Empire of the Moghul: The Serpent's Tooth (45 page)

But when Shah Jahan was still only about halfway through his tale, Jahanara saw his eyes closing and his head beginning to nod forward. He slept so much these days. Rising quietly from her stool so as not to disturb him, she walked to the casement. At first her legs felt a little stiff, but then she herself was getting older – in April she would be fifty-two. Her hair, though still thick, was growing white as the snows of Kashmir she hadn’t seen for so many years. Yet what did it matter how she looked? There were few to see her now …

From the casement she watched a young boy leading a camel down to the Jumna to drink and other children running along the riverbank and shouting. The sight gave her pleasure, yet their high spirits and simple joy in each other’s company cost her a pang. How narrow and constrained her own existence seemed in comparison. Yet her youth had been full of life and of people – her mother and six brothers and sisters, the endless bustle and activity of the court, their journeyings, the attendants who had become friends, like Satti al-Nisa, now at rest in her tomb in the grounds of the Taj Mahal … and of course there was Nicholas Ballantyne.

Some months before her death Satti al-Nisa had smuggled a letter from him into the fort. It had come all the way from England – a journey that, from the date, had taken over a year. It had said simply that he had reached home and was living quietly on his brother’s estates but that he missed the heat and colour of Hindustan and of course his friends at court. When she had read the letter her eyes had filled with tears. She’d been relieved that Nicholas had at last returned to his cold, rain-washed island but she’d often wondered whether he could ever find contentment there. The sadnesses of disappointment and unfulfilled hope were part of life, whether that of an imperial princess or an adventurer like Nicholas, just as they were of the most humble peasant.

Jahanara woke with a start. The pale light of a late winter dawn was filtering into her apartment, throwing into relief the intricate sandstone carving around the casement. Getting up, she walked across to the window and looked out through the mists that so often shrouded the Jumna at this time of year. Suddenly a shiver ran through her, not of cold, even though the morning was a chill one, but of apprehension. She must go to her father, whose frailty had seemed to increase daily since his birthday two weeks before. Without pausing to question her intuition she called for her attendants and quickly began to dress.

In less than a quarter of an hour, warmly clothed and with a soft Kashmiri shawl drawn across her face in place of a veil, Jahanara was hurrying to her father’s apartments. Two of the
haram
eunuchs led the way and two of her own female attendants followed. Reaching the ivory-clad doors to her father’s rooms the eunuchs knocked with the ebony staves of office they carried, and then as the doors were opened from inside stood back for Jahanara to enter. ‘Has my father awoken yet?’ she asked his chief servant, an elderly silver-haired Pathan.

‘Yes, Highness,’ he began, and relief flooded into Jahanara as he continued, ‘He was awake about an hour ago when we looked in on him as we now regularly do. He told us he did not wish to rise but asked for a bed to be prepared beneath the domed pavilion just outside his room where he could rest longer.’

‘Is he in the pavilion now?’

‘Yes, Highness. It didn’t take us long to ready the bed. He was dozing when I passed by ten minutes ago.’

‘I will go to him.’ Still feeling an unaccountable unease, Jahanara crossed the richly carpeted room and went through the exterior doors out to the pavilion. Her father was lying on a divan propped against brocade cushions and bolsters and swathed in soft wool blankets and shawls against the early morning cool. A gentle breeze caught a lock of the silver hair protruding from beneath the chintz-patterned shawl framing his head. Jahanara bent and tucked the strand of hair back beneath the shawl. At first Shah Jahan, whose eyes were half closed, did not seem to notice either her touch or her presence. But slowly his eyes opened a little further and focused.

‘Jahanara, is that you?’

‘Yes, Father.’ Jahanara took his hand. How soft his skin felt. How little flesh there was on his palms and his long fingers.

‘Good. I am so glad.’

For a moment or two neither said anything more. Watching Shah Jahan’s shallow, rapid breathing Jahanara realised her forebodings had not been misplaced. His condition had deteriorated even in the few hours since she had last seen him. Then her father put her fears into words. ‘I feel my life ebbing from me.’ Seeing tears well in Jahanara’s eyes he went on, ‘Do not weep. Every man has his time to die and sometimes I feel I have gone beyond my own. I have no pain, just a sense of the life force draining from me.’ Then his voice strengthened. ‘Before I go, lift me higher against the bolsters so I can see your mother’s tomb.’

Struggling to contain her tears, Jahanara hoisted her father’s frail body up the bolsters and tucked more cushions behind his back.

‘Thank you. Now give me your hand again. I have things I must say.’

Taking his hand once more in her own, Jahanara realised the futility of trying to convince him that he was mistaken about his condition and so just nodded. ‘Go on. I am listening.’

‘It may not matter to him, but tell Aurangzeb that I forgive him … Above all beg him to do all he can to avoid conflict with and between his sons. Such animosities have plagued our dynasty since we first entered Hindustan. I wanted to end them … but to my lasting regret I failed.’

‘I will, Father,’ Jahanara said softly.

‘I hope I have not sinned too greatly. I know that I have done things that are wrong and done so more frequently than many men. But I believe that was because my ambition and my subsequent position gave me greater freedom than others and not because I was more wicked at heart. I have done what I have done out of love for my wife and my children and my dynasty.’

‘None of us can doubt your love, Father. God will forgive you for your sins. Here on earth the tomb you have built for our mother will prove an incomparable monument to your great love which will long outlast other memories of you.’ Jahanara heard her father’s breathing become irregular and he gasped for air as she clasped his hand more tightly. ‘Soon you will be in the gardens of Paradise with Mother.’

‘I see her,’ said Shah Jahan, fixing his eyes on the Taj Mahal standing proud above the Jumna mist. Slowly his pulses faded and his eyes glazed. The fifth Moghul emperor was dead and, as she realised this, his eldest daughter collapsed over his body, weeping warm tears for him, his wife and for all his children alive and dead, herself included.

After a minute or two, however, she lowered her father’s body back on the divan and stood up, composed herself and straightened her back. She must remember she was a Moghul. She had a duty to give her father the burial he deserved. If he could not have a black marble tomb of his own he would join his wife in the luminous white one he had raised as a monument to her and to their love.

U
nlike his father Jahangir, Shah Jahan did not write his own memoirs, but his life is well documented. Jahangir himself gives us a picture of the young Shah Jahan – or Prince Khurram as he then was – in his youthful days while he was still his father’s favourite. When Jahangir became too infirm to keep a journal, he handed the task to Mutamid Khan who described Shah Jahan’s revolt against his father. On becoming emperor, Shah Jahan asked Abdul Hamid Lahori to document his reign. Increasing infirmity prevented Lahori from covering more than the first twenty years of Shah Jahan’s rule in his
Padshah-nama
. However, he described in detail the building of the Taj Mahal. Also, the scholar Inayat Khan, responsible for the imperial library, wrote a detailed history of Shah Jahan’s reign, the
Shah-Jahan-nama
. In addition we have the writings of several court poets.

Foreigners of course wrote of what they saw at the Moghul court and were amazed by its opulence. Englishman Peter Mundy, in India from 1628 to 1633, witnessed the early construction of the Taj Mahal, writing: ‘the building … goes on with excessive labour and cost, prosecuted with extraordinary diligence, gold and silver esteemed but common metal and marble but as ordinary stone.’ The Venetian adventurer Niccolao Manucci was eyewitness to the rivalry and disintegration of Shah Jahan’s family. His
Storia do Mogor
describes how he fought for Dara Shukoh and graphically captures the tragedy of the final battle of Samugarh.

As always, though, the sources need handling with care. Official chroniclers were constrained in what they could write and eulogy and propaganda play their part in their accounts. Foreign visitors to the Moghul court were far freer to write what they wanted but were often attracted by the sensational as well as being hampered by ignorance of local customs and languages from understanding what was really going on. Nevertheless, certain themes emerge consistently through the sources, whoever the author and whatever their purpose, especially the unshakeable bond between Shah Jahan and Mumtaz and his collapse after her death, and the emerging rivalries between the surviving children of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan, undetected until too late by Shah Jahan himself.

As in the earlier books in the series, nearly all the main characters existed in real life – the imperial Moghul family themselves, the Rajput rulers, the Moghuls’ close confidants like Satti al-Nissa. A few, though, are composite characters, like Nicholas Ballantyne who first made his appearance in
The Tainted Throne
and is based in part on Niccolao Manucci and the Rajput prince Ashok Singh. The main events and battles all happened though I’ve sometimes altered timescales to maintain the narrative pace. I’ve also omitted some events to focus on those which best capture this tipping point in the story of one of the world’s greatest dynasties.

Research took me to many places that still speak of the love between Shah Jahan and Mumtaz and the tragedy that overtook the dynasty in the next generation. I travelled south, following the route taken by Shah Jahan and Mumtaz on their final journey together to the ill-omened fortress-palace of Burhanpur on the Tapti river. Here staff of the Archaeological Survey of India showed me the chamber where most believe Mumtaz died. Across the river, surrounded by fields, I found the Zainabad garden – an old Moghul hunting ground – where the Baradari pavilion beneath which Mumtaz’s body was temporarily laid to rest still stands.

The Agra fort where Mumtaz spent her brief time as empress still conjures the imperial family’s luxurious life, bathing in marble
hammams
flowing with rosewater and eating from jade dishes. Standing in the many-pillared Chamber of Public Audience, I thought of Shah Jahan, ablaze with gems, dispensing justice to his subjects while an equally glittering Mumtaz watched from behind a carved
purdah
screen. In the fort’s marble pavilions – built by Shah Jahan overlooking the Jumna river and destined to become his prison – the colours of the flowers inlaid into the white marble remain as vivid as when the craftsmen first sliced the leaves and petals from semi-precious stones and the marble floors and pillars feel cool to the touch. Loveliest of all is the bronze-canopied octagonal tower where a fluidly carved marble pool fills the centre of the floor and sculpted friezes of swaying irises and yet more jewelled flowers overlay walls and pillars. I could picture Shah Jahan in his imprisonment looking from the tower towards the Taj Mahal, floating mirage-like beyond the ox-bow bend in the Jumna, and like Shakespeare’s Troilus sighing his soul as he thought of the long-dead Mumtaz.

I roamed Shah Jahan’s
mahtab bagh
, his moonlight garden, from where, before his overthrow, he often contemplated the melancholy beauty of the Taj Mahal. And of course I returned to the Taj itself. Though I’ve seen it many times I always find it enduringly lovely, whether at sunrise when it emerges ethereal through the early morning mists, at sunset when purple shadows wrap around the dome, or by the light of the silvering moon. People argue about what makes it so perfect. Artistry, symmetry, setting all play their part, yet the heart of its magic is surely the knowledge that it is above all a monument to love and loss.

Chapter 1

Shah Jahan came to the throne at the beginning of January 1628 and faced several assassination attempts during his reign. He was born on 5 January 1592. His wife Mumtaz was a year younger. They married in May 1612.

Khusrau’s wife Jani did take her life by swallowing a hot coal.

Shah Jahan’s court poets wrote many verses in praise of Mumtaz including those quoted here, which are from Kalim’s
Padshah Nama
.

The Deccan crisis which drew Shah Jahan south erupted towards the end of 1629.

Chapter 2

The Archaeological Survey of India are currently restoring the fortress palace of Burhanpur.

Chapter 3

The famine around Burhanpur was extremely severe. Shah Jahan’s historian recorded how ‘During the past year no rain had fallen … and the drought had been especially severe … dog’s flesh was sold for goat’s flesh, and the pounded bones of the dead [people] were mixed with flour and sold [to make bread] … Destitution at length reached such a pitch that men began to devour each other, and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love’. To aid his stricken subjects, Shah Jahan remitted taxes and ordered his officials to open feeding stations in Burhanpur and other cities, where bread and broth were doled out to the hungry. He also ordered 5,000 rupees to be distributed amongst the poor every Monday.