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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.
- [00:19]
William Dalrymple
Hablas Espanol Spries du dzoich kom du nosq.
- [00:23]
Supriya Gandhi
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- [00:35]
William Dalrymple
With over 16 million subscriptions sold and.
- [00:37]
Supriya Gandhi
A 20 day money back guarantee. Just start speaking another language with Babbel right now. Up to 55% off your Babbel subscription at babbel.com Spotify podcast spelled B A B-B-E-L.com Spotify podcast rules and restrictions may apply.
- [01:00]
William Dalrymple
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand and me, William Dalrymple. We've been having just such a rollercoaster ride with the story of the Mughals and thank you so much for all of your kind comments. It's lovely to know that you're enjoying the series as much as you are. We left off with a brokenhearted turned white overnight, Shah Jahan, his hair turning white, his love gone, his heart broken, and the memory of the love of his life, Mumtaz Mahal, being raised from the ground in this white mausoleum that today is the path for all travellers to India. The Taj Mahal. And that was great fun talking about that. But we take up the reins. We sort of left you on a little bit of a cliffhanger that the death of that love also heralds great building, but also the start of some rather turbulent times in the empire. And we're going to pick up those reigns right now with a superb, fantastic guest that Willi cannot contain himself over his excitement that we've managed to get her on. Supriya Gandhi is with us, author of the Emperor who Never Was, Dara Shukoh in Mughal India and amongst other things, a very esteemed academic. I'm gonna hand over to Willi because he's going to do a really, I mean. Supriya, fasten your seatbelt. It's gonna be rather embarrassing fanboy moment for you. Go on, Willi, off you go.
- [02:17]
Anita Anand
Supriya is an old friend. How old were you when we first met Supriya in old Delhi?
- [02:21]
Supriya Gandhi
Probably 16 or 17.
- [02:23]
Anita Anand
16 or 17. And I was 24 or 25. This is now 20 something years ago. And I was just finished City of Djinns and you were beginning your path to studying Persian. And we both gravitated to the room of a wonderful Sufi teacher teaching in the Anglo Arabic school just outside the old city. And we used to sit together in this domed room as he would tell us Sufi anecdotes and porous pots of masala chai. You were literally 16 or 17 already setting off on your life's work.
- [02:56]
William Dalrymple
What a precocious historian at 16 or 17. Supriya, you have recollections of this?
- [03:01]
Supriya Gandhi
I didn't know that I was going to be a historian, but, you know, when I arrived in Delhi to go to college, I started exploring the city and I came across, quite serendipitously, Dr. Jafrey, who then, through whom I then met willi. So. And Dr. Jaffrey was my sort of gateway into the whole world of Persian and Mughal history.
- [03:23]
William Dalrymple
Okay, so just between us, describe Willi. What was he like? Describe Willy. Yeah, what was he like? And just between you and me, what was he really like?
- [03:32]
Supriya Gandhi
What I remember about him was that he had a mobile phone, and I hadn't quite seen one before I'd heard about them. So he had this sort of this very fancy gadget, and he was always traveling in taxis, which struck me as extremely decadent because, you know, I would travel by bus in auto rickshaw.
- [03:49]
William Dalrymple
Can I just say, a man who's attached to his phone and incredibly decadent. I mean, you've changed a lot, William. I mean, hardly recognizable from the man I know today.
- [03:59]
Anita Anand
Before Supriya begins to tell us about this man, who she's written this wonderful biography about, I should quickly say to anyone listening that Supriya's book, the Emperor who Never Was, is just a model of accessible, beautifully written scholarship. Supriya's clearly spent years with all the primary sources, and yet she writes with great lightness and grace. And it's an utterly, utterly entrancing book. And it's also oddly unfamiliar because people have often talked about Dara, Shukoh and Aurangzeb in India. They're kind of symbols of everything that went wrong, and Dara Shuko of everything that could have been. And we'll go into that further in this episode, but it's always been built on often fictional portrayals of these two men. And Supriya, oddly, is the first person since the 1930s, since Kanungo, I think, is the last person to produce a biography of Dara Shuko, that's actually based on primary sources and rooted in the original writing. She's completely rewritten the story, and so I recommend it to anyone.
- [05:04]
William Dalrymple
Well, look, we talked, Supriya in the last episode about raising the Taj Mahal and about, you know, that ultimate political flex, the Peacock throne, and how he sort of throws himself into the construction of all of these things and how Jahanara, his daughter, takes a really pivotal role in being the glue that makes sure that the family doesn't fragment in the absence of the matriarch and the grief of the father. But I did sort of allude to the fact that we were in for some turbulence because all of these very solid structures were going up. But succession is a very tricky thing. It isn't just an HBO series. It is a tricky thing, especially when you introduce it to the Mughal period. And we are here to talk about the man you've written about, Dara Shuko, who. We talked a lot about Jahanara, but not so much about his eldest son. Just tell us, I mean, a little bit about him.
- [05:53]
Supriya Gandhi
Well, Dara Shuko was a Mughal prince, and we hear of the Mughal princes who become emperors, you know, quite naturally. But there were many Mughal princes who thought that they ought to be emperors, or rather, they fought for the throne. And Dara Shuku is considered to be sort of an exception because the stereotype about him was that he was this prince in an ivory tower who was too naive, too mystical, too sort of interested in spending time with Sufis and chatting with sort of Hindu sages to actually really sort of be suited for the throne.
- [06:30]
William Dalrymple
Nicola Mnucci, who. We slagged him off terribly in the last episode about the reliability of some of his history. But he wrote about Prince Zara as if he had a crush. So can I just read a little bit of what he has to say? And as you say, sort of. Many people dwell on his beauty and his sort of, you know, that he lives on a higher plane than most of us. But this is what Manucci writes about him. Prince Zara was a man of dignified manners, of comely countenance, polite in conversation, ready and gracious of speech, of extraordinary liberality, kindly, compassionate, but overconfident in his opinion of himself, considering himself competent in all things and having no need of advisers. Indeed, he despised those who gave him counsel. Now, since we've poured a whole bucket of sick over some of Manucci's thoughts and musings in the last episode, how much can we rely on his pen.
- [07:18]
Supriya Gandhi
Portrait of this Man Manucci was writing for, I think, a European audience, and of course, he wanted to tell a good story and an engaging story. He wanted to show that he had access to the Mughal court in a manner that was, I think, fairly exaggerated. So, of course, one, you know, ought to, if not be suspicious, at least contextualize the sorts of stories that Manucci told.
- [07:42]
William Dalrymple
But, I mean, is it right that he despised advisors? I mean, is that something that is based on anything other than Manucci writing a story?
- [07:49]
Supriya Gandhi
So when Manucci was actually in Mughal India in the 1650s, this is sort of coming off a period when Dara Shuko is already. He's sort of established himself. His father is old, and he really is almost like the core ruler alongside his father, who trusts him immensely, cherishes him, gives him a prominent place in court. So it isn't surprising that Tara Shuko indeed would think of himself so highly or at least, you know, give that impression to Manucci, because he's had that. He hasn't had to fight for it. He hasn't had to push against his father and rebel like a lot of princes who later successfully become emperors. So he has access to his father's court. He is able to host a whole range of figures.
- [08:36]
Anita Anand
So you'd actually go along with Manucci in many ways. You think he was a bit overconfident. And that portrait is not in itself inaccurate.
- [08:44]
Supriya Gandhi
As a historian, I'm sort of a little wary of thinking that I know the personalities of historical figures like Dara Shuko, you know, sort of really well and really closely. And part of this is, of course, you know, that in the colonial period, there was this fascination with the personalities of. Of Mughal emperors. And they were supposed to have certain personality traits. And then these personality traits defined a whole age. And then it, you know, it came to be that you just utter the name of someone like Dara Shukoh, Aurumzeb or Akbar, and. And you think that, you know, them and their names become metonyms for just, you know, a whole range of sort of qualities that then sort of become inextricably glued to them. And of course, people are complex. They change time. And what we have about Dara Shuko is not his inner thoughts directly, but we have a kaleidoscope of representations, how he presented himself to the world, how other people portrayed him, whether it's European writers, whether it's sort of contemporaneous writers and so on. So I think that might capture a bit of it, but it's more complex on perception.
- [09:45]
William Dalrymple
Let's just do the thing that I do, which is the absolutely shallow and completely aesthetic. I mean, he's a looker. He certainly, you know, miniatures do him. No, they do him no harm at all. I mean, he looks like a sort of more handsome version of his dad, frankly. You know, you've got that sort of aquiline nose, you know, those almond eyes, they heavily fringed with thick eyelashes. You know, he's. He's a beauty in miniature.
- [10:08]
Anita Anand
You have never ever said that before about any of the figures.
- [10:11]
William Dalrymple
We've got this. Honestly, I've got the reputation for being.
- [10:13]
Anita Anand
A new side of your character coming out here.
- [10:16]
William Dalrymple
They have given me the reputation for being boy mad, and now I'm embracing it. I don't fight it anymore. I just embrace it. But, I mean, this sort of the beauty of the man in the court, was it something that people commented on at the time, or are these just miniaturists and court artists trying to flatter a man who has or may have all the power in the future?
- [10:33]
Supriya Gandhi
Well, there certainly were a lot of paintings of Tara Shukoh, lots and lots. There are just many of them. They've survived. So we really have sort of this most profuse efflorescence of paintings that are coming out of Shah Jahan's court. And, you know, Dara Shukoh is clearly an important patron. And we have paintings of Dara Shukoh where he's clearly a youth. He doesn't have a beard yet, and he has these finely chiseled features. He has a sort of this luminous look in his eyes. And I think the idea is to portray someone who is young but destined for great spiritual prowess as well as, you know, perhaps sort of worldly success. So you have him sort of looking most earnestly at a spiritual teacher and, you know, a whole series of paintings. And then as he grows older, yes, you see him portrayed with a beard much like his father and his brother Aurangzeb. You know, they all look sort of similar.
- [11:29]
William Dalrymple
Was he like his dad in his regard for astrology? We talked about, you know, his father, Shah Jahan, pausing at the gates of Agra for 12 days until all the planets are aligned. And it's an auspicious time for him to actually enter and do what is inevitable, which is claim power. Is his son, Dara Shukra, exactly like that or different?
- [11:48]
Supriya Gandhi
Yeah, well, I think, you know, we ought to regard Shah Jahan's interest in astrology not as a kind of quirk of his character or, you know, an eccentricity. This was an age where astrology was science.
- [12:01]
Anita Anand
And in the west too.
- [12:02]
Supriya Gandhi
And in the west as well, you know, I mean you have figures like John Dee and you know, sort of all of these other people to d in London.
- [12:10]
Anita Anand
Yes, the man who comes up with the word British Empire apparently.
- [12:13]
Supriya Gandhi
Absolutely. So this was an age where the world wasn't entirely known and that was okay. The aim wasn't to sort of to know every single bit of the world, but to sort of learn how to manipulate and master some of these unseen elements. Elements that are seen as. That were considered to be sort of very sort of deeply interconnected.
- [12:34]
Anita Anand
Supriya, in your wonderful book you very much have two sides of Dara on show. On one hand he's at court and you're at pains to show that he is very much an active player along with his sister Jahanara and his father. And the three of them in many ways are triumvirate. But you also have this other side of him which is the really intriguing side for so many of us who are interested in him, this Sufi side where he is going up to Kashmir hanging out with ascetics, both Hindu and Muslim, and where he is trying to find commonalities between the spiritual paths of the various different traditions in our eyes. Particularly strikingly the fact that it is both Hindu and Muslim, two paths which have diverged so dramatically in the 20th century in which in some ways you can go back to Dara Shuko as the point where the fork in the road begins or where the divergence begins at the end of his life. Tell us about his spiritual life and about his searchings and particularly the thing which I didn't know until I read your book about his interest in yogic breathing of all things.
- [13:40]
Supriya Gandhi
Now that wasn't entirely unusual. Muslim scholars have been interested in yoga and tantra and like in sort of even like tantric spells and all kinds of things, like forever. For a very long time you find references to these like hidden in the pages of Arabic books by religious scholars, you know, whom today you wouldn't really imagine would be interested in these things, but they were so Tara Shukul wasn't completely unique in his interest, but he certainly was unusual in the depth to which he pursued them. And he was actually introduced to the Qadari Sufi order, which wasn't the usual kind of Sufi order that the Mughals patronage.
- [14:17]
Anita Anand
Could you explain what that means? A Qadri Sufi order?
- [14:20]
Supriya Gandhi
It was a Sufi order that attributed its founding to the famous sort of Sufi from the Baghdad Abdul Qadir Jilani, and it had a branch of its followers and lineages in India. There was another Sufi lineage, the Chishti lineage, that was very prominent throughout North India and the Deccan as well. And Akbar and Jahangir were great patrons of that particular Sufi order. And for Dara Shuku to do something a little different, that followed what his ancestors did, and it referenced that it followed the same pattern, but it still showed him to be carving his own path in his own right. He cultivated ties with the Qadari order, and it was his father who introduced him to this Qadari Sufi known as Miyamir, or sometimes Miya Jeev Ji is like a kind of respectful term. And he was living in Lahore at the time. And Dara Shukob had been newly married, had recently lost his firstborn child, was quite stricken with grief, and he also fell ill. And his father introduced him to this Sufi who actually, in Dara Shukoh's account, cured him of grief. Well, cured him of a physical illness that might have been connected with his grief. Yes. Oh, I see that. Certainly that occurred in the aftermath of his grief. And this was a Sufi who wasn't necessarily very kind to figures of authority.
- [15:42]
Anita Anand
Yes, quite abrupt in your telling of the story.
- [15:45]
Supriya Gandhi
Yeah, yes, very abrupt. So for Sufis, it was very difficult to tread this line between being spiritually independent, because that's how people respected them and that's how they got their spiritual authority, and also having relations with people in power, because Sufis always have had that. It's a difficult relationship to cultivate. So we see in Dara Shuko's story, we also see a story of these fiercely independent Sufis who are increasingly getting closer and closer to this orbit of imperial power.
- [16:17]
William Dalrymple
I'm sort of listening to you and thinking, I. I know this is going to. Particularly the yogic breathing, which for those of you who aren't hipsters in North London and aren't actually people who do yoga, is the practice of putting, you know, sort of a finger on one nostril and breathing in and then two fingers on the other side and breathing out. And maybe with a mantra involved in this, I can't think that the mullahs would like this very much at all. Strict Islamic scholars. I mean, did they have anything to say about it? Or if, you know, the son of the emperor wants to do it, it's fine by us.
- [16:47]
Supriya Gandhi
Well, you know, I think we might have a modern idea of what went on in Mughal courts. If you've watched Judha Akbar, have you seen that yeah.
- [16:54]
William Dalrymple
So the Bollywood movie. Lavish Bollywood movie for those who don't.
- [16:56]
Anita Anand
Indulge with Ritik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai. Yeah.
- [17:01]
Supriya Gandhi
Yes. So it's certainly very pretty. But then you have these sort of spinning Sufi dances that are sort of like, you know, what you'd see in Istanbul today. And then you have these religious scholars who are very strict and they're always berating Akbar and they're wearing these sort of dark cloaks and conniving and completely explaining.
- [17:19]
Anita Anand
Looking like Iranian mullahs.
- [17:21]
Supriya Gandhi
Yeah. And that really isn't sort of quite what happened in these times. The ulama were not the strictly defined class that we have later on, say in the 19th century. A Muslim scholar of, you know, the religious sciences could also, you know, wear many hats. I mean, he could be a general. He could be someone who's managing the imperial household. He was almost certainly inducted into a Sufi order because Sufism was really the default form of religiosity in this period. And there were many people who wrote all kinds of learned treatises on sort of religious topics. But they were also interested in what we might consider to be the occult or astrology, you know, again, because that was part of the whole system of.
- [18:05]
Anita Anand
Learning in those days, understanding the world. Exactly.
- [18:08]
Supriya Gandhi
Absolutely. So things were more complex than that. But it doesn't mean that there weren't disagreements.
- [18:14]
Anita Anand
You put in your own book, though, Supriya, a verse of Dara's, which I'd like to read out. Paradise is where no mullahs are found, where there is no bickering and clamor from the mullahs. May the world be free of the mullah's noise. May no one care about their fatwas. In the city where a mullah has his home There isn't a wise man to be found. Don't gaze upon the mullah's face. Don't go where there is no madness for love. That does imply that there is an opposition there between the lovers who are the Sufis.
- [18:44]
William Dalrymple
That's why I thought there might be a little friction, because that just suddenly sounds like friction.
- [18:48]
Anita Anand
And there's one other lovely verse, which is from the previous biography, which I'd love to read too, which again, is associated with Dara. Thou art in the Kaaba at Mecca as well as in the Hindu temple of Somnath. Thou art in the monastery as well as at the tavern. Thou art at the same time the light and the moth, the wine and the cup, the sage and the fool, the friend and the stranger, the rose and The Nightingale.
- [19:15]
Supriya Gandhi
So there was certainly opposition and there was opposition not just to Dara Shukoh, but opposition to things that certain Sufis who were perhaps more ecstatic in their expressions of religiosity said. So Mullah Shah, who was the successor of Tara Shukoh's first spiritual teacher, Miyamir Mulla Shah was from, originally from Central Asia, from Badakshan and he lived in Kashmir. And you know, after Tara Shukoh convinced him to take him on as his disciple, he and Jahanara would always visit him. And Shah Jaha had also a very close relationship with him. So Mulla Shah had certain ecstatic utterances about the, the Prophet Muhammad, you know, about how he was hand in hand with the Prophet and so on that were considered to be very disrespectful by certain religious scholars in Shah Jahan's court. And Mi Amir was deeply concerned about this and he actually asked Shah Jahan to help. And it looks like Tara Shukobh also urged Shah Jahan to intervene. And finally, you know, whatever sort of threat or punishment was in the making for Maulasha, that was averted. So definitely there were differences in opinion among these religious scholars, many of whom were also Sufis. There were tensions. And another thing is that Sufi poetry often uses these conventions of contrasting very strict minded scholars who are only concerned about the externals of religion with those who are more interested or more focused on a sort of internal esoteric spiritual quest. So, so we see these tropes in Dara's writings as well and they may indeed have reflected tensions that were already taking place.
- [21:04]
Anita Anand
And Suprem, one of the things that distinguishes Dara is that he has this intuition that Islam and Hinduism are not separate religions, that the punishads could even be. The secret books referred to in the Quran tell us about that whole idea because that's something which is far from orthodox.
- [21:25]
Supriya Gandhi
So to properly understand this we need to look at these two very famous figures whom Dara Shuko isn't directly saying he wants to emulate, but who really are his models. And one of them is his great grandfather Akbar. Dara Shukoh doesn't say that he wants to be like Akbar, but really what he's doing is he's trying to rule the way Akbar ruled in the second half of his reign after he'd consolidated his empire. And he was sort of getting all of these Sanskrit texts translated into Persian and all of that and holding into religious dialogue. So Darushuk was wanting to do what Akbar did before he actually became emperor. So There was an established model for that. So it wasn't only his personal intuition he was following the model of. Akbar didn't quite say that, you know, Islam and Hinduism are the same. But what Akbar was trying to do was to point at a universal truth, that it was at the core of different religious traditions, and that Akbar, being the spiritually enlightened emperor, had access to that truth. He had this, like, perfect understanding so he could guide his subjects. He could cure the dissension and conflict that existed between people of different religions, because he understood this universal truth that was at the core of all of these religions. And in a sense, that's what Dara Shuko is trying to achieve. But for Dara Shuko to understand this, he first starts by seeking out spiritual teachers, first Sufis, and then he has dialogues with Hindu sages. So he sort of branches out even more and sort of gets interested in perhaps, you know, yoga and so on. And then he clearly is studying a whole range of texts. So he's figuring out what he thinks is this core truth of which Islamic concepts and Hindu concepts are just different expressions. And then he moves even further. He actually finds what he thinks is this text that is going to unlock all of these deep spiritual mysteries. And the implication is, you know, when he's actually found and understood this text and translated it with this group of Sanskrit pundits, you know, these religious scholars from Benares, that the idea is once he's understood this, he really doesn't need to go to gurus and spiritual teachers anymore. He's actually found the source, and he's put it between the covers of a book.
- [23:46]
Anita Anand
The mingling of two oceans.
- [23:47]
William Dalrymple
You can see why he's beloved of people who, you know, their mantra is, why can't we just get along? Because it's basically the core philosophy that he lives by. We've spoken about him and Jahanara, and it seems as if they have a fairly good relationship. They do things together. Their father loves them both. We haven't talked about the sibling Aurangzeb. Now, just tell us a little bit how they contrast and maybe just tell us about the differing attitudes to the elephant fight between these two brothers.
- [24:15]
Supriya Gandhi
So the elephant fight is one episode that is quite well known because there are a lot of later writers who've made much of this elephant fight.
- [24:25]
Anita Anand
And some gorgeous pictures, aren't there, in the Panshranama and so on.
- [24:28]
Supriya Gandhi
There are these gorgeous pictures in the Panchanama. So this was, you know, after Shah Jahan becomes emperor and as sort of he and his sons like to do. They were watching these two maddened elephants engage in this fierce and vicious fight. And they were sort of. Their trunks were knotted, and so they were sort of writhing like serpents. And, you know, all was, you know, going very well until one of the elephants actually started charging. And these young princes and the emperor were all nearby on. On horseback. And what happened was that Darushuko, well, he may or may not have been near the elephant, but the one who actually drove his spear several inches deep into the elephant's head was Aurangzeb, who.
- [25:11]
Anita Anand
Showed great bravery by charging the charging elephant.
- [25:15]
Supriya Gandhi
Yes, he showed great bravery. It actually didn't really serve to resolve the situation because things were still very chaotic. There were people throwing fireworks at the elephants to try to distract them, because.
- [25:26]
William Dalrymple
That notoriously helps in a tricky situation.
- [25:31]
Supriya Gandhi
Yes. What actually happened was, you know, finally the other elephant then resumed the fight and then distracted the offending elephant from sort of attacking the crowd.
- [25:43]
Anita Anand
Supriya, while Aurangzeb is bravely attacking the charging elephant and saving his father and the rest of his family, Dara seems to be hanging back. And there's even some suggestion that he's allowing the unhorsed Aurangzeb to suffer for his fate. Is that the implication of the story?
- [26:01]
Supriya Gandhi
That's the implication that later commentators have applied to the story in the poems of the time. Again, we have have this great poet, Kaleem Kashani, who praises Aurangzeb, but he doesn't say nasty things about Dara. He says that Aurangzeb, who isn't really even of age, shows sort of this most amazing maturity and that, you know, when he plunged his spear into the elephant, all the elephant's sort of madness sort of just came gushing out and left him. So he certainly. This was a way to elevate Aurangzeb, but it was later on used as a way to attack.
- [26:37]
William Dalrymple
Right. Attack him as a coward, whereas Aurangzeb is the man of action. I think we need to come back after the break and examine Aurangzeb a bit more. So do join us. Welcome back. So just before the break, Supriya was telling us about how an interpretation at the time and thereafter has colored people's view of these two brothers, Aurangzeb and Dara Shuko. And we should talk about Prince Aurangzeb now, because he was. I mean, this isn't just a people who come later sort of imposing thoughts and images on people. Aurangzeb was different. He was a different kind of character, as you did so beautifully with Dara Shukoh. Tell us a little bit about this young man who's three years younger than Dara, but has a huge ambition even at a young age, and who we.
- [27:26]
Anita Anand
Should say is today possibly the most controversial person in Indian history. He's regarded by the current government and frequently mentioned in speeches. Although he's 300 years ago as the kind of symbol of Islamic authoritarianism and bigotry and puritanism, he's a person in daily political discourse in India today. What's your vision of him, Supriya?
- [27:51]
Supriya Gandhi
My vision of him in this book is really sort of confined to his younger years. And then, of course, the war of succession that, you know, we're probably going to talk about later, perhaps in another episode. But I'll tell you a few things, a few reports about Aurangzeb when he was young. One interesting thing to keep in mind that not a lot of people know about is that when he and Dara Shukoh were both quite young, they spent several years with their parents on the run from their grandfather Jahangir's forces. And this is because their father was rebelling against their grandfather. And it was a rebellion that didn't necessarily have an inevitably success, successful outcome. They spent years sort of again, you know, trudging through muddy rivers and facing defeat and all kinds of misfortune. And then finally, sort of at the very depths of this whole experience, Shah Jahan was forced to send his two sons as hostages to his father's court. They went there and I imagine it must have been quite a terrifying time. They had this crucial experience as hostages together that for them had a happy ending. And the unhappy ending of the whole story for a lot of these young Mughal princes was that Shah Jah had them killed before he came to the throne. He got ruthlessly got rid of all opposition, and, of course, that could have been their fate. And, you know, fortunately for them, it.
- [29:16]
Anita Anand
Wasn'T sent off to Gwalior to be fed poppy water, whatever the terrible ways of assassinating princes, he chose.
- [29:23]
Supriya Gandhi
So despite going through this difficulty together, there certainly does seem to have been a rivalry. And that's a rivalry that was fairly common among Mughal princes because they all sort of knew that they would have to fight each other for the throne whenever the question of succession arose, which it didn't for a long time. There's, of course, this elephant fight. There's another little anecdote from Shah Jahan's years of rebellion that's perhaps fairly telling. It's an account that's written by a provincial noble called Shitab Khan. And he's. He makes himself out to be very close to Shah Jahar during his years of rebellion and all that. And, you know, maybe he's exaggerating, but he tells this anecdote about how Shah Jahan, who's reaped some initial successes in eastern India, you know, when he's rebelling against his father, and one of the things that he did was to find these very special bananas from Marthaban, you know, which is this place in Burma, and he distributes these bananas amongst his nobles and then the share of the author of this account is missing. And then it was discovered that little Aurangzeb had gobbled them up and apparently Shah Jahan was very angry with him.
- [30:35]
Anita Anand
I'm sure your boys wouldn't do anything of the sort. Both Supriya and Anita, both these ladies have banana eating.
- [30:41]
William Dalrymple
Yes. I mean, if I can get them to eat a banana, it's a win. But with Mnucci, who, you know, we described in the first half as having something of a crush on Dara Shuko, the way he wrote about him, except he said he was a bit arrogant. Everything else was lovely, dreamy, in fact. But when he talks about Aurangzeb, I'll just read you what he says about him. Although Aurangzeb was held to be bold and valiant, he was capable of great dissimulation and hypocrisy. Pretending to be an ascetic, he slept while in the field on a mat of straw that he had himself woven. He ate food that cost little and let it be known that he underwent severe penances and fasting. All the same, under cover of these pretenses, he led in secret a jolly life. His intercourse was with certain holy men addicted to sorcery, who instructed him on how to bring over to his side as many friends as he could with witchcraft and soft speeches. He was so subtle as to deceive even the quickest witted people. I mean, it's not the eulogy that we had for Dara, is it? I mean, this is a man who is disliked by Mnucci. And I mean, how is he sort of regarded in the court as a whole? This is a traveller who's his own agenda and is writing his own stuff. But what about in the court? Was he popular? Was he more popular than Dara? I mean, how did they fare?
- [31:52]
Supriya Gandhi
Well, he was popular in some ways and unpopular in other ways. When Aurangzeb was a prince, you know, he was Given all of these sort of quite challenging postings, you know, made governor of this or that province away from the court. So he had some relative independence, but his father was controlling all of his actions.
- [32:11]
Anita Anand
You paint in your book a picture of Shah Jahan being quite rough with him in his letters. He's always asking him to send him fruit or pomegranates, and there's never any sort of gratitude expressed. He's always sending sort of grumpy orders while Dara gets to sit at court, you know, amid the fluttering pigeons and the kind of dancing girls and hang out while poor Aurangzeb's trucking over mountains in the deck at chasing rebels.
- [32:34]
William Dalrymple
Yeah. As a teenager. I mean, he's a young teen when he's being sort of flogged around the kingdom. Do go on. Yes, go on, Cypriya.
- [32:41]
Supriya Gandhi
Yes. Which actually turns out to have been rather good for him, because while his father was micromanaging his, like, every action and, you know, nothing he did was ever good enough. Aurangzeb cultivated fairly good relationships with his men. So he was always trying to get extra money to pay them good incomes and, you know, and make sure that they were happy. He became quite good at managing people. He was. And he was. He was. He was very sort of canny. So, for instance, you know, if Shah Jahan and Dara Shukoh had a problem with a certain Rajput noble, like, you know, for instance, with Rana Raj Singh, he was building a fortification, which was a little alarming for the imperial court. And Shah Jahan would, you know, try to send people to try to. To coerce the Rajput to sort of tone things down a little bit. And then Aurangzeb would seize that opportunity and send him lavish gifts with envoys and, you know, write him nice letters and all of that. So he was using every opportunity to cultivate his network and have good relations with a range of nobles, regardless of religious affiliation.
- [33:49]
William Dalrymple
Kind of a shadow state. That's interesting.
- [33:51]
Anita Anand
But why do you think his father disliked him? Because his father sort of, you know, when he nearly takes Kandahar, he lifts the siege. When he asked to go back and have a second run at it, the emperor just replies, something that has been tested need not be tested again. He seems to have irritated his father, and his father seems to have showered all his love on Jahanara and Dara Shuko.
- [34:14]
Supriya Gandhi
There certainly are a few things that he does that seem to have annoyed his father. He has his governorship stripped at a certain point, you know, so he's Been serving in the Deccan and you know, Jahanara's just had this like awful accident where she's burned and you know, Shah Jahan is very perturbed and so on. And then, you know, I'm just going to read what one of Shah Jahan's court historians says. Owing to the company of some rotten minded ignoramuses and short sighted fools, Prince Aurangzeb Bahadur decided to withdraw his hand from matters of state and, and retire from the world.
- [34:52]
Anita Anand
That was not what his dad was after at all.
- [34:54]
Supriya Gandhi
No, that's not what his dad was after. But you know, he made this threat, no doubt because he was unhappy with something that his dad was making him do. Or, you know, there certainly was a falling out and there were many such fallings out.
- [35:07]
William Dalrymple
Well, what happened to Jahanara that she got so badly burned? How did that happen? That sounds like a story.
- [35:11]
Supriya Gandhi
Well, it was an accident with candles and her, you know, clothes were doused in this sort of rose perfume.
- [35:19]
Anita Anand
Her grandmother had invented this fancy iter and it had become fashionable to cover your clothes with this scented oil.
- [35:27]
William Dalrymple
And it just took light, just made her very flammable. But does this bring the brothers together? Did they both love her enough to get over themselves and get on a bit better?
- [35:36]
Supriya Gandhi
Well, she certainly tried. Even from her sick bed, you know, she tried to mend relationships and that's a theme that we're going to see throughout. You know, she's always trying to bring the brothers together. There's one point when Dara Shukoh is governor of Lahore and that's a posting that he actually sort of enjoys and he's sort of doing quite well over there. And Aurangzeb goes through the city, he's very insulted because Dara Shukoh's representative sort of is mounted on a horse and sort of sees him and like just turns away. You know, he ignores him. He doesn't really give him the respect that's due to Prince and he thinks that, you know, Dara Shuko must be behind this insolent act.
- [36:16]
William Dalrymple
Gosh, you know, they're so petty, they're so powerful, but they're really quite petty in many ways, aren't they, these boys?
- [36:22]
Anita Anand
But in their defence, if you're brought up knowing that the huge probability is that you're going to have to kill or be killed by your brothers, which is also the case in the Ottoman world, then you're not gonna grow up. Paul palace at you.
- [36:36]
Supriya Gandhi
True. But then also Jahanara, perhaps in response to this, makes sure. That Aurangzeb meets Tara and he even mentions that he met him and he had a nice time with him. And he even mentions that. Well, you know, because it was the time of Muharram, the 10th day of Muharram, which is, you know, where Shia Muslims typically mourn. But it's a very somber occasion for all that they didn't listen to music, otherwise they would have. So sort of implies that, you know, Aurangzeb, they love music and listening to music, and had it not been that very somber time of year, they might even have enjoyed a musical evening together.
- [37:10]
Anita Anand
I mean, it is very like succession, isn't it? It's the same thing of a family, any of whom could succeed to their father's enormous wealth and power, who either have to make alliances with each other against a third member or fight it out one to one with any of them. And they all know they can't all win.
- [37:29]
William Dalrymple
Which makes Jahan Ara so special because she still has this utopian idea of, why can't we just all have a hug? Hug it out, hug it out, everybody. Let's talk about 1657, because this is the year of crisis for this family. And this is interesting because we've got Shah Jahan on decline since the death of his wife, but he goes into a steep decline in this year. What is that due to?
- [37:50]
Supriya Gandhi
So I did something that, you know, I think some historians might disapprove of. So I took a look at the symptoms that the court historians describe, and I showed that to a physician here at Yale, who then said that what Shah Jahan probably had was a kind of, like, bacterial prostate infection, the sort of thing that, you know, perhaps would be easily cured with modern antibiotics, but which was, you know, perhaps quite serious at that time.
- [38:19]
Anita Anand
I remember my dad getting that towards the end. Urine infections. Even today, it can be quite serious with ill people, but in the age before antibiotics, it's absolutely fatal.
- [38:27]
William Dalrymple
So what else did the Yale people say? Like, what causes that condition? Is it just merely an infection, as we'd have today?
- [38:33]
Supriya Gandhi
We looked into what condition the symptoms might have referred to, and there seemed to be a very strong possibility.
- [38:40]
Anita Anand
What I think Anita is alluding to is the suggestion of Manucci that he's been taking too many aphrodisiacs.
- [38:47]
William Dalrymple
Let me say what Manucci says that has really got on my nerves in the research of this, I'll tell you, because his. His stuff has just sort of carried so far and wide. But Mnucci says that it's, you know, Shah Jahan's sexual appetite is out of control in his 60s, and that, you know, he's taking these large quantities of aphrodisiacs, which, you know, he takes in such huge quantities that they end up poisoning him. And that's why you have the crisis of 1657. Is this Manucci being Manucci again, with absolutely no basis and pretending to know more than he knows?
- [39:16]
Supriya Gandhi
Probably. I mean, you know, it would be hard to find that in other accounts. And Bonucci, of course, had to entertain his readers and provide them with salacious stories about Mughal harems and, you know, what went on in them.
- [39:28]
William Dalrymple
So, I mean, he has this terrible condition. Is he in agony? Who is around him? Who is treating him? What's going on around his bedside?
- [39:36]
Supriya Gandhi
So he is in agony. And it's a difficult moment because there's this idea that the health of the body of the emperor reflects the health of the kingdom. You know, there's this Galenic idea of the humors being in balance. So if the emperor's humors are not in balance, then it actually puts the entire kingdom into crisis, because the stability of the kingdom depends on there being a stable ruler and a sovereign.
- [40:07]
Anita Anand
But in the meantime, the whole of Delhi shuts up shop. Everyone thinks in Agra that the end is about to come. Everyone knows what a succession crisis this means. It means civil war breaking out.
- [40:18]
William Dalrymple
Well, I love this idea of shopkeepers burying their money just in case it all goes terribly wrong and they have to dig it up afterwards.
- [40:25]
Supriya Gandhi
Yes. And Dara Shuko then, you know, tries to take tight control of the intelligence and information that is leaking out and so on. So the difficulty is that the other princes are all scattered. Shuja is in Bengal, where he is governor, so that's in the northeast. Murad Bakhsh is in Gujarat, where he's governor.
- [40:49]
William Dalrymple
We haven't even talked about these two brothers, but these are the other two brothers who are in the line.
- [40:53]
Supriya Gandhi
And then Aurangzeb is also kind of relatively close to Murad in the south, in the Deccan. So we have this potential for wars on multiple fronts should each brother stake a claim to the throne.
- [41:07]
William Dalrymple
But the king ain't dead yet. I'll tell you what, let's leave it there. Join us next time when we continue this conversation with Supriya. What happens with this scramble over the not even dead body of the emperor Shah Jahan? And if you can't wait to hear that episode, you can get early access, of course, as always, by signing up to the empire club@empirepod uk. Dot com. That's empirepoduk.com and you'll get bonuses and you'll get early access to tickets and you'll get a weekly newsletter. For now, though, and until we next meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.
- [41:38]
Anita Anand
Goodbye from me, William Trimble.