Aurangzeb

Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir (4 November 1618 [O.S. 25 October] – 3 March 1707 [O.S. 20 February]), more commonly known as Aurangzeb or by his chosen imperial title Alamgir, was the sixth Mughal Emperor of India, whose reign lasted from 1658 until his death in 1707.

Badshah Aurangzeb Alamgir I, having ruled most of the Indian subcontinent for nearly half a century, was the second longest reigning Mughal emperor after the legendary Akbar. In this period he tried hard to get a larger area, notably in southern India, under Mughal rule than ever before. But after his death in 1707, the Mughal Empire gradually began to shrink. Major reasons include a weak chain of "Later Mughals", an inadequate focus on maintaining central administration leading to governors forming their own empires, a gradual depletion of the fortunes amassed by his predecessors and the growth of secessionist sentiments amongst the other communities of the empire like the Marathas.

Early life

Aurangzeb was the third son of the fifth Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal (Arjumand Bānū Begum). After a rebellion by his father, part of Aurangzeb's childhood was spent as a virtual hostage at his grandfather Jahangir's court. Muhammad Saleh Kamboh had been one of his childhood teachers.

After Jahangir's death in 1627, Aurangzeb returned to live with his parents. Shah Jahan followed the Mughal practice of assigning authority to his sons, and in 1634 put Aurangzeb in charge of the Deccan campaign. Following his success in 1636, Aurangzeb became Subahdar(governor) of the Deccan. At this time, he began building a new city near the former capital of Khirki which he named Aurangabad after himself. In 1637, he married Rabia Durrani. During this period the Deccan was relatively peaceful. In the Mughal court, however, Shah Jahan began to show greater and greater favoritism to his eldest son Dara Shikoh.

In 1644, Aurangzeb's sister Jahanara Begum was accidentally burned in Agra. This event precipitated a family crisis which had political consequences. Aurangzeb suffered his father's displeasure when he returned to Agra three weeks after the event, instead of immediately. Shah Jahan dismissed him as the governor of the Deccan. Aurangzeb later claimed (1654) that he had resigned in protest of his father favoring Dara.

In 1645, he was barred from the court for seven months. But later, Shah Jahan appointed him governor of Gujarat; he performed well and was rewarded. In 1647, Shah Jahan made him governor of Balkh and Badakhshan (in modern Afghanistan and Tajikistan), replacing Aurangzeb's ineffective brother Murad Baksh. These areas at the time were under attack from various forces and Aurangzeb's military skill proved successful.

He was appointed governor of Multan and Sindh, and began a protracted military struggle against the Safavid army in an effort to capture the city of Kandahar. He failed, and fell again into his father's disfavour.

In 1652, Aurangzeb was re-appointed governor of the Deccan. In an effort to extend the empire, Aurangzeb attacked the border kingdoms of Golconda (1657), and Bijapur (1658). Both times, Shah Jahan called off the attacks near the moment of Aurangzeb's triumph. In each case Dara Shikoh interceded and arranged a peaceful end to the attacks.

War of succession

Soon after, Shuja's youngest brother Murad Baksh, with secret promises of support from Aurangzeb, declared himself emperor in Gujarat. Aurangzeb, ostensibly in support of Murad, marched north from Aurangabad, gathering support from nobles and generals. Following a series of victories, Aurangzeb declared that Dara had illegally usurped the throne. Shah Jahan, determined that Dara would succeed him, handed over control of his empire to Dara. A Rajput lord opposed to Aurangzeb and Murad, Maharaja Jaswant Singh, battled them both at Dharmatpur near Ujjain. Aurangzeb eventually defeated Singh and concentrated his forces on Dara. A series of bloody battles followed, with troops loyal to Aurangzeb battering Dara's armies at Samugarh. In a few months, Aurangzeb's forces surrounded Agra. Fearing for his life, Dara departed for Delhi, leaving Shah Jahan behind. The old emperor surrendered the Agra Fort to Aurangzeb's nobles, but Aurangzeb refused any meeting with his father, and declared that Dara was no longer a Muslim.Shah Jahan fell ill in 1657. With this news, the struggle for the succession began. Aurangzeb's eldest brother, Dara Shikoh, was regarded as heir apparent, but the succession proved far from certain when Shah Jahan's second son Shah Shuja declared himself emperor in Bengal. Imperial armies sent by Dara and Shah Jahan soon restrained this effort, and Shuja retreated.

In a sudden reversal, Aurangzeb arrested his brother Murad, whose former supporters defected to Aurangzeb in return for rich gifts. Meanwhile, Dara gathered his forces, and moved to the Punjab. The army sent against Shuja was trapped in the east, its generals Jai Singh and Diler Khan, submitted to Aurangzeb, but allowed Dara's son Suleman to escape. Aurangzeb offered Shuja the governorship of Bengal. This move had the effect of isolating Dara and causing more troops to defect to Aurangzeb. Shuja, however, uncertain of Aurangzeb's sincerity, continued to battle his brother, but his forces suffered a series of defeats at Aurangzeb's hands. Shuja fled to Arakan (in present-day Burma), where he was executed after leading a failed coup. Murad was finally executed, ostensibly for the murder of his former divan Ali Naqi, in 1661.

With Shuja and Murad disposed of, and with his father Shah Jahan confined in Agra, Aurangzeb pursued Dara, chasing him across the north-western bounds of the empire. After a series of battles, defeats and retreats, Dara was betrayed by one of his generals, who arrested and bound him. In 1659, Aurangzeb arranged his formal coronation in Delhi. He had Dara openly marched in chains back to Delhi; when Dara finally arrived, Aurangzeb had him executed on 30 August 1659. Having secured his position, Aurangzeb kept an already weakening Shah Jahan under house arrest at the Agra Fort. Shah Jahan died in 1666.

Expansion of the Mughal Empire

Nizams's of Ahmednagar, Adilshahi's of Bijapur mostly surrendered and their territories were administered by Mughal Nawab. Qutbshahi's of Golconda however refused to surrender they fortified themselves at Golconda Fort, and fiercely protected Kollur Mine (the worlds only diamond mine). After a long siege Mughal forces managed to penetrate the walls by capturing a gate. Qutbshahi's of Golconda and Abul Hasan Qutb Shah surrendered and handed over the Nur-Ul-Ain Diamond, The Hope Diamond, Wittelsbach Diamond and the The Regent Diamond making the Mughal Emperor the richest monarch in the world. From the start of his reign up until his death, Aurangzeb engaged in almost constant warfare. He built up a massive army, and began a program of military expansion along all the boundaries of his empire. Aurangzeb pushed north-west into the Punjab and what is now Afghanistan; he also drove south, conquering three Muslim kingdoms: Nizams's of Ahmednagar, Adilshahi's of Bijapur and Qutbshahi's of Golconda.

This combination of military expansion and religious intolerance had deeper consequences. Though he succeeded in expanding Mughal control, it was at an enormous cost in lives and treasure. And, as the empire expanded in size, Aurangzeb's chain of command grew weaker. The Sikhs of the Punjab grew both in strength and numbers, and launched rebellions. The Marathas waged a war with Aurangzeb which lasted for 27 years. Even Aurangzeb's own armies grew restive — particularly the fierce Rajputs, who were his main source of strength. Aurangzeb gave a wide berth to the Rajputs, who were mostly Hindu. While they fought for Aurangzeb during his life, on his death they immediately revolted against his successors.

With much of his attention on military matters, Aurangzeb's political power waned, and his incompetent provincial Nawabs grew in authority.

Rebellions

Aurangzeb's reign is marked by numerous rebellions in the distant provinces of the Mughal Empire, many historians believe that Mughal Nawabs were incapable of bridging the gap between the rulers and the people; therefore many new identities emerged along with it armed rebellion.

• In 1669, the Jat peasants of Bharatpur around Mathura revolted and led to the formation of Bharatpur state, they formulated a fierce rebellion around the Mughal capitol.

• In 1670, Shivaji, assissanited the Adil Shahi commander Afzal Khan and later his rebels almost killed the Mughal Viceroy Shaista Khan, and waged the war against the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. Shivaji and his forces ravaged the Deccan, Janjira and tried to gain control of vast territories. However by 1689 Auranzeb's armies had captured the successor of Shivaji, his son Sambhaji alive and executed. But even after Sambhaji's death, Aurangzeb could never completely eradicate the Maratha rebels ever in his 27 years of war against them.

• In 1672, the Satnami, a sect concentrated in an area near Delhi, under the leadership of Bhirbhan and some Satnami, took over the administration of Narnaul, but they were eventually crushed upon Aurangzeb's personal intervention with very few escaping alive.

• In 1699, on his orders the Mughal governor of Sarhind surrounded the fort of Anandpur in Punjab, which was occupied by Guru Gobind Singh and well armed Sikhs. After oaths of safety by the Mughal forces, Guru Gobind Singh decided to leave the fort. However the Mughal forces broke their promises and attacked the Guru and the Sikhs. The Mughals held his 2 young sons Sahibzada Zorawar Singh and Sahibzada Fateh Singh captive and executed through Immurement. Meanwhile his elder sons (15 and 17 years old) named Sahibzada Jujhar Singh and Sahibzada Ajit Singh fell fighting Mughal Musketeers at Chamkaur (close to Anandpur Fort). Gobind Singh wrote a letter named Zafarnamah to Aurungzeb. The letter is written in exquisite Persian verse. In this letter, Guru Gobind Singh Ji reminds Aurangzeb how he and his henchmen had broken their oaths taken by the holy Qu'ran and loyalty to the Mughal Empire.

• In 1671, The Battle of Saraighat between the Mughal Empire , and the Ahom Kingdom. The battle was a disaster for the Mughal army. The Mughal army was utterly annihilated due to the bravery of the Ahom general and his Hindu army. This battle was a watershed point in Indian history since it seriously checked Mughal invasions notably under the cruelest among them all, Aurangzeb. During the battle the Mughal's were led by Mir Jumla II and Shaista Khan. During the course of the battle the Mughal Admiral, Munnawar Khan was killed.

The Deccan wars and the Rise of the Marathas

In 1657, while Aurangzeb attacked Golconda and Bijapur, Shivaji, using guerrilla tactics, took control of three Adilshahi forts formerly controlled by his father. With these victories, Shivaji assumed de facto leadership of many independent Maratha clans. The Marathas harried the flanks of the warring Adilshahi and Mughals, gaining weapons, forts, and territories. Shivaji's small and ill-equipped army survived an all out Adilshahi attack, and Shivaji personally killed the Adilshahi general, Afzal Khan. With this event, the Marathas transformed into a powerful military force, capturing more and more Adilshahi and Mughal territories. In the time of Shah Jahan, the Deccan had been controlled by three Muslim kingdoms: Ahmednagar (Nizams), Bijapur (Adilshahi) and Golconda (Qutbshahi). Following a series of battles, Ahmednagar was effectively divided, with large portions of the kingdom ceded to the Mughals and the balance to Bijapur. One of Ahmednagar's generals, a Hindu Maratha named Shahaji, joined the Bijapur court. Shahaji sent his wife Jijabai and young son Shivaji in Pune to look after his Jagir.

Just before Shivaji Raje's his coronation in 1659, Aurangzeb sent his trusted general and maternal uncle Shaista Khan the Mughal Viceroy to the Deccan to recover lost forts occupied by the Maratha rebels. Shaista Khan drove into Maratha territory and took up residence in Pune. In a daring raid, Shivaji attacked the governor's residence in Pune during a midnight wedding celebration. The Marathas killed Shaista Khan's son, even hacking off most of Shaista Khan's hand. Shaista Khan however barely survived and was re-appointed as the administrator of Bengal and was a key commander in the war against the Ahoms.

Aurangzeb ignored the rise of the Marathas for the next few years as he was occupied with other religious and political matters including the rise of Sikhism. Shivaji captured forts belonging to both Mughals and Bijapur. At last Aurangzeb sent his powerful general Raja Jai Singh of Amber, a Hindu Rajput, to attack the Marathas. Jai Singh won fort of Purandar after fierce battle in which the maratha commander Murarbaji fell. Foreseeing defeat, Shivaji agreed for a truce and meeting Aurangjeb at Delhi. Jai Singh also promised the Maratha hero his safety, placing him under the care of his own son, the future Raja Ram Singh I. However, circumstances at the Mughal court were beyond the control of the Raja, and when Shivaji and his son Sambhaji went to Agra to meet Aurangzeb, they were placed under house arrest, from which they managed to effect a daring escape.

Shivaji returned to the Deccan, and was crowned Chhatrapati or Emperor of the Maratha Empire in 1674. While Aurangzeb continued to send troops against him, Shivaji expanded Maratha control throughout the Deccan until his death in 1680. Shivaji was succeeded by his son Sambhaji. Militarily and politically, Mughal efforts to control the Deccan continued to fail. Aurangzeb's son Akbar left the Mughal court and joined Muslim rebels in Deccan. Aurangzeb in response moved his court to Aurangabad and took over command of the Deccan campaign. More battles ensued, and Akbar fled to Persia and never returned.

In 1689 Aurangzeb's forces captured Sambhaji, his successor chhatrapati Rajaram and his, Maratha forces fought individual battles against the forces of the Mughal Empire, and territory changed hands again and again during years of endless warfare. As there was no central authority among the Marathas, Aurangzeb was forced to contest every inch of territory, at great cost in lives and treasure against an organized force. Even as Aurangzeb drove west, deep into Maratha territory — notably conquering Satara — the Marathas expanded their attacks further into Mughal lands, including Mughal provinces of Malwa, Hyderabad, Jinji in TamilNadu. Aurangzeb waged continuous war in the Deccan for more than two decades with no resolution. Aurangzeb lost about a fifth of his army fighting rebellions led by the Marathas in Deccan India. He came down thousands of miles to the Deccan to conquer the Maratha confederacy and eventually died at the age of 90, during his final campaign against the Maratha confederacy.

Chatrapati

When Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur died in 1679, a conflict ensued over who would be the next Raja. Aurangzeb's choice of a nephew of the former Maharaja was not accepted by other members of Jaswant Singh's family and they rebelled, but in vain. Aurangzeb seized control of Jodhpur. He also moved on Udaipur, which was the only other state of Rajputana to support the rebellion. There was never a clear resolution to this conflict, although it is noted that the other Rajputs, including the celebrated Kachhwaha Rajput clan of Raja Jai Singh, the Bhattis, and the Rathores, remained loyal. On the other hand, Aurangzeb's own third son, Prince Akbar, along with a few Muslim Mansabdar supporters, joined the rebels in the hope of dethroning his father and becoming emperor. The rebels were defeated and Akbar fled south to the shelter of the Maratha Chhatrapati Sambhaji, Chhatrapati Shivaji's successor.

The Ahoms (the people of Shan community of Thailand) were the kings who had established their kingdom in the basin of river Bramhaputra and made it impossible for the Mughals to conquer that area.

The Pashtun rebellion

The Pashtun tribesmen of the Empire were considered the bedrock of the Mughal Army. They were crucial defenders of the Empire from the threat of invasion from the North-West as well as the main fighting force against the Sikh and Maratha forces. The Pashtun revolt in 1672 under the leadership of the warrior poet Khushal Khan Khattak was triggered when soldiers under the orders of the Mughal Governor Amir Khan allegedly attempted to molest women of the Safi tribe in modern day Kunar. The Safi tribes attacked the soldiers. This attack provoked a reprisal, which triggered a general revolt of most of tribes. Attempting to reassert his authority, Amir Khan led a large Mughal Army to the Khyber Pass. There the army was surrounded by tribesmen and routed, with only four men, including the Governor, managing to escape.

After that the revolt spread, with the Mughals suffering a near total collapse of their authority along the Pashtun belt. The closure of the important Attock-Kabul trade route along the Grand Trunk road was particularly critical. By 1674, the situation had deteriorated to a point where Aurangzeb himself camped at Attock to personally take charge. Switching to diplomacy and bribery along with force of arms, the Mughals eventually split the rebellion and while they never managed to wield effective authority outside the main trade route, the revolt was partially suppressed. However the long term anarchy on the Empire's North-Western frontier that prevailed as a consequence ensured that the Persian Nadir Shah's forces half a century later faced little resistance on the road to Delhi, being one of the causes for Mughal decline and eventual European dominance.

LEGACY

Aurangzeb's vast imperial campaigns against rebellion-affected areas of the Mughal Empire, caused his opponents to exaggerate the "importance" of their rebellions. The results of his vast campaigns were made worse by the incompetence of his regional Nawabs. His critics decry this as intolerance,.

Muslim views regarding Aurangzeb vary, most Muslim historians believe that the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb was the last powerful ruler of an empire inevitably on the verge of decline. The major rebellions organized by the Sikhs and the Marathas were long embedded and had deep roots in the remote regions of the Mughal Empire.

Unlike his predecessors, Aurangzeb considered the royal treasury as a trust of the citizens of his empire. He made caps and copied Quran to earn money for his use. He did not use royal treasury for personal expenses or extravagant building projects except, perhaps, for one project: he built the famous Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, which, for 313 years remained the world's largest mosque and still remains to this day the 5th largest mosque in the world. He also added a small marble mosque known as the Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) to the Red Fort complex in Delhi. His constant warfare especially with Marathas, however, drove his empire to the brink of bankruptcy just as much as the wasteful personal spending and opulence of his predecessors.

He died in Ahmednagar on Friday, 20 February 1707 at the age of 88, having outlived many of his children. His modest open-air grave in Khuldabad expresses his deep devotion to his Islamic beliefs. The tomb lies within the courtyard of the shrine of the Sufi saint Shaikh Burham-u'd-din Gharib (died 1331), who was a disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi.

After Aurangzeb's death, his son Bahadur Shah I took the throne. The Mughal Empire, due both to Aurangzeb's over-extension and to Bahadur Shah's weak military and leadership qualities, entered a period of long decline. Immediately after Bahadur Shah occupied the throne, the Maratha Empire — which Aurangzeb had held at bay, inflicting high human and monetary costs — consolidated and launched effective invasions of Mughal territory, seizing power from the weak emperor. Within 100 years of Aurangzeb's death, the Mughal Emperor had little power beyond Delhi.