Person · Mughal prince & scholar · India
Dara Shikoh
Also known as Dara Shikoh, Dara Shukoh, Prince Dara
Shah Jahan's eldest son, intended heir, and Mughal court's most learned polymath — a Qadiri Sufi who studied Hindu metaphysics, translated the Upanishads into Persian in 1657 as the Sirr-i-Akbar (the Great Secret), and wrote the Majma-ul-Bahrain (Mingling of the Two Oceans) arguing that Islam and Hinduism were two expressions of one truth. He lost the war of succession at Samugarh in 1658 to his brother Aurangzeb and was executed in 1659 after a propaganda trial charging him with apostasy. His translations were the route by which Upanishadic thought first reached Europe through Anquetil-Duperron's 1801 Latin version.
- Date
- 1615–1659
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Patron dynasty
- Mughal
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles and institutional records as applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Schopenhauer called the Latin Upanishads his life's greatest consolation, and read them nightly; he traced the German Idealist discovery of Indian thought to Dara's translation across two centuries and two further languages. The counterfactual Mughal history of a Dara accession rather than an Aurangzeb one is the most-played-with alternative in Mughal historiography. His Pari Mahal at Srinagar — the Sufi school on the Zabarwan range above Dal Lake — survives.
About the place
Placed at Delhi (court) and Srinagar (Pari Mahal), his two intellectual centres.
Connections (7)
- KilledAurangzeb
Aurangzeb had Dara Shikoh executed at Delhi in August 1659, four months after capturing him in the Bolan Pass fleeing toward Persia. The judicial process — a public trial for apostasy conducted by the Mughal qazis and ulama — was engineered to justify fratricide as orthodox duty rather than political murder, since Dara had claimed Islamic cover for his Upanishad translations and his Majma-ul-Bahrain. Dara is buried in Humayun's Tomb complex.
- FoundedPari Mahal, Srinagar
Dara Shikoh built the Pari Mahal — the Palace of Fairies — in 1650 on the Zabarwan range above Chashme Shahi at Srinagar, as a terraced garden and Sufi school for his teacher Mullah Shah Badakhshi. The seven terraces look out across the Dal Lake, the Hari Parbat fort and the old city at once; the school he founded there was his working institutional base for the Sufi-Vedantic conversations he was conducting with Qadiri shaikhs and with Brahmin pandits.
- Buried atHumayun's Tomb
After his execution at Delhi in 1659, Dara Shikoh was buried in the Humayun's Tomb complex — a Mughal royal burial reserved for his great-grandfather's own tomb-garden rather than any newer structure, since Aurangzeb's charge against him had been apostasy and a separate monumental tomb could not be built for an apostate. The specific chamber was identified only in 2016 after an Archaeological Survey of India review of the complex.
- Son ofShah Jahan
Dara Shikoh was Shah Jahan's eldest son and intended heir, raised in his father's syncretic court culture and formally designated as successor from the 1640s. His translation of the Upanishads into Persian as the Sirr-i-Akbar in 1657 and his earlier Majma-ul-Bahrain treating Islam and Hinduism as two expressions of one truth were partly a princely programme of comparative religion his father actively encouraged. Aurangzeb's 1658 victory ended that programme.
- Lost battle atSamugarh
Dara Shikoh lost the war of succession to his brother Aurangzeb at Samugarh on 29 May 1658, in the central battle of the Mughal civil war. Dara had the larger army but Aurangzeb's artillery and the defection of several of Dara's commanders decided the day. Dara fled toward Lahore and then toward Persia through Sindh, was captured in the Bolan Pass by Malik Jiwan, taken to Delhi and executed on apostasy charges in August 1659. The Mughal state's direction turned on this battle.
- Disciple ofSheikh Chilli
The Sheikh Chilli complex at Thanesar is traditionally associated with Dara Shikoh (1615-1659), the eldest son of Shah Jahan and the designated Mughal crown prince before the 1657-59 succession war with Aurangzeb. The Qadiri Sufi Abd-ur-Razzaq ('Sheikh Chilli', 1627-1650) is said to have been one of Dara Shikoh's spiritual teachers; Dara had earlier taken the formal Qadiri initiation from Mian Mir at Lahore in 1640 and continued his Qadiri studies through subsequent masters including Sheikh Chilli at Thanesar. Dara's own interest in Sufism, his Persian translations of the Upanishads (Sirr-i-Akbar, 1657) and the Yoga Vasistha, and his comparative religion treatise Majma-ul-Bahrain (The Confluence of the Two Seas, 1655) make the Thanesar site part of a broader Mughal intellectual network linking Islamic mysticism with Indian philosophical traditions.
- OpposedDurgadas Rathore
Durgadas Rathore (1638-1718) of Marwar and Aurangzeb (1618-1707) opposed each other from 1679 to 1707 after Aurangzeb's attempt to seize the Marwar throne and convert the Rathore line to Islam following Jaswant Singh's 1678 death. Durgadas's 28-year defence of the infant Ajit Singh across Marwar and Mewar was one of the central Rajput resistance narratives of Aurangzeb's reign and continues through the 1707-1710 Rathore restoration of Ajit Singh after Aurangzeb's death.