The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c19.27

v4.c19.27

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.