A Short History of the Mughal Empire (I.B.Tauris Short Histories)

by Fisher, H, Michael

  Indeed, Jahangir made himself pir over many mansabdars. They received imperial initiation, symbolized by receipt of his miniature portrait which they wore on breast or turban. Jahangir also appeared in visions and dreams to his disciples, curing them of illness, often over great distances.34

  For a time, Jahangir interested himself in a famous holy recluse, Gosain Jadrup (c. 1559–1638).35 Born a wealthy Brahmin jeweler, Jadrup had left his parents, wife and children for a tiny cave near Mathura. Jahangir first met him in 1601 with Akbar. In 1617 and then four times in 1619, Jahangir visited Jadrup. Jadrup discoursed about Vedanta theology but also gave administrative advice, some of which Jahangir implemented. For instance, when a local jagirdar (Hakim Beg, a son-in-law of I‘timad-ud-Daula) chastised Jadrup, Jahangir had the official dismissed (albeit temporarily). But Jahangir’s attention to Jadrup was temporary.

  Jahangir quizzed men from various religions, often posing provocative queries and pitting theologians against each other in evening sessions. For instance, Portuguese Jesuits (a small but constant presence at his court) recorded how Jahangir questioned their beliefs about Jesus and his miracles, evidently bemused by some responses about celibacy and the Trinity. But he permitted Jesuits in 1610 to baptize three sons of his late brother Daniyal.

  While Jahangir and his court regarded as relatively marginal the growing presence in the Empire of European missionaries, merchants and diplomats, we can perceive through hindsight the significance of these early interventions. During Jahangir’s reign, Portuguese naval vessels continued to capture merchant and pilgrim ships, some owned by Mughal courtiers (including imperial womenfolk). In retaliation, Jahangir in 1613 closed Catholic churches in Lahore and Agra. He stopped providing financial aid to Jesuits at court, expelling some. And he opportunistically allied with the increasingly assertive English to punish the Portuguese in Surat and Daman. After a 1615 treaty, however, these Mughal-Portuguese hostilities subsided temporarily.

  The Portuguese, the English East India Company, and then (from 1616) the Dutch East India Company also affected the Empire through increasing intercontinental trade. Europeans used vast amounts of silver and gold from the Americas to purchase Indian-made textiles and other products in substantial amounts, thus lubricating and bolstering the Mughal economy. Crops from the Americas, including tobacco, maize, chilli peppers and tomatoes, were widely adopted by Indian cultivators. For instance, tobacco’s production for local use and export spread rapidly. Akbar had questioned the allegedly healthful benefits of tobacco smoking. Jahangir futilely banned it for his courtiers (except for incurable addicts) because of ‘the disturbance that tobacco brings about in most temperaments and constitutions.’36

  Among other diverse attendants at Jahangir’s court were leading Jain ascetics. While he reportedly mocked their celibacy, he also enquired about their beliefs, especially in total non-violence. Periodically, he himself made vows not to hunt on certain weekdays or for specific time periods.

  Yet, Jahangir also prided himself on his bow- and musket-shooting, a family tradition, boasting that, by age 47, he had already successfully hunted 17,167 animals (hunts which he supervised killed another 11,365).37 Jahangir continued other Central Asian martial traditions as well. His victorious forces erected towers of severed enemy heads. Cavalrymen, armed with bows plus swords and spears, still held primacy for mansabdars.

  Simultaneously, Jahangir and his high mansabdars also increasingly integrated gunpowder weapons into imperial armies. They hired scattered Europeans and Ottomans to manufacture and fire heavy artillery. Wealthy regional rulers did so as well. Improved firelock muskets proliferated in India’s military labor market. Cannon and firearms thus proved ever more decisive in battle, both for and against the Empire.

  Throughout much of his reign, Jahangir traveled in procession through his domain, mainly in its dryer western half. He travelled for hunting and for aesthetic pleasure but not to engage personally in war. While he occasionally approached imperial frontiers, he never entered a battlefield, preferring distant supervision. Nonetheless, Jahangir dispatched mansabdars to both resolve campaigns Akbar left uncompleted and extend imperial frontiers. Jahangir’s physical presence was not necessary for campaigns to succeed, showing the Empire’s stability. However, while imperial armies achieved victories to the east, west, north, and south, many newly conquered territories were never fully integrated, producing an ever more sprawling Empire.

  In the East, Bengal remained unsettled through much of Jahangir’s reign, even as imperial armies struggled to subdue hilly Cooch Bihar and Kamrup. A young officer, Mirza Nathan, recorded his rise from mansab 100/50 to 900/450 during these hard-fought campaigns.38 Son of the commander of the provincial riverine navy, Mirza Nathan detailed how imperial forces fought and negotiated with zamindars and local chiefs, battled the Ahom (a rival empire expanding from the east), and tried to fight off Portuguese and Arakanese coastal raids. Idealized administrative models produced by the imperial center contrast with Mirza Nathan’s first-hand description of actual processes on the ground. He and his colleagues struggled to master the environment: excavating and breaching canals, damming streams and cutting forests. Military setbacks proliferated. Coalitions of mansabdars maneuvered, betrayed and assassinated their rivals. Imperial officials vied to produce reports of distinguished results for Jahangir’s approval.

  A major Mughal strategy was to co-opt enemy leaders. Mansabdars enrolled local leaders into the provincial administration. The most prominent were enticed to aspire to attend the imperial court, where they were expected to be overwhelmingly impressed. But when the Bengal governor’s son escorted some Arakanese headmen to Jahangir, he recoiled:

  Briefly they are animals in the form of men. They eat everything there is either on land or in the sea, and nothing is forbidden by their religion. They eat with anyone …. They have no proper religion or any customs that can be interpreted as religion. They are far from the Musulman faith and separated from that of the Hindus.39

  Such alienating attitudes by the emperor and khanazad mansabdars would limit the efficacy of this coopting strategy for people from beyond Hindustan or west or Central Asia.

  As prince, Jahangir had been assigned by Akbar to march westward to subdue the long-defiant Sisodia Rajputs of Mewar. But he made little progress. As emperor, Jahangir directed his second son, Parvez, to complete this campaign. When he largely failed, Jahangir replaced him with his third son, Khurram, who finally forced ruling Sisodia Rana Amar Singh (r. 1597–1620) to negotiate submission and enroll his son, Karan Singh (r. 1620–28), with mansab 5,000/5,000. Jahangir claims to have treated Karan Singh as a foster-child, training him in sophisticated imperial court culture. Jahangir also ordered full-sized marble statues of the Rana and his son put below the jharoka in Agra Fort—honoring and showing his mastery over them.

  Jahangir also sent armies northward. Imperial troops finally recaptured repeatedly rebellious Kangra in the Himalayan foothills. When Jahangir visited, he ordered the fortress leveled and a mosque built to impress his supremacy upon the local population. Jahangir additionally dispatched troops beyond Kashmir into Kishtwar and Ladakh from 1616 onward. As on other frontiers, these Mughal forces proved able to overwhelm local rulers but failed to incorporate them into the Empire, thus having to face subsequent revolts.

  To the South, the Deccan remained an unstable frontier, populated by hostile martial communities. Jahangir ordered his second son, Parvez, to complete the conquest of Ahmadnagar (veteran mansabdars actually commanded the imperial forces). However, stubborn resistance continued under Malik Ambar, even after a Mughal victory in 1616. Eventually, Jahangir transferred Parvez to Allahabad and sent Khurram to the Deccan. As on other imperial frontiers, defeating and coopting enemies proved difficult. Deccani Maratha and Telugu leaders proved particularly resistant to Mughal enticements, rarely accepting mansabs during Jahangir’s reign.

  Among his mansabdars, Jahangir evidently balanced his personal preferences
with recognition of their competence. Those whom he favored rose high. But even those he distrusted sometimes proved useful, particularly Rajputs whom his father had bound to the imperial dynasty through marriage. Although Jahangir respected his Rajput mother, he highlighted his paternal Timurid ancestry far more. Jahangir formally married at least five Rajput brides (in addition to about 14 Muslim wives) but he appointed no Rajputs or other Hindus to high offices at the imperial center and only a few as governors—Raja Man Singh being the major exception.

  Man Singh was one of Jahangir’s most accomplished commanders and governors, and also his maternal cousin and senior wife’s brother. Yet Man Singh had supported Khusrau against him at Akbar’s court. Therefore, Jahangir appointed him to high posts and awarded outward honors but candidly criticized:

  Raja Man Singh came and waited on me … [only] after orders had been sent to him six or seven times. He … is one of the hypocrites and old wolves of this State …. The aforesaid Raja produced as offerings 100 elephants, male and female, not one of which was fit to be included among my private elephants. As he was one of those who had been favoured by my father, I did not parade his offences before his face, but with royal condescension promoted him.40

  Further, in 1608, Jahangir ‘demanded in marriage’ Man Singh’s granddaughter, reiterating Mughal superiority.

  In addition, Jahangir had hundreds of concubines. Shahriyar (1605–28), and other sons with concubines, held status as imperial princes and potential heirs. As Jahangir prematurely aged, factional maneuvering for control over him and the impending succession intensified.

  DOMINANT INFLUENCES DURING JAHANGIR’S LATER REIGN

  Distinctive of Jahangir’s later reign was the rise to dominance of I‘timad-ud-Daula’s family. An impoverished Irani immigrant from the Safavid court, Ghiyas Beg Tehrani, had joined Akbar’s service and climbed due to his administrative expertise, gaining the title I‘timad-ud-Daula. Early in his career, he had married his 17-year-old daughter, Mihr-un-Nissa (born during their immigration in Qandahar), to another Irani immigrant, entitled Sher Afgan Khan. Posted with a low mansab to Bengal, Sher Afgan Khan violently quarreled with the governor, resulting in both their deaths in 1607. I‘timad-ud-Daula then brought his widowed daughter and her daughter, Ladli, to join the household of a step-mother of Jahangir.41

  Every imperial wedding required the Emperor’s approval. In 1607, Jahangir engaged his 15-year-old third son, Khurram, to fourteen-year-old Arjumand Banu, another of I‘timad-ud-Daula’s granddaughters. Seeming far more significant at that time was Jahangir’s wedding in 1610 of Khurram to the daughter of another Iranian immigrant, Mirza Muzaffar Husain, a Safavid prince.

  For supporting Khusrau’s attempted coup against newly enthroned Jahangir, I‘timad-ud-Daula was temporarily disgraced and his eldest son executed. But I‘timad-ud-Daula’s submission and abilities soon restored him to Jahangir’s favor. From 1611 onward, I‘timad-ud-Daula rose quickly in mansab. Simultaneously, his 35-year-old widowed daughter, Mihr-un-Nissa, improbably caught 42-year-old Jahangir’s eye. Within a few months he married and entitled her Nur Mahal (‘Light of the Palace’), echoing his own title, Nur-al-Din. The next year, Jahangir also consented to the wedding of Khurram and her niece, Arjumand Banu, later famous as Mumtaz Mahal (‘Excellence of the Palace’).

  Unlike Akbar’s marriages, these two weddings did not advance Jahangir politically. However, they added to the increasing influence of I‘timad-ud-Daula and his family, including his surviving son, Asaf Khan. Nur Mahal soon eclipsed Jahangir’s many other wives, but only hints survive about how they regarded her. In his memoirs, however, she receives increasing praise from 1614 onward as devoted companion, masterful huntswoman and astute political advisor.42

  I‘timad-ud-Daula gained premier positions in Jahangir’s administration, reaching by 1619 mansab 7,000/7,000. He was governor of Punjab and then Wazir and Diwan until his death.43 Jahangir appreciated both his administrative accomplishments and also his increasingly lavish gifts and hospitality. Jahangir noted that he honored I‘timad-ud-Daula ‘as an intimate friend by directing the ladies of the harem not to veil their faces from him.’44

  Indeed, I‘timad-ud-Daula’s family and their mostly Irani supporters so flourished that some later historians label them a ‘junta.’45 As of 1621, Iranis had risen to the plurality (28 per cent) among all mansabdars (even more among the highest ranked). In contrast, Turanis shrank from the plurality to only 20 per cent (Indian Muslims and Rajputs remained at 14 per cent each, stable since Akbar’s late reign).46 Other clans also rose, but I‘timad-ud-Daula’s family dominated the last half of Jahangir’s reign.

  Caravanserai Gateway, commissioned by Nur Jahan, Punjab, c. 162047

  Jahangir became ever more personally devoted to Nur Mahal, elevating her title in 1616 to Nur Jahan (‘Light of the World’), especially unusual since they had no children. Jahangir joined her in deep mourning for her mother’s death, soon followed by her father’s demise in 1622. Despite both Islamic and Mughal tradition, Jahangir gave I‘timad-ud-Daula’s vast wealth to Nur Jahan, rather than to his eldest son, Asaf Khan, or his son-in-law, Khurram. Although Asaf Khan succeeded his father as Wazir, Nur Jahan thereafter expanded her personal power even further, with Jahangir’s approval.

  Like Nur Jahan, many imperial womenfolk built tombs and caravanserais.48 But she prominently participated in public affairs, which had become unusual by this time. She awarded khilats and honors and issued farmans and coins, both joined with Jahangir and independently. She conducted diplomacy, exchanging missions with the Uzbek queen mother. Further, she sought to perpetuate her power by determining the imperial succession; both Nur Jahan and her brother, Asaf Khan, allied with Jahangir’s current favorite son, Khurram, against his brothers.

  Silver rupee with Nur Jahan and Jahangir’s names49

  Khurram had surpassed his brothers in martial achievements, Jahangir’s affections, and mansab, thus enhancing his position as heir-apparent. While one elder brother, Parvez, foundered in the Deccan, in 1620, Khurram’s forces recaptured the notoriously impregnable hill fortress of Kangra after a year-long siege and gained mansab equal to Parvez. The vital strategic need for a competent princely commander in the troublesome Deccan led Jahangir to entrust Khurram with that post, giving him royal titles Shah Sultan and then Shah Jahan (‘King of the World,’ the title he used, and we will use, henceforth). Shah Jahan, before leaving court for the Deccan, demanded vast military and financial resources and also custody of his imprisoned eldest brother, Khusrau. Jahangir granted these demands and wrote ‘my consideration for this son is so unbounded that I would do anything to please him … in his early youth [he] has accomplished to my satisfaction, everything that he has set his hand to.’50

  Among shifting factional alliances, each of Jahangir’s surviving sons, as well as Nur Jahan and Asaf Khan, maneuvered to gain allies and control over the emperor and imperial resources. Shah Jahan initially showed success, reconquering resurgent Ahmadnagar, subduing Malik Ambar (albeit temporarily), and forcing tributes from Golkonda and Bijapur. Jahangir traveled to Mandu, distantly supervising the Deccan campaigns. There, in 1617, he welcomed victorious Shah Jahan, standing to receive him and awarding him the unprecedented rank 30,000/20,000 (10,000 2-3h) and the unique privilege to sit adjacent to the throne. Nur Jahan hosted the victory feast for him.

  Jahangir’s capacity further weakened from illnesses exacerbated by long-standing alcohol and drug addictions. From 1620 onward, he traveled almost every springtime to Kashmir, where he spent the summer savoring its cool climate, far removed from the heat and politics of north India. Nur Jahan nursed Jahangir devotedly. A contemporary criticized: ‘she gradually acquired such unbounded influence over His Majesty’s mind that she seized the reins of government and abrogated to herself the supreme civil and financial administration of the realm, ruling with absolute authority till the conclusion of his reign.’51

  Further, Nur Jahan began to regard Shah Jahan as
a rival and raised a new claimant to the throne: Shahriyar, son of one of Jahangir’s concubines. She married teenage Shahriyar to Ladli Begum, her daughter from her first marriage. Shahriyar soon rose to mansab 30,000/8,000 (his high zat showing his elevated personal rank, but his significantly lower sawar showing his limited military role).

  Hitherto, Jahangir’s relations with the Safavids had largely continued through competitive diplomacy rather than warfare. For example, Jahangir commissioned paintings displaying his superiority. Additionally, the Mughal Empire still retained disputed possession of commercially, strategically and symbolically significant Qandahar. However, ailing Jahangir’s complacency was shattered in June 1622 when a powerful Safavid expedition threatened to seize Qandahar from the inadequate Mughal garrison.

  Jahangir immediately ordered almost all his imperial forces diverted from their current deployments for a massive expedition to defend and then, when the city fell, retake Qandahar. Jahangir also dreamed of retaliating by capturing the Safavid capital, Isfahan. Jahangir demanded that Shah Jahan bring his armies from the Deccan to lead this expedition: ‘wait on me with all possible speed with a victorious host, and elephants of mountain hugeness, and the numerous artillery … in order that he (the king of Persia) might discover the result of breaking faith and of wrong-doing.’52 Instead, Shah Jahan delayed complying, unwilling to abandon the Deccan and journey to distant Qandahar. But his non-compliance antagonized Jahangir who, encouraged by Shah Jahan’s rivals, discerned disloyalty.

  Then, Shah Jahan seized some jagirs assigned to Nur Jahan and Shahriyar, killing their agents. This convinced Jahangir that ‘[Shah Jahan] was unworthy of all the favours and cherishing I had bestowed on him, and that his brain had gone wrong … henceforth they should call him Bī-daulat (wretch).’53 Jahangir executed courtiers he suspected were Shah Jahan’s partisans. So overcome was Jahangir by physical frailty and these disturbing events that he could no longer write his own journal, instead dictating it to a trusted courtier.