The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c19.198

v4.c19.198

For this slander, which is repeated, of course on Mughul authority, by Fryer, Tavernier, Bernier and Manucci, there is not a scrap of evidence. ‘Alī II was accepted without hesitation in Bījāpur as the son of Muhammad and is so described both in the annals of the kingdom, where his birth, and the principal events of his childhood in the royal palace are circumstantially recorded, and in Marāthī manuscripts. Nor was there any necessity for raising to the throne a supposititious child of Muhammad, for Aurangzīb, when he captured Bījāpur in 1686, found there sixteen male scions of the house of Yūsuf ‘Ādil Shāh. The fiction was invented to inflame the wrath of Shāh Jahān, who declared war on Bījāpur.