The Secret Of The TaJ Mahal - Part 4

Continued From: http://theforgottenempiresofindia.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-secret-of-taj-mahal-part-3.html

Did Shahjahan really love his wife Arjumad Banu Begum? Like other Mughal Emperor, Shahjahan had many wives and concubines. His obsession with women make it hard to believe that he loved Arjumad Banu Begum exclusively. Our investigative study of the travelogues of Europeans who visited Agra and especially the notes provided by Bernier who stayed in the palace as the Physician shock us! The pages are filled with scandals; they go even as far as to hint at the incest committed by Shahjahan with his daughter Jahanara Begum!  Bernier narrates two anecdotes in his book to reveal the envious nature of Shahjahan when he learnt that his daughter was seeing someone else. Jahan reacted not like a concerned father but more as a jealous beau.

Jahanara like other women of the Mughal Harem was cooped up in the seraglio. She regularly sneaked in a young man into her quarters. Her tryst with the young man couldn’t be hidden from the other women or the eunuchs who guarded the harem. The news about the young man reached Shahjahan’s ears. With the intention of catching the young man in Jahanara’s room, Shahjahan entered her rooms at an unexpected hour. The young man having no place to conceal himself, snuck into a large bath tub. The emperor found the culprit in the tub, ordered the tub to be heated till the young man perished inside it right in front of Jahanara’s eyes.

The princess moved on with her life and after a period, found another attachment. She fell in love with a Stewart called Nazer Khan who was a Persian by birth. Nazer Khan was a nobleman. Jahanara’s uncle proposed that a match be arranged between her and Nazer Khan. Shahjahan gladdened everyone present at court by offering betel to Nazer Khan to indicate that he had accepted the match but, the unsuspecting youth perished from eating the poisoned betel offered by Shahjahan! The emperor’s excuse for not finding a suitable husband for his daughter, 'a gardener has every right to taste the fruit he has planted’!

Shahjahan wreaked vengeance on the Portuguese for their failure to support him against his father, the Emperor Jahangir. Shahjahan destroyed the Portuguese settlement at Hugli. He captured many of the residents as slaves. The fairest of the captured women were all sent to his harem. Manucci highlights the immoral character of Shahjahan in his book. Manucci states that, ‘for, not contenting himself with the women that he had in his palaces, he forfeited the respect of the nobles at his court by intrigues with their wives’. Manucci mentions Shahjahan’s affair with the wives of Jafar Khan and Khalil Khan. Manucci further says that, ‘Shahjahan did not spare the wife of his brother-in-law, Xaahisn Can (Shaistah Khan), though it was by a trick, for she would not consent.’ The relationship of Shahjahan with the wives of his nobles was well known in Agra that the people would refer to these women as the breakfast or lunch of Shahjahan. Manucci also narrates about a mirrored room constructed by Shahjahan so that he may obscenely observe the women who served him. The chronicles also mention about the eight day fair held by Shahjahan every year on the palace grounds to which only women were admitted. The object of these fairs was for the king to select the women who captured his fancy for the royal harem.

The character of Shahjahan revealed by his own biography the Padshanama and from the chronicles of European traveler do not show him as a sensitive husband but, more as a womanizing despot. 

Continued On: http://theforgottenempiresofindia.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-secret-of-taj-mahal-part-5.html