Babar

Babar invaded India at the invitation of Daulat Khan Lodi, who suggested that he should displace Ibrahim Lodi. Babar’s forces met and defeated Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat on April 20, 1526 (First Battle of Panipat), He next defeated Rana Sanga of Mewar at Khanwa (1527).

Meanwhile, the Afghans had set up Mahmud Lodi, a brother of Ibrahim, as their king in Bihar. Babar met the combined forces of the Afghans and Nusrat Shah of Bengal at the crossing of the river Ganges. In the absence of a decisive victory, Babar left most of Bihar in Afghan hands.

Humayun

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Humayun succeeded Babar in December 1530. His brother Kamran had charge of Kabul and Qandahar and also occupied Lahore and Multan. Humayun had two major problems: the Afghans under Sher Shah Suri in the east, and Bahadur Shah of Gujarat in the west. Matters were made worse because of his indolent nature.

He built a new city near Delhi called Dinpanah and spent his time in feast and festivities. Humayun was defeated first at Chausa (March 1539) by Sher Shah Suri and then at Kannauj (May 1540). He was forced to take shelter in the court of the Persian king who helped him recapture Qandahar and Kabul in 1545 and later, in 1555, following the break up of the Suri Empire, Delhi.

Akbar (1556-1605)

Born in Amarkot in 1542, Akbar was crowned at Kalanaur in 1556. His first problem was Hemu (Vikramjit), who had risen to become the wazir under the Suris. After Humayun’s death, he had captured Agra and Delhi. The Mughal and Afghan forces met at Panipat on Nov. 5, 1556 (Second Battle of Panipat). The battle turned in Akbar’s favour when an arrow hit Hemu and he fainted.

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Between 1556 and 1576, the Mughal territories expanded rapidly. Akbar conquered Ajmer, Malwa (Baz Bahadur was defeated in 1561), Garh- Katonga (where Durgavati, a princes of the Chandella Mahoba, was ruling on behalf of her minor son), Chittor (after Udai Singh fled to the hills in 1568), Ranthambhor and Jodhpur. Bikaner and Jaisalmer submitted peacefully.

Akbar then conquered Gujarat in 1572-73. In 1576, he defeated the Afghan ruler of Bengal and Berar, Daud Khan. Akbar next marched into Kabul (1581) to put down a revolt by his half-brother, Mirza Hakim, sent expeditions against Kashmir (1586) and Baluchistan, conquered Sindh (1590) and then turned his attention to the Deccan.

In 1591, he sent envoys to all the Deccan States inviting them to accept Mughal suzerainty. Only Khandesh accepted. Berar was annexed in 1596 and Ahmadnagar fell in 1600. Khandesh was incorporated into the empire in 1601.

Akbar followed a policy of matrimonial alliances and broad religious tolerance. He abolished the jaziya in 1564. Despite all his attempts, Mewar’s Rana Pratap opposed him. Although he was defeated at the Battle of Haldighati (1576), he continued guerilla warfare.

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Policy of Integration:

Akbar inducted many capable Hindus, including many Rajput rajas, into the nobility. In 1575, he built a hall called lbadat Khana (Hall of Prayer) at his new capital, Fatehpur Sikri, and called mystics and learned men of all religions for discussions and debates.

To stop the infighting within Islam, he issued the Mahzar (Declaration) which has wrongly been called the ‘Decree of Infallibility’. According to the Mahzar, Akbar asserted that if there were conflicting views amongst those who interpreted the Quaran, he could choose from among the interpretations; and if he issued a new order, it should be in conformity with the Quran. Akbar also began his own order, the Tauhid-i-Ilahi, which means ‘Divine Monetheism’ Later, it began to be called Din-i-Ilahi-Divine faith. Akbar also tried to emphasise the concept of Sulh-i-Kul-peace and harmony among all religions. He set up a big department to translate various religious texts into Persian.

Land Revenue:

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Akbar modified Sher Shah’s land revenue administration and reverted to a system of annual assessment. The State share was one-third of the produce and the State demand was fixed in cash. Akbar followed mainly the dahsala system in collecting land revenue, which is also known as the zabti system and as Todar Mai’s bandobast.

Mansabdari System:

Every officer was assigned a rank (mansab), and the ranks were divided into two, zat and sawar, the first being the personal rank of the mansabdar, fixing his position in the official hierarchy, the latter denoting the actual number of cavalrymen he had to maintain. This was done to organise the civil and military wings of government into one official hierarchy.

Jahangir (1605-1627)

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He brought to an end the conflict with Mewar. In the Deccan, in Ahmadnagar, he faced Malik Ambar, an Abyssinian. In the east too, there were rebellions led by the Afghan chiefs, Usman Khan and Musa Khan. But Jahangir succeeded in bringing Malik Ambar to heel (1622) and pacifying Bengal. However, Mughal prestige suffered a blow by the Persian conquest of Qandahar. Jahangir’s health also began to fail and this catapulted Nur Jahan into the political arena.

The two important events in the last part of Jahangir’s reign were Shah Jahan’s rebellion (1622-26) and Mahabat Khan’s rebellion shortly afterwards.

Shah Jahan (1628-1658)

Shah Jahan’s campaigns include an unsuccessful one to Balkh (1646- 47), which was commanded first by Murad and then by Aurangzeb and which led to the controversy that the Mughals were trying to fix the Oxus (Amu Darya) as the ‘scientific frontier’ of the empire.

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Shah Jahan was more successful in the Deccan. He signed treaties with Bijapur and Golconda in 1636, which enabled him to realise the ultimate objectives of Akbar; the suzerainty of the Mughal Emperor was now accepted over the length and breadth of the country. However, after 1636, Golconda and Bijapur overran the fertile Karnataka area. This, added to the rise of Marathas, upset the balance of power in the Deccan.

Shah Jahan’s accomplishments in the field of architecture are well known; the Taj Mahal, the Moti Masjid at Agra Fort, etc. He made lavish use of marble and pietra dura craftsmanship. Aurangzeb (1658-1707)

During Aurangzeb reign, the Mughal Empire reached its territorial climax, from Kashmir in the north to Jinji in the south, and from the Hindukush in the west to Chittagong in the east. He lived a very austere life and came to be known as ‘zinda pir’ (living saint).

His religious policy has been a point of controversy for many centuries. Although he was an orthodox Sunni Muslim by temperament, he was also Pragmatic: he hid not hesitate to issue secular decrees called zawabit, a compendium of which has been collected in a work, the Zawabit-i-Alamgiri.

The reimposition of jaziya (1679) was also both political and ideological nature. It was meant to rally Muslims for the defence of the State against the Marathas and the Rajputs and also against Golconda which was allied to ‘infidels’.

The proceeds were also reserved for the ulema, thus proving to be a big bribe for the theologians. However, his religious policy had an adverse effect, and some modern writers feel that Aurangzeb wanted to convert India from a ‘dar-ul-harb’ (land of infidels) to a ‘dar-ul-Islam’ (land inhabited by Muslims’).

There were many popular revolts and movements for regional independence in this period. In 1669, the Jats of Mathura revolted under the local zamindar Gokla, and there was a second uprising in 1685 under the leadership of Rajaram and later Churamar, In the 18th century, Churaman carved out a separate Jat principality, in 1672, the Satnamis of Narnaul revolted.

The Afghans revolted in 1667 and 1672 (when the Afridi leader, Akmal Khan, proclaimed himself king). The execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur in 1675 also led to a clash with the Sikhs under Guru Govind Singh. There was also a breach with Marwar. Aurangzeb attacked Mewar in 1679.

But the worst problem was Shivaji. The Mughals under Jai Singh besieged Purandhar (1665) and forced Shivaji to sign a treaty. Although the treaty was beneficial to both sides, Aurangzeb interpreted it narrowly and Shivaji finally broke off and crowned himself king in 1674. He undertook an expedition into Bijapur, Karnataka, in 1676 and forced Qutb Shah to pay a huge annual subsidy to him.

He died in 1680. Between 1687 and 1707, Aurangzeb concentrated his forces against the Marathas because Bijapur (1686) and Golconda (1687), the two Deccan States which had been sore spots with him, had fallen in the meantime.

Decline of the Mughal Empire

Aurangzeb was followed by Bahadur Shah who died in 1712. Each succession was accompanied by a civil war. A new element in the contest for power was the nobility. Ambitious nobles began to use incompetent royal princes as pawn to capture the seats of authority.

The next ruler was Jahandar Shah, who was deposed in 1713 by his nephew, Farrukh Siyar, with the help of the Saiyed brothers, Abdullah Khan and Hussain Ali Khan Baraha. These two deposed Farrukh Siyar in 1719 and became king makers, raising three kings to the throne in quick succession in 1719, the last being Muhammad Shah, who ruled till 1748. Muhammad Shah, got the Saiyed brothers killed in 1720.

During the reign of Muhammad Shah, the most powerful noble, the Nizam-ul-Mulk, broke away from the centre and founded the States of Hyderabad in 1724. The Maratha sardars began their northward expansion and overran Malwa, Guajarat and Bundelkhand. In 1738-39, Nadir Shah raided north India and the empire could not fight back.

After Muhammad Shah’s death in 1748, civil war broke out among power-hungry nobles and the empire was devastated by the repeated invasions of Ahmad Shah Abdali, one of Nadir Shah’s ablest generals. In 1761, he defeated the Marathas at the Third Battle of Panipat and destroyed their ambition of controlling the Mughal Emperor and dominating the whole country.

Shah Alam II, who had ascended the throne in 1759, joined Mir Qasim of Bengal and Shuja-ud-Dauia of Awadh in 1764 against the English East India Company, but was defeated at the Battle of Buxar and lived as a pensioner of the British till 1772, when he returned to Delhi under the protective arm of the Marathas.

The British occupied Delhi in 1803, and till 1857, when the Mughal dynasty was reduced to dust, the Mughal emperors served merely as a political front for the British.