Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World (57 page)

Dragging his mind back to the present, Salim continued his address. ‘I have chosen a new name by which I wish to be known as your emperor. It is Jahangir, ‘Seizer of the World’. I have taken it because the business of kings is seizing their destiny and controlling the world. My father has left me a mighty empire. With your help, my loyal subjects, I pledge to make it mightier still.’

He rose to his feet and spread his arms, as if taking every man in the room into his embrace. All around the pillared hall rose cries of ‘Long life to Jahangir!’ Such sweet music to his ears.

‘Leave me,’ Jahangir ordered his treasurer and the attendants who had accompanied him down the long flight of stone steps to the iron-bound wooden door leading into the treasure chamber concealed beneath one of the stables in the Agra fort.

‘Are you sure, Majesty? It is very dark inside the chamber until the lamps are lit and the ground is dank and slippery.’

‘Give me your key and leave me a torch, but I wish to be alone here.’

The treasurer handed over an intricate iron key on a leather thong while a servant passed Jahangir his burning torch of rags dipped in oil. Jahangir waited until the footsteps had receded back up the staircase and he was indeed alone in this dank, earthy-smelling place. He could still scarcely believe the extent of his wealth. The lists of imperial jewels that his treasurer had prepared for him amounted to nearly three hundred and fifty pounds in weight of diamonds, pearls, rubies and emeralds alone. ‘Over six hundred and twenty-five thousand carats of the most precious gems, Majesty,’ the man had pointed out, running his practised finger down the columns, ‘and semi-precious gems too numerous to count, never mind all the gold and silver coin.’

It was childish of him, but Jahangir had hardly been able to contain his eagerness to visit one of his treasure houses. He turned the key in the solid, well-oiled lock, pushed the heavy wooden door open and, holding the torch high in his left hand, peered inside.

The chamber was very dark but as Jahangir entered something glimmered in the purple shadows. He held the torch yet higher and on the wall to the left of the door noticed a double row of arched niches where oil lamps had been placed. He lit the lamps from the torch, thrust the torch in a sconce, then looked around him. The chamber was larger than he’d anticipated – some thirty feet long – and the ceiling was supported by two handsome carved sandstone pillars in the middle.

But what caught his attention were four giant domed caskets on trestles against the back wall. Advancing slowly, he opened the lid of the first to find a mound of blood-red rubies as big as duck eggs. He took a handful and stared at them. How magnificent they were – the queen of gems. For a moment, he saw Mehrunissa’s face as she had dropped her veil. Rubies would suit her and now he was emperor he could give jewels to whoever he chose . . . indeed choose anyone for his wife . . . Tipping them back in, he closed the lid and moved on. The next box contained dark green emeralds in all shapes and sizes, some cut, some uncut. The third box held sapphires and diamonds from the world’s only mine in Golconda in the Deccan, while the fourth was filled with loose pearls. Plunging in his arms up to his elbows, Jahangir felt their lustrous coolness against his skin.

To the right of the trestles, Jahangir saw open sacks of corals, topazes, turquoises, amethysts and other semi-precious stones heaped casually on the ground. Even just these would be enough to finance an army for a year . . . Suddenly he was laughing aloud. This treasure house held just a tiny fraction of his wealth – it was nothing compared with those in Delhi or Lahore, the treasurer had assured him. Still laughing, Jahangir seized a sack and tipped its contents on the floor, then another, then another, mingling the different coloured gems promiscuously. Then when he had accumulated a great pile he flung himself down on them, rolling from side to side. He was emperor now. A Hindu sage had written that nothing was more disappointing than achieving your heart’s desire. Well, he was wrong. Jahangir flung a fistful of gems into the air and watched them flash like fireflies in the lamplight.

An hour later, Jahangir emerged blinking into the bright April sunlight, still as light-headed as if he’d been drinking wine or taking opium, but the sight of Suleiman Beg’s anxious face drove all frivolous feelings from him.

‘What is it?’

‘Treason, Majesty.’

‘What do you mean? Who would dare . . .?’

‘Your eldest son. As you know, three days ago Prince Khusrau rode out of the Agra fort.’

‘I know. He told me he was going to spend some time at Sikandra superintending the construction of my father’s tomb. I gave him instructions for the builders.’

‘He was lying. He never meant to go to Sikandra. He’s riding north for Lahore, rendezvousing with his supporters as he goes and bribing new ones to join him. He must have planned this weeks ago. Aziz Koka is with him. The reason I know all this is that Aziz Koka tried to induce your brother-in-law Man Singh to join the rebels but he had the sense to refuse and to bring me word of the plot.’

Jahangir was barely listening as his mind raced. ‘We can overtake them. Have a detachment of my fastest cavalry prepared. I myself will lead them. I have waited so long for what is mine that I’ll let nobody seize it from me. Those who defy me will pay in blood, whoever they are . . .’

W
hen people talk about ‘the Great Moghul’ it’s usually Akbar they mean. He was the first Moghul emperor to be born in Hindustan. During his long and successful reign he created an empire of almost unimaginable opulence which covered two-thirds of the Indian sub-continent and had a hundred million ethnically and religiously diverse subjects. By the end of his reign he had almost trebled the size of the empire bequeathed to him by his father Humayun.

Modesty was seldom a Moghul trait and to ensure future generations appreciated his achievements Akbar employed court chroniclers. Of their works, Abul Fazl’s
Akbarnama
and
Ain-i-Akbari
– together amounting to nearly four thousand pages in English translation – are outstanding sources for Akbar’s reign. Despite his florid style and hagiographic language, Abul Fazl conveys Akbar’s charisma and the glamour of his court. He is also meticulous, telling us not only how the emperor defeated his enemies and administered his empire but also the price the court paid for everyday commodities and the detailed arrangements for cooking, for food tasting and for the
haram
. After Abul Fazl’s murder in 1602, Asad Beg, who had assisted him, took over and documented the final years of Akbar’s life in his
Wikaya
. Badauni, one of Akbar’s critics, also described the emperor and his court in
Muntakhab al-Tawarikh
, written in secret towards the end of Akbar’s life.

Akbar’s reign was also the time when growing numbers of Europeans – merchants, priests and soldiers of fortune – began making their way to the Moghul court. Father Antonio Monserrate was one of the first Jesuits to visit Akbar’s court and his
Commentary on his Journey to the Court of Akbar
describes the religious debates in Akbar’s
ibadat khana
. In 1584, Ralph Fitch was among the first English merchants to reach Hindustan and he describes the wonders of Agra and Fatehpur Sikri in his
Memoirs
.

Vivid and personal as many of these accounts are, I also wanted to visit – actually in most cases revisit – the places that were important to Akbar. In Delhi I sat in the walled garden and watched the sun set behind the domed sandstone and marble tomb Akbar built for his father Humayun, with its elegant symmetry and chamfered corners such an obvious forerunner to the luminous Taj Mahal. In Agra, I walked in burning heat up the steep, twisting ramp through gates studded with spikes to repel charges by armoured elephants into the sandstone fortress remodelled by Akbar. It is still encircled by the battlements around which he ran with a man clenched under each arm to show off his strength. Standing on a
jharoka
balcony I imagined how Akbar must have felt as he showed himself every dawn to the subjects clustering on the sandy riverbanks below.

Perhaps the greatest pointer to the boundless scope of Akbar’s ambition and confidence is the sandstone city of Fatehpur Sikri near Agra, built and then abandoned by Akbar a few years later. Wander its courtyards, palaces and pavilions and you’re surprised not to see ghosts. Bright blue tiles from Isfahan still glitter on the roof of Akbar’s immense
haram
above the palace of the winds where Akbar’s women sat to catch the cooling breezes. The marble platform where he sat beneath silken canopies is still there in the centre of the
Anup Talao
, Akbar’s ‘Peerless Pool’. The hot, dry desert air has preserved the intricate sandstone carvings while in the courtyard of the mosque people still pray at Shaikh Salim Chishti’s domed white marble tomb inlaid with mother of pearl and tie twists of thread to its delicate
jali
screens as physical expressions of their innermost wishes.

In Rajasthan, the soaring fortress-palaces of Amber and Jodhpur explain Akbar’s eagerness to make the proud and martial Rajputs
his allies, while the ruins of the once great Rajput fortress of Chittorgarh show the consequences of refusing Akbar’s overtures. I climbed up to it from the east – the direction from which Akbar’s armies made their assaults. In a courtyard, a stone marks the place where, knowing that defeat by the Moghuls was inevitable, the Rajput women committed
jauhar
, hurling themselves into the flames of a great fire rather than fall into Moghul hands. It was a reminder that for all his manifold achievements, religious toleration and advanced, sophisticated view of the world, Akbar lived in and was part of a violent time and that while those who accepted Moghul rule prospered, those who resisted were crushed.

As with all the books in the Moghul Quintet, the main military, political and personal events described in
Ruler of the World
all happened. Akbar was indeed crowned on a hastily constructed brick throne after his mother and Bairam Khan concealed the death of his father Humayun to buy time; Adham Khan, Akbar’s milk-brother, did attempt to kill him in the
haram
; Akbar’s defeat of Hemu and his subsequent military campaigns in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bengal, Kashmir, Sind and the Deccan all occurred; Akbar’s many marriages and his hundreds of concubines are also based on fact though the names of some of his wives are unknown. Akbar’s life was so rich in incident that I of course omitted some events and condensed or simplified others as well as compressing timescales in a book which covers a fifty-year period. Also because the chronicles cannot tell us everything – their writers would never have dared reveal certain things – I have used the novelist’s freedom to imagine some incidents and of course to attribute motivation.

However, all the time I have tried to be true to Akbar who, as I wrote the book, became very real to me. I was moved by the dilemma of a man, outwardly so successful and beloved by his subjects, whose relationships with those closest to him often failed. Nearly all the other main characters are real too – Akbar’s mother and aunt Hamida and Gulbadan, his milk-mother Maham Anga and milk-brother Adham Khan, his Persian regent Bairam Khan, his adversaries like Hemu, Shah Daud and Rana Udai Singh, his sons Salim, Murad and Daniyal and the Sufi divine Salim Chishti who
predicted their birth, and his grandsons, the Persian Ghiyas Beg and his family, the Jesuit fathers Antonio Monserrate and Francisco Henriquez and the mullahs Shaikh Mubarak and Shaikh Ahmad. A few like Ahmed Khan, Akbar’s
khan-i-khanan
, and Salim’s confidant Suleiman Beg are composite characters.

Frontispiece

The quotation from the
Akbarnama
comes from H. Beveridge’s translation (vol. I, p.631, Calcutta: Asiatic Society 1907-39)

Chapter 1

Akbar’s illiteracy is well attested. He may have been dyslexic.

Humayun died in January 1556. Akbar, who was born on 15 October 1542, was proclaimed emperor on his brick throne in February 1556.

Timur, a chieftain of the nomadic Barlas Turks, is better known in the west as Tamburlaine, a corruption of ‘Timur the Lame’. Christopher Marlowe’s play portrays him as ‘the scourge of God’.

Of course Akbar would have used the Muslim lunar calendar, but I have converted dates into the conventional solar, Christian, calendar we use in the west.

Chapter 2

The battle of Panipat against Hemu took place in November 1556.

Chapter 3

Bairam Khan was dismissed in 1560.

Chapter 4

Bairam Khan was killed in early 1561.

Chapter 5

Adham Khan killed Atga Khan and attempted to kill Akbar in May 1562. Maham Anga died soon afterwards, it is said from grief. Akbar provided the money for a handsome tomb for them. It still stands at Mehrauli, south of Delhi near the Qtab Minar.

Chapter 7