Dara Shikoh

Also called: Dara Shukoh · Topic: The Mughal Empire: Babur to Aurangzeb · NCERT: Class 8, Ch 2 "Reshaping India's Political Map"; Class 12, Ch 1 "Through the Eyes of Travellers"

Meaning

Dara Shikoh (also spelled Dara Shukoh, 1615–1659) was the eldest son of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and the son he wanted as the next emperor. Dara was a scholar who studied Sufism and the Upanishads, and he had the Upanishads translated into Persian as the Sirr-i-Akbar. He lost the war of succession (1657–1658) to his younger brother Aurangzeb, who had him executed.

Why he matters: his life shows two paths the Mughal state could have taken.

• Dara's path was openness between faiths, in the spirit of Akbar.
• Aurangzeb's path was strict Sunni rule.
• Aurangzeb won, and that changed Mughal religious policy for the next 49 years.

Explanation

Background: the prince and the scholar

• Dara was Shah Jahan's eldest son and his favourite. Shah Jahan kept him close at court, while his other sons were sent away to govern provinces.
• Dara was drawn to Sufism, the mystical, inward-looking tradition of Islam. He followed the Qadiri Sufi order and its teachers, Mian Mir and Mulla Shah.
• He believed that Hindu and Islamic mysticism point to the same truth. He studied Sanskrit texts with Hindu pandits.
• Because of this, orthodox (strictly traditional) ulema, the Muslim religious scholars, distrusted him. Aurangzeb's camp later used this against him.

His main works

• Majma-ul-Bahrain ("The Mingling of the Two Oceans"):
• a short book comparing Sufi ideas with Hindu Vedanta (the philosophy based on the Upanishads);

• the "two oceans" are Islam and Hinduism, and he argues they meet.

• Sirr-i-Akbar ("The Great Secret"):

• a Persian translation of about 50 Upanishads, made with the help of pandits, probably at Banaras, around 1657;

• it was later translated into Latin by Anquetil-Duperron, which is how many European readers first met the Upanishads.

• He also wrote lives of Sufi saints.

The war of succession (1657–1658)

• Shah Jahan fell ill in 1657 and wanted Dara to succeed him.
• Mughal rule had no fixed law of succession. Every son could claim the throne, so the sons fought it out. The winner took everything.
• The four brothers:
• Dara, at court, backed by his father;
• Shah Shuja, in Bengal;
• Aurangzeb, in the Deccan;

• Murad Bakhsh, in Gujarat. Murad first joined Aurangzeb.

• The sequence of battles:

• Dharmat (1658): Aurangzeb and Murad beat the imperial army sent against them;
• Samugarh (1658), near Agra: Aurangzeb defeated Dara himself, and Dara fled;

• Deorai (1659), near Ajmer: Dara's last attempt also failed.

• Dara was betrayed and handed over, paraded through Delhi, and tried for apostasy (leaving Islam) on the orders of Aurangzeb's court.

• Aurangzeb executed Dara and sent his cut-off head to their father, Shah Jahan.

Results

• The other brothers met the same kind of end: one (Murad) was arrested and executed, and one (Shah Shuja) was driven into exile.
• Shah Jahan was locked up in the Agra Fort and stayed a prisoner there until he died.
• Aurangzeb crowned himself in 1658 with the title 'Alamgir', meaning "conqueror of the world" [2].
• With Dara gone, the court moved towards orthodoxy:
• jizya (a tax on non-Muslims) and the pilgrimage tax on Hindus were brought back;
• Akbar had abolished both.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: mid-17th century, under the Mughal dynasty, in the reign of Shah Jahan. Dara was born in 1615 and executed in 1659.
• Places: the court at Agra and Delhi; the battlefields of Dharmat, Samugarh (near Agra) and Deorai (near Ajmer); the Agra Fort, where Shah Jahan was held. Dara is traditionally believed to be buried in the Humayun's Tomb complex in Delhi, but the exact grave is not certain.
• Key people:
• Shah Jahan, his father;
• Aurangzeb, the brother who defeated him;
• Shah Shuja and Murad Bakhsh, his other brothers;

• Sufi teachers Mian Mir and Mulla Shah.

• How we know:

• Dara's own books, the Majma-ul-Bahrain and the Sirr-i-Akbar;
• François Bernier, the French traveller, who worked for a short time as Dara's physician and later served the noble Danishmand Khan. His Travels in the Mogul Empire gives an eyewitness account of the succession war, and NCERT uses it in "Through the Eyes of Travellers";
• Mughal court histories: the Maasir-i-Alamgiri, the court history of Aurangzeb's reign (1658–1707), tells the story from the winner's side [3].

Don't confuse with

• Sirr-i-Akbar vs Emperor Akbar: Sirr-i-Akbar means "The Great Secret". It is Dara's Persian translation of the Upanishads and has nothing to do with Emperor Akbar, Dara's great-grandfather.
• Sirr-i-Akbar vs Majma-ul-Bahrain: Sirr-i-Akbar is a translation of the Upanishads. Majma-ul-Bahrain is Dara's own comparison of Sufism and Vedanta.
• Sirr-i-Akbar vs Razmnama: the Razmnama is the Persian translation of the Mahabharata, made under Akbar. Dara's translation project was the Upanishads, under Shah Jahan.
• Dara Shikoh vs Danishmand Khan, as Bernier's patrons: Bernier was first physician to Prince Dara, and later worked with the noble Danishmand Khan. Exam statements often swap the two.

Prelims Hooks

• Dara Shikoh was the eldest son of Shah Jahan and Shah Jahan's chosen heir.
• Sirr-i-Akbar is the Persian translation of the Upanishads, made under Dara Shikoh. Majma-ul-Bahrain compares Sufism and Vedanta.
• Battle of Samugarh (1658): Aurangzeb defeated Dara. Chronological order of the battles: Dharmat → Samugarh → Deorai.
• François Bernier served as physician to Dara Shikoh.
• Aurangzeb executed Dara (1659) and sent his head to Shah Jahan. Shah Jahan died a prisoner in the Agra Fort.
• Trap: the Mughals had no fixed law of succession, so primogeniture (the eldest son inherits) was not the rule. That is why Dara, the eldest, could be defeated.

Mains Points

• Two models of Mughal rule.
• Dara stood for Akbar's line of openness between faiths. Aurangzeb stood for orthodoxy.
• Aurangzeb's victory brought back the jizya and the pilgrimage tax and turned many groups against the empire [2].

• Use this to show that who won the throne shaped state policy. It also feeds the "what if Dara had won?" debate, which historians treat with caution.

• No succession law led to recurring civil war.

• The Mughals had no fixed rule for who inherits, so every succession became a war: 1657–58, and again at the Battle of Jajau (1707) after Aurangzeb died [2].

• Each war weakened the dynasty and the nobility. This is a useful point in GS-I answers on Mughal decline.

• Dara as cultural heritage.

• The Sirr-i-Akbar carried the Upanishads to Persian readers and later to Europe through Latin.
• Dara is an example of India's tradition of dialogue between faiths, which links Sufi thought, Vedanta and the Bhakti–Sufi meeting ground in a GS-I culture answer.

Related concepts

• Aurangzeb
• Mughal war of succession 1657-58
• Farman
• Fatawa-i-Alamgiri
• Badshahi Mosque, Lahore
• Bibi Ka Maqbara

Read more

• Aurangzeb (1658–1707): expansion and reversal