Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World Read online

  ALEX

  RUTHERFORD

  Copyright © 2011 Alex Rutherford

  The right of Alex Rutherford to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2011

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 9780755383276

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

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  www.headline.co.uk

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Map

  Main Characters

  Epigraph

  Part I From Behind the Veil

  Chapter 1 Sudden Danger

  Chapter 2 A Severed Head

  Chapter 3 Manhood

  Chapter 4 A Gift of Concubines

  Chapter 5 Milk and Blood

  Part II Children of Sun, Moon and Fire

  Chapter 6 The Emperor Rides Out

  Chapter 7 Saffron Warriors

  Chapter 8 Hirabai

  Chapter 9 Salim

  Chapter 10 A Wonder of the World

  Chapter 11 The Pewter Sea

  Chapter 12 A Cauldron of Heads

  Part III The Power and the Glory

  Chapter 13 City of Victory

  Chapter 14 Sun Among Women

  Part IV Allah Akbar

  Chapter 15 ‘You Will Be Emperor’

  Chapter 16 Heaven and Hell

  Chapter 17 Flaming Torches

  Chapter 18 Warrior Prince

  Chapter 19 Jewel of Chastity

  Part V Great Expectations

  Chapter 20 The Abyss

  Chapter 21 ‘A Riband in the Cap of Royalty’

  Chapter 22 The Battlements of Agra

  Chapter 23 Pomegranate Blossom

  Chapter 24 The Indus

  Chapter 25 The Treasurer of Kabul

  Chapter 26 Oblivion

  Part VI Seizer of the World

  Chapter 27 A Jute Sack

  Chapter 28 Fathers and Sons

  Chapter 29 Seizer of the World

  Historical Note

  Additional Notes

  Main Characters

  Akbar’s family

  Humayun, Akbar’s father and the second Moghul emperor

  Hamida, Akbar’s mother

  Gulbadan, Akbar’s aunt and Humayun’s half-sister

  Kamran, Akbar’s uncle and Humayun’s eldest half-brother

  Askari, Akbar’s uncle and Humayun’s middle half-brother

  Hindal, Akbar’s uncle and Humayun’s youngest half-brother

  Hirabai, Akbar’s wife, princess of Amber and mother of Salim

  Salim, Akbar’s eldest son

  Murad, Akbar’s middle son

  Daniyal, Akbar’s youngest son

  Man Bai, Salim’s wife, mother of Khusrau and daughter of Bhagwan Das, Raja of Amber

  Jodh Bai, Salim’s wife and mother of Khurram

  Sahib Jamal, Salim’s wife and mother of Parvez

  Khusrau, Salim’s eldest son

  Parvez, Salim’s middle son

  Khurram, Salim’s youngest son

  Akbar’s inner circle

  Bairam Khan, Akbar’s guardian and first khan-i-khanan, commander-in-chief

  Ahmed Khan, Akbar’s chief scout and later his khan-i-khanan

  Maham Anga, Akbar’s wet-nurse (milk-mother)

  Adham Khan, Akbar’s milk-brother

  Jauhar, Humayun’s steward and later Akbar’s comptroller of the household

  Abul Fazl, Akbar’s chief chronicler and confidant

  Tardi Beg, Governor of Delhi

  Muhammad Beg, a commander from Badakhshan

  Ali Gul, a Tajik officer

  Abdul Rahman, Akbar’s khan-i-khanan after Ahmed Khan

  Aziz Koka, one of Akbar’s youngest commanders

  Others at the Moghul court

  Atga Khan, Akbar’s chief quartermaster

  Mayala, a favourite concubine of Akbar

  Anarkali, ‘Pomegranate Blossom’, Akbar’s Venetian concubine

  Shaikh Ahmad, an orthodox Sunni and leader of the ulama, Akbar’s senior Islamic spiritual advisers

  Shaikh Mubarak, Islamic cleric and Abul Fazl’s father

  Father Francisco Henriquez, Jesuit priest, Persian by birth

  Father Antonio Monserrate, a Spanish Jesuit priest

  John Newberry, English merchant

  Suleiman Beg, Salim’s milk-brother and friend

  Zahed Butt, captain of Salim’s bodyguard

  Zubaida, Salim’s former nursemaid and attendant to Hamida

  Delhi

  Hemu, Hindu general who seizes Delhi from the Moghuls

  Fatehpur Sikri

  Shaikh Salim Chishti, a Sufi mystic

  Tuhin Das, Akbar’s architect

  Gujarat

  Ibrahim Hussain, a rival member of the Gujarati royal family

  Mirza Muqim, a rival member of the Gujarati royal family

  Itimad Khan, a rival member of the Gujarati royal family

  Kabul

  Saif Khan, Governor of Kabul

  Ghiyas Beg, a Persian émigré appointed Treasurer of Kabul

  Mehrunissa, Ghiyas Beg’s daughter

  Bengal

  Sher Shah, ruler from Bengal who ejected the Moghuls from Hindustan in Humayun’s reign

  Islam Shah, Sher Shah’s son

  Shah Daud, vassal ruler of Bengal in Akbar’s reign

  Rajasthan

  Rana Udai Singh, ruler of Mewar and son of Babur’s enemy Rana Sanga

  Raja Ravi Singh, a Rajasthani ruler and vassal of Akbar’s

  Raja Bhagwan Das, ruler of Amber, brother of Hirabai and father of Man Bai

  Man Singh, son of Raja Bhagwan Das and nephew of Hirabai

  The Moghuls’ ancestors

  Genghis Khan

  Timur, known in the west as Tamburlaine from a corruption of Timur-i-Lang (Timur the Lame)

  Ulugh Beg, Timur’s grandson and a famous astronomer

  ‘The rush of arrows and the clash of swords

  Tore the marrow of elephants and the entrails of tigers’

  Akbarnama of Abul Fazl

  Part I

  From Behind the Veil

  Chapter 1

  Sudden Danger

  Northwestern India, 1556

  A low rumbling growl rose from the dense acacia bushes thirty yards away. Even without it Akbar would have known the tiger was there. Its musky scent hung in the air. The beaters had done their work well. While moonlight still silvered the hills in which Akbar’s army was encamped, a hundred miles northeast of Delhi, they had started towards the small forest where a large male tiger had been sighted. The village headman who had brought word of it to the camp, saying he had heard that the young Moghul emperor was fond of hunting, claimed it was a maneater that in the last few days had killed an old man labouring in the fields and two small children as they went to fetch water.

  The headman had left the camp well rewarded by Akbar, who could hardly contain his excitement
. Bairam Khan, his guardian and khan-i-khanan – commander-in-chief – had tried to dissuade him from the hunt, arguing that with the Moghuls’ enemies on the move this was no time to be thinking of sport. But a tiger hunt was too good to miss, Akbar had insisted, and Bairam Khan, a faint smile lightening his lean scarred face, had finally agreed.

  The beaters had employed the age-old hunting practices of the Moghul clans brought from their homelands on the steppes of Central Asia. Moving quietly and methodically through the darkness, eight hundred men had formed a qamargah, a huge circle about a mile across, around the forest. Then, striking brass gongs and beating small, cylindrical drums suspended on thongs round their necks, they had begun closing in, forming a tighter and tighter human barrier and driving all kinds of game – black buck, nilgai, and squealing wild pigs – into the centre. Eventually, as the light grew stronger, some of them had spotted tiger tracks and sent word to Akbar, following the beaters on elephant-back.

  The beast on which Akbar was sitting high in a jewelled canopied howdah also sensed that the tiger was close. It was swinging its great head from side to side and its trunk was coiling in alarm. Behind him Akbar could hear the elephants carrying his bodyguards and attendants also restlessly shifting their great feet. ‘Mahout, quieten the beast. Hold it steady,’ he whispered to the skinny, red-turbaned man balanced on the elephant’s neck. The mahout at once tapped the animal behind its left ear with his iron ankas, the rod he used to control it. At the familiar signal, the well-drilled beast slowly relaxed to stand motionless again. Taking their cue from it, the other elephants also ceased their fidgeting and a profound silence fell.

  Excellent, thought Akbar. This was the moment when he felt most alive. The blood seemed to sing in his veins and he could feel his heart thump, not with fear but with exhilaration. Though not yet fourteen, he had already killed several tigers, but the battle of wits and of wills, the danger and unpredictability, always excited him. He knew that if the tiger suddenly broke cover, it would take him only an instant to pluck an arrow from the quiver on his back and fit it to his taut-stringed, double-curved bow – the weapon most hunters would use against such quarry. But Akbar was curious to see what a musket could do, especially against such a monster as this was reputed to be. He prided himself on his skill with a musket, and despite his mother’s remonstrances had spent far more hours practising his marksmanship than at his studies. What did it really matter if he couldn’t read when he could outshoot any soldier in his army?

  The tiger had stopped growling and Akbar sensed its amber eyes watching him. Slowly he rested the slender engraved-steel barrel of his matchlock musket on the side of the howdah. He had already loaded the metal ball, trickled gunpowder from his silver-mounted powder horn into the pan and checked the short, thin length of fuse. His qorchi, his squire, half crouching close beside him, was already holding the burning taper Akbar would need to ignite the fuse.

  Satisfied, Akbar aimed his musket at the densest part of the acacia bushes where he was certain the tiger was hiding, braced his shoulder to the ivory-inlaid wooden butt and squinted down the length of the long barrel. ‘Hand me the taper,’ he whispered to his qorchi, ‘and signal to the beaters.’ Clustered in a semicircle behind the elephants, the beaters at once broke into high-pitched yells and began striking their gongs and beating their drums. Moments later, with an answering roar, the tiger burst through the screen of acacias. Akbar saw a blur of long white teeth and gold and black fur leaping towards his elephant as he lit the fuse. There was a brilliant flash, then a deafening bang. The musket’s recoil knocked Akbar backwards, almost somersaulting him out of the howdah, but not before he had seen the tiger drop to the ground, still ten yards away. As the smoke cleared, Akbar saw the animal lying motionless on its side, blood pouring from a jagged hole above its right eye.

  Akbar gave a yell of triumph. Without waiting for the mahout to bring his mount – which had reacted with admirable calmness to the charge of the tiger and the sharp crack of the musket – to its knees, he climbed, grinning broadly, over the side of the howdah and dropped lightly to the ground. He’d made a fine kill, a perfect kill. He’d proved to the doubters who insisted a musket was too slow for killing such prey that in the hands of a good marksman it was easily fast enough. Curious to inspect the dead beast, Akbar advanced closer. The tiger’s pink tongue, lolling flaccidly from its mouth, was already attracting green-black flies. Then Akbar noticed something else protruding through the thick belly fur. Teats. The tiger he’d been hunting was supposed to have been male.

  The thought was swiftly followed by another that made the hairs on the back of his young neck lift. With trembling fingers Akbar yanked his bow from his shoulder and, reaching behind him, grabbed an arrow. He was still fitting it to the string when a second and massive tiger launched itself out of the acacias straight towards him. Somehow Akbar managed to fire his arrow, and then time seemed to stop for him. The clamour of warning shouts behind him faded and it was as if he and the tiger were alone. He watched his arrow very slowly part the air in its flight. The tiger too looked almost suspended in its leap, saliva-flecked lips drawn back, long canines prominent and ears flattened against its head, like the image etched on the golden ring that had once belonged to Akbar’s great ancestor Timur and was now on his own shaking forefinger.

  Then, suddenly, time rushed forward again and the tiger was almost on him. Akbar jumped aside, closing his eyes as he did so and expecting at any moment to feel claws ripping into his flesh or smell hot, rancid breath as sharp teeth sought his throat. Instead he heard a skidding thud and opened his eyes to see the tiger crumpled up beside him, his arrow embedded in the crimsoning fur of its throat. For a moment Akbar stood in silence, knowing he had experienced something almost unknown to him – fear – and also that he had been very, very lucky.

  Still dazed, he caught the sound of rapidly approaching hoofbeats and turned to see a rider weaving through the low scrub and spindly trees towards them. It must be a messenger from the camp, no doubt sent by Bairam Khan to hurry him up. Five minutes ago he’d have been annoyed to have his sport interrupted but now he felt grateful for the distraction from thoughts of what might have happened. The crowd of beaters, guards and attendants parted to let the rider through. His tall bay horse was foamy with sweat and he himself so caked with dust that his tunic of bright Moghul green looked almost brown. Reining in before Akbar, he flung himself from the saddle, made the briefest of obeisances and said breathlessly, ‘Majesty, Bairam Khan requests that you return to the camp immediately.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Delhi has fallen to an advance force of Hemu’s rebels.’

  Four hours later, as the hunting party with Akbar at its head passed through the first of the picket lines thrown out around his camp, the sun was still high in the clear blue sky. Despite the tasselled brocade canopy shading him, Akbar’s head ached. Sweat was sticking his tunic to his body, yet he barely noticed the discomfort as he pondered the disastrous news of the loss of his capital. Surely his rule was not destined to be over almost before it had begun.

  It was barely ten months since, on a makeshift brick throne hastily erected on a masonry platform in the centre of a Moghul encampment, he had been proclaimed Emperor of Hindustan. Still raw with grief at the sudden death of his father, the Emperor Humayun, he had stood awkwardly but proudly beneath a silken awning to receive the homage of Bairam Khan and his other commanders.

  His mother Hamida had only recently succeeded in convincing him just how desperate that time had been. How Bairam Khan, despite his Persian origins, had understood better than anyone that in the first hours and days after his father’s death the danger to Akbar came from within – from ambitious commanders who, now the emperor was dead leaving only a boy as heir, might claim the throne for themselves. Most were men with no time for sentiment. Many were from the old Moghul clans who with Akbar’s grandfather Babur had founded a new empire on the dry plains of Hindustan. The code of the steppes, ha
d always been taktya, takhta, ‘throne or coffin’. Any who felt strong enough could challenge for the crown and over the years many had done so and would do so again.

  Akbar’s elephant stumbled, jerking him from his recollections, but only for a moment. Staring down at the wrinkled grey neck of the beast with its sproutings of sparse coarse hair, his mind soon returned to its dark reflections. If the news was true and Delhi had indeed fallen, everything his mother and Bairam Khan had done for him might have been for nothing. To win precious time, they had concealed Humayun’s death for nearly two weeks, finding a loyal servant of similar build to impersonate the dead emperor. Each day at dawn, he had donned the imperial robes of green silk and Humayun’s jewelled turban with its plume of white egrets’ feathers and appeared as custom demanded on the riverside balcony of the imperial palace in Delhi, the Purana Qila, to show the crowds jostling each other on the banks of the Jumna that the Moghul emperor lived.

  Meanwhile, Hamida and her sister-in-law Gulbadan, Akbar’s aunt, had persuaded the reluctant Akbar that he must secretly leave Delhi. He could still see his mother’s strained anxious face as, holding a flickering oil lamp in one hand, she had shaken him awake with the other, whispering, ‘Come now – bring nothing with you – just come!’ Stumbling from his bed, he had allowed her to throw a dark hooded cloak over him, like the one she was wearing. Barely awake but head reeling with questions he had followed her down narrow passageways and twisting flights of stairs through a part of the palace he had never seen to emerge into a small, grubby courtyard. He could still recall the acrid smell of urine – human or animal, he couldn’t tell.

  A large palanquin was waiting, and in the shadows stood Gulbadan and about twenty soldiers he recognised as Bairam Khan’s men. ‘Get in,’ Hamida had whispered.

  ‘Why, where are we going?’ he had asked.

  ‘Your life is in danger if you stay here. Don’t question me. Just do it.’

  ‘I don’t want to run away. I’m no coward. I’ve already seen blood and battles . . .’ he had protested.