The Serpent's Tooth Part 19

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 Francois 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 compa.s.s 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.

By Alex Rutherford and available from Headline Review.

Empire of the Moghul: Raiders from the North.

Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War.

Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World.

Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne.