Aurangzeb's Personality

Hello, My name's Nandhini strategy,

and I'm senior lecturer in history at the University of Exeter,

and I'm going to talk about the last phase of the Mogul empire in India.

So to start off with the man who perhaps defines the period Aurangzeb,

his personality looms over the second half of the 17th century in India.

And that's important because a great deal of historical

significance continues to be attached to his personality traits.

Many historians still feel with differences in interpretation,

that it was this man's religious bigotry, obsessiveness and authoritarianism

that may have

allowed him to singlehandedly bring down the Mogul empire.

But before we start assessing why, indeed, the mogul empire was destroyed,

it may be worth just turning our attention to the personality of this man,

emperor or NC.

And as it happens,

we have a very large number of sources

that give us direct access to Orange's own voice

and reveal him in relation to specific others. That voice is very loud and clear.

One of these very early images that we have of oranges. It is him as a 14 year old prince

facing up to a maddened elephant.

There is a painting of this which is gorgeous,

which is which accompanies the relevant text in the Pachamama,

which is the official chronicle of orange.

Jeb's father, Emperor Shah Jahan, as rain and a gorgeous manuscript of this text,

is now in the Windsor Castle library.

Now watching elephants fight was a favourite mogul pastime

oranges great grandfather The Emperor Akbar

is reported in his own official biography as having broken in elephants himself.

Now this was a kind of elaborate on always risky may truism,

which was an essential part of mogul dynastic culture.

So on one fateful day in Lahore,

Emperor Shah Jahan was watching an elephant fight

from the balcony while his four sons,

including Aurangzeb, were watching it from close by on horseback.

One of the elephants temporarily fled the fight

and the other elephant charged towards the princess.

Now all accounts report that orange Zeb bravely stood his ground

and lance the elephant between its eyes with his spear.

Now reports begin to vary as to whether or not

one of his brothers actually turned up to help him,

and which nobles exactly tried to assist the young prince.

But they all agree that eventually the other elephant returned

to the fight and thankfully drew the mad elephant away

whereby Aurangzeb now slowly walked towards the emperor's Piva. Lien

Shah Jahan thanked God for Aurangzeb safety and gave

him an enormous cash prize for his bravery,

but also scolded him as a father would for his brashness.

Now the episode, as we've just said, is reported in several sources.

But one of them,

written by an admiring quarter of Orange's IBS when he had become emperor,

recounted that Orange replied to his father at that moment,

if it had ended differently, there would have been no dishonour in it.

The shame lay in what my brothers did

now, whether or not or is it did actually say this.

The theme of acute suspicion, jealousy and competitiveness towards his brothers,

especially the eldest brother, Dara Chicago,

is something that crops up again and again.

Some years after the elephant incident again in Lahore,

when the brothers were grown men,

Doroshow Sicko invited the emperor as well as his brothers to

a party to his new palace or indeed did turn up,

but refused to enter the room where they were supposed to be seated,

insisting instead on sitting on the doorstep,

and then when he was rebuked for this,

he eventually left and that without the permission of the emperor,

which was a very serious breach of discipline.

He was duly punished for his bad manners, of course.

But when asked for his reasons by his eldest sister,

he said that he was suspicious of Dara

Chicas intentions and feared that Dara may have

been trying to lock them all up in that basement room and then murdering them.

Now, whether or not such neurotic suspicion was justified, orangey was anything

but

timid.

In fact, amongst the four brothers, he was the greatest general,

and for this reason he earned the respect of the senior most nobles,

including the Rajput commander, jazzing,

which would be crucial in the battle for succession.

Dara is today seen as a liberal, tolerant, open minded man,

a scholar who translated Sanskrit texts into Persian

and saw the common ground between Hinduism and Islam

but too many high ranking nobles. At the time.

He was aloof, haughty and simply inexperienced

because, as she imagines favourite son, he was constantly next to his father

rather than on difficult missions as Aurangzeb was

to the military generals in particular,

and the Mogul empire, above all, was a military state.

He was a terrible strategist, obstinate and inconsiderate towards his soldiers,

and this was very clearly demonstrated during the

crucial battles of succession in 16 58 59

during the decisive battle of Sam Aguiar in May 16

58 in which orange Zeb faced up to Dara,

Dara moved his army forward and kept them standing in the

May son for an entire day in in full battle gear.

And it just happened to be the month of Ramadan as well.

He managed to kill a large number of his soldiers by just doing that.

And then when the battle eventually began,

Dara got off his elephant at a crucial point for some reason,

giving the impression to his soldiers that their leader had been killed,

causing an unorganised retreat and complete defeat.

But we should also guard against beginning to think

that all was noble and brave about oranges.

That was certainly not the case.

During this succession battle, he eliminated his brother's ruthlessly with,

by the way, was good old mogul tradition.

But the difference was that he saw fit to

attach elaborate Islamic legal justification for these murders.

Murad, the brother with whom he had promised to share the empire,

was executed on dredged up charges for of having murdered a man many years ago.

Dara, once defeated and captured, was famously accused of heresy.

Now the trouble was that the chief Qazi of the empire

that is the Islamic judge refused to pass any such sentence.

So Orange is simply replaced the man with a more compliant person

who passed the necessary judgement so that Dara could be disposed of.

It's really difficult to pair up such elaborate piety with such

equally hard nosed real politics without thinking of the word hypocrisy.

Or is it also did something rather unusual

in that he disposed his brothers and climbed the throne before his father was dead.

He kept the deposed emperor imprisoned in the Agra

fort for the final six years of his life.

And for this he was condemned by rulers from around the Islamic world because none of

them actually bought his argument that he was

protecting the emperor against and the empire itself,

against the personal failings of Shah Jahan.

It was just not what a son not to do,

and perhaps fittingly,

for a man who had such a difficult relationship with his own father.

Orange was extremely suspicious, hard and authoritarian towards his sons.

One son called Jack Paar was driven to rebellion and exile,

Another really beautiful and it seems like a good son.

Masum was imprisoned for eight years on false

suspicion of having open negotiations with the kingdom,

which was about to be conquered and in which conquest.

He had actually played a major role

in a purported collection of oranges, saying called the Atacama Alum.

Geary translated as the anecdotes of orangey

again compiled by an admiring coat here,

Orange Baby is supposed to have sat down the long suffering Moazzam and said,

Don't be so salt that is so harsh that your subjects spit you out of their mouths.

Norby, so sweet that they may gulp you down.

But this advice is out of place here because salt ish nous is not at all in your nature,

and that is the share of your dear brother.

But whether the ill mannered um

and more imperious as Um, or the mild mannered Moazzam

Orange kept all his sons under a very tight leash,

refusing them that essential space.

They needed to build up a core of political and military followers

who would assist them when they would transition to becoming emperors themselves.

It has been argued by historians, even in recent times, that by doing so,

or NZ unwittingly hobbled his sons

and destroyed the essential high level networking that

had sustained emperors in all previous generations.

Surprisingly, perhaps,

it is in relation to women that Orange appears in the best light,

despite his elder sister Johanna Ra's open support of Dara and her

own highly liberal religious views with which our exit did not agree.

Or and they remained consistently respectful of this woman and

took her opinion in a number of crucial matters.

And in a rather charming episode with which we can end this section orange,

they rebuked his favourite grandson, called lidar, bucked

for having quarrelled with his wife and shared some

experience with this young prince man to man.

Refering to his own first wife, the LRA's Banu Begum

Aurangzeb said

I, too, had this relation with a person who had extreme imperiousness

but to the end of her life. I continue to love her

and never once did. I wound her feelings,

and I think it's rather charming to think of Aurangzeb sitting there quietly and

absorbing a verbal drubbing from what must

have been an extremely formidable woman.