Aurangzeb Alamgir (r. 1658-1707), the sixth Mughal emperor, is widely reviled in India today. Hindu hater, murderer and religious zealot are just a handful of the modern caricatures of this maligned ruler. While many continue to accept the storyline peddled by colonial-era thinkers-that Aurangzeb, a Muslim, was a Hindu-loathing bigot-there is an untold side to him as a man who strove to be a just, worthy Indian king.

In this bold and captivating biography, Audrey Truschke enters the public debate with a fresh look at the controversial Mughal emperor.

Audrey Truschke is assistant professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. She received her PhD in 2012 from Columbia University. Her teaching and research interests focus on the cultural, imperial and intellectual history of early modern and modern India (c. 1500-present). Her first book, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Penguin, 2016) investigates the literary, social and political roles of Sanskrit as it thrived in the Persian-speaking, Islamic Mughal courts from 1560 to 1650.