Empire: World History - 220. Battle of Brothers: The Puritan vs The Mystic (Ep 1)

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

The battle of succession that erupted during a severe illness of Shah Jahan is often regarded as one which determined the fate of India. The eldest of Shah Jahan’s sons was Dara Shukoh—the Glory of Darius. Contemporary miniatures show that Dara bore a striking resemblance to his father, and like him he was luxurious in his tastes and refined in his sensibilities. He preferred life at court to the hardships of campaigning; he liked to deck himself in strings of precious stones and belts studded with priceless gems; he wore clothes of the finest silk and from each ear lobe he hung a single pearl of remarkable size. Dara was a tolerant Sufi and composed a study of Hinduism and Islam, ‘The Mingling of Two Oceans’, which stressed the affinities of the two faiths and what he believed to be the Vedic origins of the Quran. Then there was Aurangzeb, unloved by his father, a bitter and bigoted puritan, as intolerant as he was grimly dogmatic. He was a ruthlessly talented general and a brilliantly calculating strategist, but entirely lacked the winning charm of his predecessors.  Listen as William and Anita are joined by Supriya Gandhi, author of The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India, to discuss the brothers who fought for the crown, and with it the future of India. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producers: Anouska Lewis & Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. We've been having just such a roller coaster ride with the story of the moguls. And thank you so much for all of your kind comments. It's lovely to know that you're enjoying the series as much as you are.

We left off with a broken-hearted, turned white overnight, Shahjahar, its hair turning white, his love gone, his heart broken, and the memory of the love of his life, Mumtaz Mahal, being raised from the ground in this white mausoleum that today is the path for all travellers to India, the Taj Mahal, and that was great fun talking about that. But we take up the reins, we sort of left you on a little bit of a cliffhanger, that the death of that love also heralds great building, but also the start of some rather turbulent times in the empire. And we're going to pick up those reigns right now with a superb, fantastic guess that Willie cannot contain himself over his excitement that we've managed to get her on.

Supriya Gandhi is with us, author of The Emperor Who Never Was Dara Shoko in Mughal India, and amongst other things, a very esteemed academic. I'm going to hand over to Willie because he's going to do it really. I mean, Supriya, to fasten your seatbelt. It's going to be rather embarrassing fanboy moment for you. Go on, Willie. Off you go. Supriya is an old friend.

How old were we first met, Supriah, an old Delhi? Probably 16 or 17. 16 or 17. And I was 24 or 25. This is now 20 something years ago. And I was just finished city of Jins. And you was beginning your path to studying Persian. And we both gravitated to the room of a wonderful Sufi teacher

teaching in the Anglo-Arabic school just outside the old city. And we used to sit together in this domed room, as he would tell us Sufi anecdotes and porous pots of masala chai. You were literally 16 or 17, already setting off on your life's work. What a precocious historian at 16 or 17, Supria. Do you have recollections of this? I didn't know that I was going to be a historian. But when I arrived in Delhi to go to college,

I started exploring the city and I keep. I came across quite serendipitously Dr. Jaffrey, through whom I then met Willie. And Dr. Jaffrey was my sort of gateway into the whole world of Persian and Mughal history. Okay, so just between us, describe Willie. What was he like back then? Yeah, what was he like? And just between you and me, what was he really like? What I remember about him was that he had a mobile phone and I hadn't quite seen one before.

I'd heard about them. So we had this very fancy gadget, and he was always travelling in taxis, which struck me as extremely decadent because, you know, I would travel by bus and auto-rickshaw. Can I just say a man who's attached to his phone and incredibly decadent? I mean, you've changed a lot, William.

I mean, it's like hardly recognisable for the man I know today. Before Sopria begins to tell us about this man who she's written this wonderful biography about, I should quickly say to anyone listen, that Sopriya's book, The Emperor, who never was, is just a model of accessible, beautifully written scholarship. Suprius clearly spent years with all the primary sources, and yet she writes with great lightness and grace, and it's an utterly, utterly entrancing book. And it's also oddly unfamiliar, because people have often talked about Dara Shuko and Orang Zeb.

In India, their kind of symbols of everything that went wrong and Dara Shuko of everything that could have been. and we'll go into that further in this episode. But it's always been built on often fictional betrayals of these two men. And Supriya, oddly, is the first person since the 1930s, since Canungo, I think is the last person, produced a biography of Darushuco that's actually based on primary sources and rooted in the original writings. And she's completely rewritten the story. And so I recommend it to anyone. Well, look, we talked to Sipri in the last episode about raising the Tharha Mahal and

about, you know, that ultimate political flex, the peacock throne, and how he sort of throws himself into the construction of all of these things. And how Jahanara, his daughter, takes a really pivotal role in being the glue that makes sure that the family doesn't fragment in the absence of the matriarch and the grief of the father. But I did sort of allude to the fact that we were in for some turbulence because all of these very solid structures were going up. But succession is a very tricky thing. It isn't just an HBO series. It is a tricky thing, especially when you introduce it to the Mughal period. And we are here to talk about the man you've written about Dara Shuka, who we talked a lot about Jahanara, but not so much about his eldest son.

Just tell us, I mean, a little bit about him. Well, Dark Shoko was a Mughal prince. And we hear of the Mughal princes who become emperors, you know, quite naturally. But there were many Mughal princes who thought that they ought to be emperors, or rather than, you know, and we hear of the Mughal princes. they fought for the throne. And Dara Shuku, it's considered to be sort of an exception because the stereotype about him is that he was this prince in an ivory tower who was too naive, too mystical, too sort of interested in spending time with Sufis and chatting with sort of Hindu sages to actually really sort of be suited for the throne.

Nicola Manucci, who we slag him off terribly in the last episode about the reliability. of some of his history. But he wrote about Prince Dara as if he had a crush. So can I just read a little bit of what he has to say. And as you say, sort of many people dwell on his beauty and his, sort of, you know, that he lives in a higher plane than most of us. But this is what Manucci writes about him. Prince Dara was a man of dignified manners, of comely countenance, polite in conversation, ready and gracious of speech, of extraordinary liberality, kindly, compassionate, but overconfident, in his opinion of himself, considering himself, in all things and having no need of advisors. Indeed, he despised those who gave him counsel.

Now, since we poured a whole bucket of sick over some of Manucci's thoughts and musings in the last episode, how much can we rely on his pen portrait of this man? Manucci was writing for, I think, a European audience. And of course, he wanted to tell a good story and an engaging story. He wanted to show that he had access to the Mughal court in a manner that was, I think, fairly exaggerated. So of course, one ought to, if not be suspicious, at least contextualize the sorts of stories that Manucci told. But I mean, is it right that he despised advises? I mean, is that something that is based on anything other than Manucci writing a story? So when Manucci was actually in Mughal India, in the 1650s, this is sort of coming off a period

when Darashuko is already, he's sort of established himself, his father is old, and he really is almost like the core ruler alongside his father who trusts him immensely cherishes him, gives him a prominent place in court. So it isn't surprising that Dara Shoko indeed would think of himself so highly, or at least give that impression to Manucci because he's had that power. He hasn't had to fight for it. He hasn't had to push against his father and rebel, like a lot of princes who later successfully become emperors. So he has access to his father court, he is able to host a whole range of figures. So you'd actually go along with Manucci in many ways.

You think he was a bit overconfident and that portrait is not in itself in Ankara? As a historian, I'm sort of a little wary of thinking that I know the personalities of historical figures like Darashoko, you know, sort of really well and really closely. And part of this is, of course, you know, that in the colonial period, there was this fascination with the personalities of Mughal emperors. they were supposed to have certain personality traits, and then these personality traits defined a whole age. And then it, you know, it came to be that you just utter the name of someone like Dara Shoko or Rang Zheb or Akbar, and you think that you know them. And their names become metonyms

for just, you know, a whole range of sort of qualities that then sort of become inextricably glued to them. And of course, people are complex. They change over time. And what we have about Dara Shoko is not his inner thoughts directly, but we have a kaleidoscope of representations, how he presented himself to the world, how other people portrayed him, whether it's European writers, whether it's sort of contemporaneous writers and so on. So I think that might capture a bit of it, but it's more complex. On perception, let's just do the thing that I do, which is the absolutely shallow and completely aesthetic. I mean, he's a looker. He's certainly, you know, miniatures do him, they do him no harm at all. I mean, he looks like a sort of more handsome version of his dad,

frankly, you've got that sort of aquiline nose, you know, those almond eyes, they're heavily fringed with thick eyelashes, you know, he's a beauty in miniature. You have never ever said that before about any of the figures we've left out of the reason. Honestly, I've got the reputation for being... A new side of your character coming out here. They have given me the reputation for being boy mad and now I'm embracing it. I don't fight it anymore. I just embrace it. But, I mean, this sort of the beauty of the man in the court, was it something that people commented on at the time, or are these just miniaturists and court artists trying to flatter a man who has or may have all the power in the future? Well, there certainly were a lot of paintings of Darashiko, lots and

lots. There are just many of them, they've survived. So we really have sort of this most profuse efflorescence of paintings that are coming out of Shah Jahan's court and, you know, Darashuko is clearly an important patron. And we have paintings of Darashiko where he's clearly a youth. He doesn't have a beard yet. And he has these finely chiseled features. He has a sort of this luminous look in his eyes. And I think the idea is to portray someone who is young but destined for great spiritual prowess, as well as, you know, perhaps sort of worldly success. So you have him sort of looking most earnestly at a spiritual teacher and, you know, the whole series of paintings. And then as he grows older, yes, you see him portrait with a beard, much like his father and his

brother Orang Saab. They all look sort of similar. Was he like his dad in his regard for astrology? We talked about, you know, his father, Shahjah, pausing at the gates of Agra for 12 days until all the planets are aligned and it's an auspicious time for him to actually enter and do what is inevitable, which is claim power. It's his son, Darashuka, exactly like that or different? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, we want to regard Shahjah's interest in astrology, not as a kind of quirk of his character or, you know, an eccentricity. This was an age where astrology was science. And in the West too. And in the West as well, you know, I mean, you have figures like John D and, you know, sort of all of these other people. Dr. D in London. Yes. The man who comes up with the word

British Empire, apparently. Absolutely. So this was an age where the world wasn't entirely known, and that was okay. The aim wasn't to sort of to know every single bit of the world, but to sort of learn how to manipulate and master some of these unseen elements, elements that are seen that were considered to be very deeply interconnected. In your wonderful book, you very much have two sides of Dara on show. On one hand, he's a court, and Europe pains to show that he is very much an active player, along with his sister, Jahanara and his father, and the three of them in many ways are triumbrate.

But you also have this other side of him, which is the really intriguing side for so many of us who are interested in him. This Sufi side, where he is going up to Kashmir, hanging out with ascetics, both Hindu and Muslim, and where he is trying to find commonalities between the spiritual paths of the various different traditions. In our eyes, particularly, strikingly, the fact that it is both Hindu and Muslim, two paths which have diverged so dramatically in the 20th century, in which in some ways you can go back to Darashuka is the point where the fork in the road begins or where the divergence begins at the end of his life. Tell us about his spiritual life and about his searchings, and particularly the thing

which I didn't know until I read your book about his interest in yogic breathing of all things. Now, that wasn't entirely unusual. Muslim scholars have been interested in yoga and tantra and like sort of even like tantric spells and all kinds of things like forever for a very long time. You find references to these, like hidden in the pages of Arabic books by religious scholars, whom today you wouldn't really imagine would be interested in these things, but there were. So Darashuka wasn't completely unique in his interest, but he certainly was unusual in the depth to which he pursued them. And he was actually introduced to the Qadari Sufi order, which wasn't the usual kind of Sufi order that the Mughal's patronate. Could you explain what that means, a Qadri Sufi order?

It was a Sufi order that attributed its founding to the famous sort of Sufi from Baghdad, Abdul Qadir Jilani, and it had a branch of its followers and lineages in India. There was another Sufi lineage, the Chishti lineage, that was very prominent throughout North India and the Deccan as well. And Akbar and Jihangir were great patrons of that particular Sufi order. And for Darushu could do something a little different that followed what his ancestors. as did, and it referenced that. It followed the same pattern, but it still showed him to be carving his own path and his own right. He cultivated ties with the Qadari order, and it was his father who introduced him to this Qadari Sufi known as Mia Mir or sometimes Mia Jee. Jee is like a kind of respectful term, and he was living in Lahore at the time, and Dara Shuko had been

newly married, had recently lost his firstborn child, was quite stricken with grief, and He also fell ill. And his father introduced him to the Sufi, who actually, in Darushiko's account, cured him. Of grief. Well, cured him of physical illness that might have been connected with his grief. Yes. Oh, I see. That certainly that occurred in the aftermath of his grief.

And this was a Sufi who wasn't necessarily very kind to figures of authority. Yes, quite abrupt in your telling of the story. Yes, very abrupt. So for Sufis, it was very difficult to tread this line. between being spiritually independent, because that's how people respected them, and that's how they got their spiritual authority, and also having relations with people in power, because Sufis always have had that. It's a difficult relationship to cultivate. So we see in Dharashoko's story, we also see a story of these fiercely independent Sufis who are increasingly getting closer and closer to this orbit of imperial power. I'm sort of listening to you and thinking, I know this is going to, particularly the yogic breathing, which for those of you who aren't hipsters in North London and aren't actually people who do yoga, is the practice of putting, you know, sort of a finger on one nostril and breathing in and then two fingers on the other side and breathing out and maybe with a mantra involved in this. I can't think that the mullahs would like this very much at all.

Strict Islamic scholars. I mean, did they have anything to say about it or if, you know, the son of the emperor wants to do it, it's fine by us. Well, you know, I think we might have a modern idea of what went on in Mughal courts if you've watched Jodha Akbar. Have you ever seen that? Yeah, so the Bollywood movie, lavish Bollywood movie for those who don't indulge. With Ritik, Russian and Ashwari Rai. Yes, so it's certainly very pretty. But then you have these sort of spinning Sufi dances that are sort of like, you know, what you'd see in Istanbul today. And then you have these religious scholars who are very strict, and they're always berating Akbar,

and they're wearing these sort of dark cloaks and conniving and complaining. Looking like Iranian mullahs. Yeah. And that really isn't sort of quite what happened in these times. The ulama were not the strictly defined class that we have later on, say, in the 19th century. A Muslim scholar of the religious sciences could also, you know, wear many hats. I mean, he could be a general. He could be someone who's managing the imperial household.

He was almost certainly inducted into a Sufi order because Sufism was really the default form of religiosity in this period. And there were many people who wrote all kinds of learned treatises on sort of religious topics, but they were also interested in what we might consider to be the occult or astrology, you know, again, because that was part of the whole system of learning in those days. Understanding the world, exactly. Absolutely. So things were more complex than that. but it doesn't mean that they weren't disagreements. You put in your own book, though, Sopria, a verse of Dara's, which I'd like to read out, Paradise is where no mullahs are found, where there is no bickering and clamour from the mullahs.

May the world be free of the mullah's noise. May no one care about their fatwas. In the city where a mullah has his home, there isn't a wise man to be found. Don't gaze upon the mullah's face. Don't go where there is no madness for love. That does imply that there is an opposition there between the lovers who are the Sufis. So I thought there might be a little friction because that just suddenly sounds like friction. And there's one other lovely verse which is from the previous biography, which I'd love to read too, which again is associated with Dara.

Thou art in the Karba at Mecca as well as in the Hindu temple of Somnath. Thou art in the monastery as well as at the tavern. though art at the same time the light and the moth, the wine and the cup, the sage and the fool, the friend and the stranger, the rose and the nightingale. So there was certainly opposition, and there was opposition not just to Dharashako, but opposition to things that certain Sufis who were perhaps more ecstatic in their expressions of religiosity said. So Mullah Shah, who was the successor of Darashiko's first spiritual teacher, Miamir. Mullah Shah was originally from Central Asia, from Badakhshan, and he lived in Kashmir,

and after Darashiko convinced him to take him on as his disciple, he and Jahanara would always visit him, and Shah Jha had also a very close relationship with him. So Mullah Shah had certain ecstatic utterances about the Prophet Muhammad, you know, about how he was hand in hand with the Prophet and so on. that were considered to be very disrespectful by certain religious scholars in Shah Jahar's court. And Mia Amir was deeply concerned about this, and he actually asked Shahjah to help. And it looks like Darashuku also urged Shahjah to intervene. And finally, you know, whatever sort of threat or punishment was in the making for Molasha that was averted.

So definitely there were differences in opinion among these. religious scholars, many of whom were also Sufis. There were tensions. And another thing is that Sufi poetry often uses these conventions of contrasting very strict-minded scholars who are only concerned about the externals of religion with those who are more interested or more focused on a sort of internal, esoteric spiritual quest. So we see these tropes in Dara's writings as well, and they may indeed have reflected tensions that were already taking place. And, Sopri, one of the things that distinguishes Dara is that he has this intuition that Islam and Hinduism are not separate religions, that the Panishads could even be the secret

books referred to in the Quran. Tell us about that whole idea, because that's something which is far from Orthodox. So to properly understand this, we need to look at these two very famous figures whom Daru Shoko isn't directly saying he wants to emulate, but who really are his models. And one of them is his great-grandfather Akbar. Darish-Shoku doesn't say that he wants to be like Akbar, but really what he's doing is he's trying to rule the way Akbar ruled in the second half of his reign after he'd consolidated his empire, and he was sort of getting all of these Sanskrit texts translated into Persian and all of that and holding into religious dialogue.

So Darushuk was wanting to do what Akbar did before he actually became emperor. So there was an established model for that. So it wasn't only his personal intuition. He was following the model of Akbar. Didn't quite say that, you know, Islam and Hinduism are the same. But what Akbar was trying to do

was to point at a universal truth that it was at the core of different religious traditions and that Akbar, being the spiritually enlightened ember, had access to that truth. He had this like perfect understanding. So he could guide his subjects. He could cure the dissension and conflict that existed between people of different religions because he understood this universal truth that was at the core of all of these religions. And in a sense, that's what Dara Shoko is trying to achieve. But for Dara Shoko to understand this,

he first starts by seeking out spiritual teachers for Sufis and then he has dialogues with Hindu sages. So he sort of branches out even more and sort of gets interested in perhaps, you know, yoga and so on. And then he clearly is studying a whole range of texts. So he's figuring out what he thinks is this core truth of which Islamic concepts and Hindu concepts are just different expressions. And then he moves even further. He actually finds what he thinks is this text that is going to unlock all of these deep spiritual mysteries. And the implication is, you know, when he's actually found and understood this text and translated it with this group of Sanskrit bundits, you know, these religious scholars from Benares, that the idea is once he's understood this, he really doesn't need to go to gurus and spiritual teachers anymore. He's actually found the source and he's put it between the covers of a book.

The mingling of two oceans. You can see why he's beloved of people who, you know, their mantra is, why can't we just get along? Because it's basically the core philosophy that he lives by. We've spoken about him and Jahanara, and it seems as if they have a fairly good relationship. They do things together, their father loves them both. We haven't talked about the sibling, Orang Zeb. Now, just tell us a little bit how they contrast. And maybe just tell us about the differing attitudes to the elephant fight between these two brothers.

So the elephant fight is one episode that is quite well known because there are a lot of leader writers who've made much of this elephant fights. And some gorgeous pictures, aren't there, in the Padshanama and so on? There are these gorgeous pictures in the Pachanama. So this was, you know, after Shahjah becomes emperor, and as sort of he and his sons like to do, they were watching these two maddened elephants engaged in this fierce and vicious fight and there was sort of their trunks were knotted and so they were sort of writhing like serpents and, you know, all was, you know, going very well.

until one of the elephants actually started charging, and these young princes and the emperor were all nearby on horseback. And what happened was that Tarushu go, well, he may not have been near the elephant. But the one who actually drove his spear several inches deep into the elephant's head was Orangsepe. Who showed great bravery by charging the charging elephant? Yes, he showed great bravery. It actually didn't really serve to resolve the situation because things were still very. chaotic. There were people throwing fireworks at the elephants to try to distract them. Because that notoriously helps in a tricky situation. Yes. What actually happened was, you know, finally the other

elephant then resumed the fight and then distracted the offending elephant from sort of attacking the crowd. Supriya, while Orangzeb is bravely attacking the charging elephant and saving his father and rest of his family. Dara seems to be hanging back. And there's even some suggestion that he's allowing the unhorsed Orang Zeb to suffer for his fate. Is that the implication of the story? That's the implication that later commentators have applied to the story. In the poems of the time, again, we have this great poet, Kaleem Koshani, who praises Orangzeb, but he doesn't say nasty things about Dara. He says that that Orang Zab, who isn't really even of age, shows sort of this most amazing maturity and that, you know, when he plunged his spear into

the elephant, all the elephant's sort of madness sort of just came gushing out and left him. So he certainly this was a way to elevate Orangzeb, but it was later on used as a way to attack Thara. Right, attack him as a coward, whereas Orangzeb is the man of action. I think we need to come back after the break and examine Orangzeb a bit more. So do join us. Welcome back. So just before the break, Supriya was telling us about how an interpretant at the time and thereafter has coloured people's view of these two brothers, Orangzeb and Dara Shoko. And we should talk about Prince Orangzeb now because he was. I mean, this isn't just people who come later sort of imposing thoughts and images on people.

Orang Zab was different. He was a different kind of character. As you did so beautifully with Dara Shoko, tell us a little bit about this young man who's three years younger than Dara that has a huge ambition, even at a huge ambition, even at a young age. And who we should say is today, possibly the most controversial person in Indian history. He's regarded by the current government and frequently mentioned in speeches, although he's 300 years ago, as the kind of symbol of Islamic authoritarianism and bigotry and Puritanism. He's a person in daily political discourse in India today. What's your vision of him, So, Prera? My vision of him in this book is really sort of confined to his young,

years, and then of course the war of succession that, you know, we're probably going to talk about later, perhaps in another episode. But I'll tell you a few things, a few reports about Orang Zib when he was young. One interesting thing to keep in mind that not a lot of people know about is that when he and Darashoko were both quite young, they spent several years with their parents on the run from their grandfather Jahangir's forces. And this is because their father was rebelling against their grandfather. And it was a rebellion that didn't necessarily have an inevitably successful outcome. They spent years sort of, again, trudging through muddy rivers and facing defeat and all kinds of misfortune. And then finally, sort of at the very depths of this, a whole experience,

Shahjah was forced to send his two sons as hostages to his father's court. They went there, and I imagine it must have been quite a terrifying time. They had this crucial experience as hostages together that for them had a happy ending, and the unhappy ending of the whole story for a lot of these young Mughal princes was that Shahjah had them killed before he came to the throne.

He ruthlessly got rid of all opposition. And of course, that could have been their fate. And fortunately for them, it wasn't. Sent off to Guali or to be fed poppy water or whatever the terrible ways of assassinating princes he chose. So despite going through this difficulty together, there certainly does seem to have been a rivalry. And, you know, that's a rivalry that was fairly common among Mughal princes, because they all sort of knew that they would have to fight each other for the throne whenever,

you know, the question of succession arose, which it didn't for a long time. There's, of course, this elephant fight. There's another little anecdote from Shahjah's years of rebellion that's perhaps fairly telling. It's an account that's written by a provincial noble called Shetab Khan, and he makes himself out to be very close to Shah Jahar during his years of rebellion and all that. And, you know, maybe he's exaggerating. But he tells this anecdote about how Shahjah has reaped some initial successes in eastern India, you know, when he's rebelling against his father. And one of the things that he did was to find these very special bananas from Martaban, you know, which is this place in Burma. And he distributes these bananas. amongst his nobles. And then the share of the author of this account is missing. And then it was discovered that little Orangzeeb had gobbled them up. And apparently Shah Jah was very angry with him.

I'm sure your boys wouldn't do anything of the sort, both Supri and Anita. Both these ladies have banana eating children. Yes, I mean, if I can get them to eat a banana, it's a win. But with Manucci, who we described in the first half as having something of a crush on Dara Shuko, the way he wrote about him, except he said he was a bit arrogant. Everything else was lovely, dreamy, in fact. But when he talks about Oringsoe, I'll just read you what he says about him, although Orangzeb was held to be bold and valiant. He was capable of great dissimulation and hypocrisy.

Pretending to be an ascetic, he slept while in the field on a mat of straw that he had himself woven. He ate food that cost little and let it be known that he underwent severe penances and fasting all the same under cover of these pretences. He led, in secret, a jolly life. His intercourse was with certain holy men. addicted to sorcery who instructed him on how to bring over to his side as many friends as he could with witchcraft and soft speeches. He was so subtle as to deceive even the quickest witted people. I mean, it's not the eulogy that we had for Dara, is it? I mean, this is a man who is disliked

by Manucci. And I mean, how is he sort of regarded in the court as a whole? This is a traveler who's got his own agenda and is writing his own staff. But what about in the court? Was he popular? Was he more popular than Dara? I mean, how did they fare? Well, he was popular in some ways and unpopular in other ways. When Orang Zab was a prince, he was given all of these quite challenging postings, you know, made governor of this or that province, away from the court. So he had some relative independence, but his father was controlling all of his actions. You paint in your book a picture of Shah Jahan being quite rough with him in his letters. He's always asking him to send him fruit or pomegranates, and there's never any sort of gratitude expressed.

He's always sending sort of grumpy orders. Well, Dara gets to sit at court, you know, amid the fluttering pigeons and the kind of dancing girls and hang out, well, poor Oroxem is trucking over mountains in the deck of chasing rebels. Yeah, as a teenager. I mean, he's a young teen when he's being sort of flogged around the kingdom. Do you go on, yes. Go on, Sopria. Yes, which actually turns out to have been rather good for him.

Because while his father was micromanaging his, like, every action and, you know, nothing he was ever good enough, Orang Zib cultivated fairly good relationships with his men. So he was always trying to get extra money to pay them good incomes and make sure that they were happy. He became quite good at managing people. He was, and he was very sort of canny. So for instance, if Shahjaha and Dharashoko had a problem with a certain Rajput, noble, like, you know, for instance, with Rana Raj Singh, he was building a fortification, which was a little alarming for the imperial court. And Shahjah would try to send people to try to coerce the Rajput to sort of tone things down a little bit.

And then Orangze would seize that opportunity and send him lavish gifts with envoys and, you know, write him nice letters and all of that. So he was using every opportunity to cultivate his network and have good relations with a range of nobles, regardless of religious affiliation. a shadow state. That's interesting. But why do you think his father disliked him? Because his father sort of, you know, when he nearly takes Kandahar, he lifts the siege. When he asked to go back and have a second run at it, the emperor just replies something that has been tested, did not be tested again. He seems to have irritated his father. And his father seems to have showered all his love on Jahanara and Dara Shuko. There certainly are a few things that he does that seem to have annoyed his father. He has his governorship stripped at a certain point. You know, so he's been

serving in the Deccan, and, you know, Jahanaras just had this, like, awful accident where she's burned and, you know, Shah Jah is very perturbed and so on. And then, you know, I'm just going to read what one of Shahjah's court historian says. Owing to the company of some rotten-minded ignoramus and short-sighted fools, Prince Orang Zab Bahadur decided to withdraw. To be able to, decide to withdraw his hand from matters of state and retire from the world. That was not what his dad was after at all. No, that's not what his dad was after, but, you know, he made this threat, no doubt, because he was unhappy with something that his dad was making him do.

You know, there certainly was a falling out, and there were many such fallings out. But what happened to Jahanara that she got so badly burned? How did that happen? That sounds like a story. Well, it was an accident with candles and her, you know, clothes were doused in this sort of rose perfume. Her grandmother had invented this fancy itter and it had become fashionable to cover your clothes with this scented oil and it just took light. It just made it very flammable. But does this bring the brothers together? Did they both love her enough to get over themselves and get on a

bit better? Well, she certainly tried, even from her sick bed, you know, she tried to mend relationships. And that's a theme that we're going to see throughout. You know, she's always trying to bring the brothers together. There's one point when Darashuko is governor of Lahore, and that's a posting that he actually sort of enjoys, and he's sort of doing quite well over there. And Orang Zab goes through the city. He's very insulted because Darashoko's representative sort of is mounted on a horse and sort of sees him and just turns away. You know, he ignores him. He doesn't really give him the respect that's due to Prince, and he thinks that, you know, Darashoka must be behind this insolent act. Gosh, you know, they're so petty. They're so powerful, but they're really quite petty in many ways, aren't they, these boys?

But in their defence, if you're brought up knowing that the huge probability is that you're going to have to kill or be killed by your brothers, which is also the case in the Ottoman world, then you're not going to grow up or palate you. True. But then also, Jahanara, perhaps in response to this, makes sure that Orangzeb meets Thara. And he even mentions that he met him and he had a nice time. with him. And he even mentions that, well, you know, because it was the time of Maharam, the 10th day of Maharam, which is, you know, where Shia Muslims typically mourn, but it's a very somber occasion for all, that they didn't listen to music, otherwise they would have. So it sort of implies that, you know, Orang's they love music and listening to music. And had it not been that very somber time of year, they might even have enjoyed a musical evening together. I mean, it is very like succession, isn't it? It's the same thing of a family, any of whom could say,

succeed to their father's enormous wealth and power, who either have to make alliances with each other against a third member or fight it out one to one with any of them. And they all know they can't all win. Which makes Jihana are so special because she still has this utopian idea of why can't we just all have a hug? Hug it out. Hug it out, everybody. Let's talk about 1657, because this is the year of crisis for this family. And this is interesting because we've got Shahjah on decline since the death of his wife, but he goes into a steep decline in this year. What is that due to? So I did something that, you know, I think some historians might disapprove off. So I, you know, took a look at the symptoms that the court historians describe. And I showed that to a physician here at Yale,

who then said that what Sharjahar probably had was a kind of like bacterial prostate infection, the sort of thing that perhaps would be easily cured with modern antibiotics, which was perhaps quite serious at that time. I remember my dad getting that towards the end, urine infections. Even today it could be quite serious with old people. But in the age before antibiotics, it's absolutely fatal. So what else did the Yale people say? What causes that condition?

Is it just merely an infection, as we'd have today? We looked into what condition the symptoms might have referred to and there seemed to be a very strong possibility. What I think Anita is alluding to is the suggestion of Manucci that he's been taking too many Aphrodisiacs. Let me say what Manucci says. That has really got on my nerves in the research of this. I'll tell you, because his stuff has just sort of carried so far and wide.

But Manucci says that it's, you know, Shah Jahan's sexual appetite is out of control in his 60s and that, you know, he's taking these large quantities of Aphrodisiacs, which, you know, he takes in such huge quantities that they end up poisoning him. And that's why you have the crisis of 1650. So is this Manucci being Manucci again with absolutely no basis in pretending to know more than he knows? Probably. I mean, you know, to be hard to find that in other accounts. And Manucci, of course, had to entertain his readers and provide them with salacious stories about Mogul Harums and, you know, what went on in them.

So, I mean, he has this terrible condition. Is he an agony? Who is around him? Who is treating him? What's going on around his bedside? So he is in agony. and it's a difficult moment because there's this idea that the health of the body of the emperor reflects the health of the kingdom.

You know, there's this Golanic idea of the humors being in balance. So if the emperor's humors are not in balance, then it actually puts the entire kingdom into crisis because the stability of the kingdom depends on there being a stable ruler and a sovereign. But in the meantime, the whole of Delhi shuts up shop. Everyone thinks in Agra that the end is about to come. Everyone knows what a succession crisis means. It means civil war breaking out. Well, I love this idea of shopkeepers burying their money just in case.

It all goes terribly wrong and they have to dig it up afterwards. Yes. And Barashoko then tries to take tight control of the intelligence and information that is leaking out and so on. So the difficulty is that the other princes are all scattered. Shujah is in Bengal, where he is governor, so that's in the northeast. Murad Bachsh is in Gujarat, where he's governor. We haven't even talked about these two brothers, but these are the other two brothers who are in the line.

And then Orangzeb is also kind of relatively close to Murad in the south and the Deccan. So we have this potential for wars on multiple fronts, should each brother, other stake a claim to the throne. But the king ain't dead yet. I'll tell you what, let's leave it there. Join us next time when we continue this conversation with Supriya. What happens with this scramble over the not even dead body of the emperor, Shahjahar? And if you can't wait to hear that episode, you can get early access. Of course, as always by signing up to the Empire Club at EmpirePod UK.com. That's EmpirePoduk.com. And you'll get bonuses and you'll get early access to tickets and you'll get our weekly newsletter. For now, though, and until we next meet us, goodbye from me, Anita Arnins.

And goodbye from me, William Trimple.