Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: John Kelsay, Islam and War: A Study in 

Comparative Ethics (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John 

Knox Press, 1993); Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in 

the Law of Islam (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Insti-

tute, 1955).

Dara Shikoh

 

(Dara Shukoh, Dara 

Shikuh)

 

(1615–1659)  Mughal prince known for 

his writings on Sufism and liberal attitudes toward 

other religions, especially Hinduism

Dara Shikoh was the first son of one of the most 

powerful sovereigns of India’s m

Ughal

 

dynasty

,

Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58). In his 

aUtobiography

,

Dara wrote that his father longed for an heir to 

the throne and prayed that Sufi 

saint

 Muin al-

Din Chishti would fulfill his wish. The next year, 

Queen Mumtaz Mahal gave birth to Dara near the 

saint’s shrine in a

Jmer

. Dara spent his early years 

in the palace and then was assigned command of 

an army when he was 17 years old. His father also 

gave him administrative appointments and high 

state honors to qualify him to be his successor and 

avoid dynastic conflict. Nevertheless, when Shah 

Jahan became ill in 1657, Dara and three younger 

brothers, Muhammad Shuja, Murad, and a

Urang

-

zeb

, engaged in a life-and-death struggle for their 

father’s Peacock Throne. Aurangzeb and Murad 

accused Dara of being an apostate because of his 

involvement with Hindu yogis and ascetics. Never 

very adept at war, Dara was defeated on the battle-

field, tried by the 

Ulama

 for 

apostasy

, and executed 

in 1659. Aurangzeb took the throne for himself 

and did away with his remaining brothers.

Dara Shikoh, like his great-grandfather Akbar 

(d. 1605), is usually placed within the liberal wing 

of South Asian Islam, in juxtaposition to hard-

line religious conservatives such as his brother 

Aurangzeb. His interest in religion first became 

evident in 1640, when he was 25 years old. It 

was at this time that he compiled a biographical 

dictionary about m

Uhammad

, the Prophet’s wives 

and family, the first 

caliph

s, the Shii i

mams

, and 

hundreds of Sufis, particularly those of the Qadiri, 

Naqshbandi, Chishti, Kubrawi, and Suhrawardi 

orders. During the same year, he and his older 

sister, Jahanara (d. 1681), were initiated into the 

Qadiri Sufi Order by Mullah Shah, a prominent 

Sufi master who had been serving as their spiri-

tual guide. Dara wrote several books and tracts on 

Sufi doctrine and practices, reflecting the stages of 

his journey on the Sufi path. His most important 

comparative work was Majmaa al-bahrayn (The 

confluence of the two oceans), in which he sought 

to prove that Islam and the Vedanta tradition in 

Hindu religious thought shared the same essential 

truths. For example, he equated the great names 

of God in Islam with those given by Hindus to 

their absolute cosmic being. He also identified the 

Islamic idea of resurrection with Hindu notions 

of liberation. Shortly before his death, Dara trans-

lated chapters of the Sanskrit philosophical com-

mentaries on the Vedas known as the Upanishads

into Persian. Indeed, it was through his transla-

tion, in which he had the assistance of Hindu 

pandits and ascetics, that the Upanishads became 

familiar to scholars of Indian language and litera-

ture in the West. Dara also was involved with the 

translation of the Bhagavad Gita, the most well 

known sacred text in the Hindu religion.

See also h

indUism

 

and

 i

slam

; p

ersian

 

langUage

and

 

literatUre

; s

UFism

.