Later Mughals v1.c6.s26.1

v1.c6.s26.1

All accounts agree in representing Bahadur Shah as a man of mild and equable temper, learned, dignified and generous to a fault. With these qualities must have been united much command of his feelings and a power of profound dissimulation.* His mode of bearing the disgrace and indignity heaped on him by his father, proves the one, and the way in which he misled his brother as to his intention not to claim the throne proves the other. Although not so bigoted as his father, he was pious, and on Friday all business was suspended, the day being passed in prayer. He never neglected the opportunity of visiting a holy man or the tomb of a saint. He believed in omens, moreover, consulted astrologers as to the auspicious day for a battle, and complied with their directions on the occasion of an eclipse. He was kind to his children and their families, visiting them in sickness and condoling with them in time of sorrow. He could at times give way to anger, as we have seen when he rated Munim Khan after that minister's failure to capture Banda, though such outbursts were extremely rare. One personal peculiarity is noted by Iradat Khan, that this Emperor had an aversion to being in a house. Probably the habit of living in a camp had grown on him owing to the fact that from an early age he was constantly on military service in the Dakhin. When in charge of Kabul, he seems to have wandered about from place to place for the ten years or more that he was there. Certainly, from the day that he started to claim the crown until the day of his death, he never slept one night within four walls, and the occasions on which he even entered a building in the daytime could be counted on the fingers of one hand. We have a daily record of his movements for that period in the histories of Danishmand Khan and Kamwar Khan. He was in the habit of sitting up very late at night, and thus his marches began at a late hour in the morning, causing much inconvenience to the camp-followers who, not arriving till nightfall, could not find their own camp or tents and were forced to pass the night lying near the drum tent or the imperial audience-hall or among the shop-keepers. (K. K. 630.) A European traveller, who saw him about the year 1695 when he was 52 years of age, describes him as "tall and of a portly form, his beard thick, long, and beginning to grow white." (Gemelli Careri *Voyage du Tour du Monde*, iii. 182. French edition, Paris, 1727.)