Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne
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Authors: Alex Rutherford
OF THE
MOGHUL: T
HE
T
AINTED
T
HRONE
Alex Rutherford
Copyright © 2012 Alex Rutherford
The right of Alex Rutherford to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by Alex Rutherford 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 2012
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 : 978 0 7553 8328 3
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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Chapter 6: The Executioner’s Sword
Chapter 8: ‘Light of the Palace’
Chapter 10: ‘Lord of the World’
Chapter 11: The Red Velvet Coach
Chapter 18: The Kindness of Strangers
Chapter 23: A Parting of the Ways
Chapter 24: The Funeral Cortège
Chapter 25: The Sins of the Father
Chapter 26: The Peacock Throne
Alex Rutherford lives in London.
Raiders from the North
,
Brothers at War
and
Ruler of the World
were the first three novels in the
Empire of the Moghul
series; this is the fourth.
By Alex Rutherford and available from Headline Review
Empire of the Moghul: Raiders from the North
Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War
Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World
Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne
Agra, India, 1606. Jahangir, the triumphant ruler of most of the Indian subcontinent, is doomed. No amount of wealth and ruthlessness – and as the Moghul Emperor he has plenty of both – can protect him from his sons’ desire for power, at any cost. The glorious Moghul throne, its unimaginable wealth and millions of subjects, is worth any amount of bloodshed and betrayal; it drives son against father and brother against brother, whose acts of horrific violence are only matched by mind-boggling deceit. Once Jahangir raised troops against his own father. Now he faces a bloody battle with Khurram, the ablest of his warring sons.
Worse is to come. Just as the heirs of Timur the Great share intelligence, physical strength and utter ruthlessness, they also have a great weakness for wine and opium. Once Jahangir is tempted, his talented wife, Mehrunissa, is only too willing to take up the reins of empire. Perhaps a little too willing; she’ll stop at nothing, not even seizing Khurram’s young sons, to keep the throne in her grip. And with Khurram and his half-brothers each still determined to be their father’s heir, the savage battle for the Moghul throne will be more ferocious than even Timur could have imagined.
Jahangir’s family
Akbar, Jahangir’s father and the third Moghul emperor
Humayun, Jahangir’s grandfather and the second Moghul emperor
Hamida, Jahangir’s grandmother
Kamran, Jahangir’s great-uncle
Askari, Jahangir’s great-uncle
Hindal, Jahangir’s great-uncle
Murad, Jahangir’s brother
Daniyal, Jahangir’s brother
Khusrau, Jahangir’s eldest son
Parvez, Jahangir’s second son
Khurram (later the Emperor Shah Jahan), Jahangir’s third son
Shahriyar, Jahangir’s youngest son
Man Bai, Jahangir’s wife and mother of Khusrau
Jodh Bai, Jahangir’s wife and mother of Khurram
Sahib Jamal, Jahangir’s wife and mother of Parvez
Mehrunissa (also known as Nur Mahal and Nur Jahan), Jahangir’s last wife
Mehrunissa’s family
Ladli, Mehrunissa’s daughter by Sher Afghan
Ghiyas Beg, Imperial Treasurer and Mehrunissa’s father
Asmat, mother of Mehrunissa and her brothers
Asaf Khan, commander of the Agra garrison and Mehrunissa’s elder brother
Mir Khan, Mehrunissa’s younger brother
Arjumand Banu, Mehrunissa’s niece, Asaf Khan’s daughter and wife of Khurram (Shah Jahan)
Sher Afghan, commander of the garrison at Gaur in Bengal, Mehrunissa’s first husband
Jahangir’s commanders, governors and courtiers
Suleiman Beg, Jahangir’s milk-brother
Ali Khan, Governor of Mandu
Iqbal Beg, a senior commander in the Deccan
Mahabat Khan, a Persian and one of Jahangir’s leading generals
Majid Khan, Jahangir’s vizier and chronicler
Yar Muhammad, Governor of Gwalior
Dara Shukoh, Khurram’s (Shah Jahan’s) eldest son
Shah Shujah, Khurram’s (Shah Jahan’s) second son
Aurangzeb, Khurram’s (Shah Jahan’s) third son
Murad Bakhsh, Khurram’s (Shah Jahan’s) youngest son
Jahanara, Khurram’s (Shah Jahan’s) elder daughter
Roshanara, Khurram’s (Shah Jahan’s) younger daughter
In the imperial
haram
Mala,
khawajasara,
superintendent, of the imperial
haram
Fatima Begam, a widow of the Emperor Akbar
Nadya, Fatima Begam’s maid
Salla, Mehrunissa’s Armenian lady-in-waiting
Khurram’s circle
Azam Bahksh, one of Akbar’s aged former commanders
Kamran Iqbal, one of Khurram’s commanders
Walid Beg, one of Khurram’s gunnery commanders
Others
Aziz Koka, adherent of Khusrau
Hassan Jamal, adherent of Khusrau
Malik Ambar, former Abyssinian slave and now commander of the armies of the Deccan sultanates against the Moghuls
Shaikh Salim Chishti, a Sufi mystic, and his son, also a Sufi.
Foreigners in the Moghul empire
Bartholomew Hawkins, English soldier and adventurer
Father Ronaldo, a Portuguese priest
Sir Thomas Roe, English ambassador to the Moghul court
Nicholas Ballantyne, squire to Sir Thomas Roe
Sun Among Women
Chapter 1
Blood in the Sand
Northwest Hindustan, spring 1606
Jahangir ducked out from beneath the awning of his scarlet command tent and in the half-light peered towards the ridge where the forces of his eldest son Khusrau were encamped. Beneath the clear skies the early morning in the semi-desert was chill. Even at this distance Jahangir could see figures moving around, some carrying flaring torches. Here and there cooking fires had been lit. Banners were silhouetted against the rising dawn in front of a large tent on the very crest of the ridge, presumably Khusrau’s personal quarters. As he watched, a sudden sadness as chill as the morning air ran through Jahangir. How had matters come to this? Why would he face his son in battle today?
Only five months ago, following the death of his father Akbar, everything he had wanted for so long had finally become his. He had been proclaimed Moghul emperor – the fourth of the dynasty. Jahangir, the name he
had chosen to reign under, meant ‘Seizer of the World’. What a feeling it was to be master of an empire stretching from the mountains of Baluchistan in the west to the swamps of Bengal in the east and from the saffron fields of Kashmir in the north to the parched red plateau of the Deccan in the south. The lives of one hundred million people were subject to him and he subject to none.
As he had stepped out on to the
jharoka
balcony of the Agra fort to show himself to his people for the first time as emperor, and heard the roars of acclamation rising from the crowds cramming the banks of the Jumna river below, it had seemed incredible that his father was dead. Akbar had brushed aside difficulties and dangers to create a rich and magnificent empire. Just as Jahangir felt he had never fully won Akbar’s love nor lived up to his expectations during his life, suddenly he had doubted whether he could do so after his death. But, closing his eyes, he had made a silent promise.
You have bequeathed me wealth and power. I will prove worthy of you. I will protect and build on what you and our forefathers created.
The very act of making the vow had renewed his confidence.
But then only weeks later had come the blow, struck not by a stranger but by his own eighteen-year-old son. Treason – and the climate of distrust it created – was always ugly, but how much worse when the instigator was his offspring. The Moghuls had often been their own greatest enemy, fighting one another when they should have been united. He could not, would not, allow the pattern to repeat itself and now, at the start of his reign, he would demonstrate how seriously he took familial disloyalty and how swiftly and utterly he would crush it.
In the past few weeks nothing had mattered except closing the gap between his own forces and those of his son. Late the previous evening he and his army had caught up with Khusrau and encircled the ridge on which he was encamped. The more he thought of his son’s treachery, the more a visceral anger surged through him, and he ground his heel into the sandy earth. Suddenly he was aware of his milk-brother Suleiman Beg at his side. ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded, his tone harsh with pent-up emotion.