The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c20.73

v4.c20.73

Aurangzīb’s last years were unspeakably sad. In the political sphere his lifelong endeavour to govern India justly and strongly ended in anarchy and disruption. A sense of unutterable loneliness haunted his heart in his old age: one by one all the older nobles, his personal friends and the survivors of his own generation, died, with the sole exception of Asad Khān, his minister and personal companion. In his court circle he now found only younger men, timid sycophants, afraid of responsibility and eternally intriguing in a mean spirit of greed and jealousy. His puritan austerity had, at all times, chilled the advances of other men towards him, as one who seemed to be above the joys and sorrows, weakness and pity of mortals. His domestic life was darkened as bereavements thickened round his closing eyes. His gifted daughter Zib-un-Nisā died in 1702, his rebel son Akbar in exile on a foreign soil in 1704, his best beloved daughter-in-law Jahānzīb in 1705, and Gauharārā, his sole surviving sister, in 1706, besides one of his daughters and two nephews in this last year of his life.