Storia do Mogor 115: The King widens the Gates of Dihli.

115

Finding himself delivered from many dangers, and only the war against Shiva Ji on his hands (and of that he thought very lightly), Aurangzeb took it into his head to confer a benefit on the people. He knew that the gates of Dihli towards Lahor were not sufficiently wide to allow entrance to the large quantity of supplies that came from that direction. Frequently horsemen were obliged to wait a long time at the gate; and several times the king himself, on his way to hunt, was forced to retrace his steps, not being able to pass. He issued an order for three gates to be made at this place. To carry this out it was necessary to knock down several mansions, the cost of which was paid for by the king without hesitation.
About this time he also sent an order to build at his charges a wall in the nature of a bastion to protect the city of Lahor from the river then encroaching on it. This wall had a length of a league and a half. Also, because Shiva Ji was plundering in all directions in the kingdom of the Dakhin, he gave an order that, without oppressing the people, walls should be built round the cities of Aurangabad and Burhanpur, which about this time had been sacked by Shiva Ji. He had carried off four hundred Mahometan girls because the Mahomedans had interfered with Hindu women in his territories. To make a mock of Shiva Ji, the Mahomedans had killed cows in temples; in retaliation he, too, ordered the throats of pigs to be cut in the mosques of the Mahomedans. This was to demonstrate his valour and power of defying the Mogul armies.
In these days there fell a meteorolite, the size of a large pot, close to the city of Ujjain, which lies near the Rana's boundary. The governor, with the idea of doing a thing that would please Aurangzeb, had the stone dug out of the ground and sent it to the Dihli court. But the king, with a show of complying with the counsels of God, would not look at this marvel, but ordered it to be carried back and placed where it had been taken from. He said that it was not right to oppose the will of God, who knew wherefore He had sent this aerolite to that particular place.
By this time the memory of Dara was so buried that no one spoke any longer of him, when an order was sent to demolish the famous palace of that prince at Lahor. On the site of the palace a great mosque was to be erected, and it took ten years to finish this work of devoutness. Upon it was spent the sum that Aurangzeb had sent [90] to Mekkah, which the Sharif would not receive because Shahjahan was living, as I have already mentioned more than once (II., fols. 1, 84). Thus was he enabled to fulfil the vow he had made of an offering on behalf of Muhammad.