A lamp for the dark worl.., p.18
A Lamp for the Dark World, page 18
As it happens, however, the commander’s anger exceeded his ability: Bahadur won the battle between them and followed his victory with a daring raid on Jaunpur – ‘throwing up a noose, [he] climbed into the fortress’51 – to rescue his and Ali Quli’s mother, so recently made guarantee of her sons’ good behaviour. Not to be outdone, Ali Quli broke the pact that required him to stay on his side of the Ganga while Akbar toured the east.
Akbar was enraged. He even threatened to move his capital from Agra to Jaunpur until the Uzbeks came to heel. At this, Ali Quli sent renewed pleas for peace – and his newly rescued mother, back again – to Munim, and, once again, the Uzbek’s friends in Akbar’s court persuaded the padishah to give him another chance.52
Akbar returned to Agra, and Ali Quli to his rebellion. The Uzbek may have made a show of repentance to get Akbar to leave, but he had no intention of letting the boy win. He was damned, in fact, if a so-called padishah with only a battle against villagers in Paronkh to his name would tell him, grizzled hero of Panipat, what to do.
Many agreed with him. Abdullah the Uzbek, whom Akbar had chased out of Malwa, returned from Gujarat and joined Ali Quli. Asaf Khan, too, having hidden ‘like a wild beast . . . in the forests’53 for a while, decided to take his chance with the Uzbeks – as did a new posse of insurgents, known to history as the Mirzas: Timurid princes chafing at Akbar’s increasing authority. Ali Quli’s Jaunpur, as a modern historian puts it, ‘was fast becoming a rendezvous of disgruntled elements’.54
Unfortunately for him, Ali Quli had remarkable spirit for insurrection but little talent for binding men to his cause.
At their very first meeting, Asaf Khan was put off by the Uzbeks’ arrogance and ‘did not like their company’. His dismay only increased, presumably, when he saw Ali Quli ‘cast eyes . . . on his property’. Asaf Khan plotted an escape, losing a finger and the tip of his nose in the process, and returned, sheepishly, to Akbar’s fold. As for the Mirzas, their alliance with the Uzbeks was equally short-lived, ‘for every one in his folly wanted to rule’,55 a desire that does not make for lasting unions. The Mirzas, like Asaf Khan, soon left. This didn’t worry Ali Quli overly; in fact, it seems to have spurred him and his kin to set their sights on a far more ambitious coalition. Not for them Asaf Khan’s Gond gold, nor the Mirzas’ proud disaffection. The question was no longer of fighting Akbar’s authority, but of denouncing it entirely. Akbar was not, after all, the only one of Humayun’s descendants with a claim to Humayun’s throne.
The ghostly Abul Qasim, Akbar’s cousin, might be no more, but what about Humayun’s other son, Akbar’s half-brother, tucked away in Kabul?
In March 1567, almost exactly a year after he left Jaunpur, Akbar held a most magnificent – and outrageous – hunt on the outskirts of Lahore.
The hunt was of the ‘qamargah’ style, in which beaters encircled a large area of forest land and closed in, thus increasing the density of animal life within their circumference. In this case, several thousand soldiers had been enlisted to enclose an area of over 20 square kilometres – ‘from near the mountains on the one side, and from the river [Jhelum] on the other’. For a month, these men, ‘both high and low’, had moved forward, step by coordinated step, pressing animals into grounds as ‘capacious [as the] hearts of princes’.56 When the qamargah was ready, Akbar rode in with only one man by his side, Aziz, Shamsuddin Ataka’s son and Akbar’s favourite milk brother. The two friends hunted their fill for five days, Akbar aiming ‘the arrow, the sword, the lance and the musket’, swinging lassos to catch ‘lightning-footed deer’.57 The rest of the nobility was camped on the qamargah’s borders, watching to see that no animal escaped in the day, keeping guard with flaming torches at night.
When Akbar was satisfied, the nobility had their turn, and so down the ranks to the foot soldiers until every man had taken what life he was entitled to, and all turned their backs on the blood-soaked plain. It was an extravagance of gore, the sheer spectacle of which suggests that Akbar had not come all the way from Agra to Punjab for a hunt.
He had come to frighten his little brother.
Mirza Muhammad Hakim, over a decade Akbar’s junior, was an infant when Humayun left Kabul to recover his home in Hindustan – and never returned. He was brought up, therefore, by his mother, Mahchuchak (‘Moonflower’) Begum, whose dramatic and tragic struggle to ensure her son a throne deserves to be better known.
Humayun had left Kabul in Munim Khan’s charge, and, as long as Bairam Khan held sway over Akbar’s throne, the Chagatai nobleman remained where he was. During Bairam’s ouster, however, when Akbar summoned his old ataliq across the Indus, Munim left Kabul in charge of his son, Ghazi Khan. Ghazi Khan was not a popular administrator; or, perhaps, Mahchuchak had had enough of being supervised by her stepson’s aides. One day, he returned from touring some melon fields outside Kabul only to find the city gates locked against him – giving Abul Fazl the chance to quote an apt proverb: ‘Eat the melons, what business have you with their beds?’
Sheepishly Ghazi Khan rode off to Hindustan, and Mahchuchak ‘undertook the affairs of Kabul’.58
The dowager queen had three advisers, including Munim’s brother and nephew, all of whom were killed in a churn of bloody intrigue. (Munim’s nephew, for example, was invited to a drinking party, decapitated when drunk, and his body ‘flung down from the citadel’.)59 Her fourth adviser she may have married; he was allowed to live, at any rate, while he served as her son Hakim’s vakil.60
It was in Hakim’s name, and for his sake, that Mahchuchak did what she did. Merely being born in Kabul did not make it his; the city was as much in contention now as it had been when Humayun and Kamran fought over it. Within moments of Humayun’s death, it would seem, Sulaiman of Badakhshan had marched upon the city, and though he was eventually dispatched by Munim, surely his wife Haram Begum’s ambitions would send him marching this way again.
Across the Indus, meanwhile, Akbar’s power was only increasing. Soon after executing Adham Khan, Akbar ordered Munim to recover Kabul and take charge of Hakim as his ataliq – guardian, tutor and mentor rolled into one. The news did not gladden Mahchuchak’s heart: she had driven out Munim’s son and presided over the brutal murders of his brother and nephew. She could hardly expect a warm reunion with her son’s new adviser. Instead, therefore, she rode to war.
Munim Khan was defeated, comprehensively. Not only did he lose the battle, he lost many of his men to Mahchuchak’s side, and most of his possessions – 3 million in cash according to a member of his retinue. It was only because the winning army was so busy with its loot, in fact, that Munim didn’t lose his liberty, too, and escaped with his life.
Thus, tail between his legs, Munim Khan returned to Akbar’s court, and Mahchuchak rode in triumph to Kabul. Unfortunately, this moment of great victory was also the beginning of her fall.
It came in the treacherously handsome form of Humayun’s favourite sayyid, Shah Abul Ma’ali, last seen making a discreet exit from Hindustan after hiring a sniper to shoot Akbar down.
It was around the time of Mahchuchak’s victory that Sharafuddin and Abul Ma’ali had joined forces against Akbar – even pre-empting the Uzbeks’ idea of putting Hakim on the throne. They had failed; Sharafuddin disappeared, for the moment, from the story, and Abul Ma’ali arrived at Kabul’s gates.
He sent Mahchuchak a poem.
‘We are not come to this door, for the sake of pomp and grandeur / We are come here as a refuge from the evil of circumstances.’
Mahchuchak was not shy of butchering her rivals nor afraid of riding into enemy troops, but she was susceptible, it seems, to self-pitying verse. ‘Show kindness and alight, for the house is thy house’, she replied.61
Perhaps, having shut her gates in Akbar’s face, and knowing that Sulaiman of Badakhshan and his wife Haram Begum still looked upon her realm as their prey, Mahchuchak felt the need for an ally. Not only did she invite Abul Ma’ali into her citadel, she married him to her daughter. But Mahchuchak had misjudged her new son-in-law. Kindness was not his strong suit, and her house would soon be his, alone.
Abul Ma’ali was ‘obviously vile’,62 writes Abul Fazl – and no one can accuse the historian, here, of exaggeration. What followed was horrific.
Hakim was eight years old at this time but, as Babur’s grandson, he commanded a certain customary allegiance from the people of Kabul, and was an asset, therefore, to anyone who sought to rule the city. His mother was not.
The scene is gruesome. Abul Ma’ali stormed into Mahchuchak’s house, with two other men. There was a group of women, one of whom looked a bit like the queen; they killed her first and realized their error later. The three men resumed their search for the begum, striding through the house, weapons drawn. She had locked herself in a room; they broke down the door – you can imagine the sound of their hammering and the screams of the women behind them. There is no account of whether Mahchuchak cowered when they barged in or put up a fight. Perhaps the begum had time to let fly a round of curses on their heads. But then, they stabbed her.
Leaving Mahchuchak’s butchered body behind, the three men went to look for the children and plucked Hakim from among them. The eight-year-old orphan went straight from the nursery to the throne.
Abul Ma’ali would not enjoy his ill-gotten gains for long. The child-king’s supporters had him write to his uncle, Sulaiman of Badakhshan, and, ‘accompanied by Haram’,63 no doubt with some glee, he rode to the rescue. Abul Ma’ali was defeated in the battle that followed, caught and hanged – on the day of Eid after Ramzan. (A painting shows him strung up in a public square – there is even a blackbuck among the watching crowd, looking on approvingly.)
Hakim may have taken solace in the swift justice that swallowed his mother’s murderer, but his troubles were far from over.64 Sulaiman and Haram, having been invited into Kabul, were not inclined to leave. They married Hakim to one of their daughters and redistributed most of Kabul’s provinces to Badakhshani chiefs, creating such resentment among the Kabulis that, in the winter of 1564 – only months after Sulaiman and Haram had ‘liberated’ the city (and months before the Uzbek rebellion broke) – several Kabuli chiefs smuggled Hakim across the Indus and sent word to his half-brother for help.
Akbar was building Nagarchain, his city of ease, practising his polo and racing his dogs. As he listened to the news of the goings-on in Kabul and heard his young brother’s appeal, did Akbar reflect that, but for a series of fortunate events – that he wasn’t a few years younger when his father died, that he had Bairam and Maham by his side – he, too, might have suffered as his brother was suffering? Did he marvel at how the canvas of his own life was expanding by the day, across the rivers and plains of Hindustan, while the family he left behind was still squabbling over Kabul? Did he feel a pang of guilt – or even sorrow – at the brutal murder of his father’s youngest wife?
There is no record of Akbar’s feelings, but he did send help. That legion of great commanders in Punjab, the ataka khail, was told to escort Hakim to Kabul and take it back from the Badakhshanis. One of the clan, Qutubuddin Khan, ‘distinguished for his ability and trustworthiness’, was also appointed Hakim’s tutor, an older, wiser head to guide the boy.65
Only half of Akbar’s plan worked. Kabul fell to his men in an hour as Sulaiman and Haram ‘[d]isheartened . . . decided upon flight’; Hakim regained his home. He was less lucky with his new tutor. It turned out that Qutubuddin Khan was more interested in visiting his homeland, Ghazni, ‘where he had been born and brought up’, than in nurturing the prince. Having left to satisfy his homesickness as well as he could – meeting ‘all his clan, and . . . all his friends . . . laying the foundations of stations, gardens and buildings’ – Qutubuddin Khan swapped his tutor’s duties with Mir Muhammad Khan.66
Mir Muhammad, who had led the Mughal forces to Kabul, was Shamsuddin Ataka’s elder brother, and it might have been that he gave Hakim the affection, protection and loyalty his brother had lavished on Akbar. But what have might-have-beens to do with history? Mir Muhammad was loyal to the family, but he was also known for his ‘impetuosity and roughness’ – one night, incensed, he stormed out of Kabul, leaving the child-king in his realm and to his fate.67
According to Abul Fazl, this was because Hakim lacked ‘inborn goodness . . . sound reason, and . . . honest and loyal servants’. He might also have added, the young ruler of Kabul was barely ten years old – and a great temptation to ambitious and unscrupulous men. One of these had appeared on the scene – Khwaja Hasan Naqshbandi – and contrived, somehow, to have Hakim marry him to his sister, the very same princess who was lately widowed (and thankfully rid) of Abul Ma’ali. It was the fact that the marriage was arranged without his counsel and consent that sent Mir Muhammad into a rage, and back to Punjab.
Two years later, in 1566, Akbar was back from his bout against the Uzbeks and recuperating in Nagarchain once again – this time experimenting with firelit balls that allowed for games of night polo68 – when fresh news of his brother’s unhappy adventures arrived. Sulaiman and Haram had made another – their fourth! – bid on Kabul; Hakim had fled across the Indus and needed Akbar’s help again.69
Akbar had already dispatched a man called Faridun – a courtier and also Hakim’s uncle – to advise his brother and keep him safe from malevolent influence. Now, he sent a messenger – the aptly titled Khushkhabar Khan, lord of good tidings – with money, a robe of honour, a horse from Akbar’s own stables, all for Hakim, along with instructions for the ataka khail to set out for Kabul a second time.
The two men arrived within a few days of each other, and while Khushkhabar Khan brought no disgrace to his name, Uncle Faridun revealed himself ‘a regular leprous spot’.70 Having been entrusted with keeping ‘seditious men’ from ‘speaking to the [prince]’, Faridun went and proposed a brash sedition of his own. Let Hakim take Lahore! There was nothing to it, ‘it would be easy’.71 The thirteen-year-old – the same age as Akbar when Bairam crowned him in Kalanaur – and accustomed all his short life to accepting the instruction and aid of aggressive adults, agreed.
It was a pathetically weak-kneed siege. Hakim camped in a garden outside Lahore; Akbar heard the news, the ‘flames of [his] wrath . . . burst forth’ and he marched out of Agra. He had only reached Delhi when Hakim ran away terrified by ‘the reverberation’ of Akbar’s approach.72 Akbar continued his march anyway, and so we reach the scene of his vast and bloody qamargah hunt.73
The sheer scale of it – 15,000 animals, according to Badauni, were trapped in the qamargah circle – suggests that it was a means to shock and awe in the absence of a war. Even so, the enormous hunt did not sap all of Akbar’s adrenalin and anger, still burning in his brother’s wake. He returned to Lahore at a full gallop, insisting on swimming his horse to the city across the Ravi river. The accompanying nobility plunged in behind him, dutifully, and two of them drowned, including the messenger Khushkhabar Khan – perhaps unpopular despite his name, for his sudden death elicited a cruel rhyme that begins ‘Khushkhabar Khan is bad news . . .’.74
There is a telling parallel to this anecdote from Humayun’s life. During one of his eternal pursuits of Kamran, Humayun rode across a stream on horseback. As Abul Fazl tells it, not one of his chiefs followed; instead, they meandered away, ‘seeking a safe passage’.75 Humayun was upset; he told them all a peevish tale of how a Persian shah’s followers had thrown themselves off a cliff to catch his falling handkerchief. His chiefs, no doubt, pretended to listen.
How things had changed. The Ravi, writes Abul Fazl, ‘flows with ocean-like majesty’, yet the force of Akbar’s authority was stronger still. Unfortunately for Ali Quli and the Uzbeks, they could not see, or would not accept, the changing protocols of court – just as they were ignorant of, or unwilling to accept, news of Hakim’s humiliating retreat. Thus it was that now, as Akbar secured his borders in the north, word arrived from the east: the unrelenting Uzbek warlords had proclaimed the boy in Kabul their king.
The Uzbek saga was drawing to its end. What kind of truce would hold good any more, now that they had proposed an alternative head for the crown of Hindustan?
On 23 March 1567, only days after Akbar heard of their proclamation, he left Lahore for his final campaign against the mutinous Uzbek siblings, Ali Quli and Bahadur. As it happens, two of his elephants died on the way, both on the same day. Unperturbed, the padishah saw in this an omen for the end of the ‘two unlucky brothers’ of Jaunpur.76
He was not, it seems, inclined to flatter them with any show of anxious hurry in their pursuit. He ‘indulged in hunting’ all the way back from Lahore, writes Abul Fazl; halfway to Agra, he even stopped to witness a pilgrimage in Kurukshetra. A great crowd of pilgrims and ascetics had gathered around the town’s lake – the pilgrims in prayer, the ascetics receiving alms, ‘gold and silver, and jewels and stuffs’.77 Suddenly, the cheerful bustle turned aggressive. Two groups of ascetics that had converged on Kurukshetra, the Kaurs and the Puris, were arguing over turf. The Puris had long been positioned along the banks of the lake, within easy and profitable reach of alms-givers emerging from a cleansing dip in its holy waters. The Kaurs wanted to take their place.
The two sects decided to settle the matter with their fists. Akbar did not object to such violent resolution to the dispute; perhaps he even saw an omen in it. He, too, was going to battle a rival for land. As the ascetics began to bombard each other with rocks and arrows, the padishah pitched in to even their chances, lending some of his own men to the Puris, who were outnumbered by the Kaurs. The Puris won the day, and Akbar, having ‘delighted [in the] sport’ with all the gusto of an ancient Roman at the Colosseum, resumed his journey.78
