Today March 3 2014 is 307th Death Anniversary of Emperor Aurangzeb who ruled most of India/ South Asia from 1658-1707, a record that may never be broken.
World's leading historian John Darwin says:
"...Aurangzeb’s reign came to be seen by later historians as the climax of the Mughal era, and his death as the signal for a new dark age of imperial collapse, from which India was rescued by British intervention after 1765..."
('After Tamerlane / The Global History of Empire since 1405', 2007)
Emperor Aurangzeb in front of soldiers and an elephant, 1672
By: Olfert Dapper (c 1635-1689), A Dutchman who never travelled outside the Netherlands!
Courtesy: Wellcome Library, London (Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 2.0, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
John Keay, 'India A History', 2000/2010
"...In 1705 Aurangzeb fell seriously ill. A frail and shrouded spectre dressed ‘all over white’, as a visitor put it, with turban and beard of the same ghostly pallor, he was installed in a palanquin and carefully carried back to Ahmadnagar. Even then he was a long time dying. Embittered and isolated, he prayed hard, bemoaned the state of affairs, and found fault with his officials; he had already despaired of most of his progeny. As for himself, ‘I am,’ he wrote, ‘forlorn and destitute, and misery is my ultimate lot.’ The misery ended in 1707, his ninetieth year. His funeral expenses were supposedly met from the sale of the Qurans he had copied and the caps he had stitched. True to his wishes, he was buried not beneath a stylish mountain of marble and sandstone at the heart of the empire but in a simple grave beside a village shrine dear to the Muslims of the Deccan. At Khuldabad, not far from Aurangabad, a neat little mosque now flanks the small courtyard in which stands the least pretentious of all the Mughal tombs. There is barely room for a vanload of pilgrims. And instead of a great white dome, a dainty but determined tree provides the only canopy..."
Painted seal of Mughal Emperor Awrangzib ibn Shah Djahan I, Abul Muzzaffar Muhammad Alamgir surrounded by the names of his predecessors, c. 1669
Courtesy: Wellcome Library, London (Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 2.0, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )
World's leading historian John Darwin says:
"...Aurangzeb’s reign came to be seen by later historians as the climax of the Mughal era, and his death as the signal for a new dark age of imperial collapse, from which India was rescued by British intervention after 1765..."
('After Tamerlane / The Global History of Empire since 1405', 2007)
Emperor Aurangzeb in front of soldiers and an elephant, 1672
By: Olfert Dapper (c 1635-1689), A Dutchman who never travelled outside the Netherlands!
Courtesy: Wellcome Library, London (Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 2.0, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
John Keay, 'India A History', 2000/2010
"...In 1705 Aurangzeb fell seriously ill. A frail and shrouded spectre dressed ‘all over white’, as a visitor put it, with turban and beard of the same ghostly pallor, he was installed in a palanquin and carefully carried back to Ahmadnagar. Even then he was a long time dying. Embittered and isolated, he prayed hard, bemoaned the state of affairs, and found fault with his officials; he had already despaired of most of his progeny. As for himself, ‘I am,’ he wrote, ‘forlorn and destitute, and misery is my ultimate lot.’ The misery ended in 1707, his ninetieth year. His funeral expenses were supposedly met from the sale of the Qurans he had copied and the caps he had stitched. True to his wishes, he was buried not beneath a stylish mountain of marble and sandstone at the heart of the empire but in a simple grave beside a village shrine dear to the Muslims of the Deccan. At Khuldabad, not far from Aurangabad, a neat little mosque now flanks the small courtyard in which stands the least pretentious of all the Mughal tombs. There is barely room for a vanload of pilgrims. And instead of a great white dome, a dainty but determined tree provides the only canopy..."
Painted seal of Mughal Emperor Awrangzib ibn Shah Djahan I, Abul Muzzaffar Muhammad Alamgir surrounded by the names of his predecessors, c. 1669
Courtesy: Wellcome Library, London (Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 2.0, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )