The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c19: Chapter VIII. Aurangzīb (1658–1681)
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c19
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Chapter VIII. Aurangzīb (1658–1681)
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AURANGZĪB’S conduct during the war of succession was marked by rapidity of movement, wise distribution and exact co-ordination of forces, and quick-eyed generalship in the field. When to these factors we add the previous war-experience of his troops and their training in concerted action under his eyes, as well as his royal gift of judging the character of men at sight and choosing worthy and faithful agents, we can easily understand his unbroken success in this war against three rivals of equal rank and resources, none of whom was a coward or imbecile. He had opened the campaign on 30 March, 1658, when he set out for Delhi from Burhānpur. In less than three months from that day, he had crossed two large rivers, won two severely contested battles, captured the capital, and imprisoned the sovereign (18 June). The administration of the empire now naturally passed into his strong and capable hands, and his supreme position was freed from all rivalry after his treacherous arrest of his discontented and jealous partner Murād Bakhsh (5 July). The cloak of legality was thrown over his usurped authority when he crowned himself emperor at Delhi on 31 July, 1658, with the title of Abu-’l-Muzaffar Muhiy-ud-dīn Muhammad Aurangzīb Bahādur ‘Ālamgīr Pādishāh Ghāzī.
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But he had two large enemy forces still to dispose of before his throne could be considered secure. Dārā Shukoh had escaped from the ruin of his hopes at Sāmogarh (8 June), first to Delhi and then to the Punjab, where he was raising an army, while Dārā’s eldest son, Sulaimān Shukoh, after defeating his uncle Shujā‘ (at Bahādurpur on 24 February) and dictating peace to him (at Monghyr about 17 May), was advancing towards Āgra with his victorious troops. An eastward march of Dārā would have ensured the combination of the father and the son and created a serious danger for Aurangzīb. But the luckless Dārā had turned to the Punjab, as that province was held for him by trusty deputies, its people were mostly attached to him, and large numbers of recruits could be had at call among its martial population. This move ruined Dārā’s cause. Aurangzīb inserted himself like a wedge between the father and the son and rendered the junction of their forces impossible except by following a wide loop to the north, of which he held the short chord in strength. On hearing of this blocking of their westward route, Sulaimān Shukoh’s army rapidly melted away, his captains openly deserted him for their homes or for Aurangzīb's standard, and within two days of the arrival of the news of Sāmogarh and Dārā's flight to the north-west, Sulaimān's army shrank from 20,000 men to less than 6000. Aurangzīb, holding the inner line, moved his divisions with great ease and rapidity and blocked every ferry by which Sulaimān tried to reach the Punjab by skirting the foot of the central Himālayas, so that the young prince became in effect a hunted fugitive.
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Thus, freed for the time being from all danger on the east, Aurangzīb turned his undivided attention to the pursuit of Dārā. That luckless aspirant to the throne was neither a general himself, nor had he the wisdom of being guided by veteran generals whose devotion to him was manifest. His sole strategy was to flee before Aurangzīb's forces, however small, without hazarding any action. His timid and contradictory orders took the heart out of such of his subordinates as were prepared to hold up the advancing vanguard of the pursuers at the rivers of the Punjab, which are so admirably situated to favour a defence by delaying tactics. The result was that Dārā, in spite of his getting possession of the imperial treasuries at Delhi and Lahore (the latter estimated to contain ten million rupees), besides the money and jewels that Shāh Jahān had sent to him from Āgra, could not get time enough to give cohesion and training to the 20,000 soldiers that he had gathered together at Lahore. He merely fled from town to town down the Punjab river at the first news of the arrival of Aurangzīb's troops behind him. The only difficulties of the pursuers came from the heat of the season, the rapidity of the marches they had to make (which led to large numbers of soldiers lagging behind), the exhaustion and death of their horses and camels, and their inability to overtake the enemy and bring him to a decisive action. Dārā had left Delhi on 22 June, 1658, and reached Lahore on 13 July. His rear-guard, holding the Sutlej at Talwandī and Rūpar, had its left turned by Bahādur Khān's crossing the river at Rūpar on 15 August and fell back on the Beās at Govindwāl and finally on Lahore. Once more Dārā's genius quailed before that of Aurangzīb; he despaired of success, and his despair infected his troops.
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Leaving Lahore on 28 August, at the head of 14,000 men, the fugitive prince reached Multān on 15 September with his army reduced to one-half by desertion. Eight days afterwards he vacated this city and fled down the Indus towards the sea, finding rest nowhere and daily losing men. Finally, he left the province of Sind at Badīn (4 December) and entered the Rann of Cutch, at the news of which his pursuers turned back from Tatta on 15 December.
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Meanwhile, Aurangzīb himself had given up the chase from Multān (10 October) and hastened to Delhi by rapid marches, because a new storm-cloud was reported to be gathering in the east. Shujā‘ was making preparations for a second advance on Āgra. The deposition of Shāh Jahān and the imprisonment of the once-beloved ally Murād Bakhsh had taught him the true value of Aurangzīb’s solemn promise to let Shujāʻ enjoy Bengal and Bihār in full sovereignty unmolested. At Monghyr he heard of Aurangzīb’s march in full force to the Punjab and imagined the road to Āgra to be open. Now was the opportunity to seize that capital and release his father.
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So, early in November, 1658, Shujāʻ had advanced from Patna with 25,000 cavalry and a good train of artillery, got easy possession of the forts on the way up to Allahābād, and arrived at Khajuhā (in the Fatehpur district), ninety-five miles west of Allahābād, on 9 January, 1659. Here he was held up by an imperial army under Aurangzīb’s eldest son, Muhammad Sultān.
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That emperor had reached the environs of Delhi from Multān on 20 November and repeatedly sent detachments to strengthen his army near Allahābād so as to close Shujāʻ’s path effectively. But as the latter had not given up his ambitious movement, Aurangzīb had made a rapid march from Soron and reached Korā, eight miles west of Shujāʻ’s position, on 12 January, 1659. Here Mīr Jumla, released from his collusive imprisonment in Daulatābād fort, joined him on that day.
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The decisive battle took place on the 14th. But the night before it, Mahārājā Jasvant Singh, who commanded Aurangzīb’s right wing, made a treacherous and quite unexpected attack on his master, plundered the camp of prince Muhammad Sultān and also much of Aurangzīb’s baggage, and then fled to his own country with his Rājput contingent (14,000 strong). Aurangzīb’s cool courage and strict discipline in making the other divisions keep their own places during this night of alarm, prevented the confusion and panic from spreading and saved his army from further loss. With daylight many of his dispersed troops returned to his standard, and he advanced to the attack at the head of 50,000 to 55,000 men, as against Shujāʻ’s 23,000.
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With great judgement, Shujāʻ tried to make up for his hopeless inferiority in numbers by drawing up his troops not in the usual six divisions of Mughul battle-array but in one long line behind his artillery and taking the offensive himself. His right wing under Sayyid ʻĀlam charged the imperial left and after scattering it fell upon the centre, driving in front three furious war elephants, each brandishing a heavy iron chain with its trunk, before which no man or horse could stand. At the same time the imperial right wing was assailed and partly dispersed by Shujāʻ’s vanguard and left under prince Buland Akhtar. A false rumour spread through the field that Aurangzīb himself had been slain, and many of his followers fled away. One of these Bengal elephants, maddened by wounds, approached the emperor’s elephant. If the latter had turned back, the entire imperial army would have broken and run away at the sight of it. But in the crisis, Aurangzīb's cool courage and power of quick decision saved the situation: he stood like a rock, chaining the legs of his elephant to prevent its flight, and soon the attacking beast's driver was shot down and it was brought under control by an imperial *mahout*. Sayyid ʿĀlam was at last repulsed with wofully thinned ranks. His centre thus saved, Aurangzīb turned to succour his hard-pressed right wing, which on being rallied and reinforced made a counter-charge and swept away the enemy divisions before it with great carnage. Meanwhile, the imperial vanguard had advanced, shaking the front line of Shujāʿ. And now, emitting a thick shower of cannon-balls and bullets, Aurangzīb's entire army made a simultaneous advance and enveloped the centre, which alone remained of Shujāʿ's host. That prince saved his life only by dismounting from his elephant and galloping away on a fleet horse. His army at once broke and fled, giving up its entire camp and baggage, artillery (114 pieces) and elephants to the conqueror.
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From the field of victory Aurangzīb sent a division, 30,000 strong, under his son Muhammad Sultān and Mīr Jumla in pursuit of Shujāʿ, who fled eastwards, making a stand only at Monghyr and again at Sāhibganj (near the Sakrigalī or Teliyāgarhī pass) by blocking the narrow road there. But at each of these places Mīr Jumla turned his left by making a détour through the jungles under the guidance of the local *zamīndārs*. Finally, after a short halt at Rājmahāl, Shujāʿ evacuated the right bank of the Ganges and crossed over to the Mālda district. The imperialists immediately occupied Rājmahāl (23 April, 1659).
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In the campaign that ensued, Shujāʿ was hopelessly inferior on land, his regular troops having shrunk to 5000 men, while Mīr Jumla's army was five times as large and man for man superior in fighting capacity. But the imperialists were a purely land force, with few pieces of cannon and not a single boat for operations in this land of waterways. On the other hand, Shujāʿ had an artillery of big guns admirably served by European and half-breed gunners, and the entire flotilla (*navvāra*) of Bengal was at his disposal, which gave wonderful mobility to his army and multiplied its striking force, while the lack of boats at first paralysed Mīr Jumla's efforts.
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Shujāʿ, making Tānda (four miles west of the old fort of Gaur) his base, entrenched various places on the eastern bank of the Ganges to prevent the enemy from crossing. But Mīr Jumla with great diligence procured a small number of boats from remote places, and making the best use of them twice surprised and defeated Shujāʿ's advanced outposts, but his third *coup* (13 May) failed with heavy loss, as the enemy had prepared an ambush for him. On 18 June, prince Muhammad Sultān, chafing under Mīr Jumla's tutelage, was lured by the offer of the hand of Shujāʿ's daughter and secretly went over to his uncle. But Mīr Jumla restored order and control among the prince's leaderless troops, and at a council of war all the other generals agreed to obey him as their leader. Next, during the torrential rains of Bengal, while the city of Rājmahāl was completely girt round by water, its grain supply was cut off by the Bengal flotilla and Shujāʻ by a sudden attack recovered it, the surprised imperial division of the city fleeing away (1 September).
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In the following December Shujāʻ resumed operations on land and twice attacked Mīr Jumla, whose inferiority in artillery forced him to fall back from Belghāta towards Murshidābād. But Dāūd Khān, the governor of Patna, with a second army and plenty of boats and artillery, was advancing along the Ganges to co-operate with Mīr Jumla, and on hearing of this Shujāʻ evacuated Rājmahāl and fell back on Tānda. Thus, the whole country west of the Ganges was finally lost to Shujāʻ (21 January, 1660), who, however, held a line from opposite Rājmahāl to Tānda. Mīr Jumla easily crossed the Ganges with the help of the 160 boats received from Patna and then made a wide circuit round the north of Shujāʻ's position, reaching Mālda on 16 March. A month before this prince Muhammad Sultān had left Shujāʻ and returned to the imperial camp, but only to be sentenced to imprisonment for the rest of his life. On 15 April, Mīr Jumla crossed the Mahānandā and threatened to complete a circle round Shujāʻ, who could no longer resist, but fled precipitately with his family to Dacca, abandoning all his soldiers, servants and property in Tānda to the imperialists. Only sixty boats accompanied him, while 402 became the victor's prize.
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But even at Dacca Shujāʻ could make no stand. The *zamīndārs* rose against him, and Mīr Jumla arrived there hard on his heels. So, the prince finally abandoned Bengal on 22 May, 1660, and sailed for Chittagong to seek an asylum with the Magh Rājā of Arakan. Here his unquiet ambition brought him to a tragic end. With the help of the Musalman settlers in Arakan he planned to seize the throne of his protector and then advance once more for the recovery of Bengal. But the conspiracy was betrayed and the Mughul prince in trying to escape was pursued and cut down in the jungle (January, 1661).¹
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¹ See also chap. XVII, p. 480.
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We now turn to the last days of Dārā Shukoh. After leaving Sind (early in December, 1658), with the small remnant of his army, he received help from the Rājās of Cutch and Navānagar, and reached Ahmadābād at the head of 3000 men. Here Shāh Navāz Khān, the governor of the province, joined him and opened the royal treasury to him (January, 1659). Dārā now raised his army to 22,000 men, took away the artillery of Surat castle, and, learning that Shujāʻ had advanced beyond Allahābād to attack Aurangzīb, he made a dash towards Āgra. On the way he turned towards Ajmer on receiving an invitation from Jasvant Singh, who promised to join him with all the Rājputs. But in the meantime Aurangzīb had crushed Shujā‘, and he now won Jasvant over by mingled threats of invasion and promises of favour, and arrived near Ajmer with his victorious army. Thus, Dārā had no alternative but to fight. He entrenched the pass of Deorāi, four miles south of Ajmer, his flanks protected by the hills of Bithli and Gokla and his front by a low wall bristling with guns.
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Aurangzīb attacked this formidable position from the south, suffering heavy losses on account of the low and exposed position of his troops. In the evening of the third day (24 March, 1659), under cover of a furious massed attack on Dārā's left wing and a general cannonade along his entire front, a body of hillmen belonging to Rājā Rājrūp of Jammū climbed the back of the Gokla hill unperceived and thus seized the rear of Dārā's left wing. Then these trenches were stormed, the general in command, Shāh Navāz Khān, was killed, and shortly after nightfall Dārā fled from the field. When these facts became known the rest of his troops submitted to Aurangzīb.
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Dārā, accompanied by his family and only 2000 troops, moved towards Ahmadābād by rapid marches, undergoing extreme misery from the heat and dust and the death of transport animals. On the way he learnt that that city had turned against him and he would not find any safe refuge in Gujarāt. After a scene of unspeakable agony, so pathetically described by Bernier who was attending his sick wife, the prince, now "reduced to the poorest and sorriest dress, his retinue shrunk to a few men", fled to Kāthiāwār, crossed the terrible Rann again and entered Sind a second time (middle of May). A strong imperial detachment under Jay Singh and Bahādur Khān pursued him all the way with equal speed. In Sind Aurangzīb's local officers had closed Dārā's path to the north and the east. So he fled westwards, crossed the Indus and entered Sehwān, intending to flee to Persia by way of the Bolān pass and Qandahār. But his beloved wife Nādira Bānū died of illness and privations, and Dārā, now almost mad with grief and despair, sent away all his remaining troopers and his most devoted officer with her corpse to Lahore for burial in the graveyard of his patron saint Miān Mīr. He then accepted the offered hospitality of Malik Jīvan, the chieftain of Dādar (nine miles east of the Bolān pass), and was seized by this Baloch traitor (19 June) and delivered to Aurangzīb's general.
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Arrived at Delhi, Dārā and his second son Sipihr Shukoh were paraded through the streets with disgrace. He was put to death on the charge of apostasy from Islām by the sentence of Aurangzīb's court theologians (9 September). His remains were buried in a vault of Humāyūn's tomb.
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Dārā's eldest son, Sulaimān Shukoh, on his way back from the war with Shujā‘, had heard of the disaster to his father at Sāmogarh, and on being deserted by most of his troops and headed off by Aurangzīb's forces from the west, he failed to reach his father in the Punjab. He therefore sought refuge with the Rājā of Srīnagar in the Garhwāl hills, who gave him a royal welcome. But a year later (July, 1659) Aurangzīb sent a force to coerce or bribe the raja into giving up the refugee. Sulaimān was delivered up by his host and brought to Delhi on 12 January, 1661. He was ordered to be confined in the fort of Gwālior and was there done to death (May, 1662) with overdoses of opium. In the same state prison, Murād Bakhsh was beheaded (14 December, 1661) under judicial sentence for the murder of 'Alī Naqī, his *dīvān* in Gujarāt, whose son, instigated by Aurangzīb, insisted on the retaliation of blood for blood allowed by Islamic law. The very young sons of Dārā and Murād were spared, only to be kept in prison for life. Thus, all possible rivals having been removed from his path, Aurangzīb became the indisputable lord and master of Moghul India.
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In four severely contested battles for the throne, fought in the course of less than a year in widely separated provinces, Aurangzīb had marched rapidly and triumphed uniformly at the total cost of only two generals killed and one dead from sunstroke, while his opponents were crushed with terrible carnage among officers and privates alike. There could be no greater proof of his genius and efficiency than this.
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The reign of Aurangzīb naturally falls into two equal divisions of about twenty-five years each, the first of which he passed in northern India and the second in the Deccan. During the earlier half of his reign the centre of interest lies unmistakably in the north, because the most important developments, civil and military, concerned this region. In the second half, the situation is reversed: all the resources of the empire are concentrated in the Deccan; the emperor, his court and family, the bulk of his army, and all his best officers live there, and Hindustān sinks back to a place of secondary importance; the administration in northern India grows weak and corrupt at the withdrawal of the master's eye and all the ablest officers; the upper classes decline in morals, culture, and useful activity; and finally lawlessness breaks out in most parts, dimly heralding the great anarchy which covered the eighteenth century.
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After his final victory over Dārā, Aurangzīb celebrated his grand coronation on 15 June, 1659,¹ in the first month of his second regnal year, at Delhi, with prolonged rejoicings. Thereafter he lived for nearly twenty years at Delhi and Āgra, making only a trip to Kashmīr which kept him away for one year (1663) and an eighteen months' halt at Hasan Abdāl (1674–75) to direct operations against the frontier tribes. Early in 1679 he went to Ajmer to annex Mārwār, and thus became involved for the next two years and a half in the Rājput war, whose strange sequel drew him to the Deccan, there to pass the last quarter century of his life in strenuous but unavailing toil.
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¹ The official date was put twenty-three days earlier on the 1st Ramazān, A.H. 1068.
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During the years 1661–67, Aurangzīb received complimentary embassies from many foreign Muslim powers, such as the Sharīf of Mecca, the kings of Persia, Balkh, Bukhārā, Kāshghar, Urganj (Khiva) and Shahr-i-nau, the Turkish governors of Basra, Hadramaut, Yaman and Mocha, the ruler of Barbary, and the king of Abyssinia. The only embassy from Constantinople in his reign arrived in 1690, charged with a letter for him. His policy was to dazzle the eyes of these princes by the lavish gift of presents to them and to their envoys, and thus induce the outer Muslim world to forget his treatment of his father and brothers. The fame of India as a soft milch cow spread throughout the middle and near East, and the minor embassies were merely begging expeditions, as Bernier shrewdly noted. The Sharīf of Mecca in particular used to send his agents to the Delhi court every year with the object of levying contributions in the name of the Prophet, till at last the emperor’s patience was worn out and he refused to make the Sharīf his almoner at the holy city, but began to send his gifts to its scholars and mendicants through his own agents. On the embassies received and the return-embassies sent out Aurangzīb spent in presents nearly three million rupees in the course of seven years, besides the large sums which he annually distributed at Mecca and the gift of a million to ‘Abdullah Khān, the deposed king of Kāshghar, who had taken refuge in India in 1668 and died at Delhi in 1675.
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The grandest and most costly of these diplomatic intercourses was with Persia. But the overweening pride of Shāh ‘Abbās II, who could not forget how the Mughul emperor Humāyūn had been a suppliant before his ancestor, how Shāh Jahān had thrice failed to recover Qandahār, and how a petty chief like Shivājī had sacked the greatest port of the Mughul empire with impunity, led to a rupture between the two sovereigns, which was aggravated by the Shāh’s exaltation of the Shiah religion in his letters to an orthodox Sunnī like Aurangzīb. At last after sending two insulting letters to Aurangzīb and barbarously humiliating the Indian ambassador at the Persian court (Tarbiyat Khān), Shāh ‘Abbās threatened an invasion of India, but his death (August, 1667) dispersed the war clouds, and the Persian monarchy soon afterwards sank into sloth and decay, to the immense relief of the Delhi court.
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Many minor conquests were made in the outskirts of the empire during the first half of Aurangzīb’s reign, the most valuable of which were the annexations of Palāmau (in south Bihār) by Dāūd Khān the governor of Patna in 1661 and of Chittagong by Shāyista Khān the governor of Bengal in 1666. A more romantic success was that of a mission from the province of Kashmīr (1665) which forced the ruler of Tibet (evidently little Tibet or Ladākh) to acknowledge the suzerainty of Aurangzīb, stamp coins in his name, and build a mosque at his capital where the Islamic call to prayer had never been heard before. The conquests in Assam made early in the reign were all lost by the year 1681.
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The disturbances of internal peace during this earlier period were neither very important nor successful. The outbreaks which inevitably followed the collapse of civil authority during a war of succession subsided with Aurangzīb’s assertion of his mastery. The Hindu risings against his policy of religious persecution will be described later. The vassal princes who revolted were all crushed like Champat Rāi Bundelā (1661) and Rāi Singh the usurper of Navānagar in Kāthiāwār (1663), or forced to sue for pardon like Rāo Karan of Bīkāner (1660). In fact, these few and strictly localised tumults hardly disturbed the profound internal peace which northern India enjoyed during the first half of this reign.
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Aurangzīb had claimed the throne as the champion of pure Islām against the heretical practices and opinions of Dārā Shukoh. Soon after his grand coronation (June, 1659), he issued a number of ordinances for restoring the orthodox rules of conduct taught by the *Qurān*. He abolished his ancestors’ practices of stamping the *kalima* (the Muslim *credo*) on their coins and of observing the *naurūz* or New Year’s day of the pagan Persians; forbade the cultivation of *bhang* (*Cannabis indica*) throughout his realm; and appointed a censor of public morals (*Muhtasib*) in every large city to enforce the Prophet’s laws and put down forbidden practices, such as drinking, gambling and the illicit commerce of the sexes. The punishment of heretical opinions, blasphemy and omission of the five daily prayers or of the Ramazān fast by Muslims lay within the province of this officer.
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His puritanical rigour grew with age. In the eleventh year of his reign (1668) he forbade music at his court and pensioned off the state musicians and singers, many of whom had enjoyed honour and high rank under the preceding sovereigns. The royal band was, however, retained. The ceremony of weighing (*wazan*) the emperor’s person on his birthday against gold and silver, which were then given away in charity, was discontinued; and so also the custom of the emperor applying a spot of sandal paste (*tīkā*) to the foreheads of the great rajas when newly investing them (1679), and the ceremony of the emperor showing himself every morning at an outer balcony of the palace for his subjects to look at him (*darshan*)—because all these were Hindu practices.
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Gradually the festivities which used to be held on his birthday and the anniversary of his coronation were abolished (1677); only “betel leaves and scents were distributed among those present at court”, and the grandees were forbidden to make the customary presents to the emperor. In many other minute points a literal compliance with the practice of early Islām was enjoined.
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But this attempt to elevate mankind by one stroke of the official pen failed, as Akbar's social reforms had failed before. Aurangzīb's government made itself ridiculous by violently enforcing for a time, then relaxing, and finally abandoning a code of puritanical morals opposed to the feelings of the entire population, without first trying to educate them to a higher level of thought. As Manucci observed, there were few who did not drink secretly, and even the ministers and *qāzīs* loved to get drunk at home. Gambling continued to be practised in his camp, and his order to all the courtesans and dancing girls to marry or leave the realm remained a dead letter. In 1664 he issued an edict forbidding *satī* (the voluntary burning of Hindu widows), but his government was powerless to enforce the prohibition everywhere in the face of popular opposition. The castration of children for sale as eunuchs, though again and again denounced by him, continued in certain provinces.
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Nevertheless much good was done in the economic sphere by the pious emperor's determined opposition to uncanonical taxes and illegal exactions (*abwāb*). Immediately after his second enthronement (1659) he gave prompt and much needed relief to his subjects in the scarcity which followed from the disturbances of the civil war by abolishing the inland transport duty (*rāhdārī*), amounting to 10 per cent. *ad valorem*, and the octroi (*pāndārī*) on all articles of food and drink brought from outside for sale in the larger cities. This was done in the crown lands by the emperor's order (at a loss of 2½ million rupees per annum under *rāhdārī* alone), while the *jāgīrdārs* (assignees) and *zamīndārs* (landholders) were requested to do the same in their estates.
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The *abwāb* or exactions made under various pretexts, in addition to the regular land revenue or custom duty, were a prolific source of oppression to the people, and were more burdensome in their operation in proportion as their victims were poor and uninfluential and distant from the imperial headquarters. These imposts were again and again declared illegal and forbidden by Muslim sovereigns of Delhi like Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq (1375), Akbar (*c.* 1590) and Jahāngīr (1605), but they invariably managed to reappear after a short time. These *abwāb*¹ included duties on the local sale of produce (i.e. octroi), perquisites exacted by the officials for their own benefit, as well as fees and commissions levied on behalf of the state on almost every conceivable occasion, licence tax for plying certain trades, forced subscriptions, and gifts to officers, and special imposts on the Hindus. Among the last were taxes on bathing in the sacred waters (e.g. 6¼ rupees on every pilgrim at Allahābād) and a fee charged on the bones of dead Hindus carried for being thrown into the Ganges. As a tax was also levied on the father for the birth of a male child, we may say that under the Mughuls illegal cesses pursued a man from birth to death. Aurangzīb's edicts for their abolition are dated 20 November, 1665, 29 April, 1673, and 1682. But the timidity of the common people, the weakness of the central government in the provinces and its lack of an adequate number of reliable agents left the Indian population helpless under official extortion, in spite of benevolent paper edicts from the court.
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¹ The subject has been treated in full detail in my *Mughal Administration*, chap. v.
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In the course of his enforcement of orthodoxy, Aurangzīb's hand did not spare the heretics of Islām. Even several Sūfī philosophers did not feel themselves safe, as their elastic pantheism was suspected to be a coquetry with Hinduism and a veiled abjuration of the pure dogmas of Islām. The emperor's accession was followed by the persecution of several holy men of liberal views but professed Muslims whom Dārā had favoured. The most notable victim of this class was Sarmad, a Jew of Kāshān (in Persia) converted to Islām, who composed many smooth-flowing verses breathing the ardent mystical fervour of the Sūfī and the spirit of lofty catholicity which recognised the truth inherent in all great creeds. Sarmad used to go about absolutely naked, because like an uncompromising monist he denied the existence of matter and felt no shame about anything pertaining to the material body. He is said to have blessed Dārā's banners in the civil war, and was beheaded on the charge of heresy soon after Aurangzīb's accession. We also read of the execution of Shiahs for cursing the first three Khalifs, and of converts to Islām for returning to their old faith. The Isma‘īlia (or Bohra) heretics of Gujarāt were subjected to bloody persecution by order of Aurangzīb.
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So long as Shāh Jahān lived as a captive in Āgra, Aurangzīb never visited that capital, for his relations with his deposed father were extremely bitter and became the subject of public condemnation throughout India and even outside. The court theologians, particularly ‘Abdul-Wahhāb (who was rewarded with the chief justiceship of the empire), justified his usurpation of a loving father's throne on the ground that the old emperor had grown infirm and intellectually unfit for governing the realm, and, therefore, the protection of the faithful required government by a pious and vigorous man like Aurangzīb. But the rest of the world denounced Aurangzīb's treatment of his father as an outrage on justice and decorum.
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A very acrimonious correspondence that passed between father and son during the earlier days of Shāh Jahān's captive life can be still followed in Aurangzīb's replies, though Shāh Jahān's letters to him are lost. The ex-emperor's futile attempts to correspond with Dārā and Shujā‘ only led to an increase in the rigour of his captivity, under Mu‘tamid, the harsh eunuch in charge, who "sometimes allowed it to be seen that he treated Shāh Jahān as a miserable captive" (Manucci). There were also disputes about the crown jewels and Dārā's property lodged in Āgra fort, which Shāh Jahān tried in vain to withhold from the victor. Then he wrote bitter letters charging Aurangzīb with being an unnatural son and a rebel subject, a robber of other people's property and a hypocrite. The latter replied in a lofty tone of self-righteousness, posing as the champion of pure Islām and of good government, and the humble but favourite instrument of God in the work of moral reform and popular beneficence, which had been endangered by his father's incompetence, sloth and unjust rule: "Kingship means the protection of the realm and the guardianship of the people. . . . A king is merely God's elected custodian and the trustee of His money for the benefit of the subjects" (*Ādāb-i-‘Alamgīrī*). Worsted in this contest with the pen, Shāh Jahān resigned himself to his fate and prepared for the next world under the religious ministration of Sayyid Muhammad Qanaujī and the tender nursing of his eldest daughter Jahānārā, the Mughul Antigone. "All the ex-emperor's time was divided between professing obedience to God, prayer, performance of all the religious services, reading the Qurān and listening to the histories of the great men of the past." Seven and a half years passed in this way, and then he died on 1 February, 1666, aged seventy-four.
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The first great war of Aurangzīb's reign was the invasion of Assam. Early in the sixteenth century a Mongoloid soldier of fortune had founded a kingdom in Cooch Behār, north of Bengal. Lakshmī Nārāyan, the third king of this dynasty (r. 1584–1622), had professed allegiance to Akbar. A younger branch of the family had been installed over its eastern districts or Kāmrūp, i.e. the country between the Sankosh and Bar Nadī rivers, which the Muslim writers called Kuch Hājo. In 1612, taking advantage of a contest between the two branches, the Mughuls conquered and annexed Kuch Hājo, but this brought them into collision with the Āhoms. These Āhoms were a branch of the Shān race, who had crossed the Pātkai range in the thirteenth century and established a kingdom of their own over eastern and central Assam. They were a hardy race of demon-worshippers, expert in building stockades, plying boats, and making night attacks. Their society was organised on a feudal basis, under a number of official nobles, who cultivated their estates by slave labour. Their army consisted entirely of infantry, stiffened with elephants; but during their wars with Bengal they had learnt the use of firearms. Their king was the patriarch of the clan and was venerated as a semi-divine being. After much desultory fighting with the Mughuls of Kuch Hājo, the Āhom king made peace in 1638, recognising the boundary line of the Bar Nadī.
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During the war of succession, when Bengal was depleted of soldiers and left without a governor, the Rājās of Cooch Behār and Assam had sent troops from the west and the east respectively to seize the Mughul district of Kāmrūp lying between their realms. The Muslim local officers had fled away from their charge, and the Āhoms had occupied Gauhātī and plundered the whole district, driving out the Cooch Behār forces. When the civil war ended, Mīr Jumla was appointed viceroy of Bengal (June, 1660), with orders to punish these rebel rajas. Leaving Dacca on 11 November, 1661, with an army of 12,000 horse and 30,000 foot, and a flotilla of 323 vessels of different classes, Mīr Jumla captured the capital of Cooch Behār (29 December) without a blow, as the raja and his officers had vacated it in terror. The kingdom was annexed to the Mūghul empire, and then the general set out (14 January, 1662) on the invasion of Assam. His men had to undergo unspeakable hardship in making their way through the dense jungle and across numberless streams, but all their sufferings were shared by their chief. The Āhom army offered a feeble resistance and kept retreating up the Brahmaputra, so that the imperialists captured the successive forts on the way—Jogīguphā, Gauhātī, Srīghāt, Pāndu, Beltalā, Kājali, Sāmdharā and Simlā-garh. In a naval battle fought on 13 March Mīr Jumla annihilated the enemy’s naval power, and finally on 17 March entered their deserted capital Garhgāon. The spoils taken were immense: 82 elephants, three hundred thousand rupees, 675 pieces of artillery, 1345 *zambūraks* (swivels), 6750 matchlocks, and 1000 odd boats, besides much gunpowder and paddy.
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The Rājā of Assam and his nobles having fled far away to the hills, Mīr Jumla could not conclude any treaty with them, but decided to hold the country during the coming rainy season. The Āhom capital, containing all the artillery, elephants, stores and property of the Mūghul army, was occupied by a strong garrison, while the general himself went into quarters at Mathurāpur, a highly-lying village, seven miles south-east of it. Many outposts were set up for guarding the routes. The fleet could not sail up to Garhgāon, on account of the shallowness of the river near that city; it, therefore, anchored at Lakhau, some eighteen miles north-west. This was the fatal weakness of the imperialists’ position.
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During the rainy season, from May to October, the country was flooded, the movement of troops by land became impossible, the imperial outposts were isolated, and the Mughal army in Assam had to live in a state of siege. No provisions or news could come from Bengal or from the fleet, as the gun-boats were too heavy to navigate the shallow river near Garhgāon and the roads were submerged. For lack of proper food, cavalry horses and draught cattle perished by the thousand. On 20 May the Āhoms captured the outposts at Gajpur and thus cut off communications between the Mūghul army and navy. Around Garhgāon they concentrated and kept the garrison in perpetual alarm by attacks almost every night. Several assaults in force were delivered, and in one of them the bamboo fence of the fort was pierced and half the enclosure seized.
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But all these attacks were finally defeated by the exertion of every man in the garrison.
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In August a terrible epidemic broke out in Mīr Jumla's camp at Mathurāpur. Fever and flux carried off hundreds daily, reducing the army to nearly a quarter of its strength; no suitable diet or comfort was available for the sick. Coarse rice and the meat of commissariat bullocks were the food of all from the general down to the humblest soldier. Indeed, the whole of Assam was infected, and 230,000 of its people died of disease that year. At last the garrison of Mathurāpur fell back on Garhgāon (27 August), abandoning their numberless sick. But the refugees only infected the garrison of Garhgāon.
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Through all these months, the fleet at Lakhau had maintained its ascendancy on water and kept up its touch with Bengal, and when, towards the close of October, the land became dry again, it pushed up large quantities of provisions, under escort, to Garhgāon. Mīr Jumla now resumed the offensive and marched eastwards by way of Solāguri to Tipām, the Āhom raja and his nobles having again fled to the hills of Nāmrup. But the Mughul army to a man refused to enter these hills of pestilence and unknown magical terror. The general himself was seized with fainting fits. Fever and pleurisy supervened, which quickly turned into consumption, and he consented to make peace (December, 1662). The Āhom king agreed to pay an indemnity of 20,000 *tolas*¹ of gold, 420,000 *tolas*¹ of silver and 110 elephants, to send a daughter to the imperial harem, to cede to the Mughuls all the territory west of the Bharali river north of the Brahmaputra and west of the Kallang river on the south (i.e. more than half the province of Darrang, rich in elephants), and to give hostages. The princess, hostages and first instalment of the indemnity having reached his camp, Mīr Jumla set out on his return from Tipām on 20 January, 1663, a dying man, and died on 10 April before reaching Dacca. His genius had shone with supreme radiance during this campaign. No other general of that age conducted war with so much humanity and justice, or kept his soldiers under such discipline; no other general could have retained to the last the confidence and affection of his subordinates amidst such appalling sufferings and dangers. From the first day of the campaign he shared with the meanest soldier all the privations of the march and siege and brought premature death upon himself by incessant hard labour.
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¹ A *tola* weighs about 180 grains.
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The Mughuls continued to hold his acquisitions in Assam for four years after his retreat. But in 1667, the vigorous Āhom king Chakradhvaj renewed the war and recovered all the lost territory, and even captured Gauhātī. Thus, the imperial frontier was pushed back to the Monās river. A desultory war continued for nine years; but the Mughul forces were hopelessly small, they had lost their supremacy on water, and their general Rām Singh (Rājā of Amber) had not his heart in the work, as he had been transferred to that pestilential province as a punishment for his connivance at the escape of Shivājī from Āgra in 1666. After staying for some years at Rāngāmātī doing nothing, he was recalled to court in 1676. In 1679, the Mughuls, taking advantage of the weakness of the Āhom kings and dissensions among their nobles, recovered Gauhātī by bribery, only to lose it two years afterwards to the new and war-like king Gadādhar Singh. Thus, Kāmrūp was finally lost to the empire. During Mīr Jumla's investment in Garhgāon, Cooch Behār had been recovered by its raja. But when Shāysta Khān came to Bengal as governor, the raja made his peace (1664) by offering submission and half a million rupees. Later in the century, the Mughuls annexed the southern and eastern portions of the kingdom, including the present districts of Rangpur and western Kāmrūp.
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One of the tasks with which Mīr Jumla was charged by the emperor was the punishment of the pirates of Chittagong and the recovery of Shujā's family. This work, which he did not live to attempt, fell to his successor in Bengal, Shāyista Khān. The Fenny river was the boundary between the Burmese (Magh) kingdom of Arakan and the Mughul empire, but during the reigns of Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān the Magh pirates acquired complete domination over the rivers and creeks of East Bengal. Their naval power was strengthened by the settlement of Portuguese and half-caste (Feringi) adventurers in Chittagong, who acted as the agents of the local raja in these raids. "These pirates, both Magh and Feringi, used constantly to come and plunder Bengal, carrying off the Hindus and Muslims that they could seize, and employing some of the captives in degrading tasks and selling others as slaves at the Indian ports." Deltaic Bengal was so long and so thoroughly devastated by them that the riverside parts of the Backergunge and Dacca districts remained desolate and bare of inhabitants even at the time of Rennell's survey (1775).
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The sailors of the Bengal *nawwara* felt such a terror of the pirates that whenever a hundred war-boats of the former sighted only four of the latter, the Bengal crews thought themselves lucky if they could save their lives by flight. Latterly the Rājā of Arakan had ceased to send his own fleet to plunder Mughul territory, as he considered the Feringi pirates in the light of his servants and shared the booty with them half and half.¹
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¹ Sarkar, J. N., in *Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal*, 1907, p. 423.
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Bernier describes these Portuguese as "Christians only in name; the lives led by them were most detestable, massacring or poisoning one another without compunction or remorse". During their raids they practised fiendish cruelty on the people, men, women and children, whom they could catch, and their name *Harmād* (= Armada) is associated with horror and loathing in contemporary Bengali literature. Their ravages caused great loss to the imperial revenue and prestige in Bengal.
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Shāyista Khān first set himself to create a navy anew, as the Bengal flotilla had practically ceased to exist during the Assam war and the subsequent confusion and maladministration, though there was an annual grant of 1½ million rupees for its maintenance. With great energy within one year he built and manned a fleet of 300 vessels, and protected Dacca by water on the south. Next, he conquered the island of Sandwīp, at the head of the Bay of Bengal, as it was a convenient half-way house between Dacca and Chittagong (November, 1665). He next bribed the Feringi colony of Chittagong, who were then quarrelling with the local raja, to migrate suddenly with their families and ships to Mughul territory (December, 1665)—the site of their new homes in Dacca town being still called Feringi-bāzār.
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“The coming over of the Feringis gave composure to the minds of the people of Bengal”, and on 24 December an expedition by land and sea left Dacca for Chittagong, under the governor’s son Buzurg Ummed Khān and admiral Ibn Husain. The fleet moved close to the coast, while the army marched parallel to it, cutting a way through the jungle and naturally lagging some distance behind. The brunt of the fighting fell on the fleet (288 vessels) or rather on the forty ships of the Feringis which formed the imperial vanguard. Two battles were fought at sea (2 and 3 February, 1666) in which the Maghs were defeated and driven back upon Chittagong. A third battle, in the river below that town, resulted in the entire Magh squadron (135 vessels) of that region being captured. The fort of Chittagong capitulated to the fleet on 5 February, when the land force also arrived.
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Chittagong was made the seat of a Mughul commandant and its name was changed to Islāmābād. Thousands of Bengal peasants, so long held there in serfdom by the pirates, were now released and restored to their homes. The Mughuls advanced up to the port of Rāmū, but soon abandoned it as too distant an outpost. Chittagong, however, has remained attached to Bengal ever since.
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Aurangzīb was the champion of Muslim orthodoxy, and yet he had to wage many wars with his fanatical Muslim subjects of the north-western frontier. The causes were political and economic, not religious. The Afghān clans living in and around the passes leading out of India into Afghānistān have followed highway robbery as a hereditary profession from time immemorial. Their fields yield too scanty a sustenance for their fast growing numbers, and stout hearts, strong muscles and cunning brains do not remain satisfied with the poor and slow gains of agriculture, as compared with the plunder of industrious and tame plainsmen and of rich traders passing within easy reach. The Mughul emperors had learnt by bitter experience that it was cheaper to bribe these hillmen, as a means of keeping the passes open and the valleys at their foot safe, than to coerce the robbers. A sum of 600,000 rupees was annually allotted by Aurangzīb's government for paying subsidies to the various border chieftains and headmen of families. But even these political pensions did not always ensure peace on the frontier. In every generation some leader of ungratified ambition would gather together a band of fiery youths and raid the imperial territory or the villages of his rivals. The pressure of growing population made peace and a static condition impossible on this frontier.
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Early in 1667 the Yūsufzāi clan, living in Swāt and Bājaur and the north Peshāwar plain, rose under Bhāgū, who crowned a pretended scion of their ancient kings under the title of Muhammad Shāh, and crossing the Indus above Attock invaded the Hazāra district, and attacked the imperial outposts there. Other Yūsufzāi bands plundered the western Peshāwar and Attock districts. Then they came over to the south side of the Indus at Hārūn, in order to prevent any Mughul force from crossing into their country at this ferry. But Kāmil Khān, the commandant of Attock, defeated and expelled them with heavy slaughter (11 April). Next month Shamsher Khān, with a larger army, crossed the Indus, entered the Yūsufzāi country, and leaving an entrenched camp at Und ravaged the cornfields in the level country of Mandrāwar. Then advancing farther he captured many of their villages, burning down the houses, looting the property and destroying all vestiges of cultivation, up to the Panjshīr river.
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At the beginning of September the supreme command was assumed by Muhammad Amīn Khān at the head of a large force, and his hard blows quieted the rebel clansmen for some years.
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In 1672 the tactless action of the commandant of Jalālābād caused another explosion among the Khyber clans. The Afrīdīs rose under their chieftain Akmal Khān, a born general, who crowned himself king and proclaimed a holy war against the Mughuls, summoning all the Pathāns to join the national movement. Muhammad Amīn Khān, now governor of Afghānistān, was enveloped and attacked by the Afrīdīs at 'Alī Masjid (1 May) and cut off from his water supply. Disorder seized the Mughul army; horses, elephants and men became mixed together in confusion. Then the Afghāns charged down the hillside, completing the ruin of the imperialists. Muhammad Amīn and some of his higher officers escaped, but everything else was lost: ten thousand men were slain, the entire camp property, valued at twenty million rupees, was plundered, and 20,000 men and women (including the viceroy's mother, wife and daughter) were dragged into captivity. This signal success lured more recruits to Akmal's banners, and the rising rapidly spread through the entire Pathān land “from Attock to Qandahār”. Khūsh-hāl Khān, the poet and hero of the Khattak clan, now joining Akmal, became the leading spirit of the national rising and inspired the tribesmen with his pen and sword alike.
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The emperor degraded Muhammad Āmin Khān, and recalling Mahābat Khān from the Deccan sent him to Kābul as viceroy for the fourth time. But this general made a secret pact with the Afghāns on condition of mutual forbearance, and so the Khyber route remained closed. Aurangzīb was displeased and sent Shujā‘at Khān in independent command of a large force with abundant artillery (November, 1673). He was a man of humble birth who had risen to the emperor’s favour by his ability, and therefore the high-born officers regarded him with jealousy, while he treated them with insolent contempt. This led to a lack of co-operation between them and a Mughul disaster on 3 March, 1674, when Shujā‘at Khān was cut off in the Karāpā pass, but the remnant of his force was rescued by Jasvant Singh’s Rājputs.
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