History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v2.c28: Chapter XXII.

History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v2.c28

Language: English

Chapter XXII.

Early in May 1658, Sulaiman Shukoh, then pondering how he should force or turn Shuja's wall from the hill to the river at Monghyr, received a summons from his father to return quickly to him, as Aurangzib and Murad had overwhelmed Jaswant in Malwa and were marching on Agra. A peace was hastily patched up with Shuja, through the exertions of Jai Singh, and the Imperial army soon set out on its return. On 2nd July when he reached Korah, 105 miles west of Allahabad, fast couriers brought to him the fatal news of his father's crushing defeat at Samugarh five days earlier. A letter from Shah Jahan sent with them urged him to make a rapid march with his army to join his father at Delhi. Dara, too, wrote to the Imperial officers requesting them to accompany his son. But it was in vain. The

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Sulaiman Shukoh ordered to join Dara, news of Dara's downfall produced the greatest excitement in his son's army; the soldiers were distracted or openly hostile to the fallen cause; the road to Delhi was long and would soon be blocked by Aurangzib's men. What was Sulaiman Shukoh to do? The youthful Prince, bewildered by the calamity, took counsel with Jai Singh. The Rajput general advised him either to push on to Delhi or to fall back on Allahabad and there wait within its sheltering walls for news of his father. For himself, Jai Singh openly refused to follow the losing side any longer; he would go away with his troops and join the new Emperor. The hapless Sulaiman waited another day and held a second consultation. Dilir Khan, the Afghan general, advised him to cross the Ganges at Allahabad, go to Shahjahanpur, the home of a large Afghan colony, and there raising an army of his clansmen wait for fresh developments. Only on such condition was he willing to accompany the Prince. Sulaiman had no help but to obey. So, he ordered a retreat from Allahabad (4th June). But meantime Jai Singh had convinced Dilir Khan of the folly of such unselfish devotion; these two generals with their contingents parted company with the Prince at Korah, and so also did all the other Imperial officers and many newly enlisted troops* whose home was in this doab country. Only 6,000 men, less than a third of Sulaiman’s army, accompanied him in the retreat to Allahabad, under the guidance of his guardian, the faithful Baqi Beg. While he should have flown on wings to his father’s side, if he was to reach him at all, he wasted a week’s time here in distraction, daily consultation, and the maturing of conflicting plans. He was burdened with a harem of women and “furniture and articles of pomp beyond imagination.” Couches of gold, chairs of gold and silver, jewellery, gold plate, rich clothing,—in short every gift that a loving father and a doting grandfather could bestow on him on his first campaign, accompanied him and impeded his march. He could not carry them and yet he was loath to leave them. Some advised him to seize and govern the country from Allahabad to Patna and there build up an independent power. Others counselled him to retreat to Patna and by joining Shuja raise a strong force against Aurangzib. But the Syeds of Barha, who were among Dara’s chief followers, pressed him to make a wide loop round Delhi, march by the northern side of the Ganges, through their home the Middle Doab, and then cross the Ganges and the Jumna at the foot of the hills, near Nagina and Saharanpur, in order to reach Dara in the Panjab without fear of interception by Aurangzib’s forces.

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∗ Masum, 147a-148b; A.N. 168--170. Manucci says that Sulaiman conspired to murder Jai Singh and Dilir Khan at an interview (Storia, i. 284--287).

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This last course Sulaiman Shukoh adopted. Leaving his surplus property, heavy baggage, stores, and harem attendants in the fort of Allahabad in charge of his father’s trusty servant Syed Qasim of Barha, he crossed the Ganges with light kit (14th June), passed by Lucknow and Moradabad, and rapidly moved on Nagina, where he plundered the Government treasury of two lakhs of rupees and some private property also. But numbers of soldiers deserted him daily, and his following rapidly dwindled from the 6,000 men who had left Allahabad with him. Even for his diminished numbers he could not secure a crossing over the Ganges to the right bank. “At every ferry......the men took their boats to the other side at the report of his approach, and he could not cross. So he was forced to proceed further up the river towards Hardwar in the hope of crossing with the help of the local zamindars.” At Chandi, situated in the Srinagar State opposite Hardwar, he halted for some days, and sent his officer Bhawanidas to the Rajah of Srinagar to beg his help.∗

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∗ A. N. 125-126, 148, 170-173 ; Masum, 148b-151a.

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But in these few days of enforced waiting his path was completely barred by strong forces of the enemy and his further progress rendered impossible. As early as the middle of July, Aurangzib from Delhi had sent an army under Shaista Khan to the Hardwar side to oppose Sulaiman Shukoh's attempt to cross the Ganges. On 24th July another detachment was sent under Shaikh Mir and Dilir Khan to guard the right bank of the Jumna and prevent Sulaiman's flight across that river.† Thus the young Prince's path was closed on the south and the west; he was cut off from his father and the Panjab.

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† A. N. 148, 159-160 ; 126 (Khan-i-Dauran sent to besiege Allahabad) ; Aqil Khan, 71.

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While Shaista Khan was advancing to the right bank of the Ganges near the hills, a very enterprising officer, Fidai Khan, fired by the new honours and favours received from the Emperor, outstripped him, reached the ferry of Puth, south-east of Hapur, in the expectation that Sulaiman would naturally cross the Ganges there in his westward movement from Lucknow. Here he learnt from a letter of the

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His path to the Panjab barred by Aurangzib's troops.

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Rajah of Kumaun, the neighbour and therefore the enemy of the Rajah of Srinagar, that the fugitive was marching northwards to Hardwar in order to cross the river there with the help of the latter Rajah. Fidai Khan by hard riding covered 160 miles in one day and reached the right bank of the river at Hardwar in the afternoon. Sulaiman with several thousand men occupied the opposite bank, wishing to cross there that very afternoon. Only 50 troopers had been able to keep up with Fidai Khan in his strenuous march. But his appearance was enough. At once the rumour spread that this bank was held by the Vanguard of the Imperial army and that their main body under Shaista Khan was approaching. Sulaiman Shukoh lost heart, and durst not force a passage across. The precious moment was lost, and he had to turn back from the Ganges towards the Srinagar hills in search of an asylum.¹ His best followers, the Syeds of Barha, who had their homes in the Middle Doab, round Sambal, feared for the safety of their wives and children and refused to enter the hills.

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¹ Aqil Khan, 71—72. Puth, 28·41 N. 78·15 E., 8 miles S. of Garh Muktesar. (Ind. Atlas, 49 N. E).

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His most faithful officer and chief manager of affairs, Baqi Beg, a Badakhshani, who had served Dara from his boyhood, died on the way. At the death of such an experienced able and resourceful leader, confusion fell on Sulaiman’s party. The master-mind which had firmly held the men together was gone, and the party broke up into flying atoms. “At the death of such a faithful follower, utter despair and confusion overtook Sulaiman.” More than half the party with him fled back to their homes. His force was reduced to 2,000 men.*

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Despairing to make his way to the Panjab, Sulaiman had appealed to the mercy of Prithwi Singh, the Rajah of Srinagar, and marched to his frontier. Here the Rajah’s men met him and guided him into their country. Four marches from the capital, the Rajah himself waited on the august guest and offered him a refuge in Srinagar on condition of his being accompanied by his family and a few servants only; but his army, horses and elephants were to be dismissed, as the country was poor and the roads bad.

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The miserable suppliant hesitated before consenting to render himself utterly powerless and become absolutely dependent on his strange host. He spent a week in meditation and consultation. But there was no escape for him. The path to Hindustan was effectually closed. At Hardwar, Sambal, and the Middle Doab, strong forces of the enemy vigilantly waited for him; and a fourth force was already on the march to invest Allahabad, while Aurangzeb himself had entered the Panjab. A dash to the plains would only make Sulaiman Shukoh fall into the jaws of death.

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∗ Masum, 152a ; A. N. 174.

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At last he made up his mind to accept the Rajah’s terms. Those of his servants who wanted to desert him but were deterred from the attempt by the roads out of the hills being guarded by the Rajah’s men, now advised Sulaiman not to trust his life to the hill people, but to return to Allahabad. To lend support to this counsel, they showed him a forged letter purporting to have come from his father’s devoted commandant of Allahabad and reporting that Shuja had arrived there with a vast army. Sulaiman, therefore, changed his mind, thanked the Rajah for his offer of hospitality, gave him some presents, and returned to Nagina. There all the traitors fled away, leaving only seven hundred men with him.

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Changes his mind.

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Despair seized Sulaiman Shukoh as he discovered the real motive of his faithless advisers. He decided to return to Srinagar. But his troubles were only beginning. Next day, when he set his face towards the hills, "all the servants of the various departments and stores,—foragers, camel drivers, and elephant men,—fled away. From 700 men his train sank to 200 only. With such a diminished retinue and transport it was impossible for him to supply conveyances to the ladies of his harem, who numbered two hundred. The enemy were close behind; there was no time to be lost. So, he made up his mind to distribute his women to any body who would take them. At the very proposal "ladies of spotless honour" who "had so long been kept in seclusion with care, became frantic with grief, plucking their hairs out and slapping their own cheeks." But misfortune is pitiless. Some of the women were given away to new masters, many others were abandoned, and only the highest ladies of his harem accompanied the Prince on the few elephants whose drivers still clung to him faithfully. The party now reduced to two hundred souls, made a precipitate flight, covering long distances every day without daring to halt, as the enemy was close on their track. Qasim Khan, the Imperial jagirdar of Moradabad, reached Nagina only 18 hours after Sulaiman had left it, and learning of the fugitive's route he continued the pursuit without halting there. The news of the approach of the Imperialists and the rapidity of the flight dissolved Sulaiman Shukoh’s party; most of his men deserted him, and at last with his wife, a few other ladies, his foster-brother Muhammad Shah, and only seventeen followers, he reached the entrance to the hills.* The Rajah of Srinagar gave him an asylum, promising to harbour the suppliant in spite of the danger and loss that were sure to befall him for his hospitality.

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Enters Garhwal with 17 followers.

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The host was all kindness and attention to his princely guest in distress. “He repaired the old and ruined palace of his ancestors, lodged the Prince in it, and day and night served him attentively. He considered the arrival of such a prince as a divine grace, because no such event had ever happened [to his dynasty] before.” The Rajah even gave his daughter in marriage to Sulaiman, in order to mingle his blood with that of the Imperial house of Delhi.*

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∗ Masum, 151b—153b; A.N. 173—177; Khafi Khan, ii. 42 (says that the Rajah treated Sulaiman like a prisoner in greed of his gold and jewels.) Sulaiman's flight to Garhwal took place at the beginning of August, 1658, as the detachment sent by Aurangzib from Delhi on 24th July under Shaikh Mir and Dilir Khan to watch the Jumna above Saharanpur against the fugitive, returned to Aurangzib some miles east of Rupar on the Satlej on 10th August with the report that Sulaiman had entered Srinagar. (A. N. 167)

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For a year Sulaiman enjoyed peace in his rude but safe shelter. He must have been sighing for the comforts of civilised life, the luxuries of his father's Court, and the power and wealth of a ruling prince. According to Masum, his evil counsellors,—or, as is more probable, his own restless ambition prompted him to sally forth from the hills and raid a Mughal village in the plains, in the hope of re-establishing his authority and assembling his father's old retainers and other officers from the neighbouring tract. The only result of the expedition was the plunder of his all by his faithless followers and his return in naked poverty to the Garhwal hills again.†

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Aurangzib had already warned the Rajah that, if he did not wish to see the ruin of his house, he must yield the fugitive. Prithwi Singh tried evasion and pretended that Sulaiman Shukoh had found an asylum in a neighbouring hill-State and not in Garhwal. But the falsehood failed in its object.

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∗ Masum, 153b, 156a. † Masum, 154a—155a. The *Alamgirnamah* (175) places this return to the plains and desertion of Sulaiman by his treacherous followers before his entrance into Garhwal. This is more likely than Masum's version.

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At the end of a year, Aurangzib now triumphant over all his rivals, was free to turn to Sulaiman Shukoh. On 27th July 1659 he sent Rajah Rajrup of the Jammu hills with a party of Imperial troops to influence Prithwi Singh, either by persuasion or by threat, to surrender his guest. For a year and a half the hill-Rajah struggled against temptation and fear in the sacred cause of hospitality. Reinforcements in pioneers artillery and musketeers were sent to Rajrup in October 1660.[*] But a campaign among the rugged hills of Garhwal was a slow and doubtful expedient. Aurangzib therefore fell back on diplomacy. He intrigued with Prithwi Singh's all-powerful minister and virtual ruler of Garhwal, and promised him his master's throne if he brought about the capture of Sulaiman. This man, corrupted by ambition, administered to the Prince a poison in the form of medicine. Sulaiman experimented with it on a cat and learnt of its deadly property. When he disclosed the plot to Prithwi Singh, the Rajah in righteous indignation cut the wretched minister to pieces.[†]

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† Masum, 157b—159b.

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Aurangzib next employed Jai Singh, his agent in all intrigues with Hindu princes. The Rajput chief wrote to Prithwi Singh professing his own extreme sorrow at the impending ruin of a Hindu ruler like him, and pressing him to give up Sulaiman as the only means of saving himself from the Imperial vengeance. The Garhwal Rajah was old and refused to undertake the sin and shame of betraying an accepted refugee. But his son and heir, Medini Singh, was more worldly-minded; the hope of rewards from Delhi conquered his scruples. There was also the fear of losing their kingdom, as Aurangzib was instigating the neighbouring and rival hill-Rajahs to invade and annex Garhwal. The three Mughal generals who had invaded the country, had seized and established outposts in some parts of it and pressed the Rajah hard.[*] So, Medini Singh overruled his father and decided to give Sulaiman Shukoh up to the Mughals. A submissive reply was sent to Jai Singh with a promise to obey the Imperial order. On 12th December 1660 Aurangzib despatched Jai Singh's son, Kumar Ram Singh, to the foot of the hills to bring away the captive. Hearing the news, Sulaiman tried to escape over the snow to Ladak, and when pursued by the Garhwal troops he offered resistance. His foster-brother and some other companions were slain, and he himself wounded in the vain struggle for freedom against heavy odds. On 27th December he was sent down to the plains and delivered to Ram Singh,[*] and on 2nd January 1661 brought to the fort of Salimgarh at Delhi.

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∗ A. N. 421, 589; Masum, 156b—157b.

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∗ Probably by cutting off his subjects' access to the plains.

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Sulaiman is captured and delivered to Aurangzib.

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On 5th January the prisoner was placed before his dread uncle in the Hall of Private Audience of the Delhi palace.[†] His youth, extreme beauty, martial fame, and present misery deeply interested the courtiers and even the ladies of the Imperial harem in his fate. The eldest and most favoured grandson of Shah Jahan, he might under happier stars have one day adorned the throne of Delhi and sat on the seat of state in the very hall where he now stood as a captive in chains with a secret and ignominious death before him. "Many of the courtiers shed tears at the sight of this interesting young man....The principal ladies of the court,...concealed behind a lattice-work, were also greatly moved. Aurangzib spoke to him with apparent kindness, to relieve him of the fear of a death-sentence,

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His interview with Aurangzib.

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[*] A. N. 600—602 ; Aqil Khan, 105 ; Storia, i. 378—380 ; Khafi Khan, ii. 123. [†] A. N. 602.

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‘Be comforted; no harm shall befall you. You shall be treated with tenderness. God is great, and you should put your trust in Him. Dara, your father, was not permitted to live only because he had become a *kafir*, a man devoid of all religion.’ The Prince made the *salam* or sign of grateful acknowledgement....He then told the Emperor, with much self-possession, that if it were intended to give him the *pousta* to drink, he begged that he might be immediately put to death. Aurangzib promised in a solemn manner, and in a loud voice, that this drink should most certainly not be administered, and that his mind might be perfectly easy.’”*

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The *pousta* is a drink made of poppy-heads crushed and soaked in water for a night. This was the potion generally given to princes confined in the fortress of Gwalior, whose heads the Emperor was deterred by prudential reasons from taking off. A large cup of this beverage was brought to them early in the morning, and they were not given anything to eat until it was swallowed. This drink emaciated the wretched victims; who lost their strength and intellect by slow degrees, became torpid and senseless, and at length died.

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∗ Bernier, who witnessed the scene, (pp. 105-106); Storia, i. 380.

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But the fate that Sulaiman Shukoh had dreaded more than death itself, was meted out to him by Aurangzib in violation of his ‘solemn promise.’ The captive was sent to Gwalior (on 15th January) and there ordered to be plied with the drink of opium-seeds. In this dismal State-prison the hapless Prince dragged his miserable life on for a year, and finally, in May 1662, “he was sent to the next world through the exertions of his keepers.” His career that had begun with so much promise and splendour was cut off at the age of thirty. On the Gwalior hill he was buried close to another princely victim of Aurangzib’s ambition, and Sulaiman Shukoh and his uncle Murad Bakhsh were united in death in that unhonoured cemetery.∗

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∗ Kambu, 24b; Isardas, 41b; Bernier, 107; Storia, i. 380; A. N. 603 (silent about his fate); Inayetullah’s Ahkam-i-Alamgiri, 286b, 302b.

Linked texts (2)

ʿAmal-i Ṣāliḥ — Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Kambōh 1659, Persian
Tārīkh-i Shāh Shujāʿī — Muḥammad Maʿṣūm 1659, Persian