Courting India: Seventeenth-Century England, Mughal India, and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das

Author:Nandini Das
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

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There was another reason for the rush to smooth over his disagreements with Khurram, no matter what he thought of him in private. Internal strife within the imperial family was all the news. Jahangir had crushed the rebellion of his eldest son, Khusrau, ruthlessly. When he had been blinded by his father’s orders in 1607 after a second attempt to overthrow Jahangir, it had effectively ruled Khusrau out from ever becoming a viable challenger to the throne again. For years, Khusrau had been imprisoned under the care of Jahangir’s fierce and loyal Rajput follower, Ani Rai Singhdalan. Only two competitors for the Mughal throne remained, his younger half-brothers, Parvez and Khurram. The youngest, Shahryar, was only eleven. His time to enter the fray was yet to come.

As the temperature dropped in Ajmer at the beginning of autumn, those in the know at court said that Khurram, with the help of his stepmother Nur Jahan and his father-in-law Asaf Khan, had crept ahead in the race for the throne. The conquest of the Deccan was the great Mughal dream. Khandesh, Golconda, Bijapur and Ahmednagar, the four major sultanates of the Deccan, covered an area that roughly stretches across modern Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telengana and Andhra Pradesh. Of these, Akbar had only managed to annexe Khandesh in northern Maharashtra, and Jahangir was determined to achieve what his father had failed to complete. There were other, more immediate political reasons too. To the Shi’a Muslim dynasties of the Deccan, the Mughals were a Sunni incursion from the north. The rulers of Bijapur and Golconda recognised Shah ‘Abbas of Persia as their rightful Shi’a leader instead. For the moment, hemmed in by the Sunni empires of the Ottomans and the Mughals, Shah ‘Abbas had neither the time nor the inclination to enter into a direct confrontation with Jahangir. But as far as the Mughals were concerned, the danger of a pincer attack by Persian forces from the north and the Deccan forces from the south always remained. Enormous Mughal resources went into mobilising military forces against the rebel army of Ahmednagar, led by the former Ethiopian slave and formidable guerrilla strategist, Malik Ambar. In 1608, Jahangir had sent Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan to deal with Ambar’s forces, but he had failed spectacularly. So had Prince Parvez. Now, Khurram, fresh from his triumphant campaign in Mewar, Rajasthan, was going to take his place as the overall commander of the Deccan armies. Parvez, on the other hand, was going to be sent to the distant province of Bengal, far from all the action, and more importantly, far from access to his father.

Roe makes no secret in his journal about his continuing distrust of Khurram. ‘The ambitions of this young Prince are open, the Common talke of the People,’ he wrote on 10 October.23 He did not believe that Jahangir really intended him to be the heir, ‘for Sultan Cursoronne [Khusrau], the Eldest brother, is both extreamly beloved and honored of all men, almost adored, and very

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