Aurangzeb

Emperor of India (r. 1658-1707)

• Born: November 3, 1618
• Birthplace: Dohad, Mālwa, India
• Died: March 3, 1707
• Place of death: Ahmadnagar, Maharashtra, India

Aurangzeb was the last of the great Mughal emperors who ruled north and central India after 1526. The most pious and ruthless of these rulers, he was a great conqueror, a brilliant administrator, and an extraordinarily cunning statesman who took the empire to its greatest territorial extent.

Early Life

Aurangzeb (ahr-ahng-zehb) was given the name Muḥī-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Aurangzeb at birth. He was the third of four sons of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife, Mumtāz Mahal, reportedly for whom the Taj Mahal was built. The Mughals, a Muslim people descended from the Turkish and Mongol conquerors of central Asia, had ruled much of India since 1526. Aurangzeb was reared in a rich and powerful home destined to be torn by imperial intrigue and violence.

As youths, Aurangzeb and his three brothers (Dārā Shukōh, Shujah, and Murad) were taught the Qur՚ān, standard works of Persian poetry, calligraphy, and the history of their great ancestors. Prince Dārā, the favorite of his father, Shah Jahan, was a liberal-minded, aesthetically inclined Muslim who believed that truth resided in a variety of traditions and could not be contained in a single religion. Aurangzeb, in contrast, from his youth displayed narrow, literalistic religious and ethnic propensities. He memorized most of the Qur՚ān, became expert in Muslim law, and largely ignored poetry, music, and painting. Unlike his predecessors, he took little interest in monumental architecture and seldom patronized the arts. In the eventual struggle to succeed Shah Jahan as emperor, the two protagonists were Dārā and Aurangzeb—mystic versus puritan, unorthodox versus orthodox.

As a young man, Aurangzeb was ambitious, aggressive, and ruthless, but he was hardly more cruel than others of his time. Rather, he was more successful because of his superior skill in statecraft and intrigue. Recognizing Aurangzeb’s ambitions, Shah Jahan appointed him viceroy (nabob) of the Deccan (central India) in July, 1636. He spent eight years there, isolated most of the time from the center of power at the Mughal court in Āgra. When he returned to Āgra in 1644, it became apparent to him that his father was discriminating against him in favor of Dārā. This conviction caused Aurangzeb to misbehave at the court, which resulted in his temporary banishment. Soon restored to favor, however, he served as the governor of Gujarat province (1645-1647) and of the northwestern Multan and Sind provinces (1648-1652). It was there that he honed his military and command skills, as his armies were sent to fight Afghan hill tribes and Persian soldiers. He suffered crushing defeats in central Asia against the Persians, however, and found himself reassigned to the Deccan in August, 1652, once again isolated from the center of power.

Aurangzeb’s second viceroyalty in the Deccan (1652-1658) allowed him the opportunity to develop further his considerable administrative and military talents. His relations with his father and with Dārā continued to be contentious, however, and both of his major military campaigns in the Deccan—against two rich Muslim principalities, Golconda and Bijapur—were halted just short of victory by orders from Shah Jahan, who was influenced by anti-Aurangzeb factions at his court. In effect, Aurangzeb’s attempts to expand Mughal influence in central India were nullified by the court intrigues of Dārā’s supporters. It was thus a frustrated Aurangzeb who received word in September, 1657, that Shah Jahan had fallen seriously ill. This illness precipitated a struggle for succession that eventually brought Aurangzeb to the throne.

Life’s Work

At the time Shah Jahan fell ill with strangury, the four brothers were widely separated. Aurangzeb was in the Deccan, Shujah was in Bengal, Murad was in Gujarat, and Dārā was at Shah Jahan’s side in Delhi. Shah Jahan’s illness took him to death’s door and threw his court into panic over the inevitable succession struggle.

Aurangzeb began his campaign for the throne by luring his inept brother, Murad, into an alliance against Dārā, denying at first that he had any regal ambitions and then promising Murad the provinces of Punjab and Sind for his support. In the meantime, both Shujah and Murad publicly announced their own claims to the Mughal throne.

By early 1658, Shah Jahan had recovered from his illness and tried to help Dārā cope with his brother’s conspiracy against him. Yet Dārā, who was always more interested in mysticism than in imperial politics, was no match for the aggressive, battle-hardened Aurangzeb. In April, 1658, the combined forces of Aurangzeb and Murad defeated a formidable imperial force, and on May 29, 1658, they confronted Dārā’s main army several miles east of Āgra on the plain of Samugarh. Under his superior generalship, Aurangzeb’s army overwhelmed Dārā’s troops, and Dārā fled toward Āgra, leaving ten thousand of his men dead on the battlefield. On May 30, Dārā gathered about five thousand of his remaining troops and embarked for Delhi. On June 8, Āgra fell to Aurangzeb and Shah Jahan was placed under house arrest, where he would remain until his death in 1666.

Moving quickly to consolidate his power, Aurangzeb arrested his erstwhile ally, Murad, imprisoned him for the next three years, and then had him executed. Shortly after taking Āgra, his troops set out in pursuit of Dārā, but it was not until August 30, 1659, that Aurangzeb was able to capture his brother and have him executed. In the interim, he also eliminated Shujah, who eventually died a fugitive in Burma. Aurangzeb thus cemented his ascendance to the peacock throne as Ālamgīr (world conqueror) I in July, 1658. He reigned until his death in March, 1707.

Aurangzeb’s nearly fifty-year reign aroused passionate support from orthodox Muslims and equally fervent opposition from some of his Hindu subjects, upon whom his policies inflicted enormous suffering. Noted mostly for his single-minded pursuit of power and territory, he brought monumental construction to an end, ceased to patronize nonreligious celebrations, and enforced Muslim puritanism in his court and realm.

His strict adherence to orthodox Islam led him to abandon the religious tolerance and preferred treatment of Hindus, which had been the hallmark of Mughal rule since the time of his grandfather Akbar the Great. The Mughals had attempted to be rulers of all Indians, irrespective of creed and ethnicity, and had welcomed Rājput warriors into the highest ranks of their armies and administration. They had also abolished the hated jizya, a head tax imposed on all non-Muslims. Such policies had created a large reservoir of Hindu support for the Mughal Empire.

Aurangzeb reversed these policies, despite warnings from his advisers that such action would most likely result in widespread rebellions. He began by appointing what were called censors of public morals (muhtasibs) in every large city, ordering the muhtasibs to enforce Islamic laws and customs strictly. He outlawed some Hindu festivals, prohibited repairs to Hindu temples, and in 1679 reimposed the poll tax. By refusing to treat Hindus as equals, he broke the Hindu-Mughal alliance and ensured the emergence of rebellion in 1669 in the Punjab and thereafter throughout much of the empire.

The fiercest and most persistent Hindu opposition to Aurangzeb arose in the western Indian province of Maharashtra under the leadership of Śivājī, who is popularly regarded as the founder of Hindu nationalism, but whom the Mughals reviled as a “mountain rat” because of the guerrilla tactics he employed. Śivājī was a ferocious Marāthā warrior who was reared by his mother to love Hinduism and hate all varieties of Muslim rule in India. He sought self-rule and full freedom to practice his own religion. He took to the Maharashtran hills at the age of twenty to fight a guerrilla war against the Mughals and other Muslims. He soon developed a number of fortresses on mountain plateaus and gained control of much of Maharashtra. His rising power alarmed Aurangzeb, who sent a huge army against him in 1665. Śivājī was soundly defeated, but he managed to escape from the Mughals in time and by 1670 recaptured most of the ground he had lost in 1665. He remained independent of the Mughals until his death in 1680, and his sons and followers continued the battle against the Mughals thereafter.

It was the Deccan, in combination with Maharashtra, that attracted most of Aurangzeb’s attention after 1680. In that year, Aurangzeb’s son, Akbar, rose in rebellion against his father in alliance with two Rājput princes and Śivājī’s elder son, Sambhājī, who had succeeded his father. Aurangzeb invaded the Deccan in 1681 to try to quell this potentially dangerous rebellion. Akbar’s anti-Aurangzeb alliance never operated effectively, and Akbar eventually fled in 1686 to Iran, where he died in exile. In 1689, Aurangzeb captured and executed Sambhājī, who had effectively employed guerrilla tactics to frustrate Aurangzeb’s completion of the Deccan conquest. In spite of Sambhājī’s death, the Marāthās continued to defy the Mughals. They were the only power remaining outside Aurangzeb’s control, however, as he brought Mughal power to its pinnacle. Never before or since did a single ruler control so much of India.

Yet the costs of Aurangzeb’s conquest of the Deccan were enormous. At least 100,000 lives were lost, and much of the Deccan’s surplus wealth was consumed by military expenditures. The military slaughter was accompanied by famine and bubonic plague, which killed countless thousands more before Aurangzeb eventually quit the Deccan and returned to the north in 1705. By then, even he seems to have regretted the carnage he had inflicted on the Deccan.

Significance

Scholars disagree about Aurangzeb’s character and accomplishments. His life was so dramatic and forceful that it seems to compel extreme assessments. His critics point to his bigotry against non-Muslims and his excessive military adventures as marks of monumental failure. Forgotten is that he ruled India for almost half a century and that he took the empire to its greatest territorial extent. Moreover, while he was cruel and shed much blood trying to conquer all of India, ruthless ambition was hardly unique to him in the India of that time. His archrivals, the Marāthās, matched him in their pursuit of wealth and power. Although he lacked the charisma of his father, Shah Jahan, and his grandfather, Akbar, he was a firm and capable administrator.

Although the Deccan struggles severely weakened the Mughal Empire, Aurangzeb’s successor, Bahādur Shāh, was able to restore the empire’s vigor within five years of Aurangzeb’s death, suggesting that Aurangzeb’s misgovernment may not have been as severe as some contend. It is clear to most historians that Aurangzeb was, at the least, a complex personality and an able statesman who united more of India under his personal rule than any other sovereign in history.

Bibliography

Athar Ali, M. The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Explores the composition and role of the nobility during Aurangzeb’s reign.

Azizuddin Husain, S. M. Structure of Politics Under Aurangzeb, 1658-1707. New Delhi, India: Kanishka Publishers, 2002. Examines various aspects of politics during Aurangzeb’s rule, including his political views and theory of kingship.

Bhave, Y. G. From the Death of Shivaji to the Death of Aurangzeb: The Critical Years. New Delhi, India: Northern Book Center, 2000. An exploration of Mughal rule and Hindu resistance from the time of Śivājī’s execution until Aurangzeb’s death.

Gascoigne, Bamber. A Brief History of the Great Moghuls. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002. A well-written, general history of the Mughals, first published in 1971, chronicling the empire from its founder, Bābur, through Aurangzeb. Profusely illustrated, the work presents a balanced view of Aurangzeb’s reign.

Hallissey, Robert C. The Rājput Rebellion Against Aurangzeb: A Study of the Mughal Empire in Seventeenth Century India. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977. Examines the Rājput rebellion against Aurangzeb in the light of the internal dynamics of the Rājput state and the religious differences between Hindus and Muslims. Reveals the complexity of the Mughal-Rājput relationship.

Hansen, Waldemar. The Peacock Throne. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. Detailed history of the Mughal period, offering insights into Aurangzeb’s character and style of rule. Hansen’s account of the succession struggle is particularly helpful, as is his discussion of the relationship between Aurangzeb and his enemies, particularly Śivājī.

Majumdar, R. C., H. C. Raychaudhuri, and Kalikinkar Datta. An Advanced History of India. 4th ed. Delhi: Macmillan India, 1978. One of the most detailed histories of India by Indian scholars that is readily available in the West. The authors strike a balanced view of Aurangzeb’s leadership style. However, some scholars do not support their interpretations of the Rājputs and other aspects of Indian history.

Pearson, M. N. “Shivaji and the Decline of the Mughal Empire.” Journal of Asian Studies 35 (February, 1976): 221-236. Focuses on the relationship between Aurangzeb’s nemesis, Śivājī, and the decline of Mughal power created by Aurangzeb’s expeditions into the Deccan and other causes.

Sarkar, Jadunath. A Short History of Aurangzeb, 1618-1707. London: Longmans, Green, 1930. A distillation of Sarkar’s extensive studies of the Aurangzeb era. The most detailed and scholarly work on Aurangzeb and Śivājī.