Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's War of Succession: The Bloody Road to the Peacock Throne
Transcript
- Lucas: Today we're circling back to the very beginning of Aurangzeb's reign — or rather, the war he fought to get there. By 1657, Shah Jahan had been emperor for nearly three decades, and his four sons were already circling each other. But when Shah Jahan fell seriously ill in September of that year, the succession crisis erupted into open war. Luna: Wait, I thought Shah Jahan had chosen Dara Shikoh as his heir? Lucas: He had. Dara was the eldest, the favourite, the one Shah Jahan had publicly groomed. But that didn't sit well with the other three — Shuja, the governor of Bengal; Murad Baksh, governor of Gujarat; and Aurangzeb, then in the Deccan. And here's the thing: Dara was a brilliant intellectual, but he wasn't a soldier. He was a mystic, a patron of the arts, a guy who translated the Upanishads. Aurangzeb, by contrast, had spent years on campaign. He knew how to fight. Lucas: When news of Shah Jahan's illness spread, the brothers moved fast. Shuja declared himself emperor in Bengal and marched west. Murad did the same in Gujarat. And Aurangzeb, ever the strategist, didn't declare himself right away. He allied with Murad, promising to share power if they defeated Dara together. Luna: So they were ganging up on Dara? Lucas: Exactly. In February 1658, Aurangzeb and Murad met at Fatehpur Sikri and formalised their alliance. They divided the empire in their agreement — Aurangzeb would take the northwest, Murad the southeast. Dara, meanwhile, was in Agra, scrambling to raise an army. He sent a force under his son Sulaiman Shikoh to deal with Shuja in the east, while he himself marched out to face Aurangzeb and Murad. Lucas: The decisive battle came on May 29, 1658, at Samugarh, about ten miles east of Agra. It was a brutal, chaotic fight. Dara's army had the numbers, but Aurangzeb had better cavalry and, crucially, the support of Raja Jai Singh of Amber — one of the finest generals of the age. Jai Singh's Rajput horsemen turned the tide. Dara's troops broke, and he fled the field. Luna: What happened to Dara after that? Lucas: He ran — first to Lahore, then to Sindh, then to Gujarat, trying to raise support. But everywhere he went, Aurangzeb's agents were one step ahead. Eventually, Dara was betrayed by a Baluchi chieftain named Malik Jiwan, who handed him over to Aurangzeb in August 1659. And Aurangzeb didn't hesitate. He had Dara paraded through the streets of Delhi in chains — a deliberate humiliation — and then executed on charges of heresy. His head was sent to Shah Jahan in the Agra Fort. Luna: That's horrifying. Did Shah Jahan see it? Lucas: Accounts say it was placed in a box and presented to him. Shah Jahan is said to have wept, but there was nothing he could do. By then, Aurangzeb had already imprisoned him in the fort — in the very apartments overlooking the Taj Mahal. A kind of gilded cage. Meanwhile, Aurangzeb turned on his allies. Murad Baksh was invited to a feast, plied with wine, then arrested. He was executed in 1661 on trumped-up charges of murder. Shuja, after losing the battle of Khajwa in January 1659, fled to Arakan, where he was killed by local rulers. Lucas: So within two years, Aurangzeb had eliminated all three brothers. He crowned himself emperor in July 1658, taking the title Alamgir, 'World-Seizer'. But the cost was enormous. The empire was deeply divided, and the violence of the succession set a precedent for how Aurangzeb would rule — suspicious, ruthless, and utterly unforgiving. Luna: Was there any attempt at reconciliation? Like, could Dara have ruled differently? Lucas: It's one of history's great what-ifs. Dara was more tolerant — he had close ties with Hindu and Sikh saints, he commissioned translations of Hindu texts into Persian. He probably wouldn't have reimposed the jizya, which Aurangzeb did. But Dara was also indecisive and not a military commander. The empire might have fragmented under him, just differently. Aurangzeb's victory ensured centralisation, but at the cost of alienating the very allies he needed. Lucas: And the shadow of those executions hung over his entire reign. The Persian chronicler Maasir-i-Alamgiri records that Aurangzeb never fully trusted his own sons after that. He once said, 'If my own brothers could betray our father, why would my sons be loyal to me?' That paranoia shaped everything — his Deccan campaigns, his religious rigidity, his micromanagement. In a way, the war of succession never really ended. Luna: So the empire's great decline starts right here, with this family feud. Lucas: Yes. The Mughal Empire under Shah Jahan was at its peak — rich, stable, culturally resplendent. Within a few years of civil war, the treasury was drained, the nobility was divided, and the ground was laid for the Maratha and Sikh rebellions that would eventually break the empire. Aurangzeb won the throne, but in winning, he lost something essential. And he knew it. Luna: I've read that he regretted some of it? Especially Dara's execution? Lucas: There's a story — probably apocryphal, but telling — that late in his life, Aurangzeb visited Dara's grave and wept. He told a companion, 'Dara was worth a hundred such as me.' Whether true or not, it captures the tragedy. Aurangzeb spent the next fifty years trying to hold together an empire he had broken in the taking. And he died alone in Ahmednagar, writing letters to his sons warning them not to repeat his mistakes. Lucas: Which, of course, they did. The Mughal succession wars became a pattern — every emperor after Aurangzeb faced the same fratricidal struggles. The empire never recovered from the wounds of 1658. So when we talk about Aurangzeb the 'controversial' emperor, we have to remember: the controversy begins with a throne won through blood.