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Dara Shikoh
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Dara Shikoh (March 20, 1615 - August 30, 1659) was the eldest son of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. His name ???? ???? in Persian means "Darius the Magnificent". He was favoured as a successor by his father and his sister Jahanara Begum, but was defeated by his younger brother Aurangzeb 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 Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. His name ???? ???? in Persian means "Darius the Magnificent". He was favoured as a successor by his father and his sister Jahanara Begum, but was defeated by his younger brother Aurangzeb 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 and marching towards Agra while Murad Baksh 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 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 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 chieftain 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 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's famous Qadiri Sufi saint Hazrat Mian Mir, whom he was introduced to by Mullah Shah Badakhshi (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 and Hinduism. Towards this goal he completed the translation of 50 Upanishads from its original Sanskrit into Persian 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 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 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 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 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. Dara Shikoh is also the subject of a 2007 play "Dara Shikoh", 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),
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