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- [00:01]
Anita Anand
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:29]
William Dalrymple
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anit and me, William Dalrymple. I'm not even going to berate you for the pause because I think actually I would allow you to have a lie down in between saying William and Dalrymple today because you are a man up against it, are you not?
- [00:45]
Anita Anand
You're right, Anita. This is the first week of January and I have now two and a half weeks till the largest literary festival in the world opens in Jaipur and everything is sort of tottering. Remember that nice picture of Jahangir we were describing in the last episode where you sort of standing on a globe that's resting on an ox and shooting at a Abyssinian head, representing Malik Umber? My life at the moment is a bit like that.
- [01:12]
William Dalrymple
Your example was much, much better before we came on. You said, someone paint this. There are very talented people on the discord. Make this real for us. He said, anita, it is like standing on a feather that is balanced on a snowflake which is riding a surfboard in a force nine gale. So look, if you can make that into an image, we'd like to see it. Wait, listen, you're doing very well. Just stay with.
- [01:35]
Anita Anand
Festival is a bit like organizing a wedding every year.
- [01:38]
William Dalrymple
Yeah, but it always nearly goes on.
- [01:40]
Anita Anand
But it's always right in the end.
- [01:41]
William Dalrymple
Listen, exciting. We've had a surge in Empire Club joiners. There are reasons, because you get all the extras and you get sort of our series. When we do series of things, you get them all in a big blip. So you don't have to wait and hang around every week.
- [01:54]
Anita Anand
You can do a Netflix style binge.
- [01:56]
William Dalrymple
Oh God, and don't we all love a binge. The other thing, though, excitingly, I'm going to tell him, William, I'm going to do a Dalrymple. I'm going to tell him.
- [02:04]
Anita Anand
Are you letting cats out of bags?
- [02:05]
William Dalrymple
Persian cats, all sorts of cats. Cats, every type of cat imaginable. We've got live shows coming up this year, ladies and gentlemen. Live shows. We'll be touring Empire. Not going to say where, partly because I can't remember, but there are a few venues. No, I mean I actually really legitimately haven't asked permission to do this. So let's just say no one will notice. At goal hanger we're going to do a tour. And with our Empire Live shows, we have noticed that it sells out at light speed. I mean, my goodness, the barbican, which I personally never thought anyone would come to our birthday party, but you all came and it sold out within 24 hours and we do that. So if you're a member of the club, you get priority tickets. So if there was ever a reason to do something in January that might transform your lives, this is it. And you also get bonus episodes where we wang on about things that we don't wang on about in the podcast and you get to know us better. Anyway, enough of that. Because we're getting up close and personal with the man who would be Shah Jahan and the man who will ultimately be remembered as the architect, the builder of the Taj Mahal, a place where any of you who've probably done that Golden Triangle visit to India, it will stick out in your mind.
- [03:18]
Anita Anand
It's odd, though, thinking about him, because so often when we think about Shah Jahan, it is the buildings we think of. We think of the Taj, but we also think of the Red Fort, Shah Jahanabad and all his amazing gardens and building schemes which are dotted across North India and indeed right up to Kabul. But he himself, and I was just thinking this morning prior to doing this show, what a sort of reserved man he is and how much more inscrutable he is than his others. Almost all the other moguls that we've dealt with now, like Babur, with his amazing diary and his incredible descriptions of the world he's passing through. Humayun, the hippie dippy Akbar, with his extraordinary library camels. Yeah, the library camels. And Shah Jahan is, in a sense, almost only his buildings and his sort of ceremonial. He tightly controlled his public image. Not only are the artists given total detailed inscriptions of how he wants to be depicted in every picture, but even his court histories get written and rewritten and written a third time in different drafts at his instruction. He was kind of slightly obsessive and he's a handsome guy and we know his face very well because he had himself painted over and over again with this sort of sculpted dark beard, this slightly dark complexion because he's now 3/4 Rajput. Every one of his parents and grandparents were either Rajputs or married to Rajputs. But he's a sort of oddly inscrutable, non emotional man, personally. And like the Medicis, we used this image with Jahangir last time, but it's the same. He's both extremely sensitive to some things and capable of cold blooded brutality. And he has both of those features in his character.
- [05:12]
William Dalrymple
I wonder if one of the reasons that he is so controlling of his own narrative is because he's able to be. Because he comes from a long line of heavy drinkers and drug takers and he is not. He sort of stands apart because he doesn't indulge like his father Jahangir did. In fact, he didn't like drinking at all. There was a really interesting thing I found that Jahangir himself writes about that. You know, the first time his son even tastes wine is on his 24th birthday when his father practically pours it down his throat. And this is what Change writes about this. It was only after a great deal of trouble that he could be persuaded to take a little wine. And so he drank a little bit, mostly when his father is forcing him to have a drink at ceremonial events. But after 1602 he gives up booze altogether because it is a lack of control. And you get this impression, the portraits give you so much, but certainly from the writing and the difference of perception between his own court writers and those from outside his realm, and we'll talk about that maybe a little bit later, he wants to control the narrative also psychologically, I think.
- [06:13]
Anita Anand
You know, obviously if you're brought up with an alcoholic father who is killing himself, that does affect you to begin with. Chang notes very carefully how much he's drinking and how much he's taking of opium. But by the end he's more or less incapacitated by it. Any self control, that's gone. And Shah Jahan grows up with that daily reality. And the result is to make him this sort of controlling, austere and self controlled, reserved figure. Which is why I think it's interesting that when he finally falls in love, and this is the central story that we'll be dealing with in this episode and the next, he has this extraordinary marriage and his relationship with Mumtaz Mahal, which is the story that every tourist guide tells tourists as they come around Agra and that Taj is a symbol of love and all that sort of hokum that actually is based on a fascinating reality. And it goes so strongly against the stereotype that everyone in the west is brought up to the Mughals or the Ottomans. These Muslim rulers are sort of, you know, massive harem guys with women on every side. Shah Jahan only has one love of his life.
- [07:23]
William Dalrymple
Well, he has one true love, but he does have a great big harem. He does have A great big harem, but one tree.
- [07:28]
Anita Anand
I understand that's for diplomatic reasons. There's no indication at all that he is sexually profligate, certainly in the course of his wife's lifetime. And it's very interesting how far that's true for all the Mughals. I mean, many of them. If you think of Akbar, Pharaoh Manrique says that he strongly disapproved of libertine behavior. Jahangir has Nurjahan, who he's devoted to. It's a family with three generations of very strong marriages. And that's unusual and interesting.
- [07:57]
William Dalrymple
And we're sort of putting the cart before the horse. So let's just talk about little Shah Jahan, who wasn't called Shah Jahan at all. So if you've been following our Mughal series, you'll know that there are titles that we will come to know, people by which they may not have been born with. So actually, Shah Jahan, he was born with the name Kurum, and Kurum itself means joyous. And he was born in Lahore. He was born on January 5, 1592, and he was Jahangir's ninth child and his third oldest son. So the art of succession should not have been troubling him so much. Although, as we know from Mughal history, people leapfrog the succession line. But actually, just numerically, he shouldn't have had any business in thinking that he would one day rule.
- [08:39]
Anita Anand
And his mum is from the great Rajput kingdom of Jodpur. Previously, a lot of the princes had come from Jaipur wives. And Jahangir's mother is the woman known in myth as Jodhbai.
- [08:52]
William Dalrymple
Jodhabai, Yes. I mean, in all the Bollywood films.
- [08:54]
Anita Anand
Exactly. That has very little historic basis as a title. But she was from Jodpur, and you can see that in his features. You know, he's the first of the Mughals that really does look entirely Indian. He could pass in a room full of Rajasthanis. Today, there's nothing Central Asian at all in his features.
- [09:12]
William Dalrymple
There is a rather glorious little factoid that I want to throw in at this point, because, yes, he will marry a Rajput princess, as you say. And these things were diplomatic alliances, largely. But his father used to refer to Kurum, soon to be Shah Jahan's father in law, as Mutaraja, the fat king. So I think if you've spent Christmas with in laws, you'll know how this goes. But this is kind of a moniker that's stuck with the Rajput king who has given over his daughter for this alliance.
- [09:42]
Anita Anand
Mutharaja is Uday Sing Rattor, more formal type.
- [09:46]
William Dalrymple
Well, yes, to his friends, anyway. Khorram is born at a really important moment in astrology, and we've talked about how important astrology is particularly difficult to people like Humayun, for example, as astrology tense, even when he has nothing else to his name. And tell me what this astrological moment that Kurum, soon to be Shah Jahan is born under and why. It's significant.
- [10:07]
Anita Anand
He's known as the millennial sovereign, not in the sense of smashed avocados and that sort of millennial activity, but because he's born in the year 1000 of the Islamic calendar. And it's very important to remember, I think, that everyone in India, Hindu and Muslim, but also beyond into the wider world, believed at this period of history that the stars determine everything about your fate and about your life. And therefore, to study the stars is very important. And that astrology and astronomy are one science called an India Jyotisa, and that if you are born under this conjunction that Prince Karam is, then that is a very significant indicator of how your life is going to be. And as you say, this prince, who is not by any sense automatically destined to inherit, and the fact that he actually does proves to a lot of people that despite being the ninth child, the fact that it's this man who will succeed and in the eyes of many, open up the great golden age of the Moguls is something that sort of, in a sense, proves the validity of this way of thinking.
- [11:16]
William Dalrymple
He's heaven ordained in the eyes of many people. And it's because he's born at a time, and this is interesting, when Saturn and Jupiter are aligned, and in the Persian world, certainly that is meant to be an ushering in of a new era of justice, peace and prosperity. So he grows up with that on his shoulders. That, you know, all right, he may be the ninth child, he may be the third son, but the heavens have touched him on the shoulder until he's 15. This is again an interesting thing. He's not raised by his mother. He's raised by his grandfather's wife, Rukia, Sultan Begum, and he's raised in Akbar's imperial harem.
- [11:53]
Anita Anand
That's not unusual at the time.
- [11:55]
William Dalrymple
Why does this happen? I mean, because we've talked about it before, that children are given over to other members of the household. And I've always been curious, because after an emperor dies, there's such a bloodbath of killing as people want to put their own children and progeny forward. Why Trust your child, or why have your child given over to some other woman?
- [12:14]
Anita Anand
Well, the woman in question, Ruqya Sultan, who's the grandmother, is typical of these very powerful Mughal matriarchs. And the counterbalance to the young men sort of snarling at each other every succession crisis is this harem full of elderly, respected women who are often sent as peacemakers. And this is true very much of the period of Shah Jahan, that there are a succession of women, both elderly and younger. Prince Karam's future daughter, Jahanara will play the role of of United nations peacekeeper in all the successions battles that will come, and we'll hear a lot more about her. But Rukhi Sultan is one of these women, and these are powerful women at the back who are pulling the bell ropes of state with enormous influence. There's a woman based in Atlanta called Ruby Lal, who's the great professor who studied this. And she wrote her first book, which was based on her PhD, all about the Mughal harems. And up to this point, there'd been a lot written both by sort of Orientalist Brits and by terrible sort of pop historians after independence, painting the Mughal Harim as this sort of porn palace. And Ruby's work shows that it's actually full of these sort of incredibly wonderful old grannies who are keeping the whole ship estate afloat, who are peacemakers, who are holding forts in every sense, quite literally, while the men often run amok and go off the rails. And this woman seems to provide it all, the love that young Prince Karum not only needed, but received a thousand times more. He was loved than if it had been her own son.
- [13:51]
William Dalrymple
And you know what? That seems really significant, that he does grow up very secure and very, very loved. So Akbar clearly marks him out as his favorite. Jahangir Khurram's father says, my father frequently told me there was no comparison between him and my other children, and that love is reciprocated. This little boy grows up adoring Akbar, his grandfather. And when Akbar does eventually die, it is this little prince that sits by his bedside, even though you know what, Normally when an emperor dies and families are reshuffling and shuffling for power, people are spirited away and hidden away, but he sits by his grandfather's side and holds his hand. He's also very lucky. I mean, this whole thing about sort of star ordained. When he's seven, he's hit by smallpox. And smallpox is a ravager of children in this era. If you don't die, you're Often so badly pockmarked as a result of this. But somehow he's lucky. I mean, he not only survives but he remains unpockmarked.
- [14:45]
Anita Anand
I remember when I first went to India, lots of people were very badly scarred by pox. You just don't see it anymore. But I remember it was something that rather shocked me in my first visits in the 1980s.
- [14:55]
William Dalrymple
And they were the lucky ones. So look, right from the get go, this is a loved, blessed little boy. And then he becomes in a way even more blessed because of his naughty older brother. So tell us about Khusra. We kind of mentioned him a little bit in the Jahangir episode.
- [15:13]
Anita Anand
We did talk about Khusra. Khusra is that character who you were very exercised. I was saying this was normal princely behavior for the 17th century. But you were very put out by the fact that Jahangir blinded his own son who rose against him.
- [15:30]
William Dalrymple
Oddly enough, I was a little bit put out, perturbed by that behaviour.
- [15:34]
Anita Anand
It's different in different periods of history. In the 17th century in Europe and in here, there's much, much more violence within families and without. And Khusrau, who rises against Jahangir, has all his friends impaled and then is blinded. Then I think there's an intervention from one of these grandmothers in the harem and Jahangir is persuaded to send medicine and even a European doctor to attend Karam. And his eyes.
- [16:04]
William Dalrymple
Oh well, I take it all back. He's lovely.
- [16:06]
Anita Anand
Qaram's eyes are partially saved.
- [16:09]
William Dalrymple
Oh, he sounds like a right pushover in that case. What? Dad of the year. I take it all back. Okay, but you know, this kind of treachery from your older son, it does put your younger son, who's further down the line, in an even better light. So, you know, Jahangir has watched this boy love his father, adore his mother and be loyal. In fact, there are some sources that suggest that he even is the one. You know, the young Kurum who is going to be Shah Jahan is the one who warns Jahangir that Khusra is planning against him and Khusra is plotting against him. So even then, if this is a game of chess, this is a man who is promoting, you know, from pawn to queen, although not queen in this case, but would be possible emperor candidate.
- [16:52]
Anita Anand
And they also share a great love of the arts, which isn't a given because not all the princes have this. As we heard in the last episode when Sue Strong was talking so brilliantly about it, Jahangir's great love was painting. And he oversees this extraordinary growth of the atelier with Mansoor and Abu Lhassan and all these other extraordinary artists painting away. And this is something that young Karam is also obsessed with. It isn't just painting that Karam loves. He loves architecture. And when he's a teenager, he begins to redesign the imperial apartments of the palace in Kabul, commissioning gardens and hunting grounds around the palace. And this is a sort of, you know, incredibly nerdy 15 year old, comes up with these brilliant plans and shows an extraordinary interest in architecture even at that age. But the thing that really makes him stand out to his father is his obsession with jewels.
- [17:48]
William Dalrymple
Oh, tell us that story again. We did it in the Konoha episode about how he has eyes on the prize.
- [17:54]
Anita Anand
Exactly.
- [17:55]
William Dalrymple
All the time. Tell us that story again because I love that story.
- [17:57]
Anita Anand
So we have this from Jahangir's own diaries. And he's amazed to see this little kid take such an interest in something that he loves, which is precious gems and jewels and to have a real connoisseurship even in his early teens. And Jahangir comments with pride on his son's eye for gems and tells a number of stories. He calls him the star in the forehead of accomplished desires and the brilliancy in the brow of prosperity. So he's very proud of this little boy. And he tells the story that on one occasion, when Jahangir the father had been given an especially fine pearl and wanted to find a pair for it, young Prince Charum pops up and sends off the men looking after the jewels to look for the exact match which he'd seen several years earlier, which lay in an old turban jewel and was of a weight and shape exactly equal to this pearl. And they produced the old turban jewel and it's trafficked into court with a great sort of fanfare. And says Jahangir, it was indeed of exactly the same quality, weight, shape, lustre and brilliance. One might say, wrote Jahangir, that they'd been from the same mold. Placing the two pearls alongside the ruby, I bound them onto my arms.
- [19:12]
William Dalrymple
But that's not the story I was talking about. The story I was talking about, yes, the other story I was talking about, this is given to us by Edward Terry, Sir Thomas Rose Chaplin. Remember we talked about Thomas Rowe, entirely neurotic, first ambassador to the Mughal court, who never has a good enough present for the emperor. But he tells this story that, you know, young Khurram, soon to be Shah Jahan, was so fascinated by gems that there was this banquet that was thrown and Edward Terry is blessed to be there. And there are 12 dancing girls who are bedecked in jewels and not much else. You know, we've talked about this in the Koh I Noor episodes as well, that it's quite often that, you know, rows and rows and rows of pearls and diamonds and spinels and instead of looking at these lovely ladies, and by the way, I say that with a little bit of sick in my mouth. This young lad does not look up from the jewels.
- [20:03]
Anita Anand
Yes, he's just been brought a tray of jewels and he just can't take his eyes off them. And, you know, it may be that Miss World is parading in front of him, but he couldn't care less.
- [20:13]
William Dalrymple
He could not care less. So anyway, that's the guy. But let's talk about love, shall we? Because we've now got a 14, 15 year old who is showing himself to have qualities that his father Jahangir clearly admires, that his grandfather Akbar clearly loved. And it is time to marry, the age of sort of about 14 or 15. It is not unusual for, you know, royals to marry, in fact, anyone to marry at that time. We're talking about the 1600s. So there's this lovely story about a trip to Agra where his eye is caught by the beauty that is Arjuman Banu. Now, you don't know that name. She'll have a different name that you will know if you know anything about. The Taj Mahal. Mumtaz Mahal is the name that she will be given. She's a girl from a noble Persian family.
- [20:59]
Anita Anand
Not just a noble Persian family, the sort of grandest Persian family in the empire.
- [21:04]
William Dalrymple
Yeah, her father is Asif Khan and actually, incidentally, he's the man who gives the jewels to Khurm, soon to be Shah Jahan, which he can't take his eyes off and his dancing girls be damned. But this young woman catches his eye and they are betrothed to each other in the year 1607. So, yeah, she's 14, he's 15. But unusually, they don't marry for another five years. When she's 19, he's 20 years old and she becomes not his first but his second wife. Now that's interesting because the poor old first wife in the shadow of the Taj Mahal is often completely lost in this story. But there is a first wife. Now, we should talk about her a little bit.
- [21:45]
Anita Anand
And there will be subsequent ones. There are the third and fourth wives who are again married for diplomatic reasons. But this one is the one for Karam.
- [21:54]
William Dalrymple
Yes.
- [21:55]
Anita Anand
And it's noted even at the time that this is something really extraordinary. And there's a court historian called Muhammad Amin Kazwini and he writes a little bit later, the intimacy, deep affection, attention and favor which His Majesty had for the Cradle of Excellence, which is another of the titles of Mumtaz, exceeded by a thousand times what he felt for any other. And always that lady of the age was the companion, close confidant, associate and intimate friend of that successful ruler in hardship and comfortable joy and grief. When traveling or in residence, the mutual affection and harmony between the two reached a degree rarely seen between a husband and wife among sultans and rulers or among the ordinary people. And this was not merely out of sexual passion. The excellent qualities, pleasing habits, outward and inward virtues and physical and spiritual compatibility on both sides caused great love and affection and extreme affinity and familiarity.
- [22:58]
William Dalrymple
Well, familiarity is right, because this is a woman who will go on to bear 14 children to her husband and. Bloody hell. You know, I did the maths on this. Do you know what this means? Do you know what this means? In her lifespan? This is A child every 16 months, William. A child every 16. This woman must have been kanakaed with a capital K. But I'm just looking at sort of portraits of her and what it is that must have beguiled him. And lots of miniatures at the time. I mean, she was loved, therefore she was painted. And they're actually remarkably consistent. You know, you don't always have this with ancient miniatures. Different artists put different spins and may not have any access, but she's got a very oval face, sort of broad forehead, very piercing eyes, but they're sort of quite far apart. Dark eyebrows, but very fair skin.
- [23:44]
Anita Anand
She's Persian. She's not of Indian origin. She's a Persian. Asif Khan, as a young boy, came to India with his father, Itma Doodala, and his three sisters, of whom I should say one married to Durrymple. But we won't go there again.
- [23:58]
William Dalrymple
Sorry, that's me banging my head. It's okay, don't worry. You go ahead. Insert Dalrymple here.
- [24:04]
Anita Anand
James Dalrymple in 1790, marries Mutibegum, who is Noor Jahan's great, great niece.
- [24:11]
William Dalrymple
That's nice.
- [24:11]
Anita Anand
You'll be pleased to hear.
- [24:13]
William Dalrymple
Oh, yeah, thrilled. Can't you hear it in my voice?
- [24:15]
Anita Anand
I will take you one day to their grave in Hyderabad.
- [24:18]
William Dalrymple
Okay. No, that's a deal. I'd be up for that. So, look, his life is sort of all coming together. He's found love. He really has found love. He's got children coming, eight sons and six daughters in all. But in 1627, something monumental happens. And the great figure who has been on the dwindle with his alcohol and opium addiction, Jahangir, dies. Join us after the break and find out how all hell breaks loose.
- [24:50]
Anita Anand
This is a paid advertisement from our old friends, Better help. So in January, we all inevitably look forward to a fresh new year ahead. And many of us make resolutions such as diets that we end up not following up on and which fade away by February. But it is a great time of year to think about what you actually want for the future. It's almost like writing a new book with 365 blank pages waiting to be filled. And I suppose therapy can really be thought of as a sort of editor or maybe editorial partner, helping you to write chapters and feel more in control and to sort of cut the bits that you don't like on your own life. So write your own story. With BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com empire that's better. H A L p.com empire hi, everyone.
- [25:50]
C
It'S Katie here from the Rest IS Politics us Anthony Scaramucci. And I want to tell you about our new series that looks at one of the darkest days in modern American history, the capitol riots of January 6th.
- [26:02]
D
You know, four years have passed since Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and tried to overturn the 2020 election election results. And Katie and I are going to explore the tensions and the personalities at the heart of that storm.
- [26:16]
C
Yeah, we're going to look at the whole story, starting off with, of course, the 2020 election result itself. Joe Biden's victory, Donald Trump's attempts to undermine that result right up until January 6th and those horrifying scenes that all of us watched on television back then. So don't miss it. Go and search the Rest IS Politics US wherever you get your podcast to hear just how Donald Trump tried to defy American democracy. And we've included a clip from the series for you to listen to at the end of this episode.
- [26:51]
William Dalrymple
Welcome back. So, yes, we left you on a cliffhanger. Jahangir dies. Well, we all die. But his death is really very monumental. And we've talked about this. We've talked about him getting ill over time since, you know, the 1620s. I mean, there's age, sure, but opium and alcohol have ravaged the body and mind of this man and he dies near Lahore. And at the time, notably, Coram is not nearby. He's far away, isn't he? Where is he?
- [27:20]
Anita Anand
Down in the Deccan?
- [27:20]
William Dalrymple
Yeah, he's in the Deccan, miles away. And that is difficult because there is always a gallop to the throne because who is going to claim it? And it is often the person who is nearby who has the head start, particularly if they're doing the leapfrog of succession.
- [27:36]
Anita Anand
On the other hand, he has an army and he now has good military experience and having fallen out with his dad various times and sort of done great sort of leaps around the country to avoid his father's army chasing him, he is used to doing these dashes across India.
- [27:53]
William Dalrymple
Well, hang on a minute, why has he fallen out with his dad? We've kind of leapfrogging that lovely factoid. So, I mean, you know this beloved child who's loved by Akbar, why does he piss Jahangir off?
- [28:02]
Anita Anand
It's classic sort of succession issue. There's a whole range of fights between them. And at one point, famously, young Prince Karam hides on an island in the Pichela Lake in Udaipur for a year. If you go to Udaipur and stay in the lake palace, you can look onto the island where young Prince Karum hid from his father.
- [28:23]
William Dalrymple
Can I just make the observation that the love of a Mughal father swings like a metronome, you know, so one moment adored and at another moment too big for your boots and therefore you annoy your father. And these things are actually life and death situations. It's not trivial at all.
- [28:40]
Anita Anand
There's a wonderful Instagram site called Mad Moogle Memes, which I recommend to all listeners of Empire Pod, go and look up Mad Moogle Memes. And they once put up a picture of two leather bound books, one the kind of size of an enormous Bible and the other like a kind of thin paper back. And one is labeled the History of the Moguls and the other is labeled the History of the Moguls. If only their fathers had hugged their sons a bit more.
- [29:11]
William Dalrymple
Well, quite. I mean, all right, listen, absence of hugging is one thing, but sending an army after your kid is something quite else. But also it is Jahangir's wife. It is also Coram, soon to be Shah Jahan's mother, who picks another, not the wayward son who's now a wayward son. You know, after being sort of much.
- [29:29]
Anita Anand
She picks a guy called Sharia.
- [29:31]
William Dalrymple
Sharia is younger but is her favourite. And Nurjahan, remember is not the one who's brought up Corum. That's why I just find it really odd that you take a child from the mother. That huge connection that should be a natural bond so often is broken in these, these Mughal royal families because they haven't brought them up, they haven't forget about sort of, you know, suckling them. There are wet nurses to do that, but that kind of emotional tie when they're little and vulnerable, isn't there?
- [29:55]
Anita Anand
There was a moment when Nur Nurahan and Karam were allies, but they fall out, and particularly after the marriage of Karam to Mumtaz, because that puts Karam into the camp of Nurjahan's brother, Asif Khan.
- [30:13]
William Dalrymple
Right. And they don't get on well.
- [30:16]
Anita Anand
They got on before this, but they are rivals for power. Exactly.
- [30:19]
William Dalrymple
This is so mad. So again, Christmas round at the Moguls is a really bloody, fraught affair. So you've got sort of Nurjahar, primary Empress, okay, who may have got on with her brother at one point, but ends up in a position where she starts despising him and not getting on, as we've said, you know, often involves death and the pulling out of eyeballs in this particular scenario. So you've got this situation where Nurjahan has selected. She's put her hand on the head of Shahria, a younger brother to Khurm, but her own brother says, nope, I'm not having that. You may well be the Empress, but I'm going to put somebody else on the throne, as it were.
- [30:59]
Anita Anand
So Sharia is sitting, I think, in Lahore, nearby Nurjahan. And Asif Khan sends off post haste to the Deccan, right down to the middle of India, where Karam is on campaign and where he's distinguished himself. He's captured Abhinagar, he's done all sorts of amazing military feats and he has to come racing back up to the north. And in the end, after the usual succession battle, Karam does defeat the army of Sharia, Nur Jahan. And then there's this sort of terrible bloodbath yet again. And there's Supriya Gandhi, who is one of my favorite historians of the period. She's going to be coming on for the next episode and she writes this nice little sentence which I love. She says, earlier, Mughal emperors had also dealt severely with their brothers and rebelled against their fathers. But in terms of the sheer number of princes killed, Shah Jahan's route to the throne set a new standard for bloodiness. So as soon as he defeats Nurjahan and Shahriar, not only Sharia, but all the other brothers are killed.
- [32:11]
William Dalrymple
There's a date of death, isn't it? January 1628. His brother, his two nephews, his two cousins are all murdered in one day. What a day that was. Imagine his diary, if he was a diary keeper, killed most of family today.
- [32:23]
Anita Anand
But of course not directly. So he is, when all this is happening. Rather like the Godfather scene where all the assassins are dispatched. The Godfather has the perfect alibi. This is exactly what's happening. Prince Karam, soon to be Shah Jahan, is encamped outside Agra, waiting for the astrologically perfect moment to enter and take his throne. And meanwhile the murders take place in Lahore.
- [32:47]
William Dalrymple
So they're going on in the background. So murder away.
- [32:50]
Anita Anand
Asaf Khan is kind of the butcher on this occasion, right?
- [32:53]
William Dalrymple
Okay, but this is really interesting because he doesn't enter Agra for 12 days. He waits outside the gates because he's had both Muslim and Hindu astrologers work on this, that the best moment to enter Agra. And now what is this date? Could we call it the 4th of February, 1628? But it's different, isn't it, in the.
- [33:13]
Anita Anand
Islamic calendar, it's the 8th of Jumadah, 1037 in the Islamic calendar. And this is the date that he takes Shah Jahan, the King of the world, as his title. Now, in fact, he'd already been given that title after he conquered Abhinagar, this moment of military triumph, I think a decade earlier. And then when he falls out with his dad, his dad sort of stops calling him Shah Jahan and goes back to call him Karam again.
- [33:38]
William Dalrymple
Oh my God, they're all so petty. I mean, they make succession look cuddly. Honestly, they're so horrible to each other.
- [33:45]
Anita Anand
With heads on pikes is very much the vibe.
- [33:48]
William Dalrymple
But what does he inherit now? So when he finally comes through the GATES, finally after 12 days, everyone in Agra, looking at their successive sundials, going, bloody hell, about time. What does he actually walk into? What is his inheritance?
- [34:00]
Anita Anand
So he succeeds Jahangir, who has done nothing really in the last 20 years except gathering gargantuan quantities of jewelry and gems. And, well, he inherits the richest kingdom in the world. It's almost impossible to exaggerate the wealth of the kingdom which Shah Jahan inherits. Nandini Das in our last episode said that the personal wealth of Jahangir was greater than than the entire GDP of Europe at this period. And so Shah Jahan, having succeeded in winning the throne and having succeeded in polishing off all his rivals, inherits the kingdom when it is stretching three quarters of the way through India. It contains all of Pakistan, all of Bangladesh, 3/4 of Afghanistan and a slither of Iran. And Shah Jahan knows exactly what he wants to spend all this money on.
- [35:06]
William Dalrymple
Which is architecture, which is his great passion.
- [35:09]
Anita Anand
Exactly.
- [35:10]
William Dalrymple
You can take the boy out of architecture. He can't take the architecture out of the boy. But he also starts splurging cash. You know, he has. He has money to bestow on favorites. He has money to bestow on these extraordinary building projects. But, you know, he likes gems. The gem and his family connection is his daughter Jahanara. She is, you know, the eldest child to survive into adulthood, who was born in March 1614, favorite daughter of Shah.
- [35:37]
Anita Anand
Jahan, who's a rather wonderful figure in every way.
- [35:40]
William Dalrymple
I love her. My goddaughter is called Jahanara, actually, and we call her JJ because we're lazy. But, yes, Jahanara is her name. She's fabulous. Tell us more about Jahanara, because I adore her.
- [35:51]
Anita Anand
So, Jahanara, we have lots of pictures of her. She's a beauty. Of course, she's an extraordinary looking woman, but she's also brilliant. She writes poetry. We have a lot of her poetry surviving. She's highly educated. But what is most wonderful about her is that she is eternally the peacemaker in the family. And at every stage right up to the end, she is the reconciler of all these warring men. And she goes out of her way a lot of her letters survive, to try and keep the brothers together, to keep the family together, to look after her dad as he gets older and crankier. And everyone loves her. She's the only member of the family.
- [36:28]
William Dalrymple
That nobody wants to kill. Nobody wants to kill her at all.
- [36:32]
Anita Anand
They're all quite unusual in this family.
- [36:34]
William Dalrymple
I know. Literally, no one wants to kill Jahanara, which is amazing.
- [36:38]
Anita Anand
Unique.
- [36:38]
William Dalrymple
Unique speaks very highly of her.
- [36:40]
Anita Anand
And then there's her brother, who we're gonna hear a lot more about in the next episode, Dara Shuko. And there are a whole variety of different brothers. But very quickly, after the accession of Shah Jahan, when he retreats back to the Deccan, where he's been campaigning as a prince, he goes back down there to Burhanpur, which I'm going visit for the first time next month. Funny enough, I've got a trip with Sam to Burhanpur scheduled for February.
- [37:08]
William Dalrymple
Sam is a younger Dalranpur, by the way, a spit of his father, and also a Very good historian and writer. We'll talk about that one day. I mean, you know, if you were a Mughal, you would have had his eyes plucked up by now. The young child Sam would have been right.
- [37:21]
Anita Anand
Luckily for Sam.
- [37:22]
William Dalrymple
Luckily for Sam. He's not gonna hide on an island somewhere in the Hebrides to escape your jealousy.
- [37:28]
Anita Anand
My jealousy?
- [37:29]
William Dalrymple
He'll be all right. He'll be all right. But coming back to our Mogul story and leaving the Dalrymple story, that could have been. Let's talk about who is actually ruling because it is a triumvirate.
- [37:39]
Anita Anand
Exactly that. I think this is something that our guest for a future episode, Supriya Gandhi, is going to talk about. There's very much a Taramvirate that takes over at the accession. It's not just Shah Jahan on his own. He's ruling very much with Jahanara and Dara Shukoh and with Mumtaz. Mumtaz is his advisor and his absolute confidant in all things.
- [38:03]
William Dalrymple
She's really busy. I can't stress this enough. Every 16 months, this woman, this poor woman is giving birth to children. And so Jahanara and Dara Shuko end up sort of having another pregnancy, another sort of either brother or sister on its way. In June 1631, that's when this baby is due, this 38 year old. I would like to say entirely knackered, but, yeah, much loved. Okay, Mumtaz Mahal, but entirely knackered. Woman is going into labor, her 14th pregnancy. 14th pregnancy, right. Okay. 30 hours in labor. And she probably suffers from what in modern medicine we would call a postpartum haemorrhage because she bleeds out and while she's still conscious, she's losing blood, she's losing consciousness. She knows she's going to die. She calls for Jahnara, her daughter, and says, bring Shah Jahan. And he comes and he is a broken man. This is the love of his life. He's going to lose his love.
- [38:57]
Anita Anand
And he's a man that doesn't have other friends.
- [38:59]
William Dalrymple
No, she's it.
- [39:01]
Anita Anand
She's everything. They form a very tight unit, crying.
- [39:04]
William Dalrymple
By the side of her bed. And she slips away. So, you know, hideous.
- [39:10]
Anita Anand
He is immediately broken. He puts on white. This man who's very formal and has never missed an audience in his life, does not appear in public for a week. No business is transacted. One chronicler says that he wrecks his eyesight for life with the amount of weeping he does. And there were some spectacles which turned up, supposedly Belonging to Shah Jahan on the market a couple of years ago, which were then copied. I don't know whether you're into Farrell the rapper.
- [39:41]
William Dalrymple
I'm into him so much that I know he's pronounced Pharrell. Or maybe you're talking about he's not.
- [39:48]
Anita Anand
A rapper but a singer. Yeah.
- [39:51]
William Dalrymple
That's okay. You go on. You're so street, it aches me.
- [39:55]
Anita Anand
I nearly had my street moment and I felt I fluffed it.
- [39:58]
William Dalrymple
Oh, God, it just reminds me of being lied to. You, you should really not try, But I'm so glad you do.
- [40:06]
Anita Anand
Pharrell, as you so rightly call him, spotting the deliberate mistake.
- [40:10]
William Dalrymple
Anoushka, you better leave this in, man. It's too funny.
- [40:14]
Anita Anand
Pharrell had started wearing two years ago these glasses with little diamonds, little sort of egg shaped glasses with these diamonds around them. And these are modeled on the original, which was up for sale in Sotheby's a couple of years ago, which I got the chance to put on.
- [40:29]
William Dalrymple
But what's Farrell wearing?
- [40:31]
Anita Anand
A Burberry version of it.
- [40:33]
William Dalrymple
I see. Okay, well, listen, we're gonna leave it there because with the death of Mumtaz Mahal, you have the birth of the idea of a mausoleum that will be fitting for the love and grief that a broken Shah Jahan is feeling. So join us next time. Till then, from me, Anita Anand, and from Farrell's greatest father that's giving you.
- [40:54]
Anita Anand
Such pleasure, I can't tell you. And from very street wise William Darrymple, goodbye. She can't even. She can't even finish it.
- [41:13]
C
As promised, here's a clip from the Rest is politics US miniseries.
- [41:17]
D
Trump is naturally a conspiracy theorist fueler. He will fuel the fire of any conspiracy theory because he's always seen himself as an outsider and he wants to foment the people from the outside to attack the people from the inside. So he's developing these ideas that he eventually uses in January, on the 6th of January. And the ideas are, there's misinformation out there. There's lies out there. Let's use these lies as fodder to attack the people on the inside. He's doing it with COVID I think hydroxychloroquine works. You may remember this. I took hydroxychloroquine. Mr. President, you took hydroxychloroquine. Yeah, yeah, I'm on it. I took it. And this is the beginnings. This is the kernels of what's about to come. And it all starts with COVID And it leads up to this insurrection, or, as the president says, a very peaceful group of tourists descending upon the Capitol building.
- [42:28]
C
If you want to hear the rest of the show, go and search. The rest is politics, us, wherever you get your podcasts.