WHEN Akbar died, the hope of a peaceful, prosperous India died with him. None of his successors was nearly so wise, open-minded, and farsighted. Even so, the Mogul Empire kept growing. The seventeenth century was, indeed, the height of Mogul power. Akbar’s son Jahangir reigned from 1605 to 1627. His name, which meant “grasper of the world,” did not fit him at all well, for he added only a little territory to the empire. Although he was clever and well-educated, Jahangir was also lazy and pleasure-loving. He was content to leave affairs of state to his Persian wife and her relatives. As he admitted in his memoirs, he “only wanted a bottle of wine and a piece of meat to make merry.” On Jahangir’s death, his two sons began to fight over which should succeed him. Before the question was settled, the winner had killed his brother and all but one of his other male relatives. In 1628, he was crowned as Shah Jahan. Three years later, his beautiful empress Mumtaz Mahal the name meant “jewel of the palace” died in childbirth. The grief-stricken emperor commanded the best architects in the land to create a monument worthy of his dead wife. Twenty thousand men worked on the project for fifteen years. The result was the world-famous white marble tomb known as the Taj Mahal, which many people consider the loveliest structure ever raised anywhere. The cost of building the Taj Mahal was enormous. Shah Jahan could afford it, for his treasury contained the equivalent of a billion dollars, an unheard-of sum for those days. His subjects did not benefit from his wealth. Instead of prospering, as they had under Akbar, they suffered terrible hardships. Under Akbar, the state had collected land taxes, but Shah Jahan let his governors collect taxes …
Read More »The Height of Mogul Power A.D. 1605-1707
