Farrukhsiyar

It does not seem improbable that the Mughal Empire, which was at its most expansive during the reign of Aurangzeb, was soon to be disintegrated after his death. The reason for this is the accession of the weak rulers after his death in 1707. One such ruler was Farrukhsiyar who was feeble and fickle minded.

Farrukhsiyar was the son of Azim-ush-shan and grandson of Bahadur Shah I, son and successor of Aurangzeb.  He succeeded to the Mughal throne in 1713 with the help of powerful Saiyid Brothers.

Historian Khafi khan writes about him. He “had no will of his own. He was young, inexperienced and inattentive to the business of the state”.

Farrukhsiyar was a weak ruler and suffered from a sense of insecurity. He ordered the murder of Zulfiqr Khan, who became the most powerful noble during the reign of Bahadur Shah I and Jahandar Shah, the successor of Bahadur Shah I. In order to thwart any plans by Saiyid Brothers to displace him, prominent members of the imperial family, who were kept in prisons, were blinded on the emperor’s orders. Another important event of his rule was the execution of the Sikh leader Banda Bahadur who was tortured to death by the Mughals in 1716.

However, Farrukhsiyar was no able to check the growing power of the Saiyid Brothers who, with the help of Ajay Singh of Marwar, who had married his daughter to the emperor, deposed and murdered him in 1719.

Alberuni, the celebrated traveller to India and a Great Scholar

One of the most famous Arab travellers to India, Alberuni (Al-Biruni) visited India when Mahmud of Ghazni invaded Somnath, the famous shrine in Gujarat dedicated to Lord Shiva. Between 1001 and 1027 Mahmud made seventeen raids on India. One of the main objects of his raids was to acquire the wealth of India. Naturally so, the temples and towns were his main targets because they were repositories of immense wealth. As a result of his campaigns, many temples were looted and desecrated. Enormous caravan of booty and slaves were taken to Ghazni. Mathura and Kanyakubja, the great cites of India at that time, were plundered.

Also called Abu Raithan, Alberuni spent his years in India in the study of astronomy, medicine, chemistry, etc,. His book Tahkik-i-Hind (reality of Hindustan or Enquiry into India), a voluminous work divided into 80 chapters, is a mirror of the eleventh century India. The magnum opus gives a good graphic description of India as the great scholar saw the country. In fact, the book is “a magic island of quite impartial research in the midst of a world of clashing swords, burning towns and plundered temples.”   

Alberuni writes about Indians. He says, “They are haughty, foolish, vain, self-conceited, stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they known…According to their belief, no other created beings besides them have any knowledge of science whatsoever.”