The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c19.39

v4.c19.39

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.