Text/Jeffrey Parker
Shah Jahan's eldest son, Dara Sikhoko, was favored by his father and had to join Shah Jahan in the court, and he owned Jagill (fiefdom) almost equal to the fief area of the other three brothers combined. Shah Jahan's three young sons were stationed in remote provinces and were also the emperor's representatives in various places, and the emperor appointed them from time to time to lead troops to fight.
Shah Jahan made such a deliberate arrangement precisely to avoid a rebellion similar to that of his own brother against his father, Jahangir.
Shah Jahan was even worse than Li Yuan
However, Shah Jahan was ill-conceived and missed the ambition, ability and charm of his third son, Aurangzeb.
In 1636, at the age of eighteen, Aurangzeb began to rule the newly governmentd Deccan region on behalf of his father. For the next eight years, Aurangzeb installed his own manpower in almost every aspect of the administration, and created a group of loyal dead soldiers, whose reward was the newly acquired land in the frontier war.
Aurangzeb built a new city and named it Aurangabad. Whether in Aurangabad or elsewhere, Aurangzeb generously granted his own mosques and prayer halls; forged bonds with religious fanatics; and encouraged new subjects to convert to Islam.
The remarkable achievements of the Deccan region persuaded Shah Jahan, who commissioned Aurangzeb to reconquest Central Asia. Despite this failure, Aurangzeb gained valuable command experience.
Aurangzeb became increasingly convinced that it was his brother Dara Sycow who had withdrawn his supplies and reinforcements for the battle, so he and the other two brothers 'made plans to preserve their own honor and 'handle the affairs of the court' in the event of their father's death.
Aurangzeb then returned to Deccan, where he prepared for the inevitable succession struggle. He forged ties with religious leaders and major ethnic groups, a force that Shah Jahan had failed to integrate into the imperial organization.
He also gathered a group of talented non-commissioned officers and loyal officers, and with their assistance successfully defeated several neighbors in the southern frontier of the empire, winning the empire great wealth and supreme prestige.
By this time, Aurangzeb had vast political, military and financial resources.
At the end of 1657, when it was rumored that the emperor was "unable to listen to the government" due to illness, Dara Siko 'had a chance' to seize the reins of power. The princes who ruled Gujarat and Bengal seized the local treasury at the first moment, issued their own currency, and presided over the weekly Friday prayers in their own name.
Upon hearing the news, the sick emperor authorized Dara Sikhor to restore order; the prince foolishly divided his army into two places and sent troops to both places to deal with the usurpers. Aurangzeb was now leading his army against gujarat's own brother's rebels, but he skillfully allowed his brother's army to suffer more casualties in the decisive battle.
Thus by the time Dara Sikho was retreating, Aurangzeb's army had already occupied Agra, as well as the imperial treasury, the Grand Arsenal, and Shah Jahan himself there.
Aurangzeb ascended the throne by plotting to usurp the throne
The emperor offered to divide the empire equally among his sons, but Aurangzeb was confident that he would win alone. Aurangzeb proclaimed himself emperor and waged war against his brothers one by one, executing his brothers and their heirs who dared to disobey him one by one. Aurangzeb also kept his father under house arrest until his death.
As one Mughal chronicler commented, the subjects of the new emperor were unfortunately confronted with "disturbances and movements of large armies throughout the empire for two whole years (1658-60), especially in the northern and eastern territories', and coincidentally again 'the monsoon did not arrive'. In Delhi, grain prices have risen sharply.
Aurangzeb tried to turn the tide by abolishing more than sixty taxes as a "relief to alleviate the pain of soaring grain prices." But southwest India witnessed "a great drought" in 1659. According to local British merchants, 'people struggle every day with food scarcity on the line of death'. In Gujarat, the 'famine and plague' were already 'intensifying' (as in 1630-2), and they 'swept away most of the inhabitants, leaving few left to guard their homes.' ’
In 1660, when the 'monsoon didn't come', the same Group of English merchants lamented that the 'Great Scarcity' in India had "now lasted for eighteen months"; the British in Gujarat also believed that 'there has been no more severe famine in all parts of the world, and it is now very difficult for the living to bury the dead."" ’
At the same time, according to one Mughal chronicler, "scarce rainfall" had brought famine to the Gangetic plains: staple food was becoming scarcer, the poverty of the poor was worsening, and the vast majority of parganahs (i.e., administrative villages) were left uninhabited. Large numbers of people from all over the country's borders and in the immediate vicinity of the capital rushed into the city.
Aurangzeb 'opens 'free porridge farms' near permanent public distribution centres for cooked and raw foods, with 10 in the capital and more in the immediate vicinity. Aurangzeb also instructed the nobles to follow suit. He also re-enacted the tax exemption decree, stipulating that it would be applied until 'the people's living conditions finally became better'.
But the good times were short-lived. A fire in 1662 destroyed much of Shah Jahannabad, and grain prices in Gujarat were approaching famine levels because 'the precipitation of the previous year was extremely scarce' and 'it was simply not enough to produce grain except for some specific areas, and few of those particular areas produced half and a quarter of what had been before.' ’
British businessmen feared that an extreme drought would 'wipe out all the people in these areas once and for all', as 'more than 500 weaver families have fled their homes.' If the famine escalates, the rest will surely flee with them. ’
The monsoon of 1664 returned to normal, but 'years of deprivation' caused a wide range of diseases in Gujarat, and 'all the towns and villages in this area were full of sick people, and few houses were spared.'" At the same time, famine, drought and disease led to soaring staple food prices in Bengal; the southern state of Kerala suffered three years of drought.
In 1668, a French physician who was staying in Delhi recorded that 'in the states that make up the vast territory of the Indian Empire, many places are only a little better than nothing.' There are also many places where the barren mountains are barren and sparsely populated; even a large part of the fertile land is still abandoned and uncultivated because of the lack of manpower';
A newly compiled Tax Survey of the Aurangzeb Treasury shows that tax revenues in the ten provinces in the core region of the Empire have fallen by 20 percentage points from pre-war levels.
The civil war also allowed the Marathi nobleman Shivaji to create a strong Hindu state that would also defy or even defeat the Mughals (in 1664 and 1670, Shivaji twice sacked Surat, Mughal's main port).
According to the economic historian Shirin Musvi, the crisis of 1658-1670 constituted a watershed in the Mughal Empire's expansion into decline. However, the expansion of the empire continued for another forty years.
Aurangzeb's arrest, trial, and execution of the charismatic Sikh guru Derge Bahadur in the 1670s contained a campaign of conversion that eroded the Hindu and Islamic faiths; in the 1680s, Aurangzeb defeated a Rajput rebellion by his son, conquered the kingdoms of Bijapur and Gorkunda on the Deccan Plateau, captured and executed the leaders of the Marathi Federation.
Aurangzeb seems to have forgotten his own warning that "stagnation is bad for the emperor and the flowing water", because he ignored the 'monsoon not coming' of 1686 and 1687 (both years of intense El Niño activity and weak monsoons), and spent 27 consecutive years fighting the Marathis on the Deccan Plateau, deepening the consequences of the Long Storm Brigade. According to merchants in the city of Madras, 35,000 people died in the fighting. Parents abandon their children, and adults sell themselves into slavery in order to escape famine.
The largest territory of the Mughal Empire
Despite the millions of rupees spent, the Mughal treasury at the time of the emperor's death in 1707 left behind 240 crore – far more than all previous rulers left behind, and almost certainly more resources than any other ruler in the world.
Throughout the seventeenth century, the Mughal Empire's tax revenues, tributes and looting harvested outweighed its financial needs. But orangzeb's Rajput, Sikh and Marathi neighbors are also waiting. They were ready to take advantage of the inevitable and immediate war of succession after Aurangzeb's death.
Even the richest country in the world cannot overcome the weakness of the 'bloody election system'.