Chapter Eleven
The Moghul Emperors of India

World Seizer, King of the World, and Conqueror of the World

The Manchu emperors who ruled China believed that they had conquered the most important country on earth. The battling kings of Europe who fought the Thirty Years’ War believed that their kingdoms were the center of all civilization. But the kings of India knew that India was the center of the world! During the years that we’ve been reading about, three emperors ruled in India. The first was named World Seizer. When World Seizer’s son inherited his father’s throne, he named himself King of the World. And when King of the World’s son became king, he gave himself the proudest name of all: Conqueror of the World.

The first emperor, World Seizer, was a descendent of the great Mongol warrior Genghis Khan. Many years before, one of Genghis Khan’s relatives, a prince named Babur, had wandered south, down into India. Here, he found a number of different little Indian kingdoms, each governed by a nobleman. Babur conquered these little kingdoms and united them all together into one Indian empire. For many years, India was ruled by Babur’s sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, and great-great-greatgreat grandsons. This family of kings was called the Moghul dynasty because its kings were descended from the Mongols.

World Seizer, whose Indian name was Jahangir, was just as ruthless as his great ancestor Genghis Khan. When he suspected that his father’s best friend was plotting against him, he ordered the man murdered. Every Tuesday, he held court at his palace and sentenced anyone who had broken his laws to be crushed by elephants or beheaded. And he put the heads of the condemned on special towers along the main roads of his empire as a warning to others.

But although Jahangir was cruel, he was also a clever and thoughtful king. He knew that India would grow richer if it could encourage more and more English traders to sail to its ports and trade for silks and spices. So he signed a trade treaty with James I, the king of England, allowing Englishmen to enter all Indian ports in safety. And Jahangir was the first Indian emperor to invite an English ambassador (a special state official, sent by one country to another in order to help the two countries be friends) to India.

The English ambassador was amazed by the riches in Jahangir’s court. He wrote back to James I, describing the gold, jewels, silver, and exquisite paintings found in the palace. He described in amazement the enormous celebration held on the birthday of Khurram, the emperor’s favorite son. On this day, Khurram was dressed in gold and jewels and was seated on one side of an enormous pair of golden scales. Courtiers heaped bags of gold, jewels, spices, corn, and butter on the other side of the scales, until they had measured out the weight of the prince in goods. Then the goods were all given away to the poor!

When Jahangir died, Khurram became emperor. As emperor, he was given a new name; just as his father Jahangir had been known as World Seizer, Khurram would now be called Shah Jahan, or King of the World.

As soon as Shah Jahan became king, he made sure that everyone knew he was just as powerful as his father. He ordered all rivals to the throne—including his own brothers—put to death. When he learned that some of the towns at the far edges of India were preparing to rebel against his rule, he set off himself to fight against the rebels. He spent years strengthening his control over India.

This King of the World didn’t reign alone. His wife, Mumtaz Mahal, had already borne him thirteen children. Now, she traveled with him everywhere, helped him govern his kingdom, and worked with him to plan out his military campaigns. She kept his seal—the sign of his authority—and every decree that he made went to her to be approved.

But only three years after Shah Jahan became king, tragedy struck him! He was traveling to a battle with Mumtaz and his army when Mumtaz grew ill and died. Shah Jahan’s hair turned white from grief. He cried so much that he ruined his eyesight and had to wear glasses for the rest of his life. He spent two years mourning his wife; during this time, he refused to hear any music, wear beautiful clothes, or eat any rich food.

When the two years was over, Shah Jahan decided to build Mumtaz Mahal a tomb, or mausoleum, that would show the whole world how much he loved her. Shah Jahan quarried the finest transparent marble and the reddest sandstone for this tomb. He gathered precious stones for its walls—shining green jade, sparkling diamonds, sky-blue turquoise. He chose a beautiful spot on the banks of the Yamuna River, where the tomb would overlook the clear running waters. Twenty thousand craftsmen labored over the building for over twenty years! They built a huge marble dome, surrounded by smaller domes, on a red sandstone foundation. A huge garden in front of the tomb was planted with tulips and daffodils. A red mosque was built on either side of the mausoleum, so that the Muslims of India could worship there. All of the buildings were covered with intricate carvings of vines, fruit, leaves, and flowing lines of Arabic writing from the Muslim holy book, the Koran. The flowers and vines were inlaid with jewels—sometimes as many as fifty jewels in a single flower!

Shah Jahan had built the most beautiful building in India. This mausoleum, the Taj Mahal, became known as the eighth wonder of the world.

While Shah Jahan supervised his building projects, he left much of the actual work of ruling the kingdom to his four sons. Each son was a general in Shah Jahan’s army and ruled over one fourth of the empire. Shah Jahan’s son Aurangzeb was one of his best generals and rulers, and Shah Jahan sent him out over and over again to fight for his father’s empire.

But although Aurangzeb conquered cities and led his father’s army to victory, Shah Jahan didn’t reward him. Instead, he criticized Aurangzeb and reduced his rank! Meanwhile, Shah Jahan’s favorite son, Dara, lounged around the court—and grew more and more popular with his father.

When Shah Jahan announced that Dara would be his heir, Aurangzeb rebelled. He collected his army together, marched into his father’s capital city, and defeated Dara’s soldiers. Dara ran away! And Shah Jahan himself had to surrender to his son.

Aurangzeb ordered his father imprisoned inside his own fortress. He made sure that the old emperor had food, water, servants, and doctors—but he never allowed Shah Jahan to leave the fortress again. After Shah Jahan wrote him letters complaining about his treatment, Aurangzeb even ordered that all of Shah Jahan’s paper and pens be taken away!

Now Aurangzeb was the ruler of India. He gave himself the title Conqueror of the World. He kept Shah Jahan imprisoned until the old man died. Shah Jahan was buried next to Mumtaz Mahal in the Taj Mahal, and Aurangzeb, Conqueror of the World, was the undisputed emperor of all India.

Aurangzeb’s Three Decisions

The Moghul emperor Aurangzeb, Conqueror of the World, was now the ruler of India. Like his father, King of the World, and his grandfather, World Seizer, he was determined to be a strong and powerful ruler. And he succeeded. He ruled over a strong and powerful India for almost fifty years.

But when Aurangzeb died, fifty years later, India was doomed. Three of Aurangzeb’s own decisions helped to pave the way for foreign invaders who would take away India’s independence.

Aurangzeb’s first decision had to do with religion. Aurangzeb, like all the Moghul emperors, was a Muslim—a follower of the teachings of Muhammad. But most of the people of India were Hindu. For many years, the Moghul emperors allowed their Hindu subjects to worship in their own way. The emperor Akbar, one of the greatest Moghul rulers of all (and Aurangzeb’s great-grandfather), had even appointed a Hindu advisor to be his Minister of State.

But Aurangzeb was different. He wanted India to become a Muslim country, and he believed that his duty as emperor was to spread the Muslim faith.

After long hours of reading the Koran and discussing its teachings with the Muslim theologians who came to his court, Aurangzeb decided that the law of the Muslim faith, called Shari’ah, should also be the law for all of India. And he also decided that only Muslims should have power in India. So he refused to give Hindus positions at court and only promoted Muslims. He forced all Indian Hindus to pay extra taxes. When new Hindu temples were built, Aurangzeb had them destroyed. Because the Koran forbids Muslims to drink wine, the emperor made wine illegal throughout all of India. And because he believed that the Koran banned all kinds of art and parties, he put an end to all music at his court and made festivals illegal.

Muslim Indians welcomed Aurangzeb’s laws. But Hindu Indians hated the emperor! Aurangzeb’s decrees meant that Muslims and Hindus in India began to quarrel with each other. And when Aurangzeb made his second decision, the hostility between Hindus and Muslims in India grew even stronger.

Aurangzeb’s second decision was to spend years and years trying to conquer the southern parts of India. During the reigns of his father and grandfather, the Indian army had conquered the northern parts of India all the way up to the high mountains dividing India from Asia. And because India is a peninsula, Aurangzeb couldn’t expand his empire to the east or the west. But he was still determined to make India larger, so he turned his army south.

The southern lands of India, called the Deccan, were covered with jagged hills, rough country, and thick brush. The kingdoms in the Deccan were not yet under Aurangzeb’s control. And although most of the Deccan leaders were Muslim, they didn’t want to come under the rule of the Moghul emperor. So the kingdoms of the Deccan made alliances with Hindu tribes who lived in the southwest parts of India. These Hindu tribes, called the Marathas, resented the way that Aurangzeb treated the Hindu people who lived under his reign. They were happy to help the people of the Deccan fight Aurangzeb!

After years of fighting, Aurangzeb managed to add the kingdoms of the Deccan to his empire. But the Deccan was never loyal to Aurangzeb’s rule. The people continued to mount little rebellions against him. And the Marathas kept right on sending little bands of guerrilla warriors (soldiers who fight in sneak attacks and from under cover, rather than in an organized army) to harass the Moghul officials and soldiers. Aurangzeb spent twenty-six years in the Deccan, fighting off Hindu guerrilla warriors and trying to keep the cities of the Deccan peaceful! Meanwhile, he ignored the rest of his empire. He didn’t visit his capital city, Delhi, for a quarter of a century!

Aurangzeb had decided to treat Muslims better than Hindus—and made enemies of part of his empire. He had decided to conquer the south of India—and ignored the rest of his kingdom. And then he made a third decision that would change India forever. While he was busy fighting against the kingdoms of the Deccan, he allowed Englishmen to come into India and build cities of their own.

Remember, Aurangzeb’s grandfather Jahangir (World Seizer) had signed a trade treaty with England. This treaty allowed English merchants to build trading posts (ports where English ships could land and load up with Indian goods) all through India.

Now, the English wanted to build a new trading post on the eastern shore of India, in an area called Bengal. They asked Aurangzeb for permission to build not only a place for ships to dock, but also a city and a factory at this new port. Aurangzeb agreed. After all, he was busy down in the south of India, and this new English city would only make India richer.

So the English began to build their city, which soon became known as Calcutta. They built a factory to make silk that they could then take to London and sell. More and more English men and women came to live in Calcutta. The city began to look more like an English colony than like an Indian city. Soldiers came to Calcutta to protect the English ships. The factories in Calcutta made gunpowder for the soldiers’ weapons.

Aurangzeb didn’t know it, but Calcutta would become the center of an English takeover of India—a takeover that would bring an end to Indian independence.

This takeover did not begin until after Aurangzeb’s death. But at the end of his life, Aurangzeb began to realize that his attempts to make India into an enormous, rich, Muslim empire had actually made India weaker.

Just before his death, Aurangzeb was still down in the Deccan, putting down rebellion after rebellion. He had lost a fifth of his army in the war against the Deccan. His men were suffering from plague. He was under constant attack from Maratha guerillas. He was nearly ninety years old, weary and sick. Back in the north of India, the administrators who were supposed to be running the country in Aurangzeb’s absence were spending money freely, neglecting the people, and allowing crime to flourish. Old, tired, and dying, Aurangzeb wrote to one of his sons, “I do not know who I am. I do not know what I have been doing. I have sinned, and yet I do not know what punishment awaits me.” Aurangzeb’s attempt to make India great had failed; he died knowing that India’s end was coming.