The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c3.6

v4.c3.6

Succession to Bābur and his descendants had not taken place without jealousy or open dispute, and Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān had each rebelled in his father's lifetime. The serious illness of Shāh Jahān kindled the smouldering envy of his four sons and war ensued from which Aurangzīb emerged successful, having killed or exiled his three brothers, and made his father a prisoner in the fort of Āgra, to survive there for eighteen years. Aurangzīb's reign falls into two periods. From 1658 to 1681 he remained in northern India, where his narrow-minded efficiency and religious intolerance caused the alienation of the warlike frontier tribes and destroyed the loyalty of the Rājputs to the empire which had been won by Akbar and maintained by Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān. Having, as he believed, subdued these discordant elements, he left for southern India to extinguish the remaining Muslim powers there and to quell the rising activities of the Marāthās. Success in the former enterprise increased his difficulties in the latter and after ceaseless strife his life ended with the limits of the empire extended, but its resources squandered and its army ruined, while in the north the Sikhs and Jāts were also showing rebellious tendencies.