Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne

by Alex Rutherford

  Heart beating fast, Khurram mounted the steps of the block and slowly drew back the pearl-sewn, green silk curtains. Words were impossible as he looked into Arjumand’s eyes. Leaning into the howdah, he took her in his arms and kissed her warm lips. ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long . . . sometimes it seemed impossible that it would ever come. But there are two here who have been waiting even longer than me,’ he whispered as at last he released her. He opened the howdah’s silver door and held her henna-tipped hand as together they stepped down. Tears were already running down Arjumand’s cheeks as she looked about her for her sons. Then, in the soft light of the many oil lamps with which the tent was lit, she saw Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb, looking hesitant, shy even . . . Smiling through her tears, she held out her arms to them, and they ran to her.

  Three nights later, as they lay side by side after making love, Arjumand sat up. Pushing back a lock of his dark hair she looked for a moment into Khurram’s eyes. ‘May I ask you a question?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘As we were travelling towards Sikandra, one of my attendants told me something I found difficult to believe – a story she had got from a messenger just arrived from Burhanpur. I tried to put it from my mind but could not.’

  ‘What was it?’ Something in Arjumand’s tone made Khurram sit up as well.

  ‘That one morning his attendants found Khusrau dead on his bed in the apartments where you had imprisoned him.’

  Khurram said nothing for a moment. Then: ‘It is true. My half-brother is dead,’ he said quietly.

  ‘But the story is that he was smothered on your orders.’

  Khurram was again silent. The second letter – the one he had despatched to the Governor of Burhanpur – had been an order to kill Khusrau as painlessly as possible. He had written with a heavy heart but convinced he was acting out of expediency and in the best interests of his family. But later, as he waited for news that his wishes had been carried out, he had begun to wonder how it would feel to be Khusrau hearing the door to his chamber unexpectedly open . . . turning his partially sighted gaze towards it . . . wondering who his visitors were . . . perhaps hoping that it was his wife Jani. At what stage would his half-brother realise that the opening doors brought not the comfort of a loving wife but assassins? How would Khusrau die? His only orders had been that it should be painless. Would it be a quick dagger thrust to the heart or the clean sweep of a sword blade? A cup of poison forced through resisting lips or suffocation with a pillow?

  However, he had realised that he could not afford to allow sentiment to master necessity and to think like this. He must think of Khusrau as a past and potential rebel – not as a living, feeling human being. But later, when the news of Khusrau’s smothering had reached him, a new concern had grown in his mind. How much had he been influenced by Mehrunissa’s words as she stood before him with Shahriyar? Had she played his emotions when they were heightened by his victory and his reunion with his sons and manipulated him into doing something he might regret for ever, just as she had manipulated his father? No, he had again convinced himself. He and he alone had made the fateful decision and it had been justified.

  ‘I cannot lie to you. It is true. But I acted to protect ourselves and our children.’ Khurram paused before forcing himself to continue. ‘And there is more . . . news that reached me only yesterday. After completing the funeral arrangements for Khusrau, Jani went to her rooms and killed herself – it is said by swallowing a burning coal from the brazier heating her room against the winter chill.’

  Tears appeared in Arjumand’s eyes and she began to shake. ‘How could you, Khurram? What a horrible way to die. I can almost feel the coal burning and scorching my throat, eating my lungs. What terrible, terrible pain she must have endured in those last moments.’

  Jani’s death – in particular the manner of it – had appalled him too when he had first heard of it, but all he said was, ‘I did not order her death.’

  ‘But it was a consequence of your order to execute Khusrau . . . Jani loved him as much as I love you. To take one’s life is a sin, I know, and I pray to God that if you died I would have the courage to live on for our children’s sake, but I can understand how grief overcame her.’

  Khurram looked at Arjumand’s troubled face. What she had said was true. His actions had caused Jani’s death. But whatever doubts he might feel – whatever guilt – he must put them behind him and be strong. ‘I did it for our children. They are our future – the future of the dynasty,’ he said, dismissing from his mind the thought that he had done it to make his own life and rule easier. But perhaps those motives in reality had coalesced. Few men – not even an emperor – had the cool courage to peer unflinching into their minds and motives, preferring to deceive themselves with specious justifications for their actions.

  ‘I pray Khusrau and especially Jani will rest in Paradise,’ said Arjumand, ‘and I pray too God will forgive you and exact no punishment on you or our children.’

  ‘I pray so too,’ said Khurram. He had never meant anything more, nor since his marriage felt so alone. This was what his father and grandfather had told him about the loneliness of power. It would never leave him.

  Chapter 26

  The Peacock Throne

  Agra, 14 February 1628

  The great sandstone gateway of the Agra fort – his fort – rose in front of Khurram as his elephant made its stately progress up the flower-strewn ramp at the head of the ceremonial procession. He had chosen the date of his entry into Agra with care – according to the solar calendar it was the 72nd anniversary of the proclamation of his grandfather Akbar’s reign. Rising before dawn he had walked through the drifting early morning mist to Akbar’s tomb where, as the peacocks fluttered down from their night-time roosts in the surrounding gardens, he had pressed his lips to the cold stone of his sarcophagus. ‘I will be a worthy emperor,’ he had whispered.

  But today was also the 145th anniversary of the birth of Babur whose ambition and daring had first won Hindustan for the Moghuls. Babur’s eagled-hilted sword Alamgir now hung from his waist. How many battles Alamgir must have seen on its long journey from beyond the Oxus river into Hindustan . . . The eagle’s ruby eyes glittered in the sun. Glancing at his right hand, Khurram smiled with satisfaction at the sight of something that had belonged to an even earlier ancestor – the heavy gold ring engraved with the image of a spitting tiger that had once been Timur’s. He, Khurram, was the tenth ruler in direct descent from that great warrior whose empire had once stretched from the Mediterranean in the west to the borders of China in the east, and the conjunction of the planets at his own birth had been the same as at Timur’s, much to Akbar’s delight. At this moment Khurram felt as if not only his subjects but the spectral figures of his ancestors were there watching him, the thirty-six-year-old Moghul emperor, take upon his broad shoulders the hopes and ambitions of their dynasty.

  As Khurram’s elephant passed into the purple shadows beneath the main gatehouse kettledrums boomed in salute. For a moment Khurram closed his eyes, savouring the moment, the culmination of his wishes and ambitions. But then a darkness all of his own passed over him, driving out the euphoria. Despite the heat of the day and the weight of his diamond-encrusted green brocade tunic, he shivered as he thought of the anonymous note pinned by a steel dagger to the ground close to his command tent that he had found on his return from his grandfather’s tomb. Its content had been brief: Surely a throne seized in so much blood will be ill omened?

  How had the note got there beneath the noses of his guards? Had it been written by someone he thought of as a friend but who was not – someone whose presence close to his tent wouldn’t have attracted attention? Or had it been left by a stranger who had infiltrated the heart of his camp? With the preparations for the triumphal march into Agra under way since well before dawn and with the wispy white mist to shroud them perhaps it wouldn’t have been so difficult.

  As he had flung the note into a brazier o
f burning charcoals and watched it consumed in a clear orange flame, Mehrunissa’s high-cheekboned face, lips curved in an ironic smile, had floated for a moment before him. He could imagine her writing such a note. Had she really found it possible from the seclusion of her quarters in Lahore to attempt to disturb his peace of mind on what should have been the greatest day of his life? If so she had succeeded. Whoever was responsible, the note had shaken him, but he had tried to push the message from his mind. He hadn’t even mentioned it to Arjumand whose parting kiss in the haram tents that morning had sent the same erotic shiver through him that it had in all the years of their marriage. It never failed to arouse him and had for a while banished any bleak thoughts.

  But now as his elephant emerged back into the sunlight, bearing him onwards towards the throne he had desired for so long, they had returned. Why? Because he felt guilty? No. The deaths of Shahriyar and Khusrau had been necessary, hadn’t they? Wasn’t a little blood shed at the beginning of the reign better than a lot shed later because he had not had the courage to act? Wouldn’t the benefits from the deaths outweigh any sin in them? Yes, he reiterated to himself. With these deaths he had eliminated the potential rivals to the throne and protected himself and his family.

  Enough, Khurram told himself. He had done what he had to do and the past was just that – the past. All that mattered was the present and the future and he had secured both by his actions. Trying to pull himself together, he glanced round at the vast procession following him. The elephant bearing his four sons, the imperial princes, beneath a green silk canopy and the smaller one carrying Arjumand and their two daughters in a howdah enclosed by draperies of cloth of silver into which gold mesh grilles had been inset so that they could see out were following immediately behind. Next, mounted on a white stallion, rode Arjumand’s father Asaf Khan and seated on a black stallion with a jewelled saddlecloth and graciously acknowledging the crowds was Mahabat Khan, now his khan-i-khanan, commander-in-chief. Then came the imperial bodyguards followed by cavalrymen riding four abreast – many of them scarlet-turbaned Rajputs – and finally musketmen and archers, all of them magnificently dressed in Moghul green, representatives of the great army that was now his to command.

  The sight restored Khurram’s confidence. Attendants were running along the battlements of the fort above, showering spectators with gold and silver coins – new minted to mark the start of his reign – and semi-precious stones – amethysts, cat’s eyes, topazes. Other servants were flinging stars and moons fashioned from thin-beaten silver and gold. It was as if the heavens were raining riches upon the earth – Moghul riches. He was master of it all and should be glorying in his power and wealth. He would not allow a few malicious words to unsettle him.

  Passing through a second great gate Khurram saw before him the wide flower-filled courtyard with its bubbling fountains constructed by Akbar and beyond it the many-pillared Hall of Public Audience where the golden throne on its marble dais awaited. His chief courtiers were already grouped beneath it in order of precedence. In just a few moments he would take his place on that throne and address his court for the first time. If he had sinned by spilling blood he would more than atone for it to his people. He would show them he deserved the throne and their love and make them rejoice that he was their emperor.

  Some words of his grandfather Akbar flashed into his mind. ‘The people love show and want to be impressed by their rulers and feel awe for them. A great ruler must be like the sun – too dazzling to look upon but the source of all light and hope and warmth without whom existence would seem impossible.’ Akbar had been truly magnificent. But he, Khurram, would strive to follow him, emulate his achievements, even surpass them if he could. He would reign under the title his father had once conferred on him, Shah Jahan, Lord of the World. That golden throne on which he was about to sit would not be splendid enough for the Lord of the World. He had already visited his treasure vaults with their piles of luminous gems too numerous to count which his treasurers instead assessed by weight so that they could tell him, ‘See, Majesty, here you have half a ton of diamonds and here a ton of pearls . . .’ He would summon the best jewellers in the empire to fashion a throne in which the most glorious of his gems would be displayed. He would sit beneath a jewelled canopy supported by columns studded with rubies. On top of the canopy would be a tree symbolising the tree of life, its trunk set with diamonds and pearls and on either side of it a glittering peacock, tail outspread. Seated on his peacock throne he would indeed be too dazzling to look upon.

  If it would be challenging to exceed Akbar as a great and just emperor beloved by all his people, whatever their race or religion or status, he was determined to surpass him as head of an imperial family. Akbar’s relations with his sons had been fractured and distant, just as his own had been with Jahangir. In both generations – and before that in Humayun’s time – half-brothers had contended against each other for the throne. Unlike Akbar he had the good fortune to have a united, loving family and he would make sure it stayed so. His sons and daughters, born of the same mother and brought yet closer together by all they had endured, would help him transform the dynasty. How could Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb, having suffered imprisonment together, ever fight each other? The vicious family rivalry – the old code of taktya takhta, throne or coffin, that had tainted previous generations and weakened the empire with threats of civil war – would be gone for ever.

  What was more, he would guard himself and his family against other weaknesses of his dynasty – the over-fondness for wine and opium that had weakened his father’s mind and that of his great-grandfather Humayun and destroyed so many members of his family – his half-brother Parvez and his uncles Daniyal and Murad. One of his first acts would be to renounce alcohol for himself and his family, even though like Akbar and Babur before him he felt strong enough to be the master of those drugs and not their servant.

  A roll of drums signalled that it was time for Khurram’s elephant to halt and drop to its knees. In a moment, he would descend and advance towards the throne followed by his sons while Arjumand’s elephant would bear her and their daughters through into the haram. From the women’s gallery Arjumand, his love and his comfort throughout all his misfortunes, would watch through the jali screen as for the first time he addressed his court. His reign was about to begin. Though it had begun in blood, together with Arjumand he would make sure it ended in glory . . .

  Historical Note

  Like his great-grandfather Babur, Jahangir wrote his own memoirs – Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri – which he began in 1605, the year he became emperor. Although he describes a very different world from Babur’s, Jahangir’s memoirs are also detailed and lively and often very frank. They reveal a man riven with contradiction – one moment writing lyrically of the intricate beauty of the champa flower or the exquisite taste of the flesh of a mango and at another admitting he had his father Akbar’s friend and adviser Abul Fazl assassinated because ‘he was not my friend’. In another lengthy and bitter passage he describes his alienation from his once beloved son Khurram, deriding him as ‘that one of dark fortune’ and bi-daulat, ‘the wretch’. His adoration of Mehrunissa is clear. In one passage he describes how, firing from a litter, she killed a tiger with a single shot which is, he writes, ‘a very difficult matter’. In 1622 the increasingly frail Jahangir handed the task of writing his memoirs to Mutamid Khan, one of his scribes, who was present during Mahabat Khan’s coup. He faithfully continued the journal until 1624 and then wrote his own account – Iqbal-nama – of the last three years of Jahangir’s life. There are also several other chronicles such as Ferishta’s Gulshan-i-Ibrahami which deal with Jahangir’s life or parts of it. Chronicles such as the Shahjahannama tell the story of Khurram.

  Quite a few of the foreign visitors to Hindustan in Jahangir’s reign wrote vividly of what they witnessed. The book written by Sir Thomas Roe, England’s first official envoy to the Moghul court, bursts with detail and, despite its sometimes patronising tone, be
trays the amazement felt by Europeans at the Moghul court’s magnificence. Other foreign sources include the writings of William Hawkins, sent to Hindustan by the East India Company, who was at Jahangir’s court at Agra from 1609 until 1611; William Finch, Hawkins’s assistant, who is the source for the story of Akbar’s concubine Anarkali, ‘Pomegranate Blossom’; Edward Terry, a clergymen who became Roe’s chaplain for a while and sailed back to England with him; and the famous English pedestrian Thomas Coryat who travelled overland to Hindustan and in 1615 arrived at Jahangir’s court. He described the fabulous ornaments of Jahangir’s elephants which included ‘furniture for their buttocks of pure gold’.

  As with the three earlier novels in the Empire of the Moghul quintet, Raiders from the North, Brothers at War and Ruler of the World, the main characters in this novel – the imperial Moghul family, the Persian Ghiyas Beg and all his family including Mehrunissa and Arjumand, the opportunistic Mahabat Khan, the Abyssinian commander and former slave Malik Ambar and many others like Sir Thomas Roe – existed. Some of the subsidiary characters like Suleiman Beg, Nicholas Ballantyne and Kamran Iqbal are composites but in turn based on real people.

  The main events – Khusrau’s revolt, Khurram’s campaigns against Malik Ambar and his estrangement from his father, Mahabat Khan’s coup – are also true although I’ve omitted or changed some details and in a few cases compressed or altered timescales. Jahangir was indeed obsessed with Mehrunissa, later known as Nur Jahan, who used her influence to gain personal power and became de facto ruler of Hindustan – a remarkable achievement for a woman of that period. It’s striking that in an age when royal women were seldom depicted in paintings several of Mehrunissa have survived including the portrait described in the book. It’s clear from the sources that Mehrunissa at first promoted the marriage of her niece Arjumand to Khurram but then turned against them. The dynamics of the story needed little embroidering. Sir Thomas Roe provided a nice snapshot of a reign with all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy: ‘a noble prince, an excellent wife, a faithful councillor, a crafty stepmother, an ambitious son, a cunning favourite . . .’ And as so often in great tragedies one overriding message comes through – that the central players will become the authors of their own destruction.