8 HISTORY OF AURANGZIB. [CHAP. I. highly prized the Nihaiyya of Mulla Abdullah Tabbakh. Like many other pious Muslims, and even some ladies of the Mughal royal family, Aurangzib committed the Quran to memory. Such intellectual tastes made him find delight in the society of dervishes, and when he was Viceroy of the Deccan, he took care to visit the holymen of Islam in his province, engaging them in talk, and reverently learning wisdom at their feet. Painting he No taste for the fine arts. never appreciated. Indeed the portraiture of any living being was impossible under an ortho- dox Islamic king, as an impious imitation of the Creator. Music he banished from his Court, in the outburst of devotion which marked the completion of the tenth year of his reign. Fine Chinaware he liked, and these were presented to him by nobles and traders. But he had none of his father's passion for building. No masterpiece of architecture, no superb or exquisite mosque,† hall, or tomb marks his reign.
- Masir-i-Alamgiri, 391.
Except one, the Pearl Mosque in the Delhi palace, which was begun on 10 Dec. 1659 and completed in 5 years at a cost of one lakh and sixty thousand rupees, (Alamgir- namah, 468, Masir-i-Alamgiri, 29). His mosque at Lahore is not the best one in that city. Digitized by Microsoft Ⓡ
