Swan,” three hundred tons, twenty-four guns, Master Honywood, bound for Surat, and after nineteen days’ voyage made the port on the 25th of April. Mandelslo’s travels in India – he afterwards went to China and Japan – were chiefly limited to the usual stay at Surat, and a journey through Ahmadabad to Agra and back by Lahore to Surat. Out of the eight months of his sojourn in the Moghul empire, five were spent at Surat, while his stay at Agra was unexpectedly brought to an end, apparently before he had been a month at the capital. Nevertheless, he found time to prepare a famous journal of his stay in India, which was edited, after its author’s death, by the German Olearius – a Latinization of the very Teutonic Oelschlager – and then translated into French with many additional details, by Abraham de Wicquefort. This Gallic version was rendered, in its turn, into English by Davies in 1662, and from this quaint translation our extracts here are taken.

Like Della Valle, Mandelslo was much impressed with

Page 94

the Dutch and English factories, or trading-posts, at Surat. “They have there their Lodges, their Storehouses, their Presidents, their Merchants, and their Secretaries, and indeed have made it one of the most eminent Cities for Traffick of all the East.” This was just thirty years after Hawkins had vainly attempted to save one cargo from the clutches of the Moghul governor, and another from the Portuguese. The new companies had evidently lost no time in strengthening their position. “The English particularly have made it the main place of all their Trading into the Indies, and have established there a President, to whom the Secretaries of all the other Factories are oblig’d to give an accompt. He manages affairs with the assistance of twenty or twenty-four Merchants and Officers, and hath under his superintendency the Factory of Agra, where they have a Secretary accompanied by six persons; that of Ispahan, where they have a Secretary and seven or eight other Merchants, that of Mesulipatan, with fifteen; that of Cambay, with foure; that of Amadabat, with six; that of Brodra and Broitscheia, with foure; and that of Dabul with two persons; who are all oblig’d to come once a year to Suratta, there to give an accompt of their Administration to the President.”

Mandelslo was treated by both Dutch and English with the princely hospitality which has ever been a tradition in India. He was met by a coach drawn by two white oxen, and heartily welcomed by the president, who begged him to stay with him five or six months and entertained him royally”. “At dinner he kept a great

Tomb of Itmad-ad-Daulah at Agra

This mausoleum of exquisite white marble is one of the finest buildings in Agra. It is the burial-place of Ghayas Beg, father of the empress Nur Jahan and her brother, Asaf Khan, of Jahangir’s court. The architectural lines of the structure, with its four graceful turrets at the corners and a raised pavilion in the centre, with its delicate latticework, carved tracery, and inlaid mosaics, blend into charming harmony with the surroundings amid which the building stands.

Page 95

Table of about fifteen or sixteen dishes of meat, besides the Desert.” The favourite rendezvous for the English colony was the president’s “great open Gallery,” where his friends enjoyed the sea-breezes of an evening. There was a fair garden outside the city where they all resorted on Sundays after sermon, and where on weekdays Mandelslo made a small fortune by winning pistol-matches, “shooting at Butts.” Sometimes they made a night of it over some bottles of sack; but Mandelslo was an exceedingly virtuous young man, and spoke no English – two effectual bars to excessive conviviality.

When he went into the interior, the same hospitable reception awaited him, not only at the hands of the European agents, but also of the Mohammedan merchants. Short as his stay was, the assistance of his hosts enabled him to make the most of his opportunities, and his native gift of observation stood him in good stead. A knowledge of Turkish appears to have served him well, as it did Hawkins. As he goes towards Agra we pick up hints which help us to understand the state of the provincial government under Shah Jahan. In spite of the testimony of other writers, travelling seems to have been anything but safe in Gujarat in 1638. The Rajputs – a kind of “Highwaymen or Tories,” as Jurgen Andersen, in 1646, calls them, according to Davies’s translation – infested the roads, and travellers had to journey in company with large caravans, and even had occasion to fight for their lives. Andersen describes the governor of Ahmadabad as a “judicious, understanding man, but hasty, and so rigorous, that

Page 96

his government inclin’d somewhat to cruelty.” The “somewhat” appears inadequate, when Andersen goes on to describe how, when some dancing girls refused to come and perform at his bidding, this “hasty” governor instantly had their heads cut off in the presence of a company which included the English and Dutch factors. “Assure yourselves, Gentlemen,” said he, “that if I should not take this course, I should not long be Governour of Amadabat.” “There is no King in Europe,” our traveller adds, “hath so noble a Court as the Governour of Guzaratta, nor any that appears in public with greater magnificence. In his palace he is served as a King He makes his advantages of all the Levies and Impositions which are made in his Government, so that in a short time he becomes Master of incredible wealth.”

Mandelslo describes Agra in his day as the noblest city of Hindustan, and the one in which the Moghul most delighted; but it must be remembered that New Delhi was not then built. He says it was as much as a horseman could do to ride round the city in a day. “Its Streets are fair and spacious, and there are some of them Vaulted, which are above a quarter of a League in length, where the Merchants and Tradesmen have their Shops, distinguished by their Trades and the Merchandizes which are there sold; every Trade and every Merchant having a particular Street and Quarter assigned him.” There were eighty caravansarais for foreign merchants, “most of them three Stories high, with very noble Lodgings, Store-houses, Vaults, and Stables

Page 97

belonging to them.” He counted seventy great mosques, and estimated the number of public baths “or Hot-Houses” at above eight hundred, their tax bringing in a considerable revenue to the state. Both within and without the city he saw numerous palaces of the rajas and lords, and, chiefest of all, the imperial palace, fortified with a moat and drawbridge. The treasure there jealously guarded was estimated on credible authority at above fifteen hundred millions of crowns, or over £300,000,000. “This wealth,” Mandelslo explains, “is more and more augmented every day, not so much out of the ordinary Revenue coming in from the great Kingdoms he hath (in regard that as his Ordinary Expence abates not anything of his Treasure; so is it seldome seen that he increases it, by ought remaining at the year’s end of his Revenue) as by the presents which are made him, and the Escheats falling to him at the death of great Lords and Favourites, who make the Moghul Heir to what they had gotten by his favour; insomuch that the Children have no hope to enjoy ought of their Fathers Estates, either Reall or Personall. For the Moghul’s Authority is such, and his Power so absolute, that the Estates of all his Subjects are at his disposal. There is no hereditary Dignity in all his country. That of Rasgi or Raja, which he bestows rather upon the accompt of Merit, than Birth, is Personall, as that of Chan in Persia, and is not deriv’d to Posterity, but by the recommendation of Vertue. Not that it is to be inferr’d hence, that the Moghul does exclude from Charges the Children of such as have done him good service; but he

Page 98

Rhinoceros fight.

From Rousselet’s India.

gives them lesser charges by which they may advance themselves to the Chiefest in the Kingdome, if either an extraordinary Vertue or the Princes Favour call them thereto.”

Mandelslo also describes the daily levees of the emperor, his appearance in the gallery at sunrise, when the nobility “salute him with their Patschach Salamet,” at noon when he comes to see the beasts fight, and at sunset; but it does not appear that the German traveller was personally received at court.

Agra was a very densely inhabited city at this time, “of such extent and so populous, that were there a necessity, there might be rais’d out of it two hundred

Page 99

thousand men able to bear Armes. There is no Nation in all the East but hath some commerce or other at this place; but most of the inhabitants are Mahumetans, and all the Merchandizes that are imported into it, or exported out of it, pay ten in the hundred.” The muster of the Moghul army has often been a matter of dispute, but Mandelslo gives a detailed account of the force commanded by Shah Jahan in 1630, which numbered no less than 144,500 horse, besides elephants, camels, and the like. The soldiers were armed with bows and arrows, javelins or pikes, scimitars, and daggers, with a shield for -defence. “They have no fire Armes with wheeles, nor yet Fire-locks but their Infantry are expert enough at the Musquet,” a statement distinctly contradicted by Bernier, who says the musketeers were horribly afraid when their guns went off, and lived in dread of their beards catching fire. “They know nothing,” adds Mandelslo, “of the distinction of Van-guard, main Battle, and Rear-guard, and understand neither Front nor File, nor make any Battalion, but fight confusedly without any Order. Their greatest strength consists in the Elephants, which carry on their backs certain Towers of Wood, wherein there are three or foure Harquebuses hanging by hooks, and as many men to order that Artillery. The Elephants serve them for a Trench, to oppose the first attempt of the Enemy; but it often comes to pass that the Artificial Fires, which are made use of to frighten these creatures, put them into such a disorder; that they doe much more mischief among those who brought them to the Field,

Page 100

The Taj Mahal at Agra.

then they do among the Enemies. They have abundance of Artillery, and some considerable great Pieces, and such as whereof it may be said, the invention of them is as ancient as that of ours. They also make Gun-Powder, but it is not fully so good as what is made in Europe. Their Armies do not march above five Cos [ten miles] a day, and when they encamp they take up so great a quantity of ground, that they exceed the compass of our greatest Cities.”

In the Itinerario of Father Sebastian Manrique, the Augustinian missionary, published at Rome in 1649, we read that in 1640 the city of Agra stretched for six miles along the Jumna, and had a population of six hundred thousand, excluding strangers, who crowded thither. He mentions the Jesuit mission and church, and afterwards journeying to Lahore, where the emperor was then residing, he describes an interview with the prime minister, Asaf Khan, Nur Jahan’s brother, to whom he was presented by a Portuguese Jesuit, Father da Castro. Asaf Khan dwelt in a splendid palace adorned with pictures, some of which illustrated the life of Saint John the Baptist. At a banquet at which the emperor himself was present, Father Sebastian was amazed at the sumptuous fare and also at the presence of ladies of rank unveiled. This was in 1641, and Asaf Khan died the same year, leaving an immense fortune, in spite of the quarter of a million sterling that his palace at Lahore cost him. But, as Roe remarked, he, like all the court, was “greedy of gifts.” Manrique learned from Father da Castro that the architect of the famous Taj

Page 101

The Taj Mahal at Agra.

at Agra was Geronimo Verroneo, a Venetian, and this accounts for the difference between this dream in marble and other Moghul works. As the learned topographer and historian, Mr. Keene, has well said, “As a building and apart from its surroundings it cannot be pronounced to be an organic whole.

No relation can be discovered among any of the dimensions; the outline of the dome does not express the inward form of the vault it covers; the disengaged towers at the four corners have no use or purpose, either apparent or real. The fenestrations give little shadow outside, no light within. Yet, masked by the modern garden, and consecrated by the repose of the whole scene – glittering, gleaming, distinguished – there is something about the Taj, as we

Page 102

now see it, which is perhaps unequalled by any building in the world for that mysterious fascination which we express by the single short word charm.’ “

The Taj Mahal was finished in 1648, nearly eighteen years after the death of the queen, who was interred, meanwhile, in a tomb in the garden. Tavernier saw it, while it was being built, and says that twenty thousand workmen were continuously employed. Long before this the other buildings which Shah Jahan carried out at Agra were complete. The palaces in the Fort were erected between 1628 and 1637, the great Mosque in 1644–50, and the Moti Masjid, or “Pearl Mosque,” was completed in 1653. But the Taj was to be the supreme masterpiece dedicated to a supreme love, and there was to be no haste, but yet no rest, about its elaborate and stately growth.

Whatever the glories of Agra, the capital of Babar and Akbar enlarged and enriched by Shah Jahan, they were eclipsed by the splendour of the new city which the prince of Moghul builders laid out at Delhi. Agra is full of his noble works, but New Delhi, or Shahjahanabad as he named it and as it is still called, was his creation. It was begun about the time that Mandelslo was in India, and ten years later, in 1648, it was finished, when, according to all accounts, it must have been the most magnificent royal residence in the world. The learned French physician Bernier, the pupil of Gassendi and school-fellow of Molière, who lived at the court for many years in the succeeding reign of Aurangzib, has left a graphic description of the new capital,

Page 103

extracts from which will be found in the next chapter. Fergusson, the historian of architecture, said of the palace of Shahjahanabad that it was “the most magnificent in the East – perhaps in the world.” The fort in which it stands is about a mile and a half in circuit, the massive walls rising sixty feet above the river, and higher still on the moated side toward the land. “Two barbicans, each 110 feet high, guard the main entrance on that side, two smaller gates opening on the side facing the Jumna. Within was a vast series of public and private halls and apartments, with a mosque, bathhouse, and gardens; the whole permeated by a marble channel bringing in the bright and wholesome water of the canal.” The great mosque dated 1658, the year of Shah Jahan’s deposition, is described by Mr. Keene as “raised on a rocky basement, and has three domes, and two lofty towers each 130 feet high. Its outside area is fourteen hundred square yards, and the approach is up a flight of thirty-three steps. Three sides of the quadrangle are arcades or open cloisters, the fourth being the sanctum itself, 260 feet long, with a depth of ninety feet. The hall of worship is paved with black and white marble, marked out for 899 worshippers.”

In the stately city Shah Jahan spent his luxurious old age, sometimes leaving it for a summer excursion to the lovely valleys of Kashmir, whither he would journey with a set of travelling tents so numerous and complete that they took two months to pitch at the successive stages of the royal route. His coronation anniversaries were observed with splendid extravagance,

Page 104

Shah Jahan’s palace at Agra.

and he would then be weighed, according to Moghul custom, in scales against the precious metals; bowls of costly gems were poured over him, and all these riches, to the value of a million and a half, were ordered to be distributed among the people.

The emperor and the court had reached a pitch of luxury that fostered effeminacy. In his youth and early manhood Prince Khurram had been a brave soldier, a brilliant general, a prudent counsellor, and a stern and resolute governor. As he grew old he abandoned all active pursuits, gave himself up more and more to pleasure, and suffered himself to be managed by his children. His adored wife, the lady of the Taj, had died in 1631, in giving birth to their fourteenth-child, and Shah Jahan, essentially

Page 105

an affectionate “family man,” while denying himself none of the pleasures of the zenana, became engrossed in his devotion to his eldest daughter, the Princess Begam, Jahan Ara. He was still the benevolent and popular king that he had always been since his accession, but his strength of character was gone; he had become a mere pageant of royalty, given over to ease and the aesthetic delights of the eye and taste. Dryden has drawn the contrast in “Aureng-Zebe “:

“O! had he still that character maintain’d

Of Valour which in blooming Youth he gain’d

He promised in his East a glorious Race;

Now, sunk from his Meridian, sinks apace.

But as the Sun, when he from Noon declines,

And with abated heat less fiercely shines,

Seems to grow milder as he goes away,

Pleasing himself with the remains of Day:

So he who in his Youth for Glory strove

Would recompense his Age with Ease and Love.”

The burden of state interfered with his enjoyment, and he sought to devolve his power upon his four sons, to each of whom he gave the viceroyalty of a distant province, in the hope of stilling their dangerous jealousies. The sceptre was falling from his hand, and he tried to secure peace by breaking it in pieces. It was a fatal policy. The fragments of the sceptre, like the -rods of Pharaoh’s sorcerers, turned into so many serpents, which strangled the remnant of his power, till the rod of Aurangzib swallowed up the rest, and with them the Peacock Throne itself.

The Deccan was the Dauphine of the Moghul empire.

Page 106

It was there that Shah Jahan had mustered his strength to try conclusions with his father; and it was thence that Aurangzib drew his forces in the struggle which ended in his coronation. As the chief warlike events of Jahangir’s reign centred round his son’s career, so Shah Jahan’s later wars were mainly fought by Aurangzib. History had shown that whoever could rule the Deccan was fit to be master of India. Shah Jahan had won his spurs in that never tranquil government. It Will be remembered that Akbar had annexed Khandesh and a portion of Berar, but had not conquered any of the four kingdoms into which the Bahmanid empire of the Deccan had broken up. The Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, the Adil Shahs of Bijapur, and the Kutb Shahs of Golkonda were still powerful, though the Barid Shahs of Bidar were no more. The Nizam Shahs, being nearest to the Moghul frontier, were the most obnoxious, and their able vizir, an Abyssinian named Malik Amber, repeatedly routed the imperial armies, recovered Ahmadnagar, which Shah Jahan’s forces had temporarily held, and drove them back to Khandesh. Malik Amber’s skilful tactics with light Maratha cavalry, afterwards so successful in the hands of the same people against Aurangzib, perpetually harassed the Moghul troops and wore them out, till it seemed as if the empire of Delhi must once more withdraw north of the dividing mountain range. It was then that Shah Jahan had shown his mettle. Arriving in the Deccan in 1616, he skilfully detached the King of Bijapur from the support of Amber, and soon

Page 107

brought the vizir to his knees; in a year’s campaign Ahmadnagar was recovered, and Malik Amber became a tributary vassal. Then followed Shah Jahan’s rebellion, disgrace, and flight, and the Deccan province was intrusted to his brother Parviz, who speedily drank himself to death, leaving the command to the general, Khan Jahan.

Throughout Shah Jahan’s reign the Deccan had been constantly disturbed by wars and rebellions. Khan Jahan had revolted in 1629, only to be defeated and killed in Bandelkhand two years later; but his conciliatory policy towards the Deccan kings, to whom he sold Ahmadnagar in order to strengthen his power, had weakened the Moghul position. The campaigns of A’zam, Mahabat, and Asaf Khan did little to restore the lost prestige; but when Shah Jahan advanced in person in 1635, the King of Bijapur at length found himself outmatched, and in the following year consented to a peace by which he agreed to pay £200,000 to Delhi in annual tribute. The Nizam Shah’s dominions were absorbed in the Moghul empire, and his dynasty extinguished. So matters remained for nearly twenty years, until Aurangzib became viceroy of the Deccan in 1655, and proved it once more to be the way that led to the steps of the throne. This third son of Shah Jahan, born in 1618, had already been governor of the Deccan in 1636 immediately after his father’s successful campaign against Bijapur; but the youth of seventeen seems to have been more occupied with thoughts of the world to come than with the earth

Page 108

beneath his eyes. In 1643, when only twenty-four, he announced his intention of retiring from the world, and actually took up his abode in the wild regions of the Western Ghats, where he adopted the rigorous system of self-mortification which distinguished the fakir, or mendicant friar of Islam. The novelty of the experiment, however, soon faded away; the fakir grew heartily tired of his retreat; and the prince returned to carry out his notions of asceticism in a sphere where they were more creditable to his self-denial, and more operative upon the great world in which he was born to work.

It is true his first campaigns were unsuccessful. Ordered in 1647 to take command of the provinces of Balkh and Badakhshan beyond the Hindu Kush, recently conquered from the Uzbegs by Shah Jahan’s generals, Aurangzib found the position untenable in face of the unceasing hostility of the indomitable hill tribes, and withdrew his forces with heavy loss. Nor were his efforts in 1649 and 1652 to recover Kandahar from the Persians, who had retaken it in 1648, more successful. Aurangzib had again to retreat discomfited, as his elder brother Dara did from a third attempt in 1653. These campaigns in Afghanistan and beyond the Hindu Kush are of no importance in the history of India, except as illustrating the extreme difficulty of holding the mountain provinces from a distant centre; but they were of the greatest service to Aurangzib. They put him in touch with the imperial army, and enabled him to prove his courage and tactics in the

Page 109

Tombs of the kings at Golkonda.

eyes of the best soldiers in the land. The generals learnt to appreciate him at his true value, and the men discovered that their prince was as cool and steady a leader as the best officer in India. He had gone over the mountains a reputed devotee, with no military record to give him prestige. He came back an approved general, a prince whose wisdom, endurance, coolness, and resolution had been tested and acclaimed in three arduous campaigns.

The wars over the northwest frontier had ended as such wars have often ended since, but they had done for Aurangzib what they did for Stewart and for Roberts: they placed their leader in the front rank of Indian generals.

The inevitable destiny of a prince who had displayed such ability was to govern the ever critical province of the Deccan. His arrival in 1655 was the sign for a vigorous “forward policy.” Not only were the kings of Golkonda and Bijapur in possession of provinces which had once been part of the kingdom of Delhi, but

Page 110

they were Shi’a heretics, whom it was the duty of an orthodox Moslem to chastise. Aurangzib found an invaluable ally in Mir Jumla, a Persian of brilliant military genius, who in many campaigns, as vizir of Golkonda, had shown himself a very scourge of idolatry and a persecutor of Hindus. This talented and ambitious officer had fallen out with his king, and now threw himself upon the protection of the Moghul. Overjoyed at the pretext, Aurangzib marched upon Golkonda in 1656, and, but for urgent commands from his pacific father, would have added that kingdom then and there to the Moghul empire. Foiled on the very eve of victory, he sent Mir Jumla to Agra, where the crafty Persian so worked upon the cupidity of the old emperor, by describing the wealth of the decrepit southern kingdoms that were ready to fall like overripe fruit into his hands, and by presenting him with an earnest of the treasures to be amassed in the shape of the famous Koh-i-nur diamond, which, after a series of strange adventures, now reposes among the crown jewels of England, that Shah Jahan consented to an aggressive policy. Aurangzib, reinforced by Jumla, accordingly wrested Bidar from the King of Bijapur, occupied Kulbarga and Kaliani, and was on the point of conquering Bijapur itself, the capital of the Adil Shahs, when his father’s alarming illness in 1657 summoned him to the north. Once more he was balked on the very eve of triumph.

Shah Jahan was believed to be dying. There was no law of succession, and each of the four sons prepared to fight for the throne. Shuja was in the east,

Page 111

governor of Bengal; Aurangzib was south in the Deccan; and Murad Bakhsh was in the west, making merry in Gujarat. To Dara was assigned the government of Multan and Kabul; but he had become so necessary to his father that he deputed his functions to others, and himself remained at Delhi, attached to the king’s person. Each of the princes behaved more like an independent sovereign than a lieutenant of the emperor. They had the command of rich revenues, which they devoted to the formation of large armies in preparation for the struggle which they knew to be inevitable.

Shah Shuja’ was first in the field. He at once announced that his father had been poisoned by Dara; proclaimed himself emperor; engraved his name on the coinage of Bengal, and set out to march upon Agra. Almost at the same moment Murad Bakhsh caused coins to be struck at Ahmadabad and the prayer for the king to be recited in his own name, and displayed his lordly instinct by immediately assaulting the city of Surat and extorting six lacs of rupees from its luckless merchants. Aurangzib, in the Deccan, alone of the four brothers, assumed no royal function. Whatever his designs may have been, for the present he kept them to himself.

Dara lost no time in sending out the imperial armies to chastise Shuja’ and Murad Bakhsh. The former was easily repulsed: Raja Jai Singh surprised him at his camp near Benares, and attacked before sunrise, while the careless bon vivant was yet heavy with wine. After -a brief contest the rebels gave way, and the

Page 112

dazed prince, scarcely awake, hastily took to flight, abandoning his camp and treasure, artillery and ammunition. Meanwhile Aurangzib had made up his mind to join forces with his younger brother, Murad Bakhsh, and at the head of the Deccan army shortly met him near the Narbada. Towards the close of April, 1658, the combined forces came upon the royal army under the command of the Maharaja Jaswant Singh, on the opposite banks of the Narbada. Under a withering storm of arrows and javelins, Murad Bakhsh charged across the ford, followed by the whole strength of the Deccan, and crashed into the royal forces with an overwhelming shock. Kasim Khan and his Mohammedans fled from the field. The Rajputs fought desperately, till of their eight thousand men only six hundred remained. The wounded remnant sadly followed their chief back to his desert fastness in Marwar. There he was received with bitter scorn. His high-mettled wife shut the castle gates in his face, saying that a man so dishonoured should not enter her walls: “If he could not vanquish, he should die.”

The Moghul capital was in an uproar. Dara, exasperated by the defeat, resolved to wipe out the disgrace, and led a magnificent array to the encounter. The lowest calculation estimates his army at one hundred thousand horse, twenty thousand foot, and eighty guns, but many were half-hearted in his cause. At the Chambal, Dara found that his brothers, making a circuit, had already crossed the river on the 2d of June. The two armies came in sight of each other on the 7th, at Samugarh,

Page 113

afterwards known as Fathabad, “the place of victory.” For a day or more they remained observing one another. The heat was such as is known only on the plains of India. It was a true Agra summer, and the men were fainting and dying in their heavy armour. Early in the morning, Aurangzib marshalled his men. Keeping the command of the centre for himself, he placed Murad Bakhsh in the left wing, appointed Bahadur Khan to lead the right, and sent forward his own son, Mohammad, with the advance-guard to act with the artillery, which was, as usual, in the van. Dara meanwhile disposed his forces in a similar order. He placed his cannon in front, linked together by iron chains, so that the enemy’s cavalry might not break through. Immediately behind the cannon, he ranged a line of light artillery-camels, mounting brass pieces worked on swivels and fired by the rider. Then came infantry armed with muskets. The mass of the army was composed, as usual, of cavalry armed with sabres, pikes, and arrows. The last was the favourite weapon of the Moghuls and Persians; the hand-pike being the special arm of the Rajputs. Khalil Allah Khan commanded the right, Rustam Khan the left, and Dara himself was with the centre.

The battle began, as Moghul battles always did, with an artillery engagement; cannon were fired; rockets or hand-grenades were thrown to excite a stampede among the enemy’s horses and elephants, and then the infantry came into action with their clumsy matchlocks, while flights of arrows flew over their heads from the

Page 114

archers behind. Dara’s advance-guard, under his son, Sipihr Shukoh, then charged and drove in Prince Mohammad’s squadrons, and this advantage was immediately followed up by bringing the left wing to bear upon Aurangzib’s right, which wavered and seemed on the point of breaking, when reinforcements came up opportunely from the centre. After this the engagement became general. Dara, towering high above his horsemen on a beautiful Ceylon elephant, led his centre against Aurangzib, carried the enemy’s guns, after severe loss, and routed the camel corps and infantry. With the shock of horsemen against horsemen the real struggle began. No Moghul prince, as yet, knew the colour of the “white feather,” and Dara displayed all the splendid valour of his famous blood. Emptying their quivers upon the Deccan horse, he and his men drew their swords, and fought hand to hand till the enemy began to break and fly.

It was the critical moment of the fight. The day was going against Aurangzib. The flower of his cavalry was driven back, and he was now standing, with scarcely a thousand men about him, awaiting Dara’s onslaught. Never was cool courage put to a severer test; but Aurangzib’s nerve was steel. “Dili, Yarana, Take heart, my friends,” he cried. “Khuda-he! There is a God! What hope have we in flight? Know ye not where is our Deccan? Khuda-he! Khuda-he! “Thereupon, with a splendid self-control that comes only of bravery, he ordered the legs of his elephant to be chained together, to make retreat impossible. The mere

Page 115

order was enough to restore the ebbing courage of the few squadrons that still stood beside him.

Meanwhile Murad Bakhsh was hotly engaged with Dara’s right, fighting like a lion and reeking with slaughter. Three thousand Uzbegs charged up to his ensanguined elephant, and arrows, spears, and battle-axes rained so thickly that the frightened animal turned to fly. The Moghul courage was again put to the test. The elephant’s legs were quickly chained. Then Raja Ram Singh, of the valiant Rantela stock, came riding up with his Rajputs, insolently shouting, “Dost thou dispute the throne with Dara Shukoh?” and hurling his spear at the prince, tried to cut his elephant’s girths. The Moghul, wounded as he was, and sore beset on all hands, cast his shield over his little son, who sat beside him in the howdah, and shot the raja dead. The fallen Rajputs, in yellow garb, and stained with their war-paint of turmeric, were heaped about the elephant’s feet, and “made the ground like a field of saffron.”

The cool courage of the one prince and the fiery valour of the other daunted Dara’s division. Aurangzib and Murad Bakhsh were still perilously hemmed in by raving Rajputs maddened with bang (opium), and furious at the death of their chiefs, but it needed little to turn the balance of fortune either way. It was Dara’s unlucky destiny always to turn it against himself. At this crisis he committed the most fatal error that an Indian commander could perpetrate. All the army looked to his tall elephant as to a standard of victory. Yet now, when the day seemed almost his own, he must

Page 116

needs dismount. Murad Bakhsh was still there on his gory elephant, with his howdah stuck as full of arrows as a porcupine with quills, grimly dealing blow for blow and shaft for shaft. Aurangzib towered high above a seething scrimmage of Rajputs. But where was Dara? It was though the sun had vanished in mid-heaven. A blind panic seized upon the all but victorious army, and every man fled for dear life. Once a panic has got hold of an Indian army, no power can save it. In one brief moment the tide had turned, and the all but vanquished became the victors. For a terrible moment Aurangzib had steadily maintained his seat on his besieged elephant, and his reward was the Peacock Throne. A little too soon Dara had dismounted, to be “numbered among the most miserable of princes,” a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. Then, and not till then, did Aurangzib descend from his elephant, and, prostrating himself on the bloody field, give thanks to God for this great and glorious victory.

The victory of Samugarh was the signal for all the world to come and tender their homage to Aurangzib, who remained on the field of his triumph, busily engaged night and day in negotiating with his father’s amirs. They required little inducement to come over to the side of the rising man. The Raja Jai Singh, who commanded the army which had successfully repulsed Shuja’ in Bengal, gave his adhesion to the future emperor. The Maharaja Jaswant Singh presently followed his example and tendered his fealty to the new power. Dara had already fled with a few hundred

Page 117

Shah Jahan

followers, and his father had sent money and five thousand horsemen to assist him.

Aurangzib now turned his attention to his most dangerous rival, the still popular Shah Jahan.

The father tried to induce his son to visit him, but Aurangzib, suspecting a trap, sent his son Mohammad,

Page 118

Mumtaz-i-Mahal, the Lady of the Taj.

who entered the fort of Agra on the 18th of June, overcame the guard, and turned the palace into a prison. Shah Jahan never left the castle during his seven remaining years of life. He was allowed every enjoyment that his sensuous nature demanded, loaded with presents, and supplied with such amusements as most entertained him.

His daughter, the Begam Sahib, and all his numerous women, kept him company. Cooks skilfully ministered to his appetite, and dancers and singing-girls enlivened his senile revels. Like many another aged voluptuary, he became wondrously devout at times, and holy Mullas came and read the blessed Koran to him. Aurangzib granted him everything, in fact, except liberty. The two became partly reconciled, and the father bestowed his blessing and forgiveness on the son, but they never met. Shah Jahan died in 1666 at the age of seventy-six. The new emperor hastened to Agra to pay respect to his obsequies, and the body was laid in a tomb near the beautiful Taj which the late sovereign had set up in memory of his wife.

The day after Shah Johan had been safely locked up, Aurangzib entered Agra, seized Dara’s house and

The Fort at Agra

This massive stronghold, with its high towers and battlements of red sandstone, surrounded by a deep moat to give it extra defensive strength; is a noble example of a Moghul fortress and one of the most imposing of the grand buildings at Agra.

Page 119

treasure (equivalent to some £19,125,000), and at once pursued his brother. Murad Bakhsh, who had been enjoying the honours of kingship, accompanied him with all the glory of mock sovereignty and twenty-six lacs of rupees in his money-bags. On the road Aurangzib found, or made, his boorish brother disgracefully drunk, and, protesting that such a violator of the law of Islam could never sit on the throne, threw him into chains on July 5th. That night he was secretly conveyed to the state prison in the island Salimgarh, opposite Delhi, where he was executed three years later.

The successful schemer led the combined forces in the footsteps of Dara, by forced marches, day and night, with his usual unflagging energy, living the life of a common soldier, and sleeping on the bare ground. His stoicism awed his followers; but Dara’s own tendency to political suicide saved his brother trouble. To sum up many months of misfortune, Dara once more braved the army of Aurangzib in the hills near Ajmir, and, after four days’ hard fighting, was again put to flight. With his wife and daughter and a few servants he made for Ahmadabad. The servants plundered his baggage and stole the jewels of the princesses, and, to crown his misery, when the fugitive at length reached the once friendly city, he found its gates closed against him. His wife died of hardship and misery, and he deprived himself of his scanty escort in order to send her body to be honourably interred at Lahore. At last, after few welcomes and many rejections, after bitter bereavement and weary wanderings, the crown prince and would-be

Page 120

Emperor of India was betrayed into the hands of his enemy. He was paraded through the streets of Delhi dressed in the meanest clothes, on a wretched elephant, covered with filth; and the tumult which this barbarous humiliation stirred up among the people nearly amounted to a rebellion. “Everywhere,” wrote Bernier, “I observed the people weeping and lamenting the fate of Dara in the most touching language: men, women, and children wailing as if some mighty calamity had happened to themselves.” In face of such alarming sympathy Aurangzib resolved upon a speedy execution. A council was held; Dara was found to be an apostate and the friend of infidels; and on September 15, 1659, he was ordered to death. Many bewept his fate.

Meanwhile Shuja’ was again in arms as viceroy in Bengal, and was pushing his way up the Ganges valley, but in vain. He was soon hunted away to Arakan, conveyed by Portuguese pirates, who at once robbed and saved him, in 1660. The last glimpse we get of him is pitiable; wounded and insulted, he fled over the mountains, with but one woman and three faithful followers, and was heard of no more. The last rival was accounted for, but Aurangzib had not waited for this. He had already twice assumed the throne: first hurriedly in the garden of Shalimar outside Delhi in the closing days of July, 1658, and then formally ascending it in state on the 26th of May, 1659.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
hosted by ibiblio Support Wikipedia