Mughal Era Trivia

Steven Johnson’s book, Enemy of all Mankind, is about a British pirate who set off a world-changing set of events when he attacked and looted a ship that belonged to the Mughal emperor, Aurungzeb.

 

I learnt several new things about the Mughals, Aurungzeb and that age. First:

“When a Mughal died, his power did not pass directly to the eldest son. Each male descendant was considered to have a legitimate claim to the throne.”

Inevitably then:

“The death of a Mughal was often immediately followed by an outbreak of royal fratricide, as the surviving sons battled one another…”

 

Also, from the time of Akbar onwards:

“Sisters of the Grand Mughal (i.e., the emperor) were not allowed to marry for fear of producing offspring that might challenge the already fraught line of royal succession.”

 

Vicious, murderous moves. Pre-emptive moves. It was all par for the course when it came to succession – the stakes were that high, after all.

 

We hear a lot of Akbar and his tolerance for all religions. What I didn’t know was that the practice, generally speaking, continued long after Akbar. Until tolerance had gone too far (sound familiar?), at which the pendulum swung to the other extreme. When Shah Jahan was on his deathbed, it looked like Prince Dara would ascend the throne next. But he had a serious flaw:

“His Islamic bona fides were suspect.”

He was too friendly to the Hindus, Christians and Sikhs. He even said that all the religions were essentially identical. To the orthodox Muslim including the clergy, Dara was almost a heretic. And so, when the power struggle began, this lot “threw their weight behind Dara’s far more pious brother, Aurungzeb”.

 

And the rest, as they say, is history.

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