Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World

by Alex Rutherford

  A drawn Muhammad Beg was in the front row, leaning heavily on a carved ebony stick that Akbar had sent him. Thanks to the hakims the old warrior was well on the way to recovery, though his wounds were so severe his long years of campaigning were over. By his side stood Ahmed Khan, his long wispy beard for once carefully combed, the bulky, red-turbaned figure of Raja Ravi Singh and Akbar’s brother-in-law Raja Bhagwan Das of Amber wearing diamonds in his ears, his favourite triple-stranded pearl necklace round his neck and a close-fitting orange silk coat with coral buttons. Behind Akbar’s senior commanders were the other officers, positioned according to rank. Scanning the tens of rows, Akbar’s sharp eyes picked out the tall, broad-chested Ali Gul, resplendent in robes of scarlet and gold brocade rather than his usual plain cotton or wool tunic and trousers, standing among his fellow Tajiks. The Badakhshani officers next to them looked just as imposing in their bright steel breastplates, with their green standards in their hands.

  As the voices of his men rose in a great roar of approbation, their faces reflected the pride welling within Akbar himself. Success was sweet. Three days ago, preceded by drummers and trumpeters riding black horses with jewelled bridles and diamond-encrusted headguards and a detachment of horsemen each bearing a yak’s tail standard, and riding aboard the tallest and most stately of his war elephants in a gem-covered howdah, he had led his immaculate, victorious armies into his new capital of Sikri along a road sprinkled with rose and jasmine petals by attendants running ahead. Every blade of every weapon had been honed and shining, every bronze cannon polished and gleaming, and he had ordered the tusks of his thousand war elephants to be painted gold to show they were returning in glory from battle.

  Since his return Akbar had been preparing his speech, seeking and memorising the words that would do justice to what he hoped would be a pivotal moment in his reign. He had achieved great things but he wanted his men to understand that an even more glorious future awaited the Moghul empire. Instinctively he glanced at his three sons standing to the right of his throne. Since his return he’d had little time to spend with them but he knew that some time in the future – and he hoped it would be long delayed – they would be the dynasty’s upholders. Seven-year-old Salim was looking excited, his fine-boned face beneath his green silk turban eager and vital. Six-year-old Murad was also clearly enjoying himself. Of the three boys, he was the one who had changed most during Akbar’s absence. He was now as tall as Salim. The left cheek and chin of his square face was bruised – the result, so his tutor had informed Akbar, of a fall from a mango tree while looking for birds’ eggs. Little Daniyal was still plump and his eyes were round as he took in the mass of men below.

  Akbar raised his hands, palms down, to signal he had more to say and the cheers subsided. ‘You have already received the worldly tokens of my esteem – robes of honour, jewelled daggers and swords, horses swift as the wind, higher ranks to hold, richer jagirs to govern. Some of you have even received your bodyweight in gold. You have earned these rewards and I promise you that in the years ahead there will be more. Who can withstand us? Only yesterday, I received news from Bengal that Shah Daud, who foolishly challenged our Moghul might, has been captured and executed. Even now, his head, stuffed with straw, is on its way to Fatehpur Sikri while the trunk of his traitorous body is being nailed up in the bazaar in Bengal’s chief city. Shah Daud has paid in blood for all the death and suffering caused by his treachery. Had he been loyal he would have had nothing to fear from me.

  ‘But that is the past. Now our task is to ensure that our empire endures. History has taught us that it is easier to conquer new lands than to keep them. Nine dynasties ruled Hindustan before the arrival of my grandfather, Babur, but most were short-lived. Through indolence and conceit those rulers let what they had won trickle away like sand through their fingers. We will not make the mistakes that doomed them. With your help, the Moghul empire will become the most magnificent the world has ever seen. It will flourish not just because our armies are fearless and strong but because those who live within its borders will daily bless the fact that they are its subjects.

  ‘I speak not only of those of my own faith but of all my people. Many Hindu rulers – like Raja Ravi Singh who I see before me – fought at my side in our recent battles. They and their men bled for the Moghul cause. It is only just that they and loyal men of every faith should find favour and advancement at my court and in my armies. It is also right and honourable that all should be free to practise their religion without hindrance or harassment.’

  As he paused, Akbar looked instinctively towards two dark-robed Muslim clerics, half hidden in the shade of a covered walkway to one side of the Anup Talao. One of them was a stout elderly man, his hands folded over a belly round as a melon and straining against his black sash. Akbar knew him well – Shaikh Ahmad, an orthodox Sunni and leader of the ulama, Akbar’s senior spiritual advisers. The shaikh was one of those most opposed to Akbar’s marriages to Hindus. The second cleric was Abul Fazl’s father Shaikh Mubarak, whose lean, pockmarked face beneath his neatly bound white turban looked thoughtful.

  Akbar resumed, voice resonating with renewed determination. ‘The Moghul empire will flourish only if all its subjects can prosper too. To show I mean what I say, I hereby declare an end to the jizya – the poll tax on non-believers. Because a man does not follow the path of Islam is no reason to impoverish him. I also abolish the ancient tax levied since before Moghul times on Hindu pilgrims visiting their holy shrines.’

  Shaikh Ahmad was openly shaking his head. Well, let him. He would soon have plenty more to disapprove of. This was only the start of the changes Akbar was planning. On the leisurely journey back to Sikri he had summoned the headmen of the towns and villages he had passed and questioned them about the lives of the ordinary people. Until then he had been unaware of the oppressive taxes on the Hindu population who made up the great mass of his subjects. The more he had considered the question, the more obvious it had seemed that such taxes were not only unfair but divisive. To ensure the stability of his empire, he had taken Hindu wives and allowed them freedom of worship. Surely it was wise – as well as just – to extend tolerance and equality to all?

  He was becoming more curious about the Hindu religion. In the past, if he had considered it at all, it had seemed a strange, outlandish, even childish creed centred on idol-worship and fanciful stories. But Ravi Singh had presented him with two beautifully bound Hindu texts – the Upanishads and the Ramayana – translated into Persian. Each night, as he had made his stately progress back towards his capital, he had asked his attendants to read them to him. Listening in the half-darkness he had begun to divine beneath their rich language a resonating message – that the pure in heart, whatever their religion or race, could find their way to God and inner peace.

  He realised that until recently he’d scarcely thought about religion at all, not even his own. He observed the outward practices of his own faith because it was expected of him. Yet the more he listened to the wisdom in the Hindu books, the more sure he was becoming that there were universal truths, principles common to all religions, waiting to be revealed to all with open minds. Just as the Sufi Shaikh Salim Chishti, whose gentle, almost mystic Islamic beliefs he respected so much, had said, turning his luminous eyes upon him, ‘God belongs to us all . . .’

  Akbar rose and the four trumpeters standing behind him put their lips to their instruments, announcing by their shrill blasts that his address was over. Turning, Akbar stepped quickly through the arched sandstone doorway leading into his own apartments. He felt tired. Since returning from campaign there had been so much to attend to he had barely slept. Hamida and Gulbadan and his wives – though not Hirabai of course – had been eager to hear accounts of his triumphs and to tell him of events at court during his absence. All the time, though, his thoughts had been on his new capital. He had inspected his own quarters but was impatient to view the rest of the city. Now at last he had the opportunity.

  H
alf an hour later, Akbar was walking around the city walls with his chief architect. ‘You have indeed fulfilled your promises to me, Tuhin Das,’ he said, looking up at the red sandstone parapets and ramparts that girdled his new capital.

  ‘The labourers worked in shifts, Majesty. There was not an hour – day or night – when construction was not under way.’

  ‘How did they manage in the hours of darkness?’

  ‘We lit bonfires and torches. Your idea about carving pieces of sandstone at the quarry before transporting them here also speeded our progress. Come, Majesty. If we enter through this gate we can pass by the barracks and the imperial mint.’

  ‘The Hindu carvers have excelled themselves.’ Akbar gazed up at the perfect geometrical patterning of stars and hexagons on a sandstone ceiling in the mint. Indeed, wherever he looked it was almost impossible not to exclaim aloud at the perfection and detail of the craftsmen’s work. Chattris – tiny pavilions – rested on sandstone columns so slender it seemed they might snap. Garlands of flowers and fronds of plants, tender and delicate as in life, curled round columns and over walls.

  ‘And look at this, Majesty.’ Tuhin Das pointed to a carved milk-white marble jali, a screen. ‘The craftsmen are as skilled at working the marble as the sandstone.’ He was right, Akbar thought. The jali looked as shining and fragile as a spider’s web in a frost. It reminded him of the wonders in carved ivory brought to his court by furhatted, leather-coated merchants all the way from China.

  Of course, for all its perfections there was still a raw, dusty newness about his city, Akbar thought. Flowers and trees would soften the outlines. ‘How are the plans for the gardens going?’

  ‘Excellently, Majesty. Over there, outside your hall of private audience, the diwan-i-khas, we can see some of the gardeners at work.’

  Akbar followed Tuhin Das out of the mint. Again, his chief architect had done well, he thought, watching women as well as men squatting on the red earth as they planted rows of dark green cypresses in between young cedars. In another bed mango trees, sweet-smelling champa and the brilliant vermilion cockscomb his father Humayun had admired so much were already growing.

  ‘Please enter the diwan-i-khas, Majesty. I hope you will be pleased. It is exactly as it appeared on the drawing.’

  It was indeed, Akbar thought as he entered the graceful sandstone pavilion. In the centre of the single high chamber rose the swelling, miraculously carved column he had so admired on paper, on which rested the round platform, linked to hanging bridges, where he would sit. ‘See, Majesty, you will be positioned as if at the centre of the universe . . . the place of supreme power. It is like the pattern of our Hindu mandalas – the column represents the axis of the world . . .’

  Later that day, splashing his face with chilled water from a turquoise-inlaid silver bowl, Akbar felt a deep satisfaction. His campaigns had succeeded and his capital was as glorious as he had hoped. For the next few hours – perhaps until the dawn light warmed the stony desert plains below – he would forget about conquests and empire and visit his haram. Of all the buildings of Fatehpur Sikri that Tuhin Das had shown him, the complex behind its high walls, with the airy five-storey panch mahal where his concubines were housed and the elegant and luxurious sandstone palaces built for Hamida, Gulbadan and his wives, perhaps pleased him most.

  The main entrance into the haram lay through a curved sandstone archway, protected, as he had ordered, by elite Rajput guards. Within the complex, the women were attended by eunuchs – the only men other than Akbar himself allowed inside it – assisted by women from Turkey and Abyssinia, selected for their physical strength. The overall running of the haram was under the watchful eye of the khawajasara, to whom he had issued detailed instructions for its smooth functioning and security. While he had been away, yet more rulers anxious for his favour had sent him women to be his concubines if they pleased him – sturdy, broad-cheekboned, almond-eyed women from as far off as Tibet, slight, green-eyed Afghan girls with skin the colour of honey, voluptuous, large-featured women from Arabia, eyes rimmed with kohl, bodies made yet more alluring by intricate patternings of henna – or so the khawajasara promised him.

  At the thought of the sensual pleasures awaiting him in that hidden world behind its thick, metal-studded gates, Akbar’s blood quickened. This new haram would be his private paradise – a luxurious retreat of rosewater fountains and silk-hung chambers where he could shrug off the cares of being an emperor and embrace the joys of being a man.

  Whom would he make love to tonight? he wondered as he entered the torchlit subterranean passage that was his private entrance into the haram. His thoughts turned briefly to his wives. It would not be the Persian nor the princess from Jaisalmer . . . not tonight, anyway. As for Hirabai, he had kept his word and they had not made love since Salim’s birth. However, he had paid her a courtesy visit on his return – even presented her with a diamond bracelet that had once graced the wrist of one of Shah Daud’s wives. Hirabai’s tone had been cold, her oval face expressionless as she had at once handed his magnificent gift to one of her Rajput attendants. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but her undiminished contempt still had the power to wound.

  He turned his thoughts in a more pleasurable direction. Perhaps he would order the khawajasara to select the pick of the new arrivals and, after they had removed their jewellery so its clinking would not betray them, he would play a game of hide and seek with them. The woman who evaded him longest would share his bed. Or perhaps he would play a game of living chess with them on the giant board he had had laid out in white and black stone in the haram courtyard. As he ordered each woman to move around the board in her diaphanous garments, he would have ample time to decide which one pleased his fancy most, and – unlike Hirabai – whoever he preferred would undoubtedly be delighted to be the emperor’s choice . . .

  Six weeks later, Akbar entered his mother’s chamber. Pale pink silk hangings threaded with pearls fluttered pleasingly against the carved sandstone walls, and through the delicately arched casement he saw water bubbling from a fountain carved like a narcissus in the courtyard. His mother should be pleased with her accommodation, he thought. A little guiltily, he realised how few times he had visited her recently.

  ‘What is it, Mother? Why did you want to see me?’

  Hamida exchanged a glance with Gulbadan, seated beside her on a gold brocade bolster. ‘Akbar, we have something we must say to you. We feel imprisoned in this haram of yours behind its gates and high walls, this city of women, guarded by so many soldiers . . .’

  Akbar stared in surprise. ‘It is for your own protection.’

  ‘Of course we must be protected, but we don’t need to be shut away like prisoners.’

  ‘Our royal women have always lived in the seclusion of a haram.’

  ‘Not isolated from the world like this. You forget who we are – not just royal women but Moghul women. In past times, we accompanied our warrior husbands, brothers and sons in their quest for new lands. We rode hundreds of miles on mule or camelback between makeshift encampments and remote mud-walled settlements. We ate with our menfolk. We played our part in their plans – as advisers, ambassadors, mediators.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gulbadan broke in, ‘twice I crossed the lines of battle to intercede with your uncles after they had taken you prisoner . . . I risked my life like any Moghul warrior in the field and I was glad to.’

  ‘You should be happy those times are gone . . . that we’re not throneless nomads any more. I’m a powerful ruler – an emperor. It would reflect on my honour if I did not free you of such worldly worries and give you every luxury and comfort and the protection due to both your sex and your rank.’

  ‘My rank? I am a khanim,’ said Gulbadan, raising her chin, ‘a descendant of Genghis Khan, the one they called the Oceanic Warrior because his lands once stretched from sea to sea. His blood as well as that of Timur flows in my veins and gives me strength. I think you have forgotten that, Akbar.’ Her usually gentle voic
e was firm.

  ‘I know what you both endured because I’ve often heard you speak of it – how you fled through icy mountains and across blistering deserts, how you almost starved to death. I acknowledge and honour your courage but I thought you would no longer wish to be exposed to potential dangers.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask us first rather than assume you knew what we would want or what was good for us? We wish you to treat us like adults with adult minds – not children to be cosseted and given trinkets to keep us amused. Not all of us are content to be like your concubines, compliant, pampered and unquestioning. We have lives of our own,’ responded Hamida. Rising, she came towards him and placed her hands on his shoulders. ‘Yesterday I wished to visit a friend of mine – the wife of one of your commanders who lives near the western gate. I set out with several of my attendants from my palace but when I reached the gates leading from the haram the guards told me I could not pass . . . only the khawajasara could give permission for the gates to be opened. If you think this is for our benefit, for our security and protection, you’re quite wrong. It is intolerable to be subject to such restrictions. You may be the emperor, Akbar, but you are also my son and I tell you I will not be treated in this way.’

  ‘I am sorry, Mother, I hadn’t realised . . . I will think about how things can be changed.’