He was the second son and fourth child of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and his queen Mumtaz Mahal.

On 23 February 1633, the wedding presents worth Rupees 10 lakhs were displayed by Jahanara Begum and Sati-un-nissa Khanum.

On the death of his first wife, he married Piari Banu Begum,[8] daughter of Azam Khan, the second governor of Bengal during Shah Jahan's reign.

The remaining daughter, Amina Banu Begum, was brought to the palace, where, from grief, she died an early death.

His father, Shah Jahan, appointed as his deputy, the Rajput prince of Nagpur, Kunwar Raghav Singh (1616-1671).

However, he was beaten by Dara's army in the hotly contested Battle of Bahadurpur, near Banares (in modern Uttar Pradesh, India).

He signed a treaty with his elder brother, Dara, which left him in control of Bengal, Orissa and a large part of Bihar, on 17 May 1658.

In the meantime, Aurangzeb defeated Dara twice (at Dharmat and Samugarh), caught him, executed him on a charge of heresy and ascended the throne.

But when he was surrounded at Tanda and found that reorganisation of the army was no longer possible, he decided to leave Bengal for good and take shelter in Arakan.

After staying for a month, they departed from the city and boarded Arakanese ships on 12 May at Bhulua (near present-day Noakhali, Bangladesh).

The Arakanese king, the powerful Sanda Thudhamma, had previously agreed to provide ships for Shuja and his family to travel to Mecca, where the prince had planned to spend the remainder of his life.

The half dozen camel-loads of gold and jewels that the Mughal royals had brought with them was beyond anything that had previously been seen in Arakan.

Unable to move and being refused provisions at the bazaars, Shuja resolved to attempt to overthrow the king.

The following year however, suspicious of another coup, Sanda Thudhamma had Shuja's sons decapitated and his daughters (including the pregnant eldest) starved to death.

Arakan was unable to return to its previous dominance and Sanda Thudhamma's eventual death was followed by a century of chaos.