“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” These are the words of a 19th-century British historian Lord Acton, and they proved to be as apt in the case of the Mughal elite as in any other.
The Mughal Empire represented in many ways the apogee of Muslim rule in India. Much of the cultural legacy of modern-day states of South Asia stems from that period, such as the administrative structure, the architecture, and even the cuisine. However, the empire began to decline in the eighteenth century, and the transition to power between its monarchs, never very smooth, became even more bloody. Horrific atrocities were performed by the Mughals against each other in their insatiable quest for authority.
This is an account of these less-than-pleasant episodes some of the Mughal rulers had to face towards the end of their reigns.
Shah Jahan
By some accounts, the most magnificent of the Mughals, Shah Jahan presided over what is generally considered to be the golden age of Mughal rule in India. In his youth, he had rebelled against his father, Jahangir, much like Jahangir himself had rebelled before him against Akbar, the deed becoming a sort of Mughal tradition. So when, in 1657, rumors spread that the aged monarch was seriously ill and that the favorite prince Dara Shukoh had assumed the reins of the government, the 3 other princes, Shah Shuja in Bengal, Aurangzeb in the Deccan and Murad Bakhsh in Gujarat openly defied imperial authority and marched on the then capital of the empire, Agra. Shuja was defeated for the time being in the east, but Dara’s general Jaswant Singh was worsted by the combined armies of Aurangzeb and Murad in Malwa.
Shah Jahan sincerely wanted rapprochement between his sons, but in this, he utterly failed. Meanwhile, Dara himself was defeated at Samugarh and fled for Punjab. In the aftermath, Aurangzeb, having imprisoned his brother, Murad, now invested the fort of Agra. Even though the fort, renovated by Shah Jahan himself, was nearly impregnable, wanting reconciliation with Aurangzeb, he opened the gates of the fort to his son. Having already presented him with a jeweled sword by the name of Alamgir. Aurangzeb, however, sent his eldest son Sultan Muhammad to imprison his grandfather and deposed Shah Jahan, taking for his regnal title the very name of the sword his father had presented!
This, however, was just the beginning of Shah Jahan’s suffering. Ruler of a magnificent empire, he was forced into a house arrest in the Agra fort, with his daughter Jahanara voluntarily tending to him. As the civil war between the brothers progressed, he received news, one by one, of the executions of his sons by their brother Aurangzeb. Dara Shukoh was executed in 1659 and Murad in 1661. Dara’s son Sulaiman Shukoh was poisoned in 1662. Around that same time, Shuja and his entire family were wiped out by the Raja of Mrauk-U in the Arakan Hills.
Already weakened in earlier life due to grief by the sad demise of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, for whom he built the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan grew ever more despondent. He lived on in a sad state for 8 years as a prisoner of his son, till at last his breath gave way, in 1666. It is said that as he lay dying, with his daughter Jahanara by his side, his gaze was fixated on the Taj Mahal.
Jahandar Shah
The Mughal Empire began to show signs of decay towards the end of Aurangzeb’s reign. That emperor had welded the empire together by sheer force of will, but as soon as he was gone, the unwieldy state proved to be too much to handle for his successors. For a time, his son Bahadur Shah quelled the seeds of discord and rebellion, but he died after a short reign of 5 years. After yet another fratricidal war of succession, Jahandar Shah, by some measure the most incompetent of all his sons, ascended the throne.
Jahandar Shah’s reign is notable only for the sheer mismanagement and corruption in the empire, as the emperor for the first time shirked all his duties. He was enamored of his wife Lal Kunwar, and placed many of her relations in positions of power, openly disregarding merit. Such a situation could not last, and in the end, challenged and defeated by his nephew Farrukhsiyar for the throne, he was turned in to his contender by his own minister Zulfiqar Khan!
On 11 February 1713, while Farrukhsiyar celebrated his victory, he sent assassins to the citadel in Delhi where Jahandar Shah was imprisoned with his wife Lal Kunwar. As the group of men entered the prison room, Lal Kunwar shrieked, clasped her lover round the neck, and refused to let go. Violently forcing them apart, the men dragged her down the stairs, and she was later sent to the settlement of Suhagpura, where the widows and families of deceased Emperors lived in retirement.
Then, laying hands on Jahandar Shah, the assassins tried to strangle him. Since he did not die at once, a Mughal, with his heavy-heeled shoes, kicked him several times in a vulnerable place and finished him off. His head was then cut off. The body was then thrown into an open litter (miyana) and the head was placed on a tray (khwan). Half an hour after nightfall, the assassins reached the camp with the lifeless head and trunk and laid them at the entrance to the Emperor's tents. The following day, on the new Emperor’s orders, Jahandar Shah’s head was fixed on a spear, and his body was thrown across upon an elephant, carried throughout Delhi, and then thrown before the main gate of the Citadel to rot.
Farrukhsiyar
The next Mughal Emperor, Farrukhsiyar, started his reign as if imitating the warrior rulers of old. But it soon became clear that he was under the dominant influence of the Syed Brothers, Syed Abdullah Khan, and Syed Hussain Ali Khan. Moreover, he lacked Alamgir’s sagacity or Akbar’s resoluteness in dealing with them. The result was that in 6 years both sides had come into an open conflict, and the Emperor, alienating his followers by his fickleness, was left almost alone.
On 27 February 1719, Syed Abdullah Khan entered the Red Fort of Delhi with his forces, and displaced the emperor’s men, while his brother, Syed Hussain Ali Khan, viceroy of the Deccan, entered the city with his army. The following day, these forces took control of the Red Fort from the Emperor’s few remaining followers. A new prince, Rafi-ul-Darajat, a great-grandson of Aurangzeb, was placed on the throne, and then some 400 men were sent to take custody of Farrukhsiyar from the harem, where he was hiding.
According to William Irvine, these men rushed tumultuously into the imperial apartments. A number of the women in the harem seized weapons and tried to resist but were overcome. The weeping and lamentation of the other ladies passed unheeded. The door of the small room where he was hiding having been broken in, the wretched Farrukhsiyar, despairing of life, came out armed with sword and shield and dealt several blows at the stony-hearted ruffians. In that dire extremity, these fruitless and untimely efforts availed him nothing. His mother, his wife, his daughter, and other ladies grouped themselves around him and tried to shelter him. The shrieking women were pushed to one side with scant ceremony. The men surrounded him and hemmed him in; they then laid hold of him by the hand and neck, his turban fell off, and with every mark of indignity, he was dragged and pushed from his retreat. It was pitiful to see this strong man, perhaps the most handsome and most powerfully built of the Mughals that had ever occupied the throne, dragged bareheaded and barefooted, subjected at every moment to violent blows and the vilest abuse, into the Diwan-i-Khas to the presence of Syed Abdullah Khan. There he opened his pen box, took out a needle used by him for applying collyrium (surma) to his eyes, and giving it to one of the men, ordered them to throw down their prisoner and blind him with it.
Farrukhsiyar was then held in a very strict captivity. During four or five days at a time, he would be deprived of water for necessary ablutions. Fed with unsuitable food, he suffered from diarrhea, and having no water, he was forced to tear off pieces from his clothes to cleanse himself. Day and night he had passed his time in reciting the Quran, which he knew by heart. But now even this distraction was denied him, for in his polluted state, it was unlawful to recite the words of the holy book.
The Syed Brothers then made up their mind to get rid of him. First, they began to supply Farrukhsiyar with bitter and oversalted dishes, but to no effect. Then, slow poison was tried for a time. Farrukhsiyar now made use of violent language and cursed the Sayyids in the most virulent terms. Finally, the Syed Brothers sent executioners into the prison to strangle Farrukhsiyar. Despite violent resistance, these men succeeded in their aim, beating the ex-emperor on the hands till he let go of the strap that they had tied around his neck. To make sure, he was stabbed several times in the abdomen. This happened on the night between the 8th and 9th Jamadi-ul-Sani, 1131 H. (27th-28th April, 1719).
Alamgir II
The Mughal Empire virtually disintegrated in the next 40 years. The distant provinces had, for all intents and purposes, broken off from Delhi, and the capital itself, suffering several invasions and civil war, had been sacked multiple times. The treasury was depleted and anarchy prevailed in the countryside.
Alamgir II was the son of Jahadar Shah, enthroned in 1754. Aiming to live his life according to his formidable namesake, Alamgir I, this unfortunate monarch was precluded from doing so by the realities of his time, such as the yoke of both the Marathas and the Afghans upon the Mughal heartland, and his own personal weaknesses. He remained a puppet throughout his reign under the all-powerful Wazir, Imad-ul-Mulk, under whom he had to bear several indignities.
In 1759, Ahmad Shah Abdali invaded India once again, having previously sacked Delhi two years before. Now tied to Alamgir II by virtue of marriage, Imad-ul-Mulk was concerned that the Afghan conqueror might depose him from the premiership. He was also apprehensive of Alamgir II’s ever-present threat to his rule, and the fact that he had opened a secret correspondence with Ahmad Shah to deliver him from the yoke of his minister. In these circumstances, he decided to get rid of the emperor.
As per Jadunath Sarkar’s account, Imad’s men tempted Alamgir II to visit the Kotla of Feroz Shah, by falsely telling him that a very saintly dervish possessing miracle-working power had come from Lahore and taken up his residence there. As the emperor was naturally inclined to the company of such men, he hastened to the spot. When in the afternoon the party from the palace reached the spot, the Emperor entered a chamber under one of the bastions of the Kotla, the door of which was guarded by a party of Central Asian troops of the wazir under one Balabash Khan. Only one eunuch was admitted with him and all his other attendants (including his nephew, Prince Mirza Baba) were detained outside. Balabash Khan then suddenly stabbed the Emperor to death with his dagger, came outside, disarmed Mirza Baba, and seizing him by the wrist took him back to Delhi. The Central Asian troops plundered the horses and all other property of the imperial cortege and flung the Emperor's corpse down on the river bank below the Kotla, circulating a false story that he had died (like Humayun two centuries ago) by an accidental fall from the wall of that ruined fort.
Bahadur Shah II
By the 19th century, the Mughal Empire had ceased to exist in all but name. The Emperor of Hindustan, Zil-e-Ilahi, was just a shadow of his former glory and did not even control Delhi city, only the Red Fort in it, as a virtual subject of the British East India Company, constantly harassed over the exercise of his sovereign rights, such as bestowing ceremonial titles, and even to keep his inheritance within the family.
In these circumstances, the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, himself a poet under the nom de plume of Zafar, presided over a period of cultural revival in Delhi city, spearheaded by the rise of Urdu language and poetic displays of grandeur by such eminent names as Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib and Ibrahim Zouq.
This microcosm of stability came crashing down in the aftermath of the 1857 War of Independence (also known to the British as the Great Mutiny). As the siege of Delhi drew to a close, and when the victory of the British became certain, Bahadur Shah II took refuge at Humayun's Tomb, on the outskirts of Delhi. British forces under Major William Hodson surrounded the tomb and Bahadur Shah, with his sons, was captured on 20 September 1857. The next day, Hodson shot the 2 sons Mirza Mughal and Mirza Khizr Sultan, and grandson Mirza Abu Bakar under his own authority at the Khooni Darwaza, near the Delhi Gate. Bahadur Shah himself was taken to his wife's haveli, where he was treated disrespectfully by his captors. When news of the executions of his sons and grandson was brought to him, the former emperor was described as being so shocked and depressed that he was unable to react.
Bahadur Shah II was then tried by the British over the Sepoy Mutiny. In his defense, he stated his complete haplessness before the will of the sepoys. Despite this, he was the primary accused in the trial for the rebellion.
Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, Bahadur Shah’s most trusted confidant and both his Prime Minister and personal physician had insisted that Bahadur Shah not involve himself in the rebellion and had surrendered himself to the British. But when Bahadur Shah ultimately did so as well, the Hakim betrayed him by providing evidence against him at the trial in return for a pardon for himself.
Respecting Hodson's guarantee on his surrender, Bahadur Shah II was not sentenced to death, however, he was exiled to Rangoon in a British-held area of Burma. His wife Zeenat Mahal and some of the remaining members of the family accompanied him and lived a life of poverty. There, in 1862, at the age of 87, he finally died and was buried at the same place after a quiet ceremony, unable to return to his homeland. Thus ended, in a sad and wretched state, the life of the last Mughal Emperor.
Of his exile, Bahadur Shah is said to have composed the following couplet,
کتنا ہے بدنصیب ظفر دفن کے لئے
دو گز زمین بھی نہ ملی کوئے یار میں
How unfortunate is Zafar! For his burial,
Not even two yards of land were to be had, in the land of his beloved.
References:
- Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Volume II
- Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II
- Syed Ghulam Hussain Tabatabai, Sier Mutakherin
- William Irvine, Later Mughals, Volume I
Attribution: All images are available in the public domain, obtained from Wikimedia Commons.
