A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal by Michael Preston Diana Preston

diarist wrote after his master’s death, to be ‘a mere sacrificial lamb’. His slaughter would be deferred only until the arrival of Shah Jahan. A European observer predicted that ‘there is very little hope or chance’ for him.
    Dawar Bakhsh was an intelligent youth who shared Jahangir’s obsession with nature’s eccentricities. Several years earlier he had presented his grandfather with, as Jahangir’s diarist describes, ‘a tiger, which had an extraordinary affection for a goat, which lived in the same cage with it. They used even to couple and consort together, as if they were animals of the same kind.’ Dawar Bakhsh was initially suspicious, especially given his father’s fate, that he was being induced to accept ‘a phantom rulership’. However, he was eventually won round by the silken-tongued Asaf Khan and the solemn oaths of his confederates. The boy allowed them to proclaim him emperor before setting out, a virtual prisoner, on horseback and surrounded by Asaf Khan and the leading nobles to confront Shahriyar at Lahore. Nur followed a day later, with the body of her dead husband. Asaf Khan had issued strict orders that she was to accompany the cortège every slow step of the journey to the corpse’s final resting place.

     
    In Lahore, Shahriyar had indeed been quick to act, spurred by a terse message from Nur – the last she was able to send before being confined – and by the urgings of his wife, Nur’s daughter, Ladli. He too claimed the throne, using 7,000,000 rupees purloined from the imperial treasury in the city to buy support and raise an army. However, Asaf Khan’s army swiftly defeated his inexperienced forces when they clashed some eight miles from Lahore. A Turkish slave rushed from the battlefield to Shahriyar, hovering indecisively just outside the city, with news of the defeat. The prince took refuge within the Lahore fortress, which soon fell to the attacking forces. A eunuch dragged the hairless, trembling Shahriyar from the sanctuary of the harem. Asaf Khan had him thrown into prison and, two days later, blinded. Dawar Bakhsh, meanwhile, mounted the throne within the citadel, but would not occupy it for long.

     
    The messenger sent by Asaf Khan reached Shah Jahan at Junnar in the northern Deccan on 18 November. Learning of his arrival, Shah Jahan came hurrying out of the harem, where he had been with Mumtaz. The messenger flung himself to the ground before Shah Jahan, kissed it and handed over Asaf Khan’s ring as proof of the story he proceeded to relate. Shah Jahan passed four days in mourning, as decency and decorum demanded, but there seems to have been no sign of the deep grief that had so afflicted him as a boy when Akbar died or when, eight years earlier, he had lost his beloved mother. Affection between father and son had withered long ago, the victim of ambition on one side and suspicion on the other.
    Shah Jahan was soon making plans for the march northwards. On a day deemed auspicious by his astrologers, he and Mumtaz, who at this momentous time was again pregnant, set out to claim the throne, escorted by Mahabat Khan. As they journeyed on, Shah Jahan received a letter from Asaf Khan ‘filled with the good news of victory and triumph’ over Shahriyar and begging that ‘his glorious retinue would proceed on wings of haste to rescue the world from chaos’ – in other words, warning him to be quick.
    The time approached when the young puppet emperor’s strings must be cut. Shah Jahan decided to leave as little as possible to chance. Nearing Agra, he despatched a hand-written message to Asaf Khan in Lahore ‘to the effect that it would be well if Dawar Bakhsh, the son, and [Shahriyar] the useless brother of Khusrau, and the [two] sons of Prince Daniyal [Jahangir’s long dead brother], were all sent out of the world’. His father-in-law obliged, ordering the murder of all four, and, for good measure, of Dawar Bakhsh’s younger brother, just two days after