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Saturday, 5 July 2025

Special Guest Blogger: Shah Jahan

My full title was Shah Jahan the Magnificent and i was, when my father died i defeated my brother and crowned myself Emperor of Hindustan and leader of the Mughal's.
When i wasn't executing most of my rival claimants to the throne, i commissioned many monuments and presided over the aggressive campaigns against the Deccan sultanates, the Portuguese and the Safavids while suppressing several local rebellions.
I may have been the Emperor but i was also a ferocious soldier which meant a lot of killing and a lot of pillaging. People would say please don't pillage me and i would say no, i'm pillaging everyone, you included and vastly expanded our territory but my real love was my wife, my second wife not the first one, the lovely Mumtaz Maha, and together we had 14 children and 18 happy years of marriage until she died in childbirth and i was so distraught, i had the Taj Mahal built as an enduring tribute to her and her body laid to rest inside.
It really did upset me, so much that i only took three more wife's after her but it was with another enduring erection that created a far less savory legacy.
In 1657 i fell ill with what was called 'stangury' and it turned out that the aphrodisiacs that i had been taking to perform with my much younger fifth wife led to the retention of urine for three days, and left me almost at death’s door.
News of my supposed imminent death reached my four sons who, upon learning of my illness, immediately went to war with one another over the succession. Aurangzeb won and I was disposed and relegated to a prison for the rest of my life with my eldest daughter to nurse me in my dotage.
I did recover but by then Aurangzeb had launched a bloody religious war in India that eventually killed millions and i did try to rebel, even trying to arrange the assassination of my usurping son who had been kind enough to send me the severed head of one of his brothers.
In the end, though, nothing came of it and i remained in prison, staring out at the Taj Mahal until i joined my wife there seven years later.

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