Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's Watergate: The Emperor Who Built an Underground Palace
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Aurangzeb's big monuments — the Badshahi Mosque, Bibi Ka Maqbara, the Moti Masjid — but there's this whole other side to his building projects that's almost invisible today. I'm talking about water. Luna: Water? Like, aqueducts and wells? Lucas: Exactly. But I mean massive underground cisterns, stepwells — baolis — and reservoirs that he commissioned all across the Deccan. The scale is astonishing. During his long Deccan campaigns — which we've covered before — he needed to supply hundreds of thousands of men and animals in a semi-arid region. So he became obsessed with water infrastructure. Luna: I've heard of stepwells in Gujarat and Rajasthan, but in the Deccan? Lucas: Right. The Deccan has its own tradition, but Aurangzeb supercharged it. Take Aurangabad — his de facto capital in the Deccan. He built a massive baoli there, right near the Bibi Ka Maqbara. It's called the Panchakki, actually, but that's a later addition. The cistern itself is enormous, fed by an underground channel that brought water from a spring several kilometers away. Luna: How did they build that without modern surveying tools? Lucas: That's the thing — they used a technique called qanat, which the Mughals had learned from the Persians. You dig a gently sloping tunnel from an aquifer to the surface, with vertical shafts for ventilation and maintenance. The gradient had to be almost perfect, within a few centimeters over kilometers. And they did it with just plumb lines and trial shafts. Lucas: But Aurangzeb wasn't just doing this for Aurangabad. He also built reservoirs at Daulatabad and Burhanpur. At Daulatabad, that's the old fort that was the capital of the Deccan sultanates. Aurangzeb ordered a huge tank to be excavated inside the fort — the Baradari tank — and linked it to an underground channel that collected rainwater from the hills. It was a strategic move: whoever controlled the water controlled the fort. Luna: Wait, so he was making these forts self-sufficient? In case of siege? Lucas: Precisely. And it wasn't just military. The Maasir-i-Alamgiri, which is our main Persian source for his reign, records that he personally inspected these projects. He'd stop during his campaigns to check on the progress of a new baoli or to order repairs to an old one. The text even mentions specific amounts spent — sometimes thousands of rupees — and the number of laborers employed. Luna: What about the Europeans? Manucci wrote about this? Lucas: Niccolao Manucci, who served in the Mughal court, mentions the wells in his Storia do Mogor. He describes how Aurangzeb's officers would dig new wells along the army's route, sometimes one every mile or so, to ensure the troops never went thirsty. He also notes that these wells were often lined with brick and had steps leading down — not just holes in the ground. Lucas: But here's the interesting part: these water structures also had political symbolism. Aurangzeb was presenting himself as the provider of life-giving water in a dry land, which echoed older Persian and Indian traditions of the just king who brings water to the people. He even had coins minted with the legend 'Alamgir, the one who makes the land flourish' — or something similar. Luna: So did these projects actually work? Did they last? Lucas: Well, that's the tragedy. After Aurangzeb died in 1707 and the empire began to fracture, many of these baolis and reservoirs fell into neglect. The Deccan was hit by war and instability, and the systems that required constant maintenance — clearing silt, repairing channels — just stopped being maintained. By the 19th century, many were choked with mud or dry. Lucas: But some survive. The Panchakki in Aurangabad still functions, though it's now fed by a municipal supply. The baoli at Daulatabad is dry but the structure is intact. And there are dozens of lesser-known ones scattered across Maharashtra and Telangana that are only now being studied by archaeologists. Luna: It's kind of a metaphor for the empire itself, isn't it? Amazing infrastructure that required constant care to keep running. Lucas: Yeah, exactly right. The water system was a living thing — it needed attention, funding, labor, and expertise. When those dried up, so did the wells. And with them, the possibility of sustaining the empire in the Deccan. Luna: So next time someone thinks of Aurangzeb only as a religious zealot or a military strategist, we can say: he was also a hydraulic engineer. Lucas: A reluctant one, maybe. But yes. He understood that controlling water was controlling life. And that's a side of him that doesn't get nearly enough attention.