Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World
Read Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World Online
Authors: Alex Rutherford
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
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Chapter 4 A Gift of Concubines
Part II Children of Sun, Moon and Fire
Chapter 6 The Emperor Rides Out
Chapter 10 A Wonder of the World
Chapter 12 A Cauldron of Heads
Part III The Power and the Glory
Chapter 15 ‘You Will Be Emperor’
Chapter 21 ‘A Riband in the Cap of Royalty’
Chapter 22 The Battlements of Agra
Chapter 23 Pomegranate Blossom
Chapter 25 The Treasurer of Kabul
Chapter 29 Seizer of the World
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
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?