Mughal Empire

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, descendants of the Mongol, Turkish, Iranian and Afghan invaders of South Asia - the Mughal-invaded India under the leadership of Zahir-ud-Din Babur. Babur was the great grandson of Tamerlane (Timur the lame, from which the Western name Tamerlane strains), who had invaded India and plundered Delhi in 1398 and has subsequently received a brief empire based in Samarkand (in modern Uzbekistan) that united Persian-based Mongols (Babur's maternal ancestors) and other West Asian peoples. Babur was driven from Samarkand and initially established his rule in Kabul in 1504, he became the first Mughal ruler (from 1526 to 1530 AD). His desire was to expand eastward into Punjab, where he had made a series of raids. Then an invitation from an opportunistic Afghan chief in Punjab brought him to the heart of the Delhi Sultanate, ruled by Ibrahim Lodi (1517 - 1526 AD). Babur, a seasoned military commander, entered India in 1526 AD with its well-trained veteran army of 12,000 to meet the sultan's huge but unwieldy and fragmented force of more than 100,000 men. Babur defeated the Lodi sultan crucial in Panipat. Employs gun carts, moveable artillery, and superior cavalry tactics, Babur achieved a victory. A year later, he decisively defeated a Rajput federation led by Rana Sangha. In 1529 AD Babur routed the joint forces of Afghans and the sultan of Bengal but died in 1530 AD, before he could consolidate his military gains. He left behind as legacies his memoirs (Babur Namah), several beautiful gardens in Kabul, Lahore, and Agra, and descendants who would fulfill his dream of establishing an empire in Hindustan.

When Babur died, inherited his son Humayun (1530 to 56 AD), also a soldier, a difficult task. He was pressed from all sides by a reassertion of Afghan claims to the Delhi throne, by disputes over his own legacy, and by the Afghan-Rajput march into Delhi in 1540 AD. He fled to Persia, where he spent nearly ten years as an embarrassed guest at the Safavid court. In 1545 AD, he got a foothold in Kabul, reasserted his Indian claim, defeated Sher Khan Sur, the most powerful Afghan ruler, and took control of Delhi in 1555 AD.

Humayun's untimely death in 1556 AD left the task of further imperial conquest and consolidation to his thirteen-year-old son, Jalal-ud-Din Akbar (1556 to 1605 AD). Following a decisive military victory in the second battle of Panipat in 1556 AD, the regent Bayram Khan pursued a vigorous policy of expansion on Akbar's behalf. As soon as Akbar came of age, he began to free itself from the influence of overbearing ministers, court factions, and harem intrigues, and demonstrated his own capacity for ruling and leadership. He continued to conquer, annex, and consolidate a remote area bounded by Kabul in the northwest, Kashmir in the north, Bengal in the east, and beyond the Narmada River in the south.

Akbar built a walled capital called Fatehpur Sikri near Agra, starting in 1571 AD. Akbar adopted two distinct but effective approaches in administering a large territory and incorporating various ethnic groups in the service of his kingdom. In 1580 AD he obtained local revenue statistics for the previous decade in order to understand details of productivity and price fluctuation of different crops. Helped by Todar Mal, a Rajput king, Akbar issued a revenue schedule that the peasantry could tolerate while providing maximum profit for the state. Revenue requirements are determined according to local conventions of cultivation and quality of soil, ranged from one third to half of the crop and were paid in cash. Akbar relied heavily on land-holding zamindars. They used their considerable local knowledge and influence to collect revenue and transfer it to the Treasury, with a portion in return for benefits. Within his administrative system, the warrior aristocracy (mansabdars) held ranks (mansabs) in terms of number of troops, and indicating pay, armed quotas and duties. Warrior aristocracy was generally paid from revenues of nonhereditary and transferable jagirs (revenue villages).

A wise ruler who genuinely appreciated the challenges of managing such a large empire, Akbar introduced a policy of reconciliation and assimilation of Hindus (including Maryam al-Zamani, the Hindu Rajput mother of his son and heir, Jahangir), who constituted the majority of the population. He recruited and rewarded Hindu chiefs with the highest rank in the government, encouraged intermarriages between Mughal and Rajput aristocracy; allowed new temples to be built, personally participated in celebrating Hindu festivals such as Deepavali, or Diwali, Festival of Lights, and abolished the jizya (poll tax) assigned to non-Muslims. Akbar came up with his own theory of "power as a divine light," embedded in his new religion Din-i Ilahi (divine faith), which includes the principle of acceptance of all religions and sects. He encouraged widow marriage, discouraged child marriage, forbade the practice of sati, and persuaded Delhi traders to set up special market days for women who otherwise were secluded at home. By the end of Akbar's reign, Mughal Empire extended throughout most of India north of the Godavari River. The exceptions were Gondwana in central India, who hailed the Mughal and Assam in the northeast.

Mughal rule under Jahangir (1605 - 1627 AD) and Shah Jahan (1628 - 1658 AD) was noted for political stability, fresh economic activity, beautiful paintings, and monumental buildings. Jahangir married the Persian princess whom he renamed Nur Jahan (Light of the World), which emerged as the most powerful person in the court besides the emperor. As a result, took Persian poets, artists, researchers and government officials - including her own family - lured by the Mughal court's brilliance and luxury, asylum in India. The number of unproductive, time-serving officers shot, like corruption, while the great Persian representation upset the delicate balance of impartiality at the court. Jahangir liked Hindu festivals but promoted mass conversion to Islam, he persecuted followers of Jihad, and even executed Guru Arjun Das, the fifth saint-teacher of the Sikhs. Nur Jahan's abortive schemes to secure the throne for the prince of her choice led Shah Jahan to rebel in 1622. In the same year took the Persians in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, an event that struck a serious blow to Mughal prestige.

Between 1636 AD and 1646 AD, Shah Jahan sent Mughal armies to conquer the Deccan and the northwest beyond the Khyber Pass. Although they showed Mughal military strength, these campaigns consumed the imperial treasury. Since the State was a great military machine, whose nobles and their quota multiplied almost fourfold, so did its demand for more revenue from the peasants. Political unification and maintenance of law and order in large areas encouraged the emergence of large centers of commerce and crafts - as Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and Ahmadabad - linked by roads and waterways to distant places and ports. The world famous Taj Mahal was built in Agra during Shah Jahan's reign as a tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It symbolizes both Mughal artistic achievement and high economic costs when resources have become smaller. The economic situation of peasants and artisans did not improve because the administration has no lasting change in the existing social structure. There was no incentive for the revenue officials, whose concerns primarily were personal or familial gain, to generate resources independent of dominant Hindu zamindars and village leaders, whose self-interest and local dominance prevented them from transferring the full amount of revenue to the imperial box. In their growing dependence on land revenue, the Mughal unwittingly nurtured forces that eventually led to the dissolution of their empire.

The last of the great Mughal was Aurangzeb (1658 - 1707 AD), who seized the throne by killing all his brothers and imprisoning his own father. During his fifty years of reign, the empire reached its limits physically, but also witnessed the unmistakable signs of decline. The bureaucracy had grown bloated and excessively corrupt, and the large and unwieldy army demonstrated outdated weaponry and tactics. Aurangzeb was not the ruler to restore the dynasty's declining fortunes or glory. Awe-inspiring but lacking in the charisma needed to attract outstanding lieutenants, he was driven to extend Mughal rule over most of South Asia and to restore the Islamic orthodoxy by adopting a reactionary attitude towards the Muslims, whom he had suspected of compromising their faith.

Aurangzeb was involved in a series of protracted wars - against Pathan in Afghanistan, the sultans of Bijapur and Golkonda in the Deccan and Maratha in Maharashtra. Peasant uprisings and rebellion by local leaders became all too common, as did the conniving of the nobles to preserve their own status at the expense of a steadily weakening empire. The increasing association of his government with Islam further drove a wedge between the ruler and his Hindu subjects. Aurangzeb forbade the building of new temples, destroyed a number of them, and reinstated the jizya. A puritan and a censor of morals, he banned music at court, abolished ceremonies, and persecuted the Sikhs in Punjab. These measures alienated so many that even before he died challenges for power had already begun to escalate. Candidates for the Mughal throne fought each other, and the short-lived reigns of Aurangzeb's successors were strife-filled. The Mughal Empire experienced dramatic setbacks as regional governors broke and founded independent kingdoms. The Mughal had to make peace with Maratha rebels, and Persian and Afghan army invaded Delhi, carrying away many treasures, including the Peacock Throne in 1739 AD.