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Muhyi-ud
Din AURANGZEB ALAMGIR (r.1658-1707) |
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Prince Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb's oldest brother,
was temperamentally better suited to translating the Upanishads into Persian
than to ruling the empire; after his execution, he was buried in Humayun's
tomb |
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Prince Shah Shuja, governor of Bengal, had
a lovely palace on the Ganges in *Rajmahal*--
before he tangled with Aurangzeb |
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The luckless Prince Murad Bakhsh sought
to claim the throne in 1657; hopelessly outmaneuvered, he was executed
in 1658; his name lives on in *Moradabad* |
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When push came to shove, Aurangzeb was more
than a match for his brothers, and for the East India Company as well--
though not for *the Marathas* |
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Some portraits of Aurangzeb; despite his
anti-artistic bias, he also created the new *Moti
Masjid* inside the Red Fort, and added the Badshahi Masjid to the *Lahore
Fort* |
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Aurangzeb with Shaistah Khan and other nobles,
in a scene painted perhaps by Bichitra |
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Aurangzeb minted some truly lovely coins |
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Raja Karan Singh of Bikaner, who during
his long reign was Aurangzeb's enemy, then ally, then enemy; and an image
of a "courtier in the Deccan" |
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The often-rebellious Azam Shah, Aurangzeb's
third son, did not outlive him |
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In 1681 Aurangzeb set off to pacify the
Deccan once and for all; as his headquarters there he built up the city
of AURANGABAD, near the old headquarters fort of *Daulatabad* |
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In Aurangabad, he built the warpedly Taj-like
"Bibi ka Maqbara" as a tomb for one of his wives |
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Aurangzeb was buried in a (relatively) simple
tomb in Khuldabad, near Aurangabad; even in death, he never came back from
the Deccan |
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Contemporary European depictions of the
Mughals and their realm were not always very helpful |
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And here's a contemporary Deccani depiction
of a young European |
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From the 1700's, we have depictions by *PREVOST*
of some of the important figures in Aurangzeb's life |
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Aurangzeb became the hero of *a
tragedy by Dryden*, and father of the imaginary princess *Lalla
Rookh*; modern "Mughal" images of him are still being painted |
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