The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c20.130

v4.c20.130

After the campaign against Banda, Bahādur Shāh halted for some time in the Sirhind district, and then started for Lahore, which was reached on 11 August, 1711. With his four sons he encamped outside the city. Here he spent the last six months of his life, avoiding all serious work and engaged only in gardening, as he was now seventy (lunar) years old and Aurangzīb’s treatment of him had destroyed what little spirit and activity he may have once possessed. Early in his reign Bahādur Shāh had ordered the title *wasī* (executor, *sc.* of the Prophet’s will) to be added after the name of ‘Alī in the Friday prayer recited for the sovereign in every public mosque. This was a Shiah innovation and implied a reflection upon the first three Caliphs as usurpers, which the Sunnīs resented. The emperor’s order had provoked opposition and riots in many places, as the Sunnīs form the immense majority of the Muslim population of India. Arrived at Lahore, Bahādur Shāh called his opponents to a debate in his court and warmly pressed his point. The Sunnīs of the city, with the support of the Afghān soldiers, formed a body of nearly a hundred thousand men to resist the change by force. The emperor at first ordered his chief of artillery to cause the new prayer to be read in the principal mosque of Lahore on 2 October, 1711; but on that day, while a vast crowd, ready for rioting, was gathered in the streets, the emperor gave way, the old form was recited and peace was preserved. After declining in health for some weeks, Bahādur Shāh fell ill on 24 February, 1712 and died on the 27th. He was buried in the courtyard of ‘Ālamgīr’s mosque near the shrine of Qutb-ud-dīn Kākī outside Delhi.