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Dara Shikoh

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Dara Shikoh



 
 
Dara Shikoh (March 20, 1615 - August 30, 1659) was the eldest son of the Mughal
Mughal Empire

The Mughal Empire was a Muslim imperial power of the Indian subcontinent which began in 1526, ruled most of the Indian Subcontinent by the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and ended in the mid-19th century....
 Emperor Shah Jahan
Shah Jahan

Shihab-ud-din Muhammad Shah Jahan I , was the ruler of the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 1628 until 1658. The name Shah Jahan comes from Persian meaning "King of the World." He was the fifth Mughal ruler after Babur, Humayun, Akbar, and Jahangir....
 and his wife Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal

Mumtaz Mahal is the common nickname of Arjumand Banu Begum, an Indian-Persian Empress in the Mughal Dynasty. She was born in Agra, Hindustan....
. His name ???? ???? in Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
 means "Darius the Magnificent". He was favoured as a successor by his father and his sister Jahanara Begum
Jahanara Begum

Shahzadi Jahanara Begum Sahib was the eldest daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal....
, but was defeated by his younger brother Aurangzeb
Aurangzeb

Aurangzeb Aurangzeb ruled India for 48 years, bringing a larger area under Mughal rule than ever before . He is generally regarded as the last Great Mughal ruler....
 in a bitter struggle for the Mughal throne. The trajectory of the historical evolution of the Indian subcontinent, had Dara prevailed over Aurangzeb, has been a matter of some conjecture among historians."Poor Dara!....thy generous heart and enlightened mind had reigned over this vast empire, and made it, perchance, the garden it deserves to be made".






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Dara Shikoh (March 20, 1615 - August 30, 1659) was the eldest son of the Mughal
Mughal Empire

The Mughal Empire was a Muslim imperial power of the Indian subcontinent which began in 1526, ruled most of the Indian Subcontinent by the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and ended in the mid-19th century....
 Emperor Shah Jahan
Shah Jahan

Shihab-ud-din Muhammad Shah Jahan I , was the ruler of the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 1628 until 1658. The name Shah Jahan comes from Persian meaning "King of the World." He was the fifth Mughal ruler after Babur, Humayun, Akbar, and Jahangir....
 and his wife Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal

Mumtaz Mahal is the common nickname of Arjumand Banu Begum, an Indian-Persian Empress in the Mughal Dynasty. She was born in Agra, Hindustan....
. His name ???? ???? in Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
 means "Darius the Magnificent". He was favoured as a successor by his father and his sister Jahanara Begum
Jahanara Begum

Shahzadi Jahanara Begum Sahib was the eldest daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal....
, but was defeated by his younger brother Aurangzeb
Aurangzeb

Aurangzeb Aurangzeb ruled India for 48 years, bringing a larger area under Mughal rule than ever before . He is generally regarded as the last Great Mughal ruler....
 in a bitter struggle for the Mughal throne. The trajectory of the historical evolution of the Indian subcontinent, had Dara prevailed over Aurangzeb, has been a matter of some conjecture among historians."Poor Dara!....thy generous heart and enlightened mind had reigned over this vast empire, and made it, perchance, the garden it deserves to be made". William Sleeman (1844), p.272

The struggle for succession and death


On September 6, 1657, the illness of emperor Shah Jahan triggered a desperate struggle for power among the four Mughal princes, though realistically only Dara and Aurangzeb had a chance of emerging victorious. Shah Shuja was the first to make his move, declaring himself emperor in Bengal
Bengal

Bengal , is a historical and geographical region in the northeast of South Asia. Today it is mainly divided between the independent sovereign nation of the Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India, although some regions of the previous kingdoms of Bengal are now part of the neighboring Indian states of Bihar, Assam, Tripura and Oris...
 and marching towards Agra while Murad Baksh
Murad Baksh

Murad Baksh was the youngest son of Mughal Empire emperor Shah Jahan and empress Mumtaz Mahal .In 1657 he proclaimed himself emperor after reports that his father had died and later joined hands with Aurangzeb to defeat Dara Shikhoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan....
 allied himself with Aurangzeb.

Despite strong support from Shah Jahan, who had recovered enough from his illness to remain a strong factor in the struggle for supremacy, and the victory of his army led by his eldest son Sulaiman Shikoh over Shah Shuja in the battle of Bahadurpur on February 14, 1658, Dara was defeated by Aurangzeb and Murad at the battlefield of Samugarh, 13 km from Agra
Agra

Agra is a city on the banks of the Yamuna in the northern States and territories of India of Uttar Pradesh, India. It finds mention in the epic Mahabharata when it was called Agrabana, or Paradise....
 on May 30, 1658. Subsequently Aurangzeb took over Agra fort and deposed emperor Shah Jahan on June 8, 1658.

After the defeat Dara retreated from Agra to Delhi and thence to Lahore. His next destination was Multan and then to Thatta (Sindh). From Sindh, he crossed the Rann of Kachchh and reached Kathiawar, where he met Shah Nawaz Khan, the governor of the province of Gujarat who opened the treasury to Dara and helped him to recruit a new army. He occupied Surat and advanced towards Ajmer. Foiled in his hopes of persuading the fickle but powerful Rajput feudatory, Maharaja Jaswant Singh
Maharaja Jaswant Singh

Maharaja Jaswant Singh was a ruler of Marwar in the present-day Indian state of Rajasthan. He was a Rajput belonging to the Rathore clan. His father was Maharaja Guj Singh....
 of Marwar, to support his cause, the luckless Dara decided to make a stand and fight Aurangzeb's relentless pursuers but was once again comprehensively routed in the battle of Deorai (near Ajmer) on March 11, 1659. After this defeat he fled to Sindh and sought refuge under Malik Jiwan, a Baluch
Baluch

Baluch may refer to:*The Baloch people and Balochistan region of South Asia and southwest Asia Asia.*Nargis Baluch, Pakistani newspaper editor...
 chieftain
Tribal chief

A traditional tribal chief is the leadership of a tribe, or the head of a tribal form of self-government.The notion of a "tribal chief" is rather vague and arbitrary; neither chief nor tribe is clearly defined, so in many cases other designations are used for the same institution, such as petty ruler or even headman ....
 whose life had on more than one occasion been saved by the Mughal prince from the wrath of Shah Jehan. However, Malik betrayed Dara and turned him (and his second son Sipihr Shikoh) over to Aurangzeb's army on June 10, 1659.

Dara was brought to Delhi, placed on a filthy elephant and paraded through the streets of the capital in chains. Dara's fate was decided by the political threat he posed as a prince popular with the common people - a convocation of nobles and clergy, called by Aurangzeb in response to the perceived danger of insurrection in Delhi, declared him a threat to the public peace and an apostate from Islam. He was murdered by assassins on the night of August 30, 1659.

Intellectual pursuits

Dara Shikoh With Mian Mir and Mulla Shah
Dara Shikoh is widely renownedas an enlightened paragon of the harmonious coexistence of heterodox traditions on the Indian subcontinent. He was an erudite champion of mystical religious speculation (which made him a heretic in the eyes of his more orthodox brother and the coterie around him) and a poetic diviner of syncretic cultural interaction among people of all faiths. Dara was a follower of Lahore
Lahore

is the capital of the Pakistani Subdivisions of Pakistan of Punjab and is the List of most populated metropolitan areas in Pakistan city in Pakistan after Karachi....
's famous Qadiri Sufi saint Hazrat Mian Mir, whom he was introduced to by Mullah Shah Badakhshi
Mullah Shah Badakhshi

Mullah Shah Badakhshi, popularly known as "Mullah Shah" was a Muslim Sufi, spiritual successor of the famous Mian Mir. He belonged to the Qadiri order of Sufism....
 (Mian Mir's spiritual disciple and successor) and who was so widely respected among all communities that he was invited to lay the foundation stone of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by the Sikhs. Dara devoted much effort towards finding a common mystical language between Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
 and Hinduism
Hinduism

'Hinduism' is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as , a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal dharma", by its practitioners....
. Towards this goal he completed the translation of 50 Upanishads from its original Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
 into Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
 in 1657 so it could be read by Muslim scholars. His translation is often called Sirr-e-Akbar (The Greatest Mystery), where he states boldly, in the Introduction, his speculative hypothesis that the work referred to in the Qur'an
Qur'an

The Qur?an is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur?an to be the book of divine guidance and direction for mankind, and consider the original Arabic text to be the final revelation of God....
 as the "Kitab al-maknun" or the hidden book is none other than the Upanishads. His most famous work, Majma ul-Bahrain ("The Mingling of the Two Oceans"), was also devoted to a revelation of the mystical and pluralistic affinities between Sufic and Vedantic speculation.

Patron of art

He was also a patron of fine arts, music and dancing, a trait frowned upon by his sibling Aurangzeb. In fact many of his paintings are quite detailed and compare well to a professional artist of his time. The 'Dara Shikoh album' is a collection of paintings and calligraphy assembled from the 1630s until his death. It was presented to his wife Nadira Banu
Nadira Banu

Nadira Banu was the wife of Dara Shikoh, the heir to Shah Jahan's throne and the crown prince of his Indian empire. After his brother?s rise to power, Prince Dara?s immediate family and all of his supporters were in grave danger....
 in 1641-42 and remained with her until her death after which the album was taken into the royal library and the inscriptions connecting it with Dara Shikoh were deliberately erased; however not everything was vandalised and many calligraphy
Calligraphy

Calligraphy is the art of writing . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner" ....
 scripts and paintings still bear his mark.

Dara Shikoh is also credited with the commissioning of several exquisite, still extant, examples of Mughal architecture - among them the tomb of his wife Nadira Banu
Nadira Banu

Nadira Banu was the wife of Dara Shikoh, the heir to Shah Jahan's throne and the crown prince of his Indian empire. After his brother?s rise to power, Prince Dara?s immediate family and all of his supporters were in grave danger....
 in Lahore, the tomb of Hazrat Mian Mir also in Lahore, the Dara Shikoh Library in Delhi, the Akhun Mullah Shah Mosque in Srinagar in Kashmir and the Pari Mahal garden palace (also in Srinagar in Kashmir).

Dara Shikoh in art

The issues surrounding Dara Shikoh's impeachment and execution are used to explore interpretations of Islam in a 2008 play, "The Life and Death of Dara Shikoh", written by Akbar S. Ahmed
Akbar S. Ahmed

Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed , Sitara-e-Imtiaz, commonly referred to as Akbar S. Ahmed is an anthropologist, filmmaker, administrator, diplomat and a Muslim scholar on Islam, International Relations and International Politics, and Contemporary Islamic philosophy from Pakistan....
. Dara Shikoh is also the subject of a 2007 play "Dara Shikoh
Dara Shikoh

Dara Shikoh was the eldest son of the Mughal Empire Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. His name ???? ???? in Persian language means "Darius the Magnificent"....
", written by Danish Iqbal. Dara Shikoh is also a character played by Vaquar Sheikh in the glossy 2005 Bollywood film Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story, directed by Akbar Khan.

External Links

Bernier, Francois
Manucci, Niccolo
Srikand, Yoginder
Mittal, Aditya
Gyani Brahma Singh, [https://mailman.rice.edu/pipermail/sasialit/2002-February/008773.html Dara Shikoh - The Prince who turned Sufi] in The Sikh Review
The Hindu,





Sleeman, William (1844),