Murad Bakhsh

Mirza Muhammad Murad Bakhsh (9 October 1624 – 14 December 1661) was a Mughal prince, the youngest surviving son of Emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal ^{1 2}. A career provincial governor who proclaimed himself emperor in the war of succession of 1657, he lent his elder brother Aurangzeb the alliance — and the cavalry charge — that won Samugarh, and was repaid with arrest, three years of imprisonment in Gwalior Fort and execution ¹.

Murad was born at Rohtasgarh Fort in Bihar on 9 October 1624 — Wikidata gives 8 October, and the record preserves the one-day rivalry ^{1 3}. His siblings included the princesses Jahanara Begum and Roshanara Begum, the heir apparent Dara Shikoh and the future emperor Aurangzeb ¹. In 1638, at fourteen, he married the Safavid princess Sakina Banu Begum ¹. His governorships ran the width of the empire — Multan from 1642, Balkh in 1646 until Aurangzeb replaced him, Kashmir, the Deccan, Kabul, then Gujarat from 1654 and Malwa ^{1 4}.

When Shah Jahan fell ill in 1657, Murad proclaimed himself emperor at Ahmedabad on 30 November of that year ¹. Joining Aurangzeb against Dara Shikoh, it was Murad's ferocious charge with his sowars that turned the Battle of Samugarh in their favour ¹. The alliance lasted weeks. On 7 July 1658, entertained in his brother's tent, he was made drunk, secretly arrested, and sent to prison — transferred to Gwalior Fort in January 1659 ¹.

At Gwalior he was tried and sentenced to death for the murder of Ali Naqi, a former diwan clerk, and on 14 December 1661, after three years in prison, he was executed ^{1 2}. With him, the last of Aurangzeb's brothers was dead, and Aurangzeb stood undisputed emperor ¹.