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Authors: Indu Sundaresan
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unshakable legacy free from any threat from the outside. Most of Jahangir’s troubles came from the inside.
When he was forty-three, Emperor Jahangir married for the twentieth time and brought into his harem a Persian woman, Mehrunnisa, whom he made influential within his harem and without, at court. Mehrunnisa would, eventually, become the bane of one of Emperor Jahangir’s sons—Shah Jahan. When Jahangir died, Mehrunnisa attempted to put on the throne another son, a weakling prince named Shahryar, nicknamed most unflatteringly nashudani, good-for-nothing. In the end, it was Shah Jahan who ascended the throne at Agra as the fifth Emperor of the Mughal dynasty, and he sent to their deaths his brother Shahryar and, for good measure, a couple of his cousins, thereby ensuring even in 1627 that, if anyone would lay claim to the throne of the mighty Mughal Empire, it would be only someone who was directly descended from him and his wife Mumtaz Mahal.
And now, in June of 1631, a week after his wife’s death, Emperor Shah Jahan leaned his arms on the railing of the balcony and closed his eyes wearily against the glare of the royal seal when the sun lit upon its golden face. He was contemplating erasing his name from the center of the seal, divesting himself of the imperial turban, having the khutba —the official proclamation of sovereignty—read out in the name of one of his sons instead. The question was . . . which one?
• • •
When the heir apparent to the Mughal throne, Prince Muhammad Dara Shikoh, was born, in March of 1615, his father and mother were still firmly in the good graces of their Emperor, Jahangir. Dara’s grandfather was overjoyed to hear news of his birth, for he was the first son of a then-favorite son, and Jahangir gave the infant boy his name, which was to mean “the glory of Darius.” Five years after Dara’s birth, his family fell into disgrace. He remembered some of that mad flight around the Empire with his parents and his brothers and sisters—his grandfather’s imperial troops filling in their footsteps in the thickly packed mud of the countryside almost as soon as they had made them. Or so it seemed to Dara. They roamed the Empire for five years, sleeping in one palace one night, another the next, and a strange succession of princes and nobles came to lay their arms down before his father, who was then only a prince, a disgraced and defamed prince whom Emperor Jahangir and his twentieth wife, Mehrunnisa, were determined to crush. Even in circumstances such as these, the then five-, six-, seven-, and nine-year-old Dara watched fealty being sworn to his handsome father, leanly muscled and dark hued from days spent in the saddle, and he learned what it was to have royal blood imbuing his veins.
Only later, in fact, on that midafternoon in June of 1631, a few days after his mother had died, did Dara understand more of the situation in his childhood as he stood at the keel of the boat that rowed him over the clear waters of the Tapti to the other bank and to Zainabad Bagh, where his mother lay buried. It was the time of day, all over Hindustan, when not a creature stirred outside shelter. In Dara’s eyes, there was the hot, still dazzle of the sun hovering overhead. It had rained earlier, but the glisten of the water on the walls of the fort behind him and the roofs of the buildings in Zainabad Bagh in front of him had long since burned off in a quiet sizzle when the sun showed its face again. The heat picked up, the land dried under its fierce intensity, and people and animals fled to the safety of coolness and dark wherever they could find it—under trees, below rooftops, beneath cloth and canvas awnings, even in the cover of shadows cast by lounging cattle and camels.
Dara stood bareheaded in the boat and turned impatiently to the man rowing him across. “Can you not go any faster?”
“Yes, your Highness,” the man said, his muscles straining against the oars as they
When he was forty-three, Emperor Jahangir married for the twentieth time and brought into his harem a Persian woman, Mehrunnisa, whom he made influential within his harem and without, at court. Mehrunnisa would, eventually, become the bane of one of Emperor Jahangir’s sons—Shah Jahan. When Jahangir died, Mehrunnisa attempted to put on the throne another son, a weakling prince named Shahryar, nicknamed most unflatteringly nashudani, good-for-nothing. In the end, it was Shah Jahan who ascended the throne at Agra as the fifth Emperor of the Mughal dynasty, and he sent to their deaths his brother Shahryar and, for good measure, a couple of his cousins, thereby ensuring even in 1627 that, if anyone would lay claim to the throne of the mighty Mughal Empire, it would be only someone who was directly descended from him and his wife Mumtaz Mahal.
And now, in June of 1631, a week after his wife’s death, Emperor Shah Jahan leaned his arms on the railing of the balcony and closed his eyes wearily against the glare of the royal seal when the sun lit upon its golden face. He was contemplating erasing his name from the center of the seal, divesting himself of the imperial turban, having the khutba —the official proclamation of sovereignty—read out in the name of one of his sons instead. The question was . . . which one?
• • •
When the heir apparent to the Mughal throne, Prince Muhammad Dara Shikoh, was born, in March of 1615, his father and mother were still firmly in the good graces of their Emperor, Jahangir. Dara’s grandfather was overjoyed to hear news of his birth, for he was the first son of a then-favorite son, and Jahangir gave the infant boy his name, which was to mean “the glory of Darius.” Five years after Dara’s birth, his family fell into disgrace. He remembered some of that mad flight around the Empire with his parents and his brothers and sisters—his grandfather’s imperial troops filling in their footsteps in the thickly packed mud of the countryside almost as soon as they had made them. Or so it seemed to Dara. They roamed the Empire for five years, sleeping in one palace one night, another the next, and a strange succession of princes and nobles came to lay their arms down before his father, who was then only a prince, a disgraced and defamed prince whom Emperor Jahangir and his twentieth wife, Mehrunnisa, were determined to crush. Even in circumstances such as these, the then five-, six-, seven-, and nine-year-old Dara watched fealty being sworn to his handsome father, leanly muscled and dark hued from days spent in the saddle, and he learned what it was to have royal blood imbuing his veins.
Only later, in fact, on that midafternoon in June of 1631, a few days after his mother had died, did Dara understand more of the situation in his childhood as he stood at the keel of the boat that rowed him over the clear waters of the Tapti to the other bank and to Zainabad Bagh, where his mother lay buried. It was the time of day, all over Hindustan, when not a creature stirred outside shelter. In Dara’s eyes, there was the hot, still dazzle of the sun hovering overhead. It had rained earlier, but the glisten of the water on the walls of the fort behind him and the roofs of the buildings in Zainabad Bagh in front of him had long since burned off in a quiet sizzle when the sun showed its face again. The heat picked up, the land dried under its fierce intensity, and people and animals fled to the safety of coolness and dark wherever they could find it—under trees, below rooftops, beneath cloth and canvas awnings, even in the cover of shadows cast by lounging cattle and camels.
Dara stood bareheaded in the boat and turned impatiently to the man rowing him across. “Can you not go any faster?”
“Yes, your Highness,” the man said, his muscles straining against the oars as they
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