Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War (64 page)

‘But my husband showed himself to the people every day from the balcony of the Purana Qila that overlooks the river. What will they say when he doesn’t appear?’

‘We must choose someone of similar height and build to dress in imperial robes and impersonate the emperor. From across the river no one will be able to distinguish his features.’

‘What of Akbar during these next days?’

‘He should stay within the
haram
. I will post extra guards – my most trusted men – around your apartments. All his food, everything he drinks – even water – must be tasted first.’

‘You think the situation so dangerous?’

‘Yes, Majesty, beyond a doubt. Remember how the newly dead Islam Shah’s eldest son was murdered before his mother’s eyes here in Delhi, scarcely three years ago.’

‘Then we will do exactly what you say. It is what my husband would have wished.’

That night, with only moonlight and starlight for illumination, Akbar was standing in the small garden within the walls of the Purana Qila that Humayun had begun laying out just three months earlier. Behind him stood Jauhar, Bairam Khan and a few others who could be trusted to witness the secret burial of Humayun, Moghul Emperor of Hindustan. Since women did not attend funerals – even clandestine ones – Hamida and Gulbadan were watching from a casement above. Humayun’s body, washed in fragrant water and shrouded in soft linen, lay inside a plain wooden casket beneath the freshly turned earth.The mullah had just finished intoning the prayers for the dead and Humayun’s funeral – such as it was – was over.

Tears welled in Akbar’s eyes as he thought of the father he’d never see again. He also felt apprehensive. A few days ago his life had seemed happy and secure but now everything had changed. He sensed tension all around him. Though his mother and Bairam Khan had said little, he knew from their every look and gesture that they were concerned and that their concern was for him.

But he wouldn’t be afraid. He was of Timur’s blood. Like his grandfather Babur before him, he wouldn’t allow a cruel mischance to deprive him of what was his. Closing his eyes, Akbar began silently to address his dead father. ‘I promise that you won’t lie long in this simple grave, hidden from the eyes of men. As soon as I am able, here in Delhi, I will build for you the most magnificent tomb the world has ever seen. I, Akbar, the new Moghul emperor, swear it on my heart and on my soul . . . My beloved father, you named me “Great” and great I will be – not only in memory of you but in fulfilment of the destiny I feel within me.’

I
was fortunate that the story of Humayun – warrior, star-gazer and second Moghul emperor – is quite well documented, better than that of his father Babur, the subject of the previous book in the Empire of the Moghul quintet,
Raiders from the North
.The adventures, tragedies, contradictions and eventual triumphs of Humayun’s extraordinary life were captured by his half-sister Gulbadan, ‘Princess Rosebody’, in her detailed and affectionate account of his life – the
Humayunnama
. Humayun’s attendant Jauhar also wrote a record of his master’s life – the
Tadhkirat al-Waqiat
– while Abul Fazl, friend and adviser of Humayun’s son Akbar, chronicled Humayun’s reign in the first volume of his
Akbarnama
.

Despite the elaborate language and flowery hyperbole and certain gaps and inconsistencies in the accounts, Humayun emerges as brave, ambitious, charismatic – and at times more than a little eccentric. He indeed believed that messages were written in the stars and early in his reign organised the administration of his empire into departments based on the four elements of earth, fire, air and water. He dressed in certain colours on certain days – woe betide any miscreant brought before him on Tuesdays, the day of wrath and vengeance, when Humayun dressed in blood-red robes – and ordered the weaving of a vast astrological carpet. An early and well-documented addiction to opium probably explains some of the excesses of his early years but they were also the product of an enquiring, restless, mystical mind.

The main military, political and personal events described in
Brothers at War
all happened. Humayun was pushed out of Hindustan by Sher Shah, the ambitious son of a horse-trader from Bengal, and after one battle against Sher Shah was saved by a young water-seller called Nizam whom he allowed to sit on his throne. Humayun’s flight with Hamida across the Rajasthani desert, Akbar’s birth in lonely Umarkot, and the journey to find sanctuary in Persia, reduced to eating horsemeat boiled in a helmet, are true. So was Humayun’s happiness at eventually regaining his lost empire in Hindustan. His death just six months later after falling down a steep staircase from the roof of his observatory where he had been watching his beloved stars seems as poignant as anything a novelist could invent. It left his distraught widow Hamida with a young son to protect and the Moghul Empire again in the balance.

The treachery of Humayun’s half-brothers – especially Kamran and Askari – indeed tainted and dominated nearly his entire reign. Humayun really did pardon his brothers several times when his courtiers expected him to have them executed and argued for it. Humayun did alienate Hindal because of his determination to marry Hamida, whom Hindal is also said to have loved. Finally running out of patience, Humayun did have Kamran blinded and sent him, like Askari, on the
haj
to Mecca. However, I have sometimes condensed or simplified the action and omitted some incidents as well as compressing the timescales. I have also obviously used the novelist’s freedom to invent other incidents while remaining true to the overall framework of Humayun’s life.

Nearly all the main characters in the book existed in addition to his three half-brothers – his son Akbar, mother Maham, wife Hamida, half-sister Gulbadan, aunt Khanzada, Akbar’s milk-mother Maham Anga and milk-brother Adham Khan, Sher Shah, Islam Shah, Sekunder Shah, Shah Tahmasp of Persia, Bahadur Shah of Gujarat, Husain of Sind, Maldeo of Marwar and Bairam Khan. A very few like Baisanghar, Humayun’s grandfather, Ahmed Khan, his chief scout, Kasim, his vizier, and Baba Yasaval his general are composite characters.

As part of my research for this book over a number of years, I visited most of the places described – where they still exist – not only in India but in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. I remember in particular the red sandstone pavilion – the Sher Mandal in Delhi on the banks of the River Jumna – where I descended the stairs down which Humayun tumbled. I could picture the charismatic star-gazer hurrying towards those narrow stone steps, so full of energy and confidence, with so much he still wanted to accomplish, just seconds before his light was extinguished for ever.

Humayun came to the throne in December 1530.

Humayun was born to Maham in 1508.

Kamran was born to Gulrukh during a period not covered in the
Baburnama
, Babur’s memoirs. The precise date is unknown but he was clearly very close to Humayun in age.

Askari was born to Gulrukh in 1516. Hindal was born to Dildar three years later in 1519. Maham did beg Babur – even before Hindal was born – to let her adopt Dildar’s child and he agreed.

Of course Humayun would have used the Muslim lunar calendar, but I have converted dates into the conventional solar, Christian, calendar we use in the west.

Timur, a chieftain of the nomadic Barlas Turks, is better known in the west as Tamburlaine, a corruption of ‘Timur the Lame’. Christopher Marlowe’s play portrays him as ‘the scourge of God’.

Khanzada’s abduction and the circumstances surrounding Babur’s death are described in the first volume of this quintet,
Raiders from the North
.

 

Humayun’s conquest of Gujarat took place in 1535-6.

 

The battle of Chausa took place in June 1539. Jauhar tells the story of Nizam.

 

The battle of Kanauj was fought in June 1540.

 

Both Humayun and Kamran did indeed write offering terms to Sher Shah which he rejected.

 

Gulbadan described the flight from Lahore as ‘like the day of resurrection, people left their decorated palaces and their furniture just as they were’.

 

Hamida and Humayun were married at midday on 21 August 1541.

 

Khanzada died some years later and in different circumstances from those described here. Akbar was born in Umarkot on 15 October 1542.

 

The circumstances of Akbar being handed over to Kamran are fictionalised.

 

Gulbadan described the vicious mountain tribes with their propensity for cannibalism as ‘ghouls of the wastes’.

Humayun crossed into Persia in December 1543.

The once magnificent city of Kazvin was destroyed by an earthquake. It lies in the northwest of Iran, south of the Caspian Sea.

Shah Tahmasp’s luscious reception of Humayun – and the tensions – are described by both Jauhar and Gulbadan. The nearer Humayun drew to Kazvin, the more the journey resembled a triumphal progress. Kettledrums boomed as they rode. In the towns and villages people were ordered to put on their best clothes and cheer the column as it passed by.

Abul Fazl wrote that the Koh-i-Nur diamond reimbursed all Shah Tahmasp’s expenditure on Humayun ‘more than four times over’. The Koh-i-Nur later made its way back to India where a French jeweller saw it in the collection of Humayun’s great-grandson, Shah Jahan. It is now among the British Crown Jewels.

 

The Safawid dynasty had made the Shia practice of Islam the state religion of Persia in 1501.The distinction between Shia and Sunni derived from the first century of Islam and originally related to who was Muhammad’s legitimate successor and whether the office should be an elected one or restricted, as the Shias claimed, to the descendants of the prophet through his cousin and son-in-law, Ali. ‘Shia’ is the word for ‘party’ and comes from the phrase ‘the party of Ali’. ‘Sunni’ means ‘those who follow the custom (sunna) of Muhammad’. By the sixteenth century further differences had grown between the two sects, such as the nature of required daily prayer. Humayun did indeed convert to Shiism temporarily.

 

Kamran did expose Akbar on the walls of Kabul to forestall one of Humayun’s attacks on the city of which historically there were several. The city changed hands between the two brothers more than once.

 

Sher Shah died in May 1545.

 

Hindal died fighting Askari in 1551 in somewhat different circumstances from those described here.

 

Jauhar describes the blinding of Kamran. Unlike Askari, Kamran made it to Mecca. He died in Arabia in 1557.

 

Islam Shah died in October 1553.

 

The battle of Sirhind was fought in June 1555. Humayun entered Delhi at the end of July 1555.

 

Sekunder Shah died in 1559.

 

Humayun died on 24 January 1556. His vast sandstone mausoleum inlaid with white marble still stands in Delhi, an architectural gem and an obvious precursor of the Taj Mahal.