Mughal India, 1600–1660

In 1600 Akbar was at war in the Deccan, camped at Burhanpur while his armies besieged Ahmadnagar. In January 1601 he took Asirgarh, the fortress of Khandesh, and annexed that kingdom. Before going back north he joined Khandesh, Berar and the conquered part of Ahmadnagar into a viceroyalty of the Deccan for his son Daniyal.

While Akbar was in the south, Prince Salim set up a court of his own at Allahabad from 1599, took a royal title and struck coins in his own name. He was claiming the throne before his father's death. Father and son were not reconciled until 1604.

Abu'l-Fazl, Akbar's minister and the author of the Akbarnama, opposed Salim's claim. He had been commanding against the Deccan sultanates since 1599. In August 1602, riding north from there, he was ambushed and killed near Narwar on Salim's instigation, and his head was sent to the prince at Allahabad.

Salim's eldest son Khusrau, born in 1587, became the candidate of those who wanted the throne to pass him by. He was the nephew of Raja Man Singh of Amber through his mother and the son-in-law of Aziz Koka. In Akbar's last illness in 1605 they pressed his claim.

Aziz Koka, Akbar's foster brother and one of the greatest nobles of the reign, had married his daughter to Khusrau and backed him to the end. When Akbar named Salim his heir, the plan failed, and under Jahangir Aziz Koka lost most of his offices.

Falling ill in 1605, Akbar named Salim his heir and died at Agra in October. Salim was crowned there as Jahangir. He did not forget who had served him: Bir Singh Deo, the man who had killed Abu'l-Fazl, rose high in the new emperor's favour.

Bir Singh Deo, a Bundela Rajput chief, took Salim's commission and ambushed Abu'l-Fazl near Narwar in 1602. As emperor, Jahangir rewarded him with high rank, and he ruled Orchha from 1605 until about 1627, sponsoring temples at Mathura and Vrindavan; he was buried in a mausoleum at Orchha.

Raja Man Singh of Amber, Akbar's great general and Khusrau's maternal uncle, joined Aziz Koka in backing Khusrau over Salim. When Akbar named Salim, the plan collapsed. Jahangir took away much of the power of both men and rebuked them in his memoirs.

Akbar's youngest son led the army that besieged Ahmadnagar in 1600 and became viceroy of the new Mughal Deccan, ruling from Burhanpur. In June 1604 he married a daughter of Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur at Ahmadnagar. A heavy drinker, he died of it in March 1605, seven months before his father.

Chand Bibi, great-aunt and regent of the boy sultan Bahadur Nizam Shah, held Ahmadnagar against the Mughals; she had beaten off one siege in 1596. After months of a second siege she agreed to surrender in return for safe conduct to Junnar. An adviser told the city she was in league with the Mughals, and a mob killed her.

With the defence leaderless, Mughal mines brought down the walls on 18 August 1600 and the fort was taken. Bahadur, about seven, was sent with the other royal children to Akbar at Burhanpur and then to Gwalior fort, where he was still a prisoner in 1633.

Malik Ambar, born in Ethiopia in 1548 and sold as a slave before rising in the Deccan's armies, gathered the parts of the kingdom the Mughals had not taken. He needed a king to fight for. He found a prince of the royal line who had taken refuge at Bijapur, married his daughter to him, and made Paranda the capital.

The prince, about twenty, was crowned as Murtaza Nizam Shah II, with Malik Ambar as his peshwa and regent. Murtaza gave the restored kingdom a royal name; Ambar raised its armies and ran its government. The sultan soon chafed at this and backed Ambar's rival Raju Deccani, which led to a long war between the two nobles.

Abd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan, son of Akbar's old regent Bairam Khan, was the senior general of the Deccan war, and his daughter was Daniyal's wife. When the conquered country was divided, he took charge of the war against Malik Ambar from Berar and Telangana, while Abu'l-Fazl fought Raju Deccani. He was also Rahim, a poet of Hindi couplets, and had translated Babur's memoirs into Persian.

Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur, a musician and author of the Kitab-i Nauras, had sheltered the young prince, and Malik Ambar asked his leave before crowning him. Ibrahim also kept terms with the Mughals, marrying his daughter to Daniyal in 1604. When Ambar later wanted Murtaza deposed, Ibrahim talked him out of it.

Muhammad Qasim Firishta, a Persian from Astarabad, had served Ibrahim since 1589. At the sultan's request he wrote a history of Muslim rule in India that gave the Deccan kingdoms equal room with Delhi's. Known as the Tarikh-i Firishta or Gulshan-i Ibrahimi, it was presented to Ibrahim in about 1606.

Khusrau did not accept his exclusion. In April 1606 he rode out of Agra fort with a small following, gathered horsemen on the road to the Punjab and laid siege to Lahore. Jahangir's army broke his, and he was seized crossing the Chenab. After a plot against his father in 1607 he was blinded and kept a prisoner.

Jahangir came after Khusrau in person and then turned on those who had helped him, among them the Sikh Guru at Goindwal, whom his memoir describes with contempt. In the east he set out to make Mughal rule real: in 1608 he made his childhood companion Islam Khan governor of Bengal.

On his way to Lahore, Khusrau stopped at Goindwal on the Beas, where the fifth Sikh Guru, Arjan, received him and marked his forehead with saffron. Jahangir had the Guru arrested. He died in Mughal custody at Lahore, by the traditional date on 30 May 1606; whether he was executed or died under torture is disputed.

Arjan named his eleven-year-old son Hargobind as his successor and told him to keep armed men about him. Hargobind wore two swords, for spiritual and worldly authority, and built the Akal Takht at Amritsar. Jahangir held him for years in Gwalior fort; under Shah Jahan his men fought Mughal troops and beat them near Amritsar in 1634.

Islam Khan Chishti, governor of Bengal from 1608, moved the provincial capital from Rajmahal to Dhaka, which he renamed Jahangirnagar. From there he fought the delta's autonomous chiefs on their own ground, with war-boats as well as cavalry. He went on to annex Koch Hajo, and died in 1613.

Musa Khan, son of Isa Khan, led the Bhati chiefs known as the Bara Bhuiyans, whose strength lay in rivers, forts and hundreds of war-boats. Islam Khan's campaign, opened in October 1609, took his posts one by one. In July 1611 Musa surrendered at Jahangirnagar, and later led Mughal troops against his old neighbours.

Pratapaditya, raja of Jessore, was the first of the delta chiefs to make terms, in 1608, and promised war-boats for the campaign against Musa Khan. He never sent them. Islam Khan's forces then destroyed his fleet and took Jessore in 1611; Pratapaditya died that year at Benares, a prisoner on his way to Agra.

Murtaza Nizam Shah II kept plotting against the minister who ruled in his name. In 1610 a quarrel between his Persian wife and Malik Ambar's daughter, also his wife, ended it: the Persian called Ambar a rebel and his daughter a slave-girl, and Ambar had Murtaza and that wife poisoned.

Malik Ambar crowned Murtaza's five-year-old son as Burhan Nizam Shah III. The monarchy went on, but the minister's grip was tighter than ever, and in 1610 he founded a new capital, Khadki, near Daulatabad. Burhan would rule as Ambar's ward until the old minister died in 1626.

In May 1611 Jahangir married Mihr al-Nisa, the Persian widow of an officer killed in 1607, and named her Nur Mahal, later Nur Jahan. She came to share his power: she issued orders, had coins struck in her name and raised her family around her. In the 1610s she worked closely with Prince Khurram.

Her father, Mirza Ghiyas Beg, a Persian from Tehran who had risen in Akbar's service and held the title Itimad al-Dawla, became Jahangir's chief minister. He drew Persian talent to the court; the poet Talib Amuli entered Jahangir's service through him in 1616. He died in 1621, near Kangra.

Her brother Abu'l-Hasan, made vakil in 1611 and titled Asaf Khan in 1614, became one of the first men at court. His loyalties would later divide: his sister was the emperor's wife, and his daughter was the wife of Prince Khurram.

In 1612 Asaf Khan's daughter, Arjumand Banu, betrothed to Khurram since 1607, married him; he called her Mumtaz Mahal. She was Nur Jahan's niece, and the marriage bound the empress's family to the prince. She travelled with him through his campaigns and, later, his rebellion.

With the empress's family behind him, Khurram took the commands that made reputations. He forced Mewar's submission in 1615, and in 1617 he brought Malik Ambar and the Deccan sultans to terms. Jahangir gave him a new title for it: Shah Jahan, King of the World.

Rana Amar Singh of Mewar, eldest son of the Rana Pratap who had fought Akbar, still refused to submit. Khurram's war of attrition wore down his land and forces, and in 1615 he gave in on terms: he acknowledged the emperor, was excused attendance at court and kept his throne, and Chittor was handed back to him.

Amar's heir, Karan Singh, was presented to Jahangir in 1615 and served at court in his father's place. He became rana in 1620. The bond he formed with Khurram outlasted the war: when Khurram rebelled, Karan sheltered him at Udaipur, in the island palace of Jag Mandir.

Captain William Hawkins brought the East India Company's first ship to Surat in 1608 and reached Jahangir at Agra in 1609. His Turkish won him the emperor's ear, a rank of 400 horse and an Armenian Christian wife, but Portuguese intrigue kept him from a grant for a factory, and he left Agra in November 1611.

The next Company fleet came under Thomas Best. On 29–30 November 1612, off Swally near Surat, his four ships beat a Portuguese squadron. The fight impressed the governor of Gujarat, and in January 1613 Best received the emperor's letter confirming English trade at Surat.

Jahangir's mother, Mariam-uz-Zamani, Akbar's Rajput wife, traded on her own account; her pilgrim ship Rahimi was the largest Indian vessel in the Red Sea. In September 1613 the Portuguese, perhaps angered by the new Mughal friendship with the English, seized it with some 700 people aboard. Jahangir closed Surat to shipping, had Daman besieged and shut the Jesuit church at Agra.

Sir Thomas Roe, sent by James I at the Company's request, reached India in 1615 and followed Jahangir's court until 1619. He won no grand treaty, and Jahangir's memoirs never mention him, but he secured permission and protection for the English factory at Surat.

Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah of Golconda had founded Hyderabad in 1591, with the Charminar at its centre, and wrote poetry in Dakhni Urdu, Persian and Telugu. He had no son. When he died in January 1612, the throne passed through his only daughter.

His peshwa, Mir Muhammad Mu'min, a Persian scholar from Astarabad who held the office for some forty years, had a large hand in designing Hyderabad. He wrote a treatise on measures of length, weight and distance, the Risala-i Miqdariya, served on into the next reign and died in about 1625.

Muhammad Quli's only daughter, Hayat Bakhshi Begum, born in 1591, had married her cousin Muhammad in 1607, and through her the crown stayed in the family. She would rule as regent for her son, and in 1656 she would bargain with a Mughal army at Golconda's gates.

Sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah, the old sultan's nephew and son-in-law, took the throne in January 1612. Under him the first history of the dynasty, the Tarikh-i Qutb Shahi, was compiled, and Golconda kept its own court and trade while the Mughals bore down on Ahmadnagar. He died in February 1626.

Venkata II ruled what remained of Vijayanagara from Chandragiri and Vellore, holding the great Nayak governors to their allegiance. He had no son of his own. Before his death in October 1614 he named his nephew Sriranga as heir, passing over a boy whom his favourite queen put forward as his son.

Sriranga II held the throne for about four months. Jagga Raya's faction seized him and his family and imprisoned them in Vellore fort; when a rescue was discovered, Jagga's brother made them choose between killing themselves and being killed. Sriranga died with his family early in 1615.

Gobburi Jagga Raya, brother of Venkata's favourite queen, crowned her putative son and ruled in his name. The murder of the royal family turned many nobles against him. He brought the Nayaks of Madurai and Gingee to his side, but at Toppur on the Kaveri, late in 1616, he was killed and his army broken.

Sriranga's twelve-year-old son Rama had been smuggled out of Vellore fort with a washerman's help. As the last of the murdered king's line he became the cause his father's loyalists fought for, and after Toppur he was crowned in 1617 as Rama Deva Raya. He reigned until 1632.

Velugoti Yachama Nayaka, a commander of the late king, organised the boy's escape and led the war against Jagga Raya, taking Chandragiri and Vellore. When Madurai and Gingee joined Jagga, he called on Thanjavur, the one great Nayak house still loyal to Vijayanagara, for help.

Raghunatha Nayak of Thanjavur, a poet and musician whose court was a centre of Sanskrit and Telugu letters, marched with Yachama. At Toppur late in 1616 his cannon opened the battle; Jagga Raya fell, and the boy was crowned. The emperor now owed his throne to Nayak armies.

In the north-east, Parikshit Narayan, Koch king of Hajo on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, was attacked by Islam Khan's Bengal army. In 1613 he was defeated, captured and sent to the imperial court, and his kingdom became Mughal Kamrup.

His younger brother, Bali Narayan, fled east to the Ahom king Pratap Singha and won his trust. After the Ahoms beat the Mughals in 1615 he was made tributary raja of Darrang under the name Dharma Narayan, and he led the raids that kept Mughal Kamrup unsettled for years.

Pratap Singha, the Ahom king, had married a Koch Hajo princess in 1603. Sheltering Bali Narayan brought a Mughal invasion in 1615, which his forces crushed near the mouth of the Bharali river. He then set Bali up in Darrang as a buffer; the Ahom–Mughal war went on, off and on, for decades.

In Kerala, far from any Mughal court, the astronomer Achyuta Pisharati carried on the mathematical school founded by Madhava. His works on planetary positions and eclipses were written before 1600, but he taught on until his death in 1621. His best-known pupil learned grammar from him.

Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri, famous for the Narayaniyam, his hymn to Krishna of Guruvayur, had studied grammar under Achyuta and married his niece. At the command of Devanarayana, raja of Chempakassery at Ambalappuzha, he wrote the Prakriyasarvasva, a full commentary on Panini's rules arranged by subject.

The 1617 settlement left Malik Ambar and the Nizam Shahi kingdom standing, and in 1620 Khurram was sent south again. This time Jahangir handed him custody of his blinded half-brother Khusrau, who went south as his prisoner. Khurram relieved Burhanpur and forced the Deccan states to terms in 1621.

Khusrau had passed from keeper to keeper since his blinding, and Nur Jahan had once offered him her daughter in marriage; he refused. In January 1622 he died at Burhanpur in Khurram's keeping. Khurram reported a natural death; chroniclers of the time said he had him strangled.

Malik Ambar made the 1617 peace and broke it. In 1620 he led the Deccan states against the Mughals, drove them back to Burhanpur and besieged the governor there. Khurram's counterstroke in 1621 burned Khadki, the capital Ambar had founded in 1610, and forced another treaty, but Ambar's power survived it.

Jahangir collected rare creatures and wanted them recorded. His painter Ustad Mansur, a master since Akbar's last years, painted the turkey cock brought from Goa in 1612 and the Barbary falcon Shah Abbas sent in 1619, among many birds, animals and plants. The emperor titled him Nadir al-Asr, Wonder of the Age.

Abu'l-Hasan, son of the Persian painter Aqa Riza, had grown up in Salim's household at Allahabad. In 1618 Jahangir named him Nadir al-Zaman, Wonder of the Time, for the frontispiece of his memoirs. His allegories showed Jahangir with a golden halo holding the globe, or embracing a smaller Shah Abbas.

Talib Amuli, a poet from Amol in Mazandaran, came to India and served the governor of Kandahar before Itimad al-Dawla, Nur Jahan's father, took him under his protection and brought him to Jahangir's notice in 1616. In 1619 Jahangir made him poet laureate, a post he held until his death in 1627.

Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, a Naqshbandi teacher whose many letters urged nobles to restore strict observance, alarmed Jahangir by his claims and following. Summoned in 1619, he was confined in Gwalior fort, for about a year; after his release he travelled with the imperial camp until his death in 1624.

As Jahangir's health failed, Nur Jahan built a second road to the throne. Rebuffed by Khusrau, she married her daughter Ladli in 1621 to Jahangir's youngest son, Shahryar. The empress who had raised Khurram now had a son-in-law of her own.

Ladli Begum, Nur Jahan's only child, born in 1605 to her first husband, married Prince Shahryar in 1621. The marriage set the empress's own daughter beside a possible heir, while her niece was Khurram's wife. After 1628 Ladli, widowed, lived with her mother in Lahore.

Shahryar, born in 1605, relied on Nur Jahan for whatever power he had, and through the marriage her party became his. Khurram, campaigning in the Deccan, saw the empress's favour moving to a younger brother.

Jahangir ordered Khurram north to relieve Kandahar. Khurram feared that leaving his army and province would hand the court to Shahryar; he made demands and would not march, and Kandahar fell. In 1623 he rebelled, marched on Agra and was checked at Bilochpur near Delhi.

Mahabat Khan, given real command under the nominal lead of Prince Parviz, chased Khurram for three years: into the Deccan, east through Golconda's lands and Orissa, and into Bengal. When Khurram at last sought pardon in 1626, giving up two fortresses and sending two sons as hostages, Mahabat was the most powerful general in the empire.

Ibrahim Khan, Nur Jahan's brother, had governed Bengal since 1617. When Khurram broke into Bengal in 1624, Ibrahim fought him and was killed near Rajmahal in April. The court's family quarrel had become a war in which the empress's brother died fighting her former ally.

Parviz, Jahangir's second son, had long held commands in name only; leading the pursuit made him a possible heir, but the army was Mahabat's. Nur Jahan set out to part them, sending Khan Jahan Lodi to replace Mahabat at Parviz's side and posting Mahabat to Bengal. Mahabat refused to go.

In 1622 Shah Abbas of Persia laid siege to Kandahar, the fortress on the road from India to Persia, Mughal since 1595. It fell in June. The loss turned a question of frontier defence into a crisis over the succession.

Karan Singh of Mewar stood by Khurram. After the check at Bilochpur the prince fell back to Mandu and asked the rana for shelter, and Karan lodged him at Udaipur, finally in the island palace of Jag Mandir. Rajputs fought in Khurram's army as well as against it.

Raja Gaj Singh of Marwar, a cousin of Khurram through the prince's Rathore mother, was ordered in May 1623 to join Mahabat and Parviz against him. He hung back until, in a battle in October 1624, a taunt from Khurram's Rajput ally Bhim Sisodia drew him in, and the rebels were routed.

Ibrahim Adil Shah II had turned against Ahmadnagar after Malik Ambar besieged Bijapur itself. He bought the Mughal viceroy's help with 200,000 huns and sent a joint Mughal and Bijapuri army after Ambar, under his general Mulla Muhammad Lari.

The Mughal civil war gave Malik Ambar room. In the monsoon of 1624, near Bhatvadi, with the allied army camped across the river, he breached a dam to flood the plain, then fell on them in the rain and routed them; Mulla Muhammad was killed. Among Ambar's commanders that day was a young Maratha officer, Shahji Bhonsle.

Shahji Bhonsle, son of a Maratha commander in Nizam Shahi service and married to Jijabai, daughter of the great noble Lakhuji Jadhav, had gone over to the Mughals before Bhatvadi and came back in time to fight for Ambar. By 1625 he was a sar-lashkar, a senior general, but that year a quarrel with a cousin sent him into Bijapur's service.

Summoned to court to answer for himself, Mahabat Khan came with 5,000 Rajput horsemen, and in March 1626 he seized Jahangir in his camp on the Jhelum. He held the emperor for some three months. When his grip slipped he fled south, and in time joined Khurram, the prince he had hunted.

Nur Jahan led an attack across the river from the back of an elephant to free her husband. It failed, and she joined Jahangir in captivity. From inside Mahabat's camp she organised their escape and raised troops again, and within months the coup was over.

Parviz, gravely ill through the year, died at Burhanpur in October 1626, aged thirty-six. With him went the prince whose claim had rested on Mahabat's army, and Mahabat's turn to Khurram followed.

Malik Ambar died on 14 May 1626, about seventy-eight, with the Nizam Shahi kingdom still standing after a quarter of a century of war. He had trained his elder son to succeed him.

Fath Khan, Ambar's son, was made peshwa by Burhan Nizam Shah III, but the Deccani and Ethiopian nobles resented him and some went over to the Mughals. Within a few years his readiness to deal with the Mughals alarmed the court, and Burhan and the noble Hamid Khan had him imprisoned, first at Junnar, then in Daulatabad.

At Golconda, Sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah died in February 1626, shortly after his old minister Mir Muhammad Mu'min. His son Abdullah, born in 1614, was a boy.

Hayat Bakhshi had Abdullah crowned at once and ruled as regent for his first years; as Ma Saheba, the queen mother, she kept a strong voice in the state until her death in 1667. The marriage that had carried the crown from Muhammad Quli to his nephew now carried it to their son.

Abdullah Qutb Shah would reign for forty-six years. His first task, his mother's too, was to keep the Mughals at bay; Golconda's royal household held together while Ahmadnagar's ministry tore itself apart.

Jahangir died near Bhimber on 28 October 1627, on the road down from Kashmir, without having named an heir. Khurram was far away in the Deccan; Shahryar was at Lahore. Whoever held the court and the treasury in the first weeks would decide the throne.

Backed by Nur Jahan, Shahryar took the throne at Lahore, seized the treasury and handed out more than seventy lakh rupees to buy nobles; Daniyal's son Baisunghar joined him. His army met Asaf Khan's outside Lahore and was beaten. He fled into the fort, was handed over the next morning and blinded a few days later.

Asaf Khan put his sister under guard and worked for Khurram. To give his side a sovereign while Khurram hurried north, he brought Khusrau's son Dawar Bakhsh out of confinement and proclaimed him emperor, then beat Shahryar near Lahore.

Dawar Bakhsh, about twenty, reigned a few weeks. Once Khurram was proclaimed at Lahore at the end of December 1627, he was no longer needed: on 23 January 1628, on Khurram's orders, he, his brother, Shahryar and Daniyal's two sons were put to death. A story persisted that Dawar escaped to Persia.

Khurram was crowned at Agra on 14 February 1628 as Shah Jahan. Asaf Khan became his chief minister and kept the post until his death in 1641. Nur Jahan spent the rest of her life, until 1645, confined at Lahore with Ladli.

Ibrahim Adil Shah II died in September 1627 after forty-seven years on Bijapur's throne. Tolerant of Hindus such as Shahji, he had treated Ahmadnagar as a buffer against the Mughals even when he fought it.

His son Muhammad Adil Shah was raised to the throne at fifteen, over an elder brother. At his court a faction favouring alliance with the Mughals against Ahmadnagar grew stronger, and Shahji, who had served Bijapur since 1625, went back to Ahmadnagar early in 1628.

Jujhar Singh had succeeded his father Bir Singh Deo at Orchha, heir to the wealth and favour Bir Singh had won from Jahangir. Shah Jahan honoured him, then ordered his revenue accounts examined. Afraid, Jujhar fled from Agra to Orchha; Mahabat Khan brought him back to court, and he was pardoned and sent to serve in the Deccan.

In Mewar, Karan Singh died in 1628 and his son Jagat Singh became rana. He inherited the 1615 settlement and a kingdom that had lost districts to chiefs holding them straight from the emperor, and he set about winning them back by force.

Jai Singh, the young Kachhwaha raja of Amber, had begun his service in the Deccan under Khan Jahan Lodi. When Lodi rebelled, Jai Singh rode with the army that hunted his old commander, fighting at Bir in 1630. Later Shah Jahan gave him the title Mirza Raja, once held by Man Singh.

Khan Jahan Lodi, the Afghan noble who had risen highest under Jahangir, had refused to back Khurram in 1627 and, as governor of the Deccan, had sold the Balaghat to the Nizam Shah for 300,000 huns. Shah Jahan kept him under watch at court for eight months. In October 1629 he fled south, and Jujhar Singh helped him through.

Asylum for a rebel general was a challenge Shah Jahan could not ignore. He moved his court to Burhanpur and sent three armies, some 50,000 men, against Lodi and the Nizam Shah who sheltered him. The campaigns ran into the famine that struck the Deccan, Gujarat and Khandesh in 1630–32.

Burhan Nizam Shah III, ruling for himself since Malik Ambar's death, welcomed Lodi and gave him command of his armies. He trusted few of his own nobles. In 1629 he had the Maratha magnate Lakhuji Jadhav killed at Daulatabad, with sons and a grandson, on suspicion of dealing with the Mughals.

Lakhuji Jadhav Rao of Sindkhed, one of the great Maratha nobles of the Nizam Shahi state, had moved between Ahmadnagar's service and the Mughals'. He was murdered at Daulatabad on Burhan's orders, together with sons and a grandson; the family's chronology dates it to 25 July 1629, other accounts to 1630.

Lakhuji's daughter Jijabai, born in 1598, had been married young to Shahji Bhonsle. Her father's murder put her husband's family in danger. In February 1630, in the hill fort of Shivneri near Junnar, she gave birth to a son, Shivaji.

With his wife's family killed on the Nizam Shah's orders, Shahji went over to the Mughals in 1630 with 2,000 horse. They sent him to occupy Junnar and Sangamner and gave him those districts as his estate. He was an important commander and no more; there was no Maratha kingdom.

Beaten in 1630, Lodi broke north for the Punjab. His companions fell one by one, and on 1 February 1631 a Rajput officer, Madho Singh, cornered and killed him in central India. His head was sent to Shah Jahan at Burhanpur.

Mumtaz Mahal had followed Shah Jahan to Burhanpur. On 7 June 1631, after thirty hours of labour, she died there giving birth to her fourteenth child. The emperor was overwhelmed by grief and resolved to build her a tomb at Agra.

Jahanara, seventeen, received her mother's seal and the title Padshah Begum, first lady of the empire, over her father's other wives. She ran the imperial household, grew rich in her own right and became the firmest supporter of her brother Dara Shikoh.

Ustad Ahmad Lahori, of a family of Timurid architects from Herat, became Shah Jahan's chief architect. He is credited with the Red Fort at Delhi and may have designed the Taj Mahal, with Mir Abd al-Karim and Makramat Khan; the tomb was the work of a whole imperial workshop. He died in 1649.

Burhan, losing nobles to the Mughals, released Fath Khan on 18 January 1631 and gave him back his office. Fath Khan had his rival Hamid Khan killed, declared the sultan insane and locked him up, and opened talks with Shah Jahan.

To prove his good faith, Fath Khan had Burhan put to death, in 1631 or 1632, and crowned the sultan's ten-year-old son as Husain Nizam Shah III, with coins struck and Friday prayers read in Shah Jahan's name. As a reward he received estates that had been Shahji's. Shah Jahan, satisfied, went north in 1632.

Bijapur wanted the Nizam Shahi lands for itself. In 1633 its general Randaula Khan, a commander of African descent who held the southern Konkan as a family fief, persuaded Fath Khan, for a sum of money, to defy the Mughals, and then harried the besiegers of Daulatabad together with Shahji.

Mahabat Khan, now Khan-i Khanan and governor of the Deccan, besieged Daulatabad from March 1633 and took it in June. The boy sultan Husain was sent to Gwalior fort, where Bahadur Nizam Shah was still held; Fath Khan submitted, was pardoned and pensioned.

When the Mughals gave Shahji's estates to Fath Khan in 1632, Shahji left their service, raided round Pune and took service with Bijapur again. In 1633 he fought beside Randaula Khan to save Daulatabad, and failed.

After Daulatabad fell, Shahji set up a ten-year-old boy of the royal line as Murtaza Nizam Shah III, with himself as chief minister. Within a year his army held Junnar and much of the northern Konkan, and by 1634 he was raiding round Mughal Daulatabad. He kept up to 10,000 men in a country wrecked by war and famine.

Bijapur, fearing the Mughals more than the Nizam Shahis, backed him. Its commander Murar Jagdev campaigned with Shahji in the Pune country and in 1634 built the fort of Daulatmangal on the Bhuleshwar hill. That year Bijapur's commanders and Shahji held off a four-month Mughal siege of Paranda.

Muhammad Adil Shah at first sent troops to keep Ahmadnagar alive as a buffer. His court was split: Khawas Khan led those who feared Mughal expansion, Mustafa Khan those who wanted terms with Shah Jahan.

Khawas Khan held power through Bijapur's war years and kept Mustafa Khan out of it. Late in 1635 or early in 1636 a palace coup brought him down, and Randaula Khan led the men who killed him.

Khadija Sultana, daughter of Golconda's Sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah, had married Muhammad Adil Shah in 1633 and become his chief wife, the Bari Sahiba. She played a key part in the coup against Khawas Khan, and she would rule Bijapur as regent twenty years later.

With Khawas Khan dead, Mustafa Khan became Bijapur's leading noble and the policy turned. In 1636 Bijapur accepted Shah Jahan as overlord and agreed to help subdue Shahji, or take him into its own service far from the Mughal frontier.

Randaula Khan, who had fought beside Shahji at Daulatabad, now joined the Mughal general Khan Zaman, Mahabat Khan's son, in besieging him at Mahuli. In October 1636 Shahji surrendered Mahuli and Junnar, handed over his boy king and returned to Bijapur's service.

Golconda, facing three Mughal armies, submitted in April 1636: Abdullah Qutb Shah proclaimed Shah Jahan his overlord and agreed to pay tribute. What was left of Ahmadnagar was divided; Bijapur took Pune, Chakan and the Nizam Shahi Konkan, and the Mughals took the rest.

Back at Orchha, Jujhar Singh attacked the Gond kingdom of Garha in 1634, took its stronghold of Chauragarh and killed its raja, Prem Narain. Shah Jahan demanded the conquered land and treasure; Jujhar refused.

Aurangzeb, sixteen, was given nominal command of the army sent against Orchha, while seasoned generals did the fighting. Orchha fell in October 1635, and Jujhar and his son, fleeing south, were killed by Gonds that December. On 14 July 1636 Aurangzeb was made viceroy of the Deccan.

The Bundelas did not all submit. Champat Rai of Mahoba crowned Jujhar's infant son and raided Orchha's lands; the boy was captured and sent to Gwalior, but Champat Rai and later his son Chhatrasal kept up their wars to the end of the century.

With peace in the north, Bijapur turned south. From 1638 Randaula Khan, now commander-in-chief, invaded the Nayak lands of Mysore and beyond with Shahji as a subordinate commander, and in December 1638 they took Bangalore. Randaula died in 1643.

Golconda went south too. Mir Jumla, a Persian clerk turned diamond merchant, was taken into Abdullah Qutb Shah's service in 1637 and rose to be his chief minister. He conquered the eastern Karnataka for Golconda, and in 1646 he invaded the kingdom of Chandragiri, taking Udayagiri and Chengalpattu; by April 1647 its king offered tribute.

Barred by the 1636 treaty from living in the Pune country, Shahji spent his last twenty years in the south. Bangalore became his estate, and from there he governed his Karnataka holdings almost as a prince, while Dadoji Kondadev managed his Pune estate in young Shivaji's name.

Venkata III reigned from 1632 over what was left of Vijayanagara. He had to buy off a Bijapuri invasion in 1638, and by 1642 Golconda's armies were on the coast. He died on 10 October 1642, a fugitive in the forests near Chittoor.

Damarla Venkatadri Nayaka belonged to a Velama family whose members governed the coast from Pulicat to San Thome for the king. In August 1639 he granted the East India Company the village of Madraspatnam, with leave to build a fort and run its own affairs there.

Francis Day, chief of the Company's factory at Armagon, had explored the coast in 1637 and negotiated the grant. With his superior Andrew Cogan he began the settlement of Madras; its fort, named for St George, was completed in 1644.

Sriranga III, Venkata's nephew, had fought for him against a rival claimant and then, in 1638, joined Bijapur's invasion against him. On Venkata's death in 1642 he left the Bijapuri army and made himself king at Vellore, but the Nayaks resented him and withheld the consent he needed to be crowned.

Tirumala Nayak of Madurai joined the Nayaks of Thanjavur and Gingee in a league against Sriranga in 1645 and urged Golconda to invade. When Thanjavur sided with Golconda he called in Bijapur, and the two sultanates agreed to divide the south. By 1648 Bijapur had overrun Gingee, and Sriranga was left with no kingdom.

In Assam, Momai Tamuli, raised by Pratap Singha from royal gardener to Borbarua, a new first minister, had reorganised the Ahom labour levy. In November 1638 he beat a Mughal and Koch army at Duimunisila, and in February 1639 he signed the Treaty of Asurar Ali with the Mughal faujdar Allah Yar Khan, fixing the border at the Barnadi river.

Ali Mardan Khan, the Safavid governor of Kandahar, fearing Shah Safi's purges, handed the fortress to Shah Jahan in 1638. He was received with the highest honours, governed Kashmir, the Punjab and Kabul, and built the canal that brought the Ravi's water to Lahore's Shalimar garden. He died in 1657.

Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan's eldest son, was named heir in 1633 and kept at his father's side, a favourite of his father and of Jahanara. He sought out the Qadiri saint Mian Mir of Lahore, and after Mian Mir's death in 1635 he found a master in his successor.

Mulla Shah Badakhshi, Mian Mir's successor in the Qadiri order, took Dara as his disciple around 1640 and initiated Jahanara in 1641; he would have named her his successor had the order allowed it. Dara wrote of him in his lives of the saints and built him a mosque at Srinagar.

Saadullah Khan, a Punjabi scholar who had taught in Lahore and tutored Asaf Khan's children, entered imperial service in 1641 and was made grand vizier in 1645. He ran the empire's finances and correspondence, and held the highest rank of any man outside the royal family.

Shah Jahan wanted his reign written in the manner of Abu'l-Fazl's Akbarnama. In 1642, on Saadullah Khan's recommendation, he called Abd al-Hamid Lahori out of retirement at Patna. Lahori's Padshahnama, built on an earlier draft by Muhammad Amin Qazvini, covered two decades of the reign before old age stopped him; he died in 1654.

Chandrabhan Brahman, a Brahmin of Lahore and a fine Persian poet, served Shah Jahan as a secretary and kept the emperor's diary. His Chahar Chaman describes the court's routine, the provinces and his own career; his letters went to the royal family, nobles, poets and Sufis.

At Benares, Munisvara, of a family of astronomers, wrote the Siddhanta-sarvabhauma in 1646 under Shah Jahan's patronage. He followed the twelfth-century Bhaskara and resisted borrowing Arab methods in spherical trigonometry.

Hargobind died at Kiratpur in 1644 after choosing his grandson Har Rai, then fourteen, as seventh Guru over the boy's elder brother. Har Rai kept an armed following but avoided war with the Mughals.

Nadr Muhammad, the Uzbek khan of Bukhara and Balkh, was deposed in 1645 by nobles who raised his son in his place. He appealed to Shah Jahan, who saw his chance and sent an army into Balkh in 1646.

Abd al-Aziz Khan, proclaimed khan of Bukhara in 1645, would not let the Mughals keep Balkh. In 1647 his Uzbeks attacked the Mughal garrisons, and after heavy fighting the invaders gave up the province.

Shah Abbas II of Persia took Kandahar back in February 1649. Shah Jahan sent Aurangzeb to recover it in 1649 and again in 1652, and Dara Shikoh in 1653; all three sieges failed for want of heavy guns and good gunners, and Kandahar stayed Persian.

Murad Bakhsh, Shah Jahan's youngest son, led the army into Balkh in 1646. He proved unequal to the command and was relieved; the grand vizier Saadullah Khan went to settle the province's government and did it in twenty-two days.

Aurangzeb, dismissed as viceroy of the Deccan in 1644 and then governor of Gujarat, was sent to Balkh in 1647. He held the field against the Uzbeks, but the land could not feed his army, and with winter coming the Mughals made a poor bargain and marched back to Kabul through the snow.

After Aurangzeb's two failures before Kandahar, the command in 1653 went to Dara, with Jai Singh and a large army. His siege failed in the same way. He kept his father's favour, but the rivalry between the brothers now had a military edge.

Jijabai lived with Shivaji in the Pune country while Shahji served in the south. The estate was held in her son's name, but it was run by Shahji's man, Dadoji Kondadev.

Dadoji Kondadev, a Brahmin administrator from near Sindkhed, managed Shahji's Pune estate and the nearby Kondana fort, and brought the Maval valleys under control, winning over or subduing their local chiefs. His death on 7 March 1647 left the estate in sixteen-year-old Shivaji's hands.

In 1646 or 1647, while Bijapur's sultan lay ill, Shivaji took Torna fort and found treasure there, which paid for a new fort, Rajgad. In the next two years he added Purandar, Kondana and Chakan, all in the hills round Pune.

At the siege of Gingee in 1648, Shahji was found dealing with the Nayaks and with Golconda behind the back of Bijapur's commander, Mustafa Khan. He was seized on 25 July and brought to Bijapur in chains; Maratha chronicles blamed his son's raids. He was freed in 1649 after giving up Bangalore and Kondana.

Aurangzeb had been viceroy of the Deccan again since July 1652. The province was too poor to support his army without grants from elsewhere, and he looked to the rich sultanates of Golconda and Bijapur for his opportunity.

Dara wrote on Sufism and on Hindu thought. His Majma al-Bahrayn, The Mingling of the Two Oceans, completed in about 1655, set Sufi and Vedantic ideas side by side; in 1657 he finished a Persian translation of fifty Upanishads, the Sirr-i Akbar, The Great Secret.

Back at Lahore after Kandahar, Dara was advised by Chandrabhan, Shah Jahan's chief secretary, to visit the Hindu ascetic Baba Lal. In a series of talks they discussed the ascetic life, the bond of teacher and disciple, idol worship and salvation; Dara wrote that he had seen no Hindu of such spiritual attainment.

Raj Singh became rana of Mewar on his father Jagat Singh's death in 1652. In 1654, in answer to his provocations, Shah Jahan sent the grand vizier Saadullah Khan with an army against Chittor. When the succession war came, Raj Singh held aloof from every prince's call for troops.

The More family held Javli, near Mahabaleshwar, from Bijapur under the hereditary title Chandrarao, commanding the passes from the uplands toward the Konkan. Shivaji took sides in a More succession dispute, and the quarrel became war.

In 1656 Shivaji besieged Javli, captured its Chandrarao by treachery and had him put to death, in circumstances still argued over, and seized the valley. A new fort, Pratapgad, was completed above it that year. Javli opened the way south and toward the coast.

Mir Jumla's conquests had made him richer and stronger than his master. When he learned of a plot at court to seize and blind him, he opened secret talks with Aurangzeb, and Shah Jahan, on Aurangzeb's advice, offered him protection.

Mir Jumla's son Muhammad Amin, his deputy at Golconda's court, gave himself princely airs. In November 1655 he came to court drunk and fell asleep on the sultan's own carpet, and Abdullah Qutb Shah threw him and his family into prison. Aurangzeb had his pretext.

Aurangzeb's eldest son, Muhammad Sultan, sixteen, led the advance into Hyderabad in January 1656, and Aurangzeb besieged Abdullah in Golconda fort. The settlement gave the prince a bride: on 13 April 1656 he married Abdullah's second daughter by proxy.

Hayat Bakhshi Begum went in person to Aurangzeb's camp to plead for her son. She brought the demand down: Golconda would pay an indemnity, marry its princess to Muhammad Sultan and pass to him on Abdullah's death. Meanwhile Golconda's agents won over Dara and Jahanara, and Shah Jahan ordered the siege raised.

Mir Jumla went north with his wealth into Mughal service, and in July 1656, after Saadullah Khan's death, Shah Jahan made him chief minister. Within months he was back in the Deccan at Aurangzeb's side.

At Bijapur, Muhammad Adil Shah died on 4 November 1656 after a long illness and was buried in the Gol Gumbaz, the great domed tomb he had built.

Ali Adil Shah II was raised to the throne by the chief minister Khan Muhammad and the queen, the Bari Sahiba. Rumours that the boy was not Muhammad Adil Shah's son gave Aurangzeb his excuse, and Shah Jahan gave him a free hand to invade.

Khadija Sultana, the Bari Sahiba, ruled Bijapur as regent from 1656 to 1661. It is not known whether Ali was her own son. She made Bijapur an ally of the Dutch Company and in 1659 sent troops to its attack on Portuguese Goa.

In 1657 Aurangzeb and Mir Jumla invaded Bijapur and took Bidar and Kalyani. Again Dara persuaded his father to stop the war, and Bijapur made peace. Shivaji, meanwhile, raided across the Mughal frontier near Junnar and Ahmadnagar.

At court, Dara and Jahanara took the sultanates' part, and twice persuaded Shah Jahan to stop Aurangzeb short of conquest, first at Golconda in 1656 and then in Bijapur in 1657.

In September 1657 Shah Jahan fell gravely ill at Delhi. Dara took over the government and controlled who saw his father. Shah Jahan recovered, but by then his other sons were in arms.

Jahanara sided with Dara as her father's chosen heir and stayed by the emperor through his illness. In 1644 she had pleaded Aurangzeb's case and won him back his rank; now she was the heart of Dara's party in the palace.

Her younger sister Roshanara sided with Aurangzeb. When he won she became Padshah Begum in Jahanara's place, and in 1659 her voice would be raised for Dara's death.

Shah Shuja, governor of Bengal since 1641, crowned himself at Rajmahal, his provincial capital, in November 1657 and marched west up the Ganges with Bengal's revenues and army behind him.

Dara sent an army east under his own son Sulaiman Shikoh, twenty-two, with Mirza Raja Jai Singh of Amber as the young prince's guardian and the Afghan general Diler Khan. On 24 February 1658 they routed Shuja at Bahadurpur near Benares and chased him back toward Bengal, far from where the war would be decided.

Murad Bakhsh, governor of Gujarat since 1654, proclaimed himself emperor at Ahmedabad on 30 November 1657 and made a pact with Aurangzeb to share the empire between them.

Aurangzeb did not crown himself. He declared that he was marching to rescue his father from Dara, joined forces with Murad, and had his own father-in-law, Shah Nawaz Khan, arrested at Burhanpur for refusing to come with him.

Jai Singh, Mirza Raja since 1638 and veteran of Kandahar and Balkh, commanded with Sulaiman in the east. After Bahadurpur he and his men were stranded far from home, while their families in Rajputana lay in the path of Aurangzeb's armies.

Jaswant Singh of Marwar, Gaj Singh's youngest son, raised to the throne by Shah Jahan's decree in 1638 over an elder brother, commanded the imperial army sent against Aurangzeb and Murad. On 15 April 1658 they routed him at Dharmat near Ujjain, and he fled home to Marwar.

Muhnot Nainsi, whose father had served Marwar's rajas before him, became Jaswant's diwan in 1658 and held the post until 1666. His Khyat and his survey of Marwar's districts record the lineages, lands and politics of the Rajput states.

With Dara holding the Chambal crossings, Aurangzeb found an unguarded ford. By the Bundela chronicle's account his guide was Champat Rai, who then fought on Aurangzeb's right wing at Samugarh; other sources name a local Jat or the zamindar of Bhadawar.

Rao Chhatra Sal of Bundi, famed in the Mughal army for his steadiness, led the Rajput van of Dara's army at Samugarh on 29 May 1658 and fell there, with the Rathor Ram Singh and other chiefs. Hadas and Rathors died for Dara as a Bundela rode with Aurangzeb.

Dara led the army himself to Samugarh, near Agra, with his Rajput contingents and European gunners. On 29 May Aurangzeb and Murad broke his army, and he fled north with his family toward Delhi and Lahore.

Niccolao Manucci, a young Venetian who had come to India with an English envoy, joined Dara's artillery around 1656 and fought at Samugarh. His later Storia do Mogor is a vivid source for these years, though its stories need checking against others.

Aurangzeb besieged his father in Agra fort and cut off its water. On 8 June 1658 Shah Jahan surrendered, and he never left the fort again; he died there a prisoner in 1666, with Jahanara sharing his confinement.

Murad expected half the empire. On 7 July 1658, near Mathura, he was entertained in Aurangzeb's tent, made drunk and seized; from January 1659 he was held at Gwalior. Later that month Aurangzeb crowned himself at Delhi as Alamgir, World-Seizer.

Far to the east, Sulaiman's army heard of Samugarh. Diler Khan and Jai Singh, their homes now at Aurangzeb's mercy, advised the prince to flee and went over to the new emperor.

At Benares, far from the war, Kamalakara completed his Siddhanta-tattva-viveka in about 1658. He joined Indian astronomy to the Ptolemaic system and Aristotelian physics that had reached India through Islamic scholars, and attacked Munisvara's methods; the two families of astronomers were bitter rivals.

Shuja advanced again from Bengal. At Khajwa, on 5 January 1659, Aurangzeb and Mir Jumla met him with a far larger army and beat him, and Mir Jumla was sent after him into Bengal.

Shah Nawaz Khan, a Safavid prince whose daughters had married Aurangzeb and Murad, had been jailed by Aurangzeb for refusing to join him, and had since become governor of Gujarat. In January 1659 he opened Ahmedabad and Murad's treasury to the fleeing Dara, and in March he was killed fighting for him at Deorai near Ajmer.

Dara raised a new army in Gujarat and marched on Ajmer, counting on Jaswant Singh, who failed him. Beaten at Deorai in March 1659, he fled west through the desert and Sind toward Persia with a dwindling band.

Nadira Banu, Parviz's daughter, married to Dara since 1633, had been ill through the flight; he had never taken another wife. She died on 6 June 1659 on the way to Dadar, near the Bolan Pass, and was buried at Lahore.

Malik Jiwan, the Afghan chief of Dadar, owed Dara his life: the prince had once begged it from Shah Jahan. He took Dara in, and on 9 June seized him and handed him over to Aurangzeb's officers.

Dara was paraded through Delhi in chains. That evening the emperor's council debated his fate: Danishmand Khan pleaded for his life; Shaista Khan, Muhammad Amin Khan and others demanded his death, and Roshanara pressed for it. Theologians condemned him as an apostate, and he was put to death on 30 August 1659 (9 September by the new calendar).

Jaswant Singh had made his peace with Aurangzeb after Samugarh. The night before Khajwa he fell on the emperor's camp, plundered it and rode home. He then promised Dara his support. Aurangzeb sent an army to put a rival on the Marwar throne, but with Dara still in the field he needed the Rathors.

Jai Singh, now Aurangzeb's man, wrote to Jaswant as one great Hindu prince to another, warning him of ruin if he defied the emperor. His letters detached Jaswant from Dara; he was pardoned, and Dara marched toward Ajmer alone.

François Bernier, a French physician and follower of Gassendi, reached India in October 1658. Early in 1659 he served the fleeing Dara as his doctor for a short time; after Dara's fall he found a place at Aurangzeb's court.

Danishmand Khan, Mulla Shafi'a of Yazd, a learned noble and later governor of Delhi, became Bernier's patron, his 'Agha'. Bernier explained Harvey's and Pecquet's anatomy and the philosophy of Gassendi and Descartes to him, translating them into Persian, while a pandit once pensioned by Dara discussed Indian philosophy with them both.

Har Rai, the seventh Sikh Guru, had sided with Dara in the war of succession. In 1660 Aurangzeb summoned him to explain his support for the executed prince.

Bijapur, at peace with the Mughals again, sent its general Afzal Khan against Shivaji in 1659. He ordered the Maval chiefs to join him and destroy Shivaji, on pain of losing their lands, and marched into Javli to meet Shivaji at a parley.

Kanhoji Jedhe, deshmukh of the Rohid valley near Bhor and an old follower of Shahji, received Bijapur's order. He took it to Shivaji at Rajgad, gave up his lands rather than obey, and rallied the other Maval deshmukhs behind Shivaji.

On 10 November 1659 Shivaji met Afzal Khan below Pratapgad. In the embrace that opened the meeting Afzal Khan was killed, by Maratha accounts after he struck first, and Shivaji's troops routed his army. Eighteen days later Shivaji took Panhala.

Netaji Palkar, Shivaji's cavalry commander, had laid waste Bijapur's lands before the parley. After it the Marathas pushed into Bijapuri territory and beat another army under Rustam-i Zaman near Kolhapur at the end of 1659.

Ali Adil Shah II then sent Siddi Jauhar, an Ethiopian general, who in 1660 besieged Shivaji in Panhala while Netaji harried the besiegers from outside. When Shivaji opened secret talks with Jauhar, the sultan suspected treachery and marched out himself.

Shivaji slipped out of Panhala at night with a picked force and made for Vishalgad. Baji Prabhu Deshpande held the pass of Ghod Khind behind him against the pursuers until Shivaji reached the fort, and died there; the pass has been called Pavan Khind ever since. Panhala fell back to Bijapur.

Aurangzeb sent his maternal uncle Shaista Khan, Asaf Khan's son, to the Deccan as viceroy. He reached Aurangabad in January 1660, took Pune, the heart of Shivaji's lands, and captured the fort of Chakan. Shivaji was caught between Bijapur and the Mughals.

Serving under Mir Jumla against Shuja, Muhammad Sultan slipped over to his uncle's camp on the night of 18 June 1659; Shuja had offered him the throne and his daughter Gulrukh Banu, betrothed to him years before. He married her, but rejoined his father in February 1660 and was imprisoned in May.

Driven back to Tanda and then Dhaka, Shuja left Bengal in May 1660 and took ship for Arakan with his family. Mir Jumla reached Dhaka and was made governor of Bengal, with orders to conquer Assam and Arakan.

Sulaiman Shikoh, cut off in the east after Samugarh, fled into the hills, first to Kumaon and then, in 1659, to Garhwal, whose raja took him in.

Sanda Thudhamma, king of Arakan at Mrauk U, granted Shuja asylum when he arrived on 26 August 1660. In December he seized the prince's gold and jewels; the fighting that followed destroyed Shuja and his household the next year.

Prithvipati Shah, raja of Garhwal at Srinagar, refused every demand to give Sulaiman up, though Aurangzeb had Jai Singh write to him again and again with promises and threats. He would not, he answered, harm his name by handing over a man who had sought his protection.

His son Medini Shah, at odds with his father, plotted with Jai Singh's son Ram Singh. Sulaiman tried to escape toward Tibet, was betrayed by villagers, seized by Medini and handed to Ram Singh. In January 1661 he was brought before Aurangzeb and sent to Gwalior.

When Shuja took Bengal's army west in 1657, Kamrup was left exposed. The Koch king seized it; then the Ahom forces of Jayadhwaj Singha drove the Koch out and pushed west to the Sankosh, and early in 1659 the Mughal commander at Guwahati fled.