A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal (38 page)

14

‘Sharper than a Serpent’s
Tooth’

T
he stage was set. A Jacobean tragedian would have struggled to create a more convincing central character than the elderly, flawed, Lear-like Shah Jahan. After three decades on the throne he believed in his divine right to rule and in the grandeur and invulnerability of the imperial image he had created. However, he had neglected the detailed running of his state, leaving it to his nobles, who had greater interest in their personal position and prosperity than that of the empire overall. He had not gone into battle, delegating the command of his military adventures to his sons, particularly the three youngest. He had also not pursued his goals with the single-minded vigour of his grandfather Akbar, whose philosophy that
‘a monarch should be ever intent on conquest, otherwise his neighbours rise in arms against him’
had been as useful in suppressing internal dissent as in subduing external threats.

Above all, in a kind of emotional withdrawal he had grown increasingly impervious to the lessons of Moghul history neatly expressed in the saying
taktya takhta?
– ‘throne or coffin?’ Successive generations of ambitious sons had challenged their fathers: Jahangir had rebelled against Akbar; he himself had revolted against Jahangir. Half-brother had fought half-brother. The gentle Humayun had struggled to subdue Kamran, Hindal and Askari. Shah Jahan had gone yet further, eliminating his half-brothers Khusrau and the hairless Shahriyar as well as, to be on the safe side, an assortment of nephews and cousins. But despite this bloody heredity, Shah Jahan fondly convinced himself that his sons would remain obedient and loyal. That they were full brothers, the offspring of a devoted couple, not of an assortment of contending wives and concubines, must have strengthened his conviction.

Had Mumtaz lived, he might have been right. She had been a loving, caring mother to her children and in the early years their unity as a family had been fashioned by danger and sustained through hardship. With Mumtaz by his side as their children grew up, Shah Jahan would have had more appetite for the business of ruling and no brooding, corroding grief from which to seek consoling distraction in architectural projects or elsewhere. He might still have had his favourites, but almost certainly Mumtaz’s affection and maternal empathy would have mitigated Aurangzeb’s sense of alienation and defused the dissatisfactions of Shah Shuja and Murad Bakhsh. The relationships between the three surviving sisters might also have been closer. Instead, Jahanara’s assumption of Mumtaz’s place as first lady of the empire had, in particular, left Raushanara, three years her junior, extremely jealous. Raushanara was, according to the Venetian Niccolao Manucci, who had recently entered Dara’s service, not especially good-looking but ‘very clever, capable of dissimulation, bright, mirthful, fond of jokes and amusement’. He also claimed she was ‘libidinous’. In the family tragedy about to be enacted she would be Aurangzeb’s ardent partisan, a curious ally for a puritan, yet there was common ground. Each had for years felt outshone – Aurangzeb by Dara and Raushanara by Jahanara. In the same way, the youngest girl, Gauharara, whose birth had accompanied Mumtaz’s death, would find common cause with her youngest brother, Murad.

Mumtaz, had she survived, would also have had the power to intercede at times of family crisis. The Moghuls had a long tradition of powerful matriarchs who, though living behind the veil, had successfully intervened and whose views were respected. Babur’s grandmother had guided him through the early years of his reign, while Hamida, Jahangir’s grandmother, had brokered his reconciliation with his father, Akbar. Among Mumtaz’s Persian antecedents the close bonds between husbands and wives – her grandfather Itimad-ud-daula and his wife, her father Asaf Khan and her mother, to say nothing of her aunt Nur’s hold on Jahangir – had also allowed the senior women an important say in family business. Jahanara, of course, did have influence. Aurangzeb had written to her many times over the years, addressing her as his ‘patroness’ and asking her to intercede with their father on his behalf. But a sister could not command the respect and obedience of a mother. With his own mother and Mumtaz dead and no other wife or senior female close to him, Shah Jahan, for better or for worse, had had to manage his large, energetic, talented family alone. He would discover that the seven surviving children borne him by Mumtaz – from Jahanara and Dara Shukoh, as close in tastes and temperament as they were in age, to the younger, more disaffected siblings – had formed their own alliances. He would also discover, like Lear, which if any of them truly loved him.

The crisis began in Delhi on 16 September 1657, when, as his chronicler wrote,
‘The emperor fell seriously ill from constipation and strangury’
.
*
French physician François Bernier wrote that Shah Jahan
‘was seized with a disorder, the nature of which it were unbecoming to describe. Suffice it to state that it was disgraceful to a man of his age who, instead of wasting, ought to have been careful to preserve the remaining vigour of his constitution.’
Manucci was yet more explicit:
‘Shah Jahan brought this illness on himself for he wanted still to enjoy himself like a youth, and with this intent took different stimulating drugs’
– in other words, aphrodisiacs.

For three days, Shah Jahan could not urinate and, unable to appear even briefly on the
jharokha
balcony, he disappeared from the view of his subjects. Dara, fearing how his three brothers would react when they learned of Shah Jahan’s decline, forbade the sending of reports to them, far away in the provinces they governed – Shah Shuja in Bengal, Murad Bakhsh in Gujarat and Aurangzeb in the Deccan. In the ensuing vacuum, rumours multiplied that the emperor was dead, even that Dara had usurped and murdered him. As panic spread, Delhi’s merchants closed their shops, fearing rioting and looting. The reality was that, nursed by Jahanara, Shah Jahan began slowly to recover, reviving himself with mint and manna soup and making a brief appearance to his worried people. But one of his court historians recorded how, weakened and fearing death was near, Shah Jahan
‘turned over much of the management of the affairs of state’ to Dara, ‘requesting the nobles to pledge their fealty to him as the designated heir-apparent’
. The irony was that, of all the brothers, Dara was not particularly anxious for the throne. As Shah Jahan’s favoured successor he would have been content to await the death of the father he loved, but events had forced responsibility upon him. In mid-October Shah Jahan left Delhi by imperial barge for Agra, where, close to the Taj Mahal and the long-dead, still-cherished Mumtaz, he could compose his mind to whatever fate awaited him.

In the absence of official reports, Shah Jahan’s three younger sons relied for information on messages from their supporters, including in Aurangzeb’s case their sister Raushanara and in Murad’s their sister Gauharara. The brothers concluded that their father must be dead and, rejecting Dara’s right to succeed him, each plotted to claim the throne. None allowed emerging proof that Shah Jahan was, after all, alive to destroy their momentum. According to Manucci, who was admittedly highly partisan towards Dara, Aurangzeb ordered any letters reaching the Deccan that suggested Shah Jahan still lived to be burned and their bearers immediately beheaded.

Shah Shuja was the first to act openly, proclaiming himself emperor, ordering the
khutba
to be read in his name and issuing coins to mark the start of his reign. After killing his finance minister, who was loyal to Shah Jahan, Murad Bakhsh also proclaimed himself emperor and sacked the city of Surat to finance his bid. Aurangzeb, equally ambitious but more cunning, quietly bided his time. Also, he had suffered a recent bereavement – his favourite wife had died in childbirth. He would build a tomb for her that, while seeking to emulate the Taj, would be a pale, spindly shadow of it.

Dara, however, suspected correctly that Aurangzeb, the brother he derided as a
‘bigot and prayer-monger’
, was the real threat and ordered senior Moghul commanders nominally under Aurangzeb’s control back to Delhi. These included Mir Jumla, the powerful Persian adventurer who had fought with Aurangzeb in the Deccani campaigns and whose forces Dara was especially anxious to keep out of Aurangzeb’s hands.

Correctly interpreting Dara’s motives, Aurangzeb thwarted him, colluding with Mir Jumla to imprison the Persian on a fake charge. Aurangzeb also secretly contacted Murad Bakhsh. According to some Moghul accounts, he wooed him with assurances that his own sole ambition was to lead a retired, religious life, arguing that Dara’s religious heresies made it unthinkable that he should be emperor and promising to support Murad, whom he lauded as a devout orthodox Muslim, for the throne. While this may be true – Aurangzeb was a master of such duplicitous stratagems – he and Murad drew up a written agreement, partitioning the empire between them, with two-thirds going to Aurangzeb and the remaining third – Afghanistan, Kashmir, the wealthy Punjab and Sind – going to Murad. There is also evidence that some years earlier the two brothers had agreed to divide the empire with Shah Shuja and that, since the crisis began, each had been seeking an alliance with him. Whatever the case, none of the three showed any fraternal compassion for their father’s favourite, the haughty Dara, whom they had long envied and whose death was integral to their schemes.

With Shah Shuja already marching towards Delhi, Dara despatched a huge imperial force under his son Suleiman Shukoh, who, in February 1658, caught his indolent uncle unawares in an early-morning attack near Benares and roundly defeated him. Horrified at the idea of his family in armed, open conflict and underestimating the deadly rivalry between them, Shah Jahan still hoped to resolve matters peaceably; he had therefore ordered Shah Shuja to be treated with mercy. Suleiman dutifully permitted his uncle to escape but could not resist giving chase – a decision that would prove disastrous. Dara, meanwhile, had also sent armies south to block the advance of Aurangzeb and Murad, now on the move as well, but this time his forces lost the ensuing battle. Realizing the acute danger, Dara hastily recalled Suleiman, but his son was by now many hundreds of miles’ march from Agra.

Meanwhile, all three rebel princes were continuing to write unctuous, flowery letters to their father, assuring him of their loyalty and of their desire to pay their respects after his recent illness. They reminded him how, when Jahanara had been badly burned, they had hurried to court out of the same family love. Their armies only accompanied them because they feared Dara was their enemy. Shah Jahan, belatedly and bemusedly grasping the seriousness of what was happening, tried to mediate between his sons, urging that their disputes be debated in the imperial council, even that Aurangzeb and Murad should visit him in the Agra fort so that he could broker a peace. At Shah Jahan’s request Jahanara made a desperate attempt to avert the coming tragedy, writing to Aurangzeb:
‘The emperor has recovered and is himself administering the state. Your armed advance is therefore an act of war against your father. Even if it is directed against Dara, it is no less sinful …’ Aurangzeb, however, insisted he had only taken up arms to save himself and that he was loyal to his father, whom he insisted on seeing. ‘I shall not brook any obstacle to this loving design’
, he added.