Shah Jahan - The Rise and Fall of the Mughal Emperor

-->

Title: Shah Jahan – The Rise and Fall of the Mughal Emperor

Author: Fergus Nicoll

Publisher: Penguin – Viking 2009 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-670-08303-9

Pages: 265

A superb piece of historical narrative from Fergus Nicoll. The entire life story of the 5^th Mughal emperor is traced from his birth to the ignominous death at the hands of his treacherous son and 6^th emperor, Aurangzeb. The style is quite lucid and embedded with interesting anecdotes and witty asides. Author’s insights goes often into the minds of the protagonists which makes the book riveting for the reader.

Shah Jahan, was born on Jan 15, 1592 as Khurram to the crown prince Jahangir. He was brought up under the close supervision of his visionary and magnanimous grand father, emperor Akbar. Jahangir, who was a full-scale drunkard and drug addict, turned in rebellion against his father. His efforts failed miserably because of the superior military strength and the personal appeal of his illustrious father. Akbar was planning to crown his grandson, Khusrau, who was Jahangir’s son. Prince Jahangir was a man who wouldn’t let blood relations come between him and the coveted throne. When Akbar fell ill, Jahangir usurped the throne from him, imprisoned his own son and blinded him! Shah Jahan’s luck cleared with this incident, and he soon rose to prominence as the crown prince. His military victories against Mewar, Kandahar and the Deccan provinces made him an essential counterpart to the emperor’s war efforts. When Jahangir married Mehr-al-Nisa, later named Nur Jahan who actively involved herself in state affairs, Shah Jahan found it difficult to reach his ambitions. Jahangir was a puppet in Nur Jahan’s hands and her strategic marital alliances between the princes and her own daughters and nieces forced her to come out in support of Shahryar, Shah Jahan’s incapable brother. Khurram opened revolt, but was soon chastised by the military might of the emperor and had to practically live in exile in the outermost reaches of the empire for six years. His only comfort was his devoted wife, Arjumand Bano Begum, later called Mumtaz Mahal who was the daughter of Asaf Khan, Nur Jahan’s brother. When Jahangir fell ill while in Kashmir, Asaf Khan imprisoned the emperor and the queen, who was his own sister! Khan crowned Dawar Bakhsh Bulaqi as a puppet till Shah Jahan reached Agra. When he arrived there in style from Deccan, Bulaqi was killed. Shah Jahan had earlier arranged the killing of his brother Khusrau who was previously a contender for the throne.

Shah Jahan became the emperor in 1627, at the age of 35. Being a megalomaniac ignorant or insensitive to the grinding poverty prevalent in the empire, he began a series of grand buildings and ornamented thrones. Millions of people perished in famines and pestilence, but Shah Jahan continued building his grand mosques, palaces, mausoleums and thrones without giving the suffering poor any comfort. There were very few emperors in human history who was so distant from the masses over which he ruled roughshod. Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631, while in labour for the 13^th time, after delivering a girl child. Shah Jahan built the world renowned Taj Mahal at Agra in memory of her, even though he visited it only once after it was complete. The second time he entered it was for himself to be buried there. He made his eldest son, Dara Shikoh, who was a moderate, the crown prince. Aurangzeb, the third son, strongly resented this, as he was militarily the most able. When the emperor fell ill, struggle for the crown ensued with the four sons of Shah Jahan pitted against each other. Aurangzeb made a tactical alliance with his brother, Murad Bakhsh and defeated his brother Dara Shikoh at the Battle of Samugarh. Dara was chased, imprisoned and beheaded. His headless corpse was carried out in victorious procession through the streets of Delhi. Aurangzeb’s forces defeated his brother Shah Shuja, who was the governor of Bengal and chased him. He fled to the forests of Arakan in Burma and his fate is not known. After defeating his enemy brothers, Aurangzeb turned treacherously against his ally. He imprisoned and killed Murad Bakhsh and Suleiman Shikoh, Dara’s son. Shah Jahan was imprisoned at Agra fort while these fratricidal war was raging around him. Aurangzeb never visited his father in prison and he died at the age of 74, on January 31, 1666. He was buried secretly in Taj Mahal at night.

The story is well known, but Nicoll’s representation is splendid and even those persons well versed in Mughal history would find this book very attractive. A list of the children borne by Mumtaz Mahal is interesting, as such a neat compilation is rare. Their marriage took place on May 10, 1612 and she had given him thirteen children until she died on June 17, 1631. The children were as follows. The date of birth is given in brackets.

1. Hur al Nisa (30.3.1613) died at the age of 3

2. Jahan Ara (1.4.1614)

3. Dara Shikuh (29.3.1615)

4. Shah Shuja (2.7.1616)

5. Roshan Ara (2.9.1617)

6. Aurangzeb (3.11.1618)

7. Umid Bakhsh (16.12.1619) died at the age of 3

8. Thurayya (11.6.1621) died at the age of 7

9. Murad Bakhsh (8.10.1624)

10. Lutfallah (4.11.1626) died at the age of 2

11. Daulat Afza (9.5.1628) died at the age of 1

12. Husn Ara (23.4.1630) died on the same day

13. Gauhar Ara (17.6.1631)

The book is made unavoidable to a student of Mughal history by its collection of very rare portraits of royal members and pictures of palaces and architecture.

As any true book suggests in gory detail, the cruelties of Mughal emperors were notorious. As the author says, “Salim’s behaviour now became more and more erratic. Mixing wine with opium and drinking more than his constitution could handle, he became so unhinged that he spent evenings either in delirium, in a psychotic rage or simply in a stupor, ‘as active as a design on a carpet or a picture on a wall’. In one typical incident, three courtiers were discovered to be planning to abandon Allahabad and transfer their loyalty to Prince Daniyal. One, a court reporter, was flayed alive in Salim’s presence, another was castrated and the third flogged to death.” (p.42). When he crushed Khusrau and his followers, the punishment was no less humane. “Khusraw’s chief commanders, Abd al Rahim Khan and Hussein Beg Badakshi, were subjected to a novel torture. Stripped naked, Hussein Beg was sewn into the hide of a freshly slaughtered ox, while his companion Abd al Rahim was stitched into the skin of an ass, also newly killed. As the men were paraded through the streets of Lahore in this humiliating condition, the hides dried in the sun and shrank, slowly crushing and suffocating the men inside. Hussein passed out and was summarily beheaded, his quartered body displayed by the roadside. Abd al Rahim survived both degradation and discomfort and was eventually ransomed for a small fortune by a loyal courtier.” (p.59). Jahangir also compelled Shah Jahan who had vowed not to touch liquour to taste it. “It was the eve of the prince’s twenty-fifth birthday. The customary weighing ceremony, approved by the court astrologers, had gone off smoothly and the ensuing party was well underway. Noticing that the man of the hour was ignoring the offered goblets of wine, Jahangir pressed him – though, as he noted in his memoir, ‘it took great persistence to get him to drink’. Implicitly questioning the prince’s masculinity, he pointed out that Khurram was a man with a son of his own and that ‘monarchs and princes have always drunk’. His son tried to resist, but the order, for such it was, was not to be refused, even when the dipsomaniac emperor – with breathtaking hypocrisy – presumed to quote the celebrated 10^th century Persian physician ‘Avicenna’.

‘Wine is the enemy of the intoxicated and the friend of the sensible,

A little opium is good; too much is the venom of the snake.

All in all, excess in injurious;

But if taken in small doses, it can do the power of good’ (p.94-95)

Not only a drunkard, Jahangir was bigoted and extremely intolerant of other faiths. “By the emperor’s own account, Jahangir imprisoned three young Muslim men who had struck up an acquaintance with a Hindu sanyasi, or holy man, and subjected their companion to one hundred lashes with a whip. The holy man’s teachings, wrote Jahangir, ‘reeked of infidelity and heresy’. ‘The special punishment was in order to maintain the religious law lest any other ignoramus be enticed into similar actions’, the emperor noted piously” (p.56). Temple destruction was the favourite pastime of the Mughals. In the Mewar campaign, “Khurram’s generals smashed and stripped down Hindu temples in the vicinity to use the stone for their own mansions. ‘Temples were destroyed’ he gloated, ‘and foundation-stones for mosques were laid; instead of the conch blowing (in Hindu ceremonials), the cry “Allahu Akbar” resounded” (p.89). When Jahangir conquered the Kangra fort, “Adding insult to the injury of their defeat, he gleefully rubbed the noses of the Hindu residents firmly into the dirt. First he arranged for the Muslim call to prayer and the khutba prayer to echo over the fortress. Then he had a cow slaughtered and, the piece de resistance, commissioned a brand new mosque inside the citadel” (p.113). Shah Jahan was no different. “For at this time, Shah Jahan’s religious attitudes were further hardening and his Islamic conservatism was becoming still more pronounced. At court, the emperor was under pressure from hardline Sunnis who advocated Islamic revivalism and a clearer statement that Sharia law was the empire’s defining judicial and social principle. Such agitators sometimes saw Hinduism as the greatest threat to the security of a properly Muslim nation, and, while Shah Jahan was far from a firebrand Islamist or stern puritan, he was inclined towards spasmodic outbursts of intolerance towards his own citizens. In January 1633, the emperor briskly ordered the demolition of as many as seventy temples at Benares, a Hindu holy site on the Ganges. His mission was described by his officials as ‘the infidel-consuming monarch, who is the guardian of religion (i.e. Islam), commanded that at Benares and throughout the entire imperial dominions, wheresoever idol-temples had been recently built, they should be razed to the ground” (p.205).

The only drawback which can be levelled against the book is a number of spelling and grammatical errors which had creeped up now and then. One would be shocked by the number of such errors in a book published by Penguin-Viking. Apart from this, the book is really fine and commendable.

Highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star