Education.
Thus, at the age of ten he came to a settled life; and arrange- ments were evidently now made for his regular education. Sadullah Khan, who rose to be the best reputed of Shah Jahan’s wazirs, is said* to have been one of his teachers. Another teacher was Mir Muhammad Hashim of Gilan, who after a study of twelve years at Mecca and Medina came to India, learnt medicine under Hakim Ali Gilani, and kept a famous school at Ahmadabad, where he was afterwards made Civil Judge (Sadr.) As Aurangzib’s tutor he remained in the prince’s service till the end of Shah Jahan’s reign, [Pad. I.B. 345.] Bernier (p. 154) speaks of Mulla Salih as his old teacher, but the Persian histories do not bear this state- ment out. Of one Mulla Salih Badakhshani we read that he was a scholar of Balkh and had his first audience of Shah Jahan on 4th January, 1647, when Aurangzib was already 29 years of age,—too old to go to school. [Pad. ii. 624.]
That Aurangzib had a natural keenness of mind and quickly learnt what he read, we can readily believe. His correspondence proves that he had thoroughly mastered the Quran and the Tradi- tional Sayings of Muhammad (hadis), and was ever ready with apt quotations from them. He spoke and wrote Arabic and Persian like a scholar. Hindustani was his mother tongue, the language used by the Mughal Court in private life. He had some knowledge of Hindi, too, and could talk and recite popular sayings in that lan- guage.@ He acquired a mastery over Chaghtai Turki, as he had served in Balkh and Qandahar, and the Mughal army contained a large body of men recruited from Central Asia. Under exactly the same circumstances Jai Singh had learnt that foreign tongue. [Dil. 1. 63.]
Aurangzib wrote Arabic in a vigorous and masterly naskh hand. In this he used to copy the Quran, a deed of piety in Muslim eyes. Two manuscripts of this book he presented to Mecca and Medina, after richly binding and illuminating them. [A7.A. 532.] A third copy is preserved at the tomb of Nizam-ud-din Auliya near Delhi. Others were sold in his lifetime by this puritan Emperor, who deemed it sinful to eat the bread of idleness, and used to ply the trade of copyist and cap-maker in his Ieisure hours in order to earn his livelihood. Copies of these Qurans are known to exist here and there in India.
“His nastalig and shikasta styles of writing were also excellent,”’ says Saqi Mustad Khan, and this we can readily believe, for Aurangzib was the author of a vast number of letters, and made it a point to write orders across all petitions in his own hand. [A.N. 1092-94]. The princes of the house of Akbar were taught hand- Writing with great care, as the signatures of Shah Jahan and Dara Shukoh on some Persian MSS. of their libraries, and the autograph remarks of Jahangir in his book of fate (a copy of the Diwan of Hafiz), look remarkably clear and beautiful. #
In his letters and speeches, he frequently quotes verses to point his remarks. But these “familiar quotations’ were a part of the mental equipment of every cultured Muhammadan, and do not prove any special taste for poetry. Indeed his historian remarks, ‘This Emperor did not like to hear useless poetry, still less laudatory verses. But he made an exception in favour of poems containing good counsels.” [{Af.A. 532.] The moral precepts of Sadi and Hafiz he had evidently learnt by rote in his youth, and he quoted them to his last day, but he does not seem to have studied these poets in later life. Once he asked for the works of a poet named Mulla Shah. But we may rightly hold that, unlike his grandfather he was not fond of poetry, and unlike Shah Jahan he had no passion for history. “His favourite study was theological works,—Com- mentaries on the Quran, the Traditions of Muhammad, Canon Law, the works of Imam Muhammad Ghazzali, selections from the letters of Shaikh Sharf Yahia of Munir, and Shaikh Zain-ud-din Qutb Muhi Shirazi, and other works of that class.’’& We also learn that he highly prized the Nihaiyya of Mulla Abdullah Tabbakh. Like many other pious Muslims, and even some ladies of the Mughal royal family, Aurangzib committed the Quran to memory. [M.A. 391.]
Such intellectual tastes made him find delight in the society of darvishes, and when he was viceroy he took care to visit the holy men of Islam in his province, engaging them in talk, and reverently learning wisdom at their feet.
Painting he never appreciated. Indeed the portraiture of any living being was impossible under an orthodox Islamic king, as an impious imitation of the Creator. Music he banished from his Court, in the outburst of devotion which marked the completion of the tenth year of his reign. Fine China-ware he liked, and these were presented to him by nobles and traders, But he had none of his father’s passion for building. No masterpiece of architecture, no superb or exquisite mosque,$ hall, or tomb marks his reign. All that he built took the impress of his utilitarian mind. They were commonplace necessary things, piles of brick and mortar, which quickly decayed. Such were the mosques which marked the scenes of his victories, and the numberless sarais which he built along the imperial highways running to the south and the west. [A.N. 1084.]
*Hamid-ud-din’s Ahkam-i-Alamgiri, §3. But Sadullah entered Shah Jahan’s service in Dec. 1640. (Pad. ii. 220).
@Masir-i-Alamgiri, 334. Alamgirnamah, 1095.
#MSS. containing the autographs of these princes are preserved in the Khuda Baksh Library, Bankipur.
&Masir-i-Alamgiri, 531-532. He spent his leisure in the afternoon in investiga- ting theological problems, deliberating on the philosophy of truth, (lit., ‘the certain sciences,’) reading the books and pamphlets of wise men and saints. (Alamgirnamah, 1103.) Aurangzib speaks of his having read two books of Ghazzali (A.S.B. Pers. MS. F. 27, 126).
$Except one, the Pearl Mosque in the Delhi palace, which was begun on 10 Dec. 1659 and completed in 5 years at a cost of one /akh and sixty thousand Rupees, (A.N. 468). His mosque at Lahor is not the best one in that city. The tomb of his wife Dilras Banu at Aurangabad was his grandest building.
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