[balti]

Shah Jahan pardoned Jujhar Singh, who paid an indemnity of 15 lakhs (1.5 million) rupees and forty war elephants. After Jujhar Singh raided his Gond neighbor in 1634, the Emperor sent another army led by his 16-year-old son Aurangzeb to invade Bundela. Two of Jujhar's sons and a grandson became Muslims; an older son who refused to convert was killed; and the fleeing Jujhar was killed by Gonds. The Gond raja was forced to pay an indemnity and an annual tribute of twenty elephants, and at Urchha the Mughals found the Bundela treasure worth ten million rupees. Shah Jahan ordered the massive Hindu temple of Bir Singh Dev demolished, and a mosque was built on the site.

Shah Jahan accepted orthodox Islam, and in 1633 he blocked the repair and construction of churches and Hindu temples. Conversion to Hinduism or Christianity was prohibited. The Mughal state sponsored two pilgrim ships from Gujarat to the Hijaz each year, and he sent two scholars with charity for the poor in Mecca and Medina. Shah Jahan abolished the extreme prostration that had been demanded at court by Akbar and Jahangir. Instead of discipleship he expected a family kind of loyalty from his officers and thus called them khanazads, meaning "born to the house." The Emperor commissioned the Peacock Throne that contained gems worth ten million rupees. After his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth in 1631, Shah Jahan ordered architects and builders to construct the famous Taj Mahal marble tomb that took seventeen years to complete. Intended as an allegory of the day of judgment, the gateways and gardens symbolize the celestial paradise. An even more ambitious building project, the palace fortress at Shahjahanabad, was begun in 1639 and cost six million silver rupees. Opposite the fortress the Jama Masjid mosque could contain thousands of worshipers. A free hospital and a religious school (madrasa) were built next to the mosque. During his reign the Mughal treasury funded building projects costing about 29 million rupees. Yet the expenditures for war were much greater than this.

Shah Jahan made Kasim 'Ali Khan governor of Bengal and ordered him to punish the Portuguese. His army besieged Hughli for three months in 1632 and captured the fort. Thousands of Portuguese were killed; prisoners had to accept Islam, and young women were put in harems. Prince Muhammad Shuja governed Bengal 1639-59. After Mahabat Khan, the Mughal governor of the Deccan, besieged and captured the Daulatabad fort to complete the conquest of Ahmadabad in 1633, the Shi'a state of Golconda recognized Mughal hegemony in 1635; but Shi'a Bijapur had to be invaded before they submitted. In 1637 Shah Jahan sent his son Aurangzeb to govern the Deccan, and the next year with an army he annexed the Rajput kingdom of Baglana. In Sind on the northwestern border, punitive campaigns killed and sold into slavery thousands from the Baluch and other tribes so that the Mughals could collect taxes in cash. Sufis controlling tombs and holy places were given tax-free land grants for mediating disputes on behalf of the Mughal empire. The murder of an Assamese Muslim trader in 1636 provoked an Ahom-Mughal war that after losses on both sides ended in a treaty two years later. Aurangzeb had financial difficulties in the Deccan and was dismissed in 1644, but he was appointed governor of Gujarat the next year.

When Uzbek ruler Nazar Muhammad Khan asked for Mughal aid in a civil war against his son Abdul Aziz, Shah Jahan sent his son Murad with an army of 60,000 men. In 1646 Murad and his co-commander Ali Mardan Khan occupied Balkh with little resistance and grabbed 12 million rupees in treasure. Prince Murad left after a month, and the Emperor sent his vizier Sa'dullah Khan, followed by Aurangzeb from Gujarat. Shah Jahan moved his court to Kabul for support. The Mughal army found they could not live off such barren land, because the grain fields and fruit orchards had been devastated by the civil war. In October 1647 Aurangzeb handed over Balkh to Nazar Muhammad Khan and retreated, as the Mughals suffered thousands of casualties from harassing Uzbeks and Turkmen tribes. Two years of war had only moved the northern Mughal border about fifty kilometers north of Kabul. Mughal records indicated that Shah Jahan spent forty million rupees trying to conquer kingdoms with revenues far less than that.

The Persian commander of Qandahar, Ali Mardan Khan, owed Persian shah Safi money and had switched sides to the Mughals in 1638. Shah Jahan gratefully accepted the valued caravan-route city and appointed him governor of Kashmir. After the Mughal disaster in Balkh, Persian shah Abbas II besieged Qandahar and reconquered it in 1649. In the next four years Shah Jahan launched three major campaigns against Qandahar; but their artillery was inadequate, and the cost of these failures was about thirty to forty thousand men killed and 35 million rupees.

In 1647 historian Abdul Hamid Lahori summarized the first twenty years of Shah Jahan's reign. The treasury accumulated by Akbar had been depleted by Jahangir. Shah Jahan put thirty million rupees or one-seventh of all revenues into the imperial treasury. His reserves in coin and jewelry grew to 95 million rupees. He had already spent about 25 million on building projects, and cash salaries for 200,000 cavalry and 40,000 musketeers cost 16 million rupees per year. Since the time of Akbar fifty years before, the Mughal empire had grown in size, population, and prosperity, doubling the total revenues. The Emperor, his sons, and other nobles had dominating power and wealth such that the top 73 persons controlled 37.6 percent of the total revenues in the empire. Of the top mansabdars, 353 were Muslims, and only ninety were Hindus.

In 1653 Aurangzeb went back to the Deccan as viceroy and found it in poor condition. With the help of Persian revenue officer Murshid Quli Khan they recruited leaders and settlers for deserted villages, and they gave loans for seed, cattle, digging wells, and constructing irrigation while assuring security. Within five years most of the land was being cultivated, and prosperity had been restored. The 1636 treaty allowed the states of Golconda and Bijapur to expand to the south, and both did so in the 1640s. The Persian merchant Muhammad Sa'id by trading diamonds and other gems rose to become the chief minister of Golconda and was given the title Mir Jumla. By letter Aurangzeb suggested to Mir Jumla that they could take over Golconda for the Mughal empire. When the Golconda sultan 'Abdullah Qutb Shah arrested his son for insolent behavior in 1655, Mir Jumla appealed to Aurangzeb, who got a letter from his father Shah Jahan demanding the son's release. Without waiting for a reply, Aurangzeb sent his son Muhammad Sultan to invade Golconda, and he entered Hyderabad in January 1656. 'Abdullah Qutb Shah appealed to Shah Jahan, and Prince Dara Shukoh persuaded the Emperor to make Aurangzeb withdraw his forces. Aurangzeb's son married 'Abdullah Qutb Shah's daughter, and Mir Jumla became Mughal vizier. When the Bijapur ruler 'Adil Shah died in November, Aurangzeb used the opportunity to take over this kingdom too even though it had not been a vassal state. Again Dara Shukoh and the Emperor persuaded Aurangzeb to restrain himself, and he merely extorted a war indemnity.

In September 1657 Shah Jahan fell ill with strangury and made his last will. All four of his sons by Mumtaz Mahal struggled for the Mughal throne. The oldest Dara Shukoh resided at court and was his father's favorite. He studied Vedanta, Talmud, the New Testament, and Sufi writings. He made Persian translations of the Atharva Veda and 52 Upanishads. He became a disciple of the Qadiri Sufis Mulla Mir (d. 1635) and Mullah Shah Badakshi (d. 1661). Dara's Persian book The Mingling of Two Oceans discussed the essential unity of Hinduism and Islam, and he had it translated into Sanskrit for Hindus. Dara also liked to hold discussions with three Jesuit priests and the Hindu saint Babalal Vairagi. Because of these activities the traditional 'ulama (Muslim scholars) considered him an apostate. The second son Muhammad Shuja governed Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, but he preferred an easy life. Aurangzeb studied the Qur'an, Islamic law, writings of al-Ghazali, and with Naqshbandi shaikhs but was an ambitious conqueror. The fourth son Murad Bakhsh governed Gujarat and Malwa, but he indulged in drinking.