Shah Jahan Information Sheet

Shah Jahan Biography
Padshah Shah Jahan I (January 5, 1592 - January 22, 1666) was the ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1627 until 1658.

Although a grandson of Akbar the Great who was a very tolerant ruler he was a firmly orthodox Muslim who initiated forty-eight military campaigns against non-Muslims in less than thirty years. Following the Ottoman practice, on coming to the throne in 1628 he killed all his male relations except one who escaped to Persia.

In Benares during his reign 76 Hindu temples were destroyed, as well as Christian churches at Agra and Lahore. At the end of the three month siege of the Portuguese enclave of Hugh, he had ten thousand inhabitants massacred and four thousand were later killed after refusing to convert to Islam.

He commissioned the building of the Taj Mahal in Agra, for his first wife Empress Mumtaz Mahal (meaning 'the first lady of the palace'). Shah Jahan had 5,000 concubines and also conducted affairs with his daughters Chamani and Jahanara.

But for the last five years of his life he was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb in a room Agra Fort, tended only by his eldest daughter Jahanara Begum, with a direct view of the building. This was punishment for his endorsing Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb's older brother in the fight for succession, but it was a better fate than he might have expected; most Mughal Emperors killed their fathers upon succession.