Many of the later Mughal emperors had significant Indian Rajput and Persian ancestry through marriage alliances as emperors were born to Rajput and Persian princesses.[1][2][3]
During the reign of Aurangzeb, the empire, as the world's largest economy and manufacturing power, worth over 25% of global GDP,[4] controlled nearly all of the Indian subcontinent, extending from Dhaka in the east to Kabul in the west and from Kashmir in the north to the Kaveri River in the south.[5]
Genealogy of the Mughal dynasty. Only principal offspring of each emperor are provided in the chart.
Its population at the time has been estimated as between 110 and 150million (a quarter of the world's population), over a territory of more than 4million square kilometres (1.5million square miles).[6] Mughal power rapidly dwindled during the 18th century and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah II, was deposed in 1857, with the establishment of the British Raj.[7]
The Mughal empire was founded by Babur, a Timurid prince and ruler from Central Asia. Babur was a direct descendant of Timur, the 14th century founder of the Timurid empire on his father's side, and Genghis Khan on his mother's side.[8] Ousted from his ancestral domains in Turkestan by Shaybani Khan, the 40-year-old prince Babur turned to India to satisfy his ambitions. He established himself in Kabul and then pushed steadily southward into India from Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass.[8] Babur's forces occupied much of northern India after his victory at Panipat in 1526.[8] The preoccupation with wars and military campaigns, however, did not allow the new emperor to consolidate the gains he had made in India.[9] The instability of the empire became evident under his son, Humayun, who was driven into exile in Persia by rebels.[8] Humayun's exile in Persia established diplomatic ties between the Safavid and Mughal courts and led to increasing West Asian cultural influence in the Mughal court. The restoration of Mughal rule began after Humayun's triumphant return from Persia in 1555, but he died from an accident shortly afterwards.[8] Humayun's son, Akbar, succeeded to the throne under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped consolidate the Mughal Empire in India.[10]
Through warfare and diplomacy, Akbar was able to extend the empire in all directions and controlled almost the entire Indian subcontinent north of the Godavari river.[11] He created a new ruling elite loyal to him, implemented a modern administration, and encouraged cultural developments. He increased trade with European trading companies.[8] The Indian historian Abraham Eraly wrote that foreigners were often impressed by the fabulous wealth of the Mughal court, but the glittering court hid darker realities, namely that about a quarter of the empire's gross national product was owned by 655 families while the bulk of India's 120million people lived in appalling poverty.[12] After suffering what appears to have been an epileptic seizure in 1578 while hunting tigers, which he regarded as a religious experience, Akbar grew disenchanted with Islam, and came to embrace a syncretistic mixture of Hinduism and Islam.[13] Akbar allowed freedom of religion at his court and attempted to resolve socio-political and cultural differences in his empire by establishing a new religion, Din-i-Ilahi, with strong characteristics of a ruling cult.[8] He left his son an internally stable state, which was in the midst of its golden age, but before long signs of political weakness would emerge.[8] Akbar was also interested in elevating the way individuals view leaders with the stylings of his clothes and ensemble.
Akbar's son, Jahangir, was addicted to opium, neglected the affairs of the state, and came under the influence of rival court cliques.[8] During the reign of Jahangir's son, Shah Jahan, the splendour of the Mughal court reached its peak, as exemplified by the Taj Mahal. The cost of maintaining the court, however, began to exceed the revenue being levied.[8]
Shah Jahan's eldest son, the liberal Dara Shikoh, became regent in 1658, as a result of his father's illness. Dara championed a syncretistic Hindu-Muslim religion and culture. With the support of the Islamic orthodoxy, however, a younger son of Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, seized the throne. Aurangzeb defeated Dara in 1659 and had him executed.[8] Although Shah Jahan fully recovered from his illness, there was a succession war for the throne between Dara and Aurangzeb. Finally, Aurangzeb succeeded the throne and kept Shah Jahan under house arrest.
During Aurangzeb's reign, the empire gained political strength once more, and it became the world's largest economy, over a quarter of the world GDP,[citation needed] but his establishment of Sharia caused huge controversies. Aurangzeb expanded the empire to include a huge part of South Asia. At its peak, the kingdom stretched to 3.2 million square kilometres, including parts of what are now India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.[14] After his death in 1707, "many parts of the empire were in open revolt."[8] Aurangzeb's attempts to reconquer his family's ancestral lands in Central Asia were not successful while his successful conquest of the Deccan region proved to be a pyrrhic victory that cost the empire heavily in both militarily and financially.[15] A further problem for Aurangzeb was the army had always been based upon the land-owning aristocracy of northern India who provided the cavalry for the campaigns, and the empire had nothing equivalent to the janissary corps of the Ottoman Empire.[15] The long and costly conquest of the Deccan had badly diminished the "aura of success" that surrounded Aurangzeb, and from the late 17th century onwards, the aristocracy became increasingly unwilling to provide forces for the empire's wars as the prospect of being rewarded with land as a result of a successful war was seen as less and less likely.[15]
Furthermore, at the conclusion of the conquest of the Deccan, Aurangzeb had very selectively rewarded some of the noble families with confiscated land in the Deccan, leaving aristocrats unrewarded with confiscated land feeling strongly disgruntled and unwilling to participate in further campaigns.[15] Aurangzeb's son, Shah Alam, repealed the religious policies of his father and attempted to reform the administration. "However, after his death in 1712, the Mughal dynasty sank into chaos and violent feuds. In the year 1719 alone, four emperors successively ascended the throne".[8]
Akbar Shah II and his four sons.
During the reign of Muhammad Shah, the empire began to break up, and vast tracts of central India passed from Mughals to the Marathas hands. Mughal warfare had always been based upon heavy artillery for sieges, heavy cavalry for offensive operations and light cavalry for skirmishing and raids.[15] To control a region, the Mughals always sought to occupy a strategic fortress in some region, which would serve as a nodal point from which the Mughal army would emerge to take on any enemy that challenged the empire.[15] This system was not only expensive but also made the army somewhat inflexible as the assumption was always the enemy would retreat into a fortress to be besieged or would engage in a set-piece decisive battle of annihilation on open ground.[15] The Hindu Marathas were expert horsemen who refused to engage in set-piece battles, but rather engaged in campaigns of guerrilla warfare upon the Mughal supply lines.[15] The Marathas were unable to take the Mughal fortresses via a storm or formal siege as they lacked the artillery, but by constantly intercepting supply columns, they were able to starve Mughal fortresses into submission.[15]
Successive Mughal commanders refused to adjust their tactics and develop an appropriate counter-insurgency strategy, which led to the Mughals losing more and more ground to the Marathas.[15] The Indian campaign of Nader Shah of Persia culminated with the Sack of Delhi and shattered the remnants of Mughal power and prestige, as well as capturing the imperial treasury, thus drastically accelerating its decline. Many of the empire's elites now sought to control their own affairs and broke away to form independent kingdoms. The Mughal emperor, however, continued to be the highest manifestation of sovereignty. Not only the Muslim gentry, but the Maratha, Hindu, and Sikh leaders took part in ceremonial acknowledgements of the emperor as the sovereign of India.[16][17]
In the next decades, the Afghans, Sikhs, and Marathas battled against each other and the Mughals, revealing the fragmented state of the empire. The Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II made futile attempts to reverse the empire's decline, but he ultimately had to seek the protection of outside powers. In 1784, the Marathas under Mahadaji Shinde won acknowledgement as the protectors of the emperor in Delhi, a state of affairs that continued until after the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Thereafter, the East India Company became the protectors of the Mughal dynasty in Delhi.[17] After 1835 the Company no longer recognised the authority of the emperor, accepting him only as 'King of Delhi' and removing all references to him from their coinage. After the Indian rebellion which he nominally led from 1857–58, the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was deposed by the British, who then assumed formal control of a large part of the former empire,[8] marking the start of the British Raj.
Titular emperors
Over the course of the empire, there were several claimants to the Mughal throne who ascended the throne or claimed to do so but were never recognized.[18]
Here are the claimants to the Mughal throne historians recognise as titular Mughal emperors.
Muhi al-Din Muhammad, commonly known as Aurangzeb, was the sixth Mughal emperor, reigning from 1658 until his death in 1707. His regnal name is Alamgir I, which derived from his title, Abu al-Muzaffar Muhi-ad-Din Muhammad Bahadur Alamgir Aurangzeb Badshah al-Ghazi. Under his emperorship, the Mughal Empire reached its greatest extent with territory spanning nearly the entirety of the Indian subcontinent.
Nasir al-Din Muhammad, commonly know by his regnal name Humayun, was the second Mughal emperor, who ruled over territory in what is now Eastern Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Northern India, and Pakistan from 1530 to 1540 and again from 1555 to his death 1556. At the time of his death the Mughal Empire spanned almost one million square kilometres.
Mirza Shahab-ud-Din Muhammad Khurram, also known as Shah Jahan I, was the fifth Mughal Emperor, reigning from 1628 until 1658. During his reign, the Mughals reached the peak of their architectural and cultural achievements.
Dara Shikoh, also known as Dara Shukoh, was the eldest son and heir-apparent of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. Dara was designated with the title Padshahzada-i-Buzurg Martaba and was favoured as a successor by his father and his elder sister, Princess Jahanara Begum. He had been given the title of 'Shah-e-Buland Iqbal' by Shah Jahan. In the war of succession which ensued after Shah Jahan's illness in 1657, Dara was defeated by his younger brother Prince Muhiuddin. He was executed in 1659 on Aurangzeb's orders in a bitter struggle for the imperial throne.
The Agra Fort is a historical fort in the city of Agra, and also known as Agra's Red Fort. Mughal emperor Humayun was crowned at this fort. It was later renovated by the Mughal emperor Akbar from 1565 and the present-day structure was completed in 1573. It served as the main residence of the rulers of the Mughal dynasty until 1638, when the capital was shifted from Agra to Delhi. It was also known as the "Lal-Qila" or "Qila-i-Akbari". Before being captured by the British, the last Indian rulers to have occupied it were the Marathas. In 1983, the Agra fort was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its importance during the Mughal Dynasty. It is about 2.5 kilometers (1.6 mi) northwest of its more famous sister monument, the Taj Mahal. The fort can be more accurately described as a walled city. It was later renovated by Shah Jahan.
Mughal architecture is the type of Indo-Islamic architecture developed by the Mughals in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries throughout the ever-changing extent of their empire in the Indian subcontinent. It developed from the architectural styles of earlier Muslim dynasties in India and from Iranian and Central Asian architectural traditions, particularly Timurid architecture. It also further incorporated and syncretized influences from wider Indian architecture, especially during the reign of Akbar. Mughal buildings have a uniform pattern of structure and character, including large bulbous domes, slender minarets at the corners, massive halls, large vaulted gateways, and delicate ornamentation; examples of the style can be found in modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
Mughal painting is a South Asian style of painting on paper confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums (muraqqa), originating from the territory of the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. It emerged from Persian miniature painting and developed in the court of the Mughal Empire of the 16th to 18th centuries. Battles, legendary stories, hunting scenes, wildlife, royal life, mythology, as well as other subjects have all been frequently depicted in paintings.
The Mughal dynasty comprised the members of the imperial House of Babur (Persian: خاندانِ آلِ بابُر; Khāndān-e-Āl-e-Bābur), also known as the Gurkanis, who ruled the Mughal Empire from c. 1526 to 1857.
A Subah was the term for a province (state) in the Mughal Empire. The term was also used by other polities of the Indian subcontinent. The word is derived from Arabic and Persian. The governor/ruler of a Subah was known as a subahdar, which later became subedar to refer to an officer in the Indian Army and Pakistan Army. The subahs were established by badshah (emperor) Akbar during his administrative reforms of the years 1572–1580; initially, they numbered 12, but his conquests expanded the number of subahs to 15 by the end of his reign. Subahs were divided into Sarkars, or districts. Sarkars were further divided into Parganas or Mahals. His successors, most notably Aurangzeb, expanded the number of subahs further through their conquests. As the empire began to dissolve in the early 18th century, many subahs became effectively independent or were conquered by the Marathas or the British.
Delhi has been an important political centre of India as the capital of several empires. The recorded history of Delhi begins with the 8th century Tomar Rajputs kingdom. It is considered to be a city built, destroyed and rebuilt several times, as outsiders who successfully invaded the Indian subcontinent would ransack the existing capital city in Delhi, and those who came to conquer and stay would be so impressed by the city's strategic location as to make it their capital and rebuild it in their own way.
Mirza Muhammad Akbar was a Mughal prince and the fourth son of Emperor Aurangzeb and his chief consort Dilras Banu Begum. He went into exile in Safavid Persia after a failed rebellion against his father in the Deccan.
The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.
The Great Moghuls is a 1990 Channel 4 documentary series covering the dramatic story of the rise of the Moghul Empire (1526–1857) of India. Over six generations, from father to son, the Great Moghuls captured, consolidated and profoundly influenced control of the sub-continent of India. The six-part series was written and presented by Bamber Gascoigne based upon his 1971 book of the same name. It was produced and directed by Douglas Rae and filmed on location in India.
Persian people were one of the major ethnic groups, who accompanied the ethnic Turco-Mongol ruling elite of the Mughal Empire after its invasion of the Indian subcontinent. Throughout the Mughal Empire, a number of ethnic Persian technocrats, bureaucrats, traders, scientists, architects, teachers, poets, artists, theologians and Sufis migrated and settled in different parts of the Indian Subcontinent.
The Army of the Mughal Empire was the force by which the Mughal emperors established their empire in the 16th century and expanded it to its greatest extent at the beginning of the 18th century. Although its origins, like the Mughals themselves, were in the cavalry-based armies of central Asia, its essential form and structure was established by the empire's third emperor, Akbar. The regular forces mainly recruited and fielded by Mansabdar officers.
Persian Inscriptions on Indian Monuments is a book written in Persian by Dr Ali Asghar Hekmat E Shirazi and published in 1956 and 1958 and 2013. New edition contains the Persian texts of more than 200 epigraphical inscriptions found on historical monuments in India, many of which are currently listed as national heritage sites or registered as UNESCO world heritage, published in Persian; an English edition is also being printed.
The Gujarat Subah was a province (subah) of the Mughal Empire, encompassing the Gujarat region. The region first fell under Mughal control in 1573, when the Mughal emperor Akbar defeated the Gujarat Sultanate under Muzaffar Shah III. Muzaffar tried to regain the Sultanate in 1584 but failed. Gujarat remained the Mughal province governed by the viceroys and officers appointed by the Mughal emperors from Delhi. Akbar's foster brother Mirza Aziz Kokaltash was appointed as the subahdar (viceroy) who strengthened Mughal hold over the region. The nobles of former Sultanate continued to resist and rebel during the reign of the next emperor Jahangir (1605–1627) but Kokaltash and his successor subahdars subdued them. Jehangir also permitted the British East India Company to establish factories in Surat and elsewhere in Gujarat. The next emperor Shah Jahan (1627–1658) expanded his territories in south and his subahdars made hold over Kathiawar peninsula including Nawanagar. Shah Jahan had also appointed his prince Aurangzeb, who was involved in religious disputes, prince Dara Shikoh and later prince Murad Bakhsh as subahdars. Following battle of succession, Aurangzeb (1658–1707) came to the Mughal throne and his policies resulted in revolts and discontent. During his reign, the Marathas under Shivaji raided Surat (1666) and their incursions in Gujarat started. Till then Gujarat prospered due to political stability, peace and growing international trade.
The Subah of Lahore was a province of the Mughal Empire encompassing the central Punjab region, now divided between Pakistan and India. It was created as one of the original 12 Subahs of the Mughal Empire under the administrative reforms carried by emperor Akbar in 1580. The province ceased to exist after the death of its last viceroy, Adina Beg in 1758, with large parts being incorporated into Durrani Empire.
The foreign relations of the Mughal Empire were characterized by competition with the Persian Empire to the west, the Marathas and others to the south, and the British to the east. Steps were taken by successive Mughal rulers to secure the western frontiers of India. The Khyber Pass along the Kabul- Qandahar route was the natural defence for India, and their foreign policy revolved around securing these outposts, as also balancing the rise of powerful empires in the region. During the break up of the Timurid Empire in the 15th century, the Ottomans in Turkey, the Safavids in Persia and the Uzbegs in central Asia emerged as the new contenders of power. While the Safavids were Shia by faith, Ottomans along with Uzbegs were Sunni. The Mughals were also Sunni and Uzbegs were their natural enemies, who caused Babur and other Timurid princes to leave Khurasan and Samarqand. The powerful Uzbegs who held sway over central India sought an alliance of Sunni powers to defeat the Shia ruled Persia, but Mughals were too broadminded to be driven away by the sectarian conflicts. The Mughal rulers, especially Akbar, were keen to develop strong ties with Persia in order to balance the warring Uzbegs. Thus, the foreign policy of Mughals was centred around strengthening the ties with Persia, while maintaining the balance of power in the region by keeping a check on the evolution of a united Uzbeg empire.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 D'souza, Rohan "Crisis before the Fall: Some Speculations on the Decline of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals" pp. 3–30 from Social Scientist, Volume 30, Issue # 9/10, September–October 2002 p. 21.
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