erwards disappeared--removed, it is said, by poison.

Aurangzib ruled with a firm hand, and in strict justice according
to the law of Islam, but though a man of great intellectual powers,
of marvellous energy and indomitable courage, he was wanting in
imagination, sympathy, and foresight, the highest qualities of a
really great ruler. He checked the dissolute conduct of the nobles,
and set an example of industry and devotion to duty; but his narrow,
bigoted disposition inclined him to distrust even his own ministers,
so that, unlike his three predecessors, he was badly served by
the lieutenants in whose hands the administration of the provinces
rested. He surrounded himself with religious bigots of the Sunni
sect of Muhammadans, who aided him in bitter persecution of the
Hindus. Hardly anything of artistic or architectural interest was
created under his patronage. Most of the great artists who attended
Shah Jahan's court were dismissed as unorthodox or heretics, and many
noble monuments were mutilated by the Emperor's fanatical followers
on the ground that they contravened the precept of the Koran which
forbids the representation of animate nature in art.

He died in 1707, eighty-nine years of age. The Mogul empire, surrounded
by hordes of the enemies his bigotry and intolerance had created,
was already tottering to its fall, and the star of the British raj
was rising. Seventeen years before his death he had granted to Job
Charnock a piece of land at Sutanati, the site of the future capital
of our Indian empire.

Agra and the Later Mogul Emperors

Agra played a very small part in the history of the weak-minded and
dissolute successors of Aurangzib. Firokhshiyar, who reigned from 1713
to 1719, resided occasionally there. After his death disputes between
various claimants to the throne led to Agra Fort being besieged and
captured by Husein Ali Khan, a partisan of one of them, who looted
the treasury of all the valuables deposited there during three
centuries. "There were the effects of Nur Jahan Begum and Mumtaz
Mahal, amounting in value, according to various reports, to two or
three crores of rupees. There was in particular the sheet of pearls
which Shah Jahan had caused to be made for the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal,
of the value of several lakhs of rupees, which was spread over it
on the anniversary and on Friday nights. There was the ewer of Nur
Jahan and her cushion of woven gold and rich pearls, with a border
of va