Aurangzeb

• 1. Introduction

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  Aurangzeb, born on the 3rd of November 1618 in Dahod, ruled the Mughal Empire for nearly half a century and died still fighting at the age of 88. Under his watch, the empire reached its greatest territorial extent, stretching across nearly the entire Indian subcontinent. He commanded armies that surpassed Qing China as the world's largest economy. His treasury raised a record £100 million in annual revenue from 24 provinces. Yet the man who presided over this peak left an empire in fracture, and his name remains one of the most contested in South Asian history. Was he a ruthless zealot who shattered the pluralism of his ancestors, or a complex ruler whose policies resist simple labels? The answers lie in a life that spanned eight decades, four governorships, a fratricidal succession war, and decades of grinding conflict across the Deccan.

• 2. The Making of a Commander

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  On the 28th of May 1633, a war elephant named Sudhakar stampeded through the Mughal imperial encampment. Aurangzeb, fourteen years old, rode directly at the beast and threw his spear at its head. He was unhorsed but survived. His father Shah Jahan rewarded him with the title Bahadur, meaning brave, and presented him with the elephant itself along with gifts worth 200,000 rupees. Historians noted that his taunt at his brothers for hanging back was probably unfair; the court scholar Jadunath Sarkar wrote that Dara Shukoh was at some distance and could not have reached the scene before it was over.

  By December 1634, not yet sixteen, Aurangzeb received his first military post with the rank of ten thousand horse and four thousand troopers. He was sent nominally to subdue the rebellious ruler of Orchha, Jhujhar Singh, who had defied Shah Jahan's policy. Aurangzeb stayed in the rear and took counsel from his generals, but the campaign succeeded and Singh was removed. Two years later, in 1636, Shah Jahan dispatched him as viceroy of the Deccan to deal with the alarming expansion of the Nizam Shahi boy-prince Murtaza Shah III and the Ahmednagar sultanate. Aurangzeb ended the Nizam Shahi dynasty that same year. The Deccan's 64 forts came under his charge, with ten more still to be taken.

  At 29, Aurangzeb was sent to Balkh as governor, replacing a younger brother who had proved ineffective. The region was under attack from Uzbek and Turkmen tribes, and his artillery could not neutralise their skirmishing tactics. He discovered his army could not live off the devastated land. One account records that during a battle against the Uzbeks, Aurangzeb dismounted from his elephant to pray, to the open surprise of the opposing commander. By the end of the two-year campaign, a vast sum had been spent for little gain, and Aurangzeb was left with a reputation for tenacity rather than triumph. His two subsequent attempts to retake Kandahar from the Safavids, in 1649 and 1652, both failed as winter closed in.

• 3. The Succession War

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  In September 1657, Shah Jahan publicly nominated his eldest son Dara Shikoh as successor. Dara was an intellectual and religious liberal with little military experience. Aurangzeb, who had spent decades on campaign while Dara remained close to the court, rejected the nomination. There was no Mughal tradition of passing power automatically to the eldest son. Historian Satish Chandra observed that military strength and connections among powerful leaders were the real arbiters.

  Shah Jahan fell ill with a painful condition called strangury in 1657. Rumours spread that he had died. His three other sons moved. Shah Shuja crowned himself king in Bengal and moved his cavalry, artillery, and river flotilla upriver toward Agra. Murad declared himself ruler in Gujarat. Aurangzeb did the same in the Deccan, then negotiated secretly with Murad to combine their forces, promising to partition the empire later. At Dharmat in April 1658, the combined Aurangzeb-Murad army defeated the allied forces of Dara and the Kingdom of Marwar. At the Battle of Samugarh in May 1658, Dara's hastily assembled army was no match for Aurangzeb's battle-hardened force, and Aurangzeb's sovereignty was acknowledged across the empire.

  What followed was systematic elimination. Aurangzeb had Murad arrested and imprisoned at Gwalior Fort. On the 4th of December 1661, Murad was executed, ostensibly for a murder in Gujarat; Aurangzeb had engineered the legal mechanism, causing the victim's son to seek retribution under Sharia principles. Shah Shuja fled to Arakan in present-day Burma, where local rulers executed him. Dara was betrayed by one of his own generals, paraded through Delhi in chains, and on the 10th of August 1659 was executed on charges of apostasy; his severed head was sent to Shah Jahan in his cell at Agra Fort. Shah Jahan lived eight more years under the care of his daughter Jahanara and died in 1666.

• 4. Empire at Its Peak

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  Aurangzeb's full imperial title ran to many lines: Al-Sultan al-Azam wal Khaqan al-Mukarram, Hazrat Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Bahadur Alamgir I, Badshah Ghazi, and more. Alamgir meant Conqueror of the World. The epithet Aurangzeb itself meant Ornament of the Throne. He was also called Caliph of the Merciful, Monarch of Islam, and Living Custodian of God.

  The empire he governed contributed nearly 25% of world GDP, more than all of Western Europe combined, and its annual revenue of $450 million was more than ten times that of his contemporary Louis XIV of France. Aurangzeb's bureaucracy employed significantly more Hindus than those of his predecessors. Between 1679 and 1707, the share of Hindu officials in the Mughal administration rose by half, reaching 31.6%, driven largely by an increased recruitment of Marathas for the Deccan campaign.

  Francois Bernier, who served as Aurangzeb's personal physician, described the textile workshops in detail. Hundreds of embroiderers worked in karkanahs producing silk, fine brocade, and muslins so delicate that Bernier wrote they wore out in a single night. He documented complex weaves including Himru, whose name derives from the Persian word for brocade; Paithani, whose pattern is identical on both sides; and the painted technique called Kalamkari, which had originally come from Persia. Bernier also provided some of the first recorded Western descriptions of Pashmina shawls, noting that these textiles were already finding their way to France and England.

• 5. Faith, Law, and Contested Memory

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  Aurangzeb had memorised the entire Quran, studied hadiths, transcribed copies of the Quran by hand, and was a trained calligrapher in the naskh style, having been instructed by Syed Ali Tabrizi. The demand for Quran manuscripts in the naskh style peaked during his reign. He was a follower of the Mujaddidi Order and a disciple of a son of the Punjabi saint Ahmad Sirhindi.

  In 1679, after a gap of about a hundred years, Aurangzeb reimposed the jizya, a tax on non-Muslim subjects levied in lieu of military service. The tax rate varied by socioeconomic status and was waived in regions struck by calamities. Rajput and Maratha officials, Brahmins, women, children, elders, the handicapped, the unemployed, the ill, and the insane were all permanently exempted. Most modern scholars reject the idea that religious bigotry was the primary motive; economic constraints from multiple ongoing wars and the need to establish credibility with orthodox religious scholars are the explanations most historians now favour. Nonetheless, Hindu merchants paid a 5% tax rate against 2.5% for Muslim merchants, a sharp break from Akbar's uniform code.

  Historian Katherine Brown has argued that the very name Aurangzeb operates as a signifier of repression in the popular imagination, regardless of what the historical record shows. Historian Richard Eaton, examining primary sources carefully, counts 15 temples destroyed during Aurangzeb's reign. Eaton notes that these destructions were associated with political rebellions and the Mughal court's concern with sovereignty and authority, not sweeping theological policy. Firmans survive in Aurangzeb's name providing funds for the Mahakaleshwar temple of Ujjain, a gurudwara at Dehradun, the Balaji temple of Chitrakoot, the Umananda Temple of Guwahati, and the Shatrunjaya Jain temples. Numerous new temples were also built in other parts of the empire during his reign. The 1663 order banning the practice of Sati, under which widows were burned on their husbands' funeral pyres, is credited to Aurangzeb by scholar Sheikh Muhammad Ikram.

• 6. Deccan Quagmire

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  Shivaji, the Maratha leader, killed the Adil Shahi general Afzal Khan in 1659 and transformed his small, ill-equipped force into a formidable military power. Aurangzeb sent his maternal uncle Shaista Khan to recover forts lost to the Marathas. Shaista Khan drove into Maratha territory and took up residence in Pune. In a midnight raid on the governor's palace during a wedding celebration, Shivaji's men killed Shaista Khan's son and Shivaji personally cut off three of Shaista Khan's fingers. Shaista Khan survived and was reassigned to Bengal.

  Aurangzeb then dispatched Raja Jai Singh, who besieged the fort of Purandar and brought Shivaji to terms. Jai Singh persuaded Shivaji to visit the Mughal court at Agra with a personal guarantee of safety. The meeting went badly. Shivaji felt slighted at his reception and insulted Aurangzeb by refusing imperial service. He was detained but managed to escape. In April 1667, Shivaji wrote offering his submission and the induction of his son into Mughal service. Aurangzeb ignored the letter. After Shivaji's death, his son Sambhaji continued the resistance until Aurangzeb's forces captured and executed him in 1689.

  The wars in the Deccan consumed roughly two decades and resolved nothing. Aurangzeb conquered Satara but the Marathas simultaneously expanded eastward into Mughal lands including Malwa and Hyderabad, and south into Tamil Nadu, capturing Jinji. The port city of Surat was sacked twice by the Marathas during his reign. Aurangzeb lost about a fifth of his army fighting Maratha rebellions. He died in the Deccan in 1707, still on campaign, at the age of 88. The Mughal Empire he left behind would fracture quickly, and the Marathas whose resistance he had failed to break would eventually establish control over much of the subcontinent before the arrival of British power.

• 7. Edges of an Empire

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  In September 1695, the English pirate Henry Every captured the Ganj-i-Sawai, reportedly the largest ship in the Muslim fleet, near Surat as it returned from the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Aurangzeb nearly ordered an armed attack on the English-governed city of Bombay. He shut down four East India Company factories, imprisoned their workers and captains, and threatened to end all English trade in India until Every was caught. The Lords Justices of England offered a bounty for Every's capture, triggering what one account describes as the first worldwide manhunt in recorded history. Every escaped. The Company's envoys eventually prostrated themselves before Aurangzeb, agreed to pay a large indemnity, and promised to refrain from such actions again.

  To the north and east, the picture was equally complicated. In 1660, the viceroy of Bengal, Mir Jumla II, pushed into Assam and reached the Ahom capital of Garhgaon on the 17th of March 1662, capturing 82 elephants, 300,000 rupees in cash, 1,000 ships, and 173 stores of rice. On his way back to Dacca in March 1663, Mir Jumla II died. The Ahoms eventually drove the Mughals out at the Battle of Itakhuli in 1682.

  Aurangzeb's foreign correspondence stretched to Ethiopia, Russia, Aceh, and the Maldives. In 1664-65, Ethiopian Emperor Fasilides sent an embassy with gifts including ivory, horses, silver pocket pistols, and a zebra. Russian Czar Peter the Great requested trade relations in the late 17th century; Aurangzeb received his envoy Semyon Malenkiy in 1696, after which Russian merchants spent six years travelling through Surat, Burhanpur, Agra, and Delhi before returning to Moscow. In 1641, the daughter of the Acehnese ruler Iskandar Muda presented Aurangzeb with eight elephants. The empire he governed touched more of the world than almost any ruler of his era, and that reach carried its own weight well after his death.