Dara Shikoh
Dara Shikoh (1615–1659) was the eldest son of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. His name is from Persian داراشكوه meaning "The possessor of Glory". He was favoured as a successor by his father and his sister Jahanara Begum, but was defeated by his younger brother Aurangzeb in a bitter struggle for the Mughal throne.
In 1657, the illness of emperor Shah Jahan triggered a fierce and desperate battle for power among the four Mughal princes, though realistically only Dara and Aurangzeb had a chance of emerging victorious. Shah Shuja declared himself emperor in Bengal. Despite strong support from Shah Jahan, who had recovered enough from his illness to remain a strong factor in the struggle for supremacy, and victories over Shah Shuja, Dara was defeated by Aurangzeb at the battlefield of Samogarh, 13 km from Agra on 8 June 1658.He attempted to rally support after this defeat, and sought refuge under Malik Jiwan, a Baluch chieftain, who had once been saved by the Moghul prince from the wrath of Shah Jehan. However, Malik betrayed Dara and [1]turned him over to his brother Aurangzeb. Marched through the streets of the capital in chains, he was first imprisoned and then murdered by assassins at the behest of his brother.
Dara Shikoh was a gentle and pious Sufi intellectual, one of the greatest representatives of that uniquely Indian synthesis sometimes referred to as the "composite culture". He was an erudite champion of mystical religious speculation (which made him a heretic in the eyes of his more orthodox brother and the coterie around him) and a poetic diviner of syncretic cultural interaction among people of all faiths. Historians have speculated how different India would have been had he prevailed over his less enlightened brother Aurangzeb. Dara was a follower of Lahore's famous Qadiri Sufi saint Mian Mir, whom he was introduced to by Mullah Shah Badakhshi (Mian Mir's spiritual disciple and successor). He devoted much effort towards finding a common mystical language between Islam and Hinduism. Towards this goal he translated the Upanishads from its original Sanskrit into Persian so it could be read by Muslim scholars. His translation is often called "Sirre Akbar" or The Greatest Mystery, where he states boldly, in the Introduction, his speculative hypothesis that the work referred to in the Qur'an as the "Kitab al-maknun" or the hidden book is none other than the Upanishads. His most famous work, Majma ul-Bahrain ("The Mingling of the Two Oceans") was also devoted to finding the commonalities between Sufism and Hindu Monotheism.
He was also a patron of fine arts, music and dancing, a trait frowned upon by his sibling Aurangzeb. In fact many of his paintings are quite detailed and compare well to a professional artist of his time. The Dara Shikoh album is a collection of paintings and calligraphy assembled during the 1630s until his death. It was presented to his wife Nadira Banu and remained with her until her death after which the album was taken into the royal library and the inscriptions connecting it with Dara Shikoh were deliberately erased; however not everything was vandalised and many calligraphy scripts and paintings still bear his mark.
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