Aurangzeb Alamgir
Ruled the Mughal Empire for 49 years, the longest of any Mughal, from Kashmir to the Deccan and Bengal to Kabul, an empire of some 158 million subjects, then a quarter of the world's population. Personally austere, a hafiz of the Quran, controversial for his revocation of Akbar's syncretic tolerance policies.
- Lived
- 1618 - 1707 CE
- Read next
- Meaning of the name Aurangzeb
Who was Aurangzeb Alamgir? Ruled the Mughal Empire for 49 years, the longest of any Mughal, from Kashmir to the Deccan and Bengal to Kabul, an empire of some 158 million subjects, then a quarter of the world's population. Personally austere, a hafiz of the Quran, controversial for his revocation of Akbar's syncretic tolerance policies.
Life
Muhi al-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb was born in 1618, third son of the emperor Shah Jahan (the builder of the Taj Mahal). He was a general from his teens and had made his political reputation before his father's illness in 1657.
In the war of succession that followed, Aurangzeb defeated his three brothers, Dara Shukoh (executed), Shuja, and Murad Bakhsh, and imprisoned his father in the Red Fort of Agra, where Shah Jahan died eight years later in view of the Taj Mahal he had built for his wife.
Aurangzeb ruled as emperor for 49 years, taking the imperial title Alamgir, "Seizer of the World." His rule extended the Mughal Empire to its greatest territorial reach, from Kabul to Bengal, from Kashmir to the tip of the Deccan, an empire of some 158 million subjects and roughly a quarter of the world's population.
He was personally austere. He was a hafiz of the Quran. He copied Qurans and stitched taqiyyah caps and refused to draw on state funds for personal expenses. His grave in Khuldabad, at his own instruction, is a bare open plot in the earth.
He is also the most controversial of the Mughal emperors. He revoked Akbar's syncretic religious policies. He reintroduced the jizya on non-Muslims in 1679. He destroyed several Hindu temples. His long Deccan wars against the Marathas and the Deccan sultanates drained the treasury and stretched the empire beyond its capacity to hold together. After his death in 1707 the empire began the two-century decline that ended in the British Raj.
He is remembered variously across South Asian Islamic tradition, some see him as the last great defender of Sunni orthodoxy against dissolution, some as the emperor whose rigidity fractured India. Both readings acknowledge the scale and the seriousness of the man.
Stories
Each story below is drawn from the classical Islamic historical sources.
Forty-nine years and a taqiyyah cap
Aurangzeb Alamgir ruled the Mughal Empire from 1658 to 1707, the longest of any Mughal, over 158 million subjects, roughly a quarter of the world's population at the time. He was a hafiz of the Quran. He copied Qurans by hand. He funded his own expenses by stitching taqiyyah caps. His grave, per his own instruction, is an open plot in the earth.