A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal by Michael Preston Diana Preston Page B
Authors: Michael Preston Diana Preston
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had stood by him through so much. He gave her 200,000 gold pieces, 600,000 rupees and an annual allowance of 1,000,000 rupees.
A few days later, in early March, Mumtaz was reunited with the young sons from whom she had been parted for over two years when her father, Asaf Khan, and her mother returned Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb safely to her. Shah Jahan’s official chronicler described in restrained language what must have been a highly emotional occasion: ‘Her Majesty the Queen greatly rejoiced to hear the news of the arrival of the august princes and her respected parents. With royal permission, she rode out to greet her noble parents in the company of Her Highness princess Jahanara Begam and other royal children; and from the other side, the Princes rode onward to meet the litter of Her Majesty the Queen. They met at a place … where tents had been pitched for the occasion and all were overjoyed to see one another again after the long separation.’
The next day, escorted by the elite of the nobility, the relieved, happy empress and her children processed into the imperial capital, where, on the jharokha balcony of the Red Fort, the imperial princes, but not their relieved mother, showed themselves to the cheering crowds. An exquisite painting in the only illustrated manuscript of the Padshahnama , an official chronicle of Shah Jahan’s reign now in the Queen’s collection in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, shows the bejewelled emperor in purple robes greeting his sons, who are equally lavishly attired in coats of orange, gold and jade green, with ropes of pearls around their necks. The chronicle records that Shah Jahan ‘much rejoiced at the sight of his children, who had all been born to him by his favourite wife’ .
These should have been days of harmony and happiness. Mumtaz could introduce the returned princes to the new brother they had never seen – the fifteen-month-old Sultan Lutf Allah, born during her uncertain exile with Shah Jahan. Of the eleven offspring born since her marriage sixteen years earlier, eight were alive and apparently thriving at this time. Yet within just three months of Shah Jahan’s accession to the throne this would change. In late April 1628, shortly before Mumtaz was due to give birth, their seven-year-old daughter Sorayya Bano died of smallpox. Then, on 9 May 1628, a court chronicler reported that ‘an auspicious star appeared in the sky’ – Mumtaz had borne Shah Jahan another son, his eighth, Sultan Daulat Afza.
Yet if joy at this event helped mitigate previous sorrows, this was short-lived. Five days later, ‘while everyone was enjoying the gifts of this world’ and Shah Jahan was distributing largesse to everyone from high-ranking nobles to ‘the turbaned religious scholars, deserving persons and musicians and dancers’ and lavishing gifts on his beloved Mumtaz, little Sultan Lutf Allah, ‘owing to the perverseness of obstinate heaven’, departed suddenly ‘to the asylum of the world beyond’ .
Though people were accustomed to relatively high rates of child mortality at this time, the death of an infant in the imperial family was always deeply mourned and the death of two children within such a short time at the outset of the reign must have seemed a bad omen. European observers were also uneasy about what the new reign would bring, but on different grounds. One wrote, ‘As to the nature of the present ruler, it is impossible as yet to express an opinion, though it is easy to foretell that a reign inaugurated by so many crimes will prove to be ill-starred, and that a throne buttressed by the shedding of so much innocent blood will prove to be insecure.’
* Some sources state that Dawar Bakhsh in fact escaped to Persia. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the French jeweller, later claimed to have encountered him there.
10
‘The Builder Could Not
Have Been of This Earth’
M umtaz’s ‘illumined tomb’
A few days later, in early March, Mumtaz was reunited with the young sons from whom she had been parted for over two years when her father, Asaf Khan, and her mother returned Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb safely to her. Shah Jahan’s official chronicler described in restrained language what must have been a highly emotional occasion: ‘Her Majesty the Queen greatly rejoiced to hear the news of the arrival of the august princes and her respected parents. With royal permission, she rode out to greet her noble parents in the company of Her Highness princess Jahanara Begam and other royal children; and from the other side, the Princes rode onward to meet the litter of Her Majesty the Queen. They met at a place … where tents had been pitched for the occasion and all were overjoyed to see one another again after the long separation.’
The next day, escorted by the elite of the nobility, the relieved, happy empress and her children processed into the imperial capital, where, on the jharokha balcony of the Red Fort, the imperial princes, but not their relieved mother, showed themselves to the cheering crowds. An exquisite painting in the only illustrated manuscript of the Padshahnama , an official chronicle of Shah Jahan’s reign now in the Queen’s collection in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, shows the bejewelled emperor in purple robes greeting his sons, who are equally lavishly attired in coats of orange, gold and jade green, with ropes of pearls around their necks. The chronicle records that Shah Jahan ‘much rejoiced at the sight of his children, who had all been born to him by his favourite wife’ .
These should have been days of harmony and happiness. Mumtaz could introduce the returned princes to the new brother they had never seen – the fifteen-month-old Sultan Lutf Allah, born during her uncertain exile with Shah Jahan. Of the eleven offspring born since her marriage sixteen years earlier, eight were alive and apparently thriving at this time. Yet within just three months of Shah Jahan’s accession to the throne this would change. In late April 1628, shortly before Mumtaz was due to give birth, their seven-year-old daughter Sorayya Bano died of smallpox. Then, on 9 May 1628, a court chronicler reported that ‘an auspicious star appeared in the sky’ – Mumtaz had borne Shah Jahan another son, his eighth, Sultan Daulat Afza.
Yet if joy at this event helped mitigate previous sorrows, this was short-lived. Five days later, ‘while everyone was enjoying the gifts of this world’ and Shah Jahan was distributing largesse to everyone from high-ranking nobles to ‘the turbaned religious scholars, deserving persons and musicians and dancers’ and lavishing gifts on his beloved Mumtaz, little Sultan Lutf Allah, ‘owing to the perverseness of obstinate heaven’, departed suddenly ‘to the asylum of the world beyond’ .
Though people were accustomed to relatively high rates of child mortality at this time, the death of an infant in the imperial family was always deeply mourned and the death of two children within such a short time at the outset of the reign must have seemed a bad omen. European observers were also uneasy about what the new reign would bring, but on different grounds. One wrote, ‘As to the nature of the present ruler, it is impossible as yet to express an opinion, though it is easy to foretell that a reign inaugurated by so many crimes will prove to be ill-starred, and that a throne buttressed by the shedding of so much innocent blood will prove to be insecure.’
* Some sources state that Dawar Bakhsh in fact escaped to Persia. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the French jeweller, later claimed to have encountered him there.
10
‘The Builder Could Not
Have Been of This Earth’
M umtaz’s ‘illumined tomb’
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