The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c20.116

v4.c20.116

Aurangzib was brave in an unusual degree. In him personal courage was combined with a coldness of temperament and a calculating spirit which we have been taught to regard as the special heritage of the races of northern Europe. In addition, he had from early life prepared himself for the sovereign’s duties by self-reverence, self-knowledge and self-control. He was a widely read and accurate scholar and kept up his love of books to his dying day. His extensive correspondence proves his mastery of Persian poetry and Arabic sacred literature. To his initiative and patronage we owe the greatest digest of Muslim law made in India, the *Fatāva-i-‘Ālamgīrī*. As a prince, he made the highest nobles of his father’s court his friends by his tact, sagacity and humility; his career in Shāh Jahān’s reign clearly marked him out for pre-eminence in the future. His private life—dress, food and recreations—were all extremely simple but well-ordered. He was absolutely free from vice and even from the more innocent pleasures of the idle rich. The number of his wives fell far short even of the Qurānic allowance of four and he was scrupulously faithful to wedded love. His industry in administration was marvellous; in addition to holding daily courts regularly (sometimes twice a day) and Wednesday trials, he wrote orders on letters and petitions with his own hand and often dictated the very language of official replies. Dr Gemelli Careri, who saw him at Galgalā in 1695 (when the emperor was already seventy-seven years old), “admired to see him endorse the petitions with his own hand, without spectacles, and by his cheerful smiling countenance seem to be pleased with the employment”. Though Aurangzib died in his ninetieth year, he retained to the last all his faculties (except his hearing) unimpaired. His memory was wonderful: “he never forgot a face he had once seen or a word that he had once heard”.