After the Kashmir visit, Shah Jahan, Jahanara, and Dara stayed in Shahjahanabad for a spell. Aurangzeb visited the court, leaving for Multan after paying his respects to the emperor. Shah Jahan had already started to plan his next stab at retrieving Qandahar. When he was in Kashmir, he had recalled Shuja from Bengal for this task.106 But eventually, in February 1652, Aurangzeb set off to lead the campaign alone.107 Dara Shukoh, fearing an alliance between his two younger brothers, may have dissuaded his father from sending both to Qandahar.
The emperor peppered his son with frequent letters, keeping close tabs on Aurangzeb’s every act and movement. Aurangzeb’s replies provide an invaluable insight into the relationship between father and son, as they reflect the tight control that Shah Jahan kept over the princes at all times. We know from Aurangzeb’s replies that the letters Shah Jahan sent before the prince launched his second offensive on Qandahar were often accompanied by lavish gifts—pearl rosaries along with pearl and cornelian armlets, a ring studded with lucky stones, fragrant perfumes and precious incense powders of musk and ambergris, a diamond turban ornament, a fine Arab steed and a female elephant. Along the way, even when knee-deep in military preparations, Aurangzeb went out of his way to supply his father with the fruits that Babur’s descendants in India craved, particularly musk melons and pomegranates.108
By January 1652, Shah Jahan, too, was on his way to Lahore, along with his entourage. His plan was to proceed to Multan in Sind, while Dara Shukoh would go on to Kabul with Ali Mardan Khan, the Safavid governor who had surrendered Qandahar to the Mughals in 1638. In his next letter, he proposed a new strategy, a two-pronged attack on the Safavids, with a separate army led by Dara.109 Was Dara Shukoh himself behind this idea? The eldest prince may have hankered to prove himself in battle, especially since his previous expedition to Qandahar ended abruptly, though fortuitously, with Shah Safi’s death. Joining his more experienced brother would enable him to bask in the credit should the siege be victorious.
Aurangzeb, as we might expect, did not leap at the prospect of a role subordinate to his older brother. He dared not openly cross his father, but referred to the issue in a veiled way: “May the desire of the happy heart [of your Majesty] be splendidly displayed in the choicest manner upon the platform of manifestation!”110 Shah Jahan sensed his son’s reluctance and chose not to pursue the suggestion any further.
In other matters, though, Shah Jahan applied firmer, more direct pressure. Both Shah Jahan’s instructions and Aurangzeb’s plans changed again and again during the lead-up to war. The emperor supervised from a comfortable distance. Aurangzeb was on the ground. With the help of local contacts among landowners, he investigated which route to Qandahar would be the safest, would offer provisions along the way, and not unduly tax his men. He first inclined toward the most direct route, along which he hoped to dig wells and set up armed posts. But by the third week of February, when his army was camped outside Multan waiting for the auspicious hour at which to depart, his heart was set on another, more roundabout route. He would head north from Multan via Bhera, a town on the banks of the Jhelum River, instead of directly west toward Qandahar.
Then a letter from Shah Jahan arrived, exhorting Aurangzeb to take the more direct route, via Deh-i Shaikh. The emperor made clear that his son was expected at Qandahar on the fifteenth of the Persian month Urdibihisht, corresponding to the fourth of May. Aurangzeb politely outlined his reservations about this route, explaining that it had a long stretch completely devoid of water and that provisions would be scarce along the way.111 Nevertheless, the prince acquiesced to his father’s command, knowing that by doing so, some of the responsibility for the troops would transfer to Shah Jahan himself. Soon afterward, Aurangzeb blamed the route for a delay. Eventually he would reach in good time, and the imperial astrologers would postpone the auspicious date for arrival at Qandahar to the twenty-third of Urdibihisht.
Early in Aurangzeb’s journey, Shah Jahan urged Shuja to join the campaign and directed Aurangzeb to do whatever he could to ensure a smooth relationship with his older brother. This time, Aurangzeb was more effusive in his praise for the emperor’s suggestion, though he still seemed reluctant to share the glory with a brother. Eventually, as he approached Qandahar, he heard from his father that Shuja was ill, but insisting on carrying on. At least his arrival would be considerably delayed. Aurangzeb, probably relieved that he would reach Qandahar first, sent loving wishes for Shuja’s recovery. Fortunately for him, Shuja never came.
At Qandahar, Shah Jahan posted his prime minister, Sadullah Khan, to guide and assist Aurangzeb and act as a conduit for his own orders: “We have given suitable instructions in all matters to the Khan, the head minister of all viziers, to inform the murid, who should act accordingly.”112 But both Aurangzeb and Sadullah Khan soon found themselves at a loss. A couple of weeks after arriving, Aurangzeb had to halt the siege because they had already run out of guns. He wrote to Shah Jahan for permission to acquire more artillery.
By the first week of June, the Mughal army had been in Qandahar for almost a month without making significant progress. They fired ten cannon-balls at the fort every day, causing minor damage that the Safavids easily repaired overnight. It was painfully clear that their artillery was inadequate. Eventually, Sadullah Khan hatched a plan with Aurangzeb to try to breach the garrison wall. They would line up all the guns in one area, with the khan leading an army in the entrenchment. Raja Rajrup and Raja Madan Singh would support him with their men. But, they would have to find a way to tow all the artillery to one place without Safavid interference. And they needed the emperor’s approval before proceeding.
Meanwhile, in Aurangzeb’s account to his father, Rajrup had boasted that he would enter the garrison with his men in the dead of night. Sadullah Khan let him execute his plan, but Rajrup botched the task. Afterward, a Safavid sortie in Sadullah Khan’s trench took many lives. The Mughal soldiers’ bows, arrows, and swords were of no use against the heavy gunfire blasting from the fort.
Amid these setbacks, a letter from Shah Jahan arrived on the sixth of July, forbidding Aurangzeb to consolidate the guns in one area: “An attack from two sides is indeed possible and must be made. Attacking from only one side, however, is entirely inappropriate.”113 Why not just breach the wall using the two massive guns from Surat that they had, along with a handful of others? It must have been difficult for Aurangzeb to swallow his frustration. Did the emperor not understand that even their largest guns were no match for the fortress walls?
In the end, Aurangzeb never managed to execute his plan. First, the emperor learned about the Mughal army’s recent losses, and had a change of heart. Now he felt it best that Aurangzeb make his own decision about the artillery. But then soon afterward, on the twelfth of July, Shah Jahan ordered Sadullah Khan to lift the siege.114 Five days later, by the time the emperor changed his mind again to order that the siege continue, the army had already dispersed.
The recriminations started even before Aurangzeb reached Kabul: “It astounds us, that after such preparations the fort was not taken.” Aurangzeb was still on his way when he received word about his new appointment. Shah Jahan ordered him to tell his sons in Multan (and presumably his wives and daughters too) to meet him in Lahore. After Aurangzeb paid his respects at court, he was to proceed directly to the Deccan, where he would serve in the position he had last held in 1644. This was essentially a demotion. To make matters clearer, Aurangzeb’s annual salary was to be cut by seventeen lakh rupees.
That was not all. There would be another campaign against Qandahar the following year. This time, Dara Shukoh would lead it. Moreover, Sulaiman Shukoh, now a young man of seventeen, had been made governor of Kabul. Aurangzeb probably wondered if Dara was behind Shah Jahan’s lack of support for his Qandahar campaign. That Shah Jahan wanted to wrest Qandahar back from the Safavids, there is no doubt. It did not matter which of his sons accomplished the victory. But in Aurangzeb’s failure lay a new opportunity for Dara.115
/> Aurangzeb did his best to protest within the tight confines of propriety that governed his relationship with the emperor. First he claimed that he had, at the outset, wished to serve in Qandahar under “Dada Bhai,” the Hindavi term of respect he used in his letters to refer to his elder brother. Might he not attempt Qandahar again? The emperor dismissed him with a Persian proverb recited by the wise: “Something already tested, need not be tested again.”116
6
MISSION
1652–1654
AURANGZEB HAD BARELY BEEN on the road for a week after leaving Kabul, when a monsoon flood forced him to halt his journey at Naushera. The Indus raged. The river was so swollen, it destroyed the bridge that he and his entourage would have used to cross to the other bank. There was no point trying to construct even a temporary bridge before the waters abated. The few boats available were not enough to carry all his men across.
But the prince was not in a terrible hurry. He had to convince his father that this was a serious emergency and that he was not just dawdling—a hard task, but by this point he was accustomed to the emperor’s rebukes. More importantly, he saw an opportunity: his brother Shuja, bound for Bengal, was also held up on the same side of the river. While writing his father, Aurangzeb mentions Shuja’s presence in the briefest, most casual way possible. Did the two manage to meet?1 The emperor, so keenly supervising his sons’ movements, made sure that they rarely saw each other, unless, of course, two princes were required to cooperate for a military campaign. When they carried out their duties separately in far-flung regions of the empire, the princes posed less of a threat to his authority.
In a letter to Jahanara, though, Aurangzeb suggests that he and Shuja missed crossing paths by a hair. “If the prince of mortals had stayed on this side of the river two or three days longer, and pulled in his reins [to stop], a meeting with him would have quickly come to hand.” He hoped to meet Shuja in Lahore. Perhaps Jahanara could help. “God-Most-High willing, whenever his delight-increasing company, of which I have long been desirous, is obtained, it would be the manifestation of Sahib’s [Jahanara’s] grace and kindness …”2 Aurangzeb stopped in Shahjahanabad for a few days on his way to Agra. While his father was away on the road, he received imperial permission to enter the private quarters of the palace-fort so that he could meet his sisters. Certainly, he would have seen Roshanara and Gauharara, but Aurangzeb spent the most time with Jahanara, whom he hosted at his own mansion in the city and visited again to take leave before proceeding to Agra.3
A later account reports that Aurangzeb and Shuja finally did manage to meet in December, at Agra. Aurangzeb was headed back to the Deccan after stopping there, and Shuja was going to travel farther east to Bengal. Jahanara herself may have arranged their meeting, per Aurangzeb’s request, though the outcome of their encounter would not have pleased her. Aurangzeb’s pent-up bitterness against his father and Dara, his eldest brother, seemed to have touched a chord in Shuja. The two brothers secretly committed to a pact. They would further solidify their sibling relationship through the marriages of their children. In any case, for Mughal royals, fraternal bonds were, by themselves, too weak to count for much. One of Shuja’s daughters would marry Aurangzeb’s eldest son, Muhammad Sultan. A daughter of Aurangzeb would wed Shuja’s eldest son, Zain-ud-Din. The marriages could not take place immediately. Muhammad Sultan was not yet thirteen. For now, though, the betrothals sufficed. The brothers would not breathe a word about this to their father, for it was Shah Jahan’s prerogative to approve, or reject, the matches of all in his extended household.4
The marriage alliance did not reflect a plot to overthrow the throne. But it signaled a deeper agreement. After all, the question of succession could at any time burst on the horizon. Shah Jahan was almost sixty-one. He had already lived longer than his father, Jahangir. Aurangzeb saw a good opportunity to enlist his brothers’ support in advance. Once in the Deccan, he would also arrange to have a separate meeting with his younger brother, Murad.5
* * *
DARA SHUKOH STAYED BEHIND IN LAHORE after his father passed through the city in August, en route to Shahjahanabad from Kabul. There was plenty of work to do, and the prince had the wherewithal to carry it out. Dara was assigned new territories that placed enormous revenues at his disposal. Under his jurisdiction were now Kabul, Lahore, and Multan. Sulaiman Shukoh, now nearly eighteen, remained in Kabul to oversee affairs there. The prince’s trusted aide, Tawakkul Beg, was dispatched to Ghazni with the duties of court reporter and overseer of revenue collection. Shah Jahan’s chroniclers tell us that these new governorships were given to Dara Shukoh in accordance with the prince’s own requests.6 This suggests that Shah Jahan allowed Dara a fair amount of independence while planning the Qandahar siege.
The prince believed that he had divine favor on his side. Earlier, in Kabul, he had invited two Sufis to a gathering in his quarters. They sat in a meditative trance, with sleeved hands shrouding their faces. After about an hour had passed, one lifted his head and reported that he was witnessing there before them the situation of Iran as it unfolded. “The ruler of Iran has passed away, having bid farewell to the kingdom and to fortune.” The other Sufi echoed him, saying that he could see the ruler’s funeral. Indeed, Dara Shukoh, too, announced that he had recently beheld a mystical vision that Shah Abbas would die before he spent even seven days in Qandahar.
But Dara was determined to leave nothing to fate. Inayat Khan reports, “During the period of three months and some days that he remained in Lahore, he used such profuse exertions that he accomplished what otherwise could not have been done in one year.”7 The prince summoned some Europeans in Mughal employ to build a model fort. For assistance, they consulted books that they brought with them, which were illustrated with diagrams of every possible type of fortress as well as potential lines of attack. Then Dara had European and Indian gunners, in turn, stage a mock siege. They hurled cannonballs at the fort from battle stations at the foot of its wall. The prince was more impressed with the European battery.8
Such an extravagant spectacle needed an audience. Dara invited choice guests to view the military exercise. A chronogram marking the date, “The first victory of Dara Shukoh,” rose above the congratulatory murmurs to be recorded in a contemporary chronicle.9 Its author, Muhammad Badi, also known as Rashid Khan, was an official in the service of Mahabat Khan (a son of Shah Jahan’s old ally, who had inherited his father’s title). Rashid Khan accompanied his master to Qandahar. Much later, in 1678, Rashid Khan published his military diaries of the expedition and the preparation leading up to it, which gives detailed insight into the Qandahar campaign.10
Dara Shukoh guided his troops toward Qandahar in February 1653.11 The army was magnificently supplied with men, animals, wealth, and guns—the cavalry numbered seventy thousand, there were ten thousand foot soldiers and sixty elephants from the imperial stable in addition to the 170 that the prince and his accompanying nobles already had. Dara carried with him a whole crore of rupees for his expenses. Boats transported several heavy cannons separately via the Ravi River. The army stopped for provisions in Multan along the way, where in the third week of March, Dara Shukoh celebrated Nauroz, the Iranian new year, according to court custom. There, Mahabat Khan contributed thirty lakh rupees toward the campaign, while another sixty lakhs arrived from Lahore.12 The prince was anxious not to tarry too long in Multan and ordered that a bridge of boats be built.
Though Dara Shukoh radiated enthusiasm for his first true taste of battle, several of the nobles with him were more jaded. Rajrup and Jai Singh, among others, were two-time veterans of the Mughal-Safavid wars. They had barely returned from a grueling campaign and journey, only to receive orders that they should turn around and march back. If they held any reservations about the expedition’s feasibility, they dared not voice them publicly.
A small part of what must have been a longer correspondence between Raja Jai Singh and Dara’s wife, Nadira Bano, still survives. It is a decree, written i
n her hand, advising the raja to discharge the duties assigned to him and not to worry about attending to her. The date corresponds to the second week of April 1653, when Jai Singh would have been marching toward Qandahar.13
This little fragment, lifted from its context, raises more questions than it answers. Why would Jai Singh and Nadira correspond, and why would she feel it necessary to remind him to focus on the task at hand? Was he deliberately stalling, looking for a way to escape the military action? Jahanara had also written to Jai Singh the previous year, informing him that he had to go fight at Qandahar.14 These examples show that the imperial women played a role in corralling Shah Jahan’s nobles toward the Mughal state’s war efforts. In Jai Singh’s case, it appears that Jahanara and Nadira were specially roped in to motivate the reluctant Rajput warrior.
* * *
AS HE LEFT FOR QANDAHAR, Dara had no way of knowing that he would never come to reside in Lahore again. He would visit, of course, but not stay there for any significant length of time. For the prince, Lahore was not merely a city. It was sacred land. As Dara’s poetry attests, its earth mingled with the dust of interred saints, chief among them his beloved spiritual guide, Miyan Mir.15 Over the years, after becoming governor, Dara had worked to leave his architectural imprint on the city’s landscape. It was already splendid enough. The citadel, walled in red sandstone, rose south of the Ravi River, elevated by its hilly ground. Outside the city’s eastern Delhi Gate, Shah Jahan’s physician Wazir Khan had built a jewel-like mosque embellished all over with vivid, Iranian-style tiles. Its minarets gazed over a city complex nearby that Dara had been constructing over the years. Farther east, upstream of the Ravi, Dara laid out a garden alongside other gardens, including Shah Jahan’s Faiz Bakhsh, lining the main road to Shahjahanabad. He also changed the royal route to Shahjahanabad so that it went southward, past the tomb complex that he had built for Miyan Mir.16
The Emperor Who Never Was Page 20
