
Mughal Empire during Aurangzeb’s reign
Mughal Empire during Aurangzeb’s reign
A brief description of the history of Mughals in India:
The Mughal Empire was an empire in the Indian subcontinent, founded in 1526. It was established and ruled by the Timurid dynasty. The beginning of the empire is conventionally dated to the victory by its founder Babur over Ibrahim Lodi, the last ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, in the First Battle of Panipat (1526). During the reign of Humayun, the successor of Babur, the empire was briefly interrupted by the Sur Empire.
The "classic period" of the Mughal Empire started in 1556 with the ascension of Akbar the Great to the throne. Some Rajput kingdoms continued to pose a significant threat to the Mughal dominance of northwestern India, but most of them were subdued by Akbar. Akbar, however, propounded a syncretic religion in the latter part of his life called Dīn-iIlāhī, as recorded in historical books like Ain-i-Akbari and Dabistān-iMazāhib. The Mughal Empire did not try to intervene in the local societies during most of its existence, but rather balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices and diverse and inclusive ruling elites, leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule. Traditional and newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, the Pashtuns, the Hindu Jats and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience.
The Mughal Empire at its peak extended over nearly all of the Indian subcontinent and parts of Afghanistan. It was the third largest empire to have existed in the Indian subcontinent (behind the Maurya Empire, and the British Indian Empire which replaced it), spanning approximately four million square kilometres at its zenith, second to the Maurya Empire. The maximum expansion was reached during the reign of Aurangzeb, who ruled over more than 150 million subjects, nearly one quarter of the world's population at the time.
The Mughal Empire also ushered in a period of proto-industrialization, and around the 17th century, Mughal India became the world's largest economic and manufacturing power, producing a quarter of global industrial output up until the 18th century.
The Mughal Empire is considered "India's last golden age" and one of the three Islamic Gunpowder Empires (along with the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia). The reign of Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor, between 1628 and 1658, was the zenith of Mughal architecture with famous monuments such as the Taj Mahal and Moti Masjid at Agra, the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, Delhi, and the Lahore Fort.