Mughal Empire

In 1526 a young ruler from the far side of the Hindu Kush, with a few thousand tired soldiers and a handful of cannons, defeated the Sultan of Delhi on the field of Panipat. That ruler was Babur, and with that one battle the Mughal Empire began. The word Mughal is the Persian form of Mongol, though the dynasty was proud of its mixed blood: on the father's side Babur was a Timurid (descendant of Timur, the Turk) and on the mother's side he came from the line of Chingiz Khan (Genghis Khan), the Mongol. Remember: Timur from the father, Chingiz from the mother.

Babur (Zahiruddin Muhammad, born 1483) became ruler of the small kingdom of Ferghana in 1494, when he was only a boy of about twelve. He tried for years to hold Samarkand, the Timurid dream city, but lost it again and again. Pushed out of Central Asia, he took Kabul in 1504 and made it his base. From there he began to look towards India, which was weak and divided under the Lodis. His first Indian expedition reached Bhira in 1519, and in 1526 he was invited by Daulat Khan Lodi (governor of Punjab) and Alam Khan (uncle of Ibrahim Lodi) to come against Ibrahim Lodi.

Why did Babur win at Panipat with a smaller army? Not because he had more men, but because he had new tactics: artillery and matchlocks, a line of carts tied together (the araba), and the tulughma, in which two flanking parties swing round the enemy. Ibrahim Lodi's elephants panicked at the noise of guns. This is the first big battle in India where gunpowder artillery was used decisively.

Babur died in 1530 at Agra. He was first buried at Agra and later, as he had wished, in his beloved garden at Kabul (Bagh-i-Babur), so he is the first Mughal emperor buried outside India. His memoir, the Baburnama (Tuzuk-i-Baburi), written in Chagatai Turkish, was translated into Persian under Akbar by Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan. He also brought the Persian Charbagh (four-part garden) to India, with the first such gardens at Agra (Aram Bagh).

Humayun (1530-1540, 1555-1556) inherited an empire that was only four years old. Babur's advice was to treat his brothers kindly, and Humayun followed it too far: his brothers Kamran, Askari and Hindal weakened him with their quarrels. His real enemies were Bahadur Shah of Gujarat in the west and Sher Khan (Sher Shah) in the east. Sher Khan beat him at Chausa (1539) and again at Bilgram / Kannauj (1540), and Humayun fled. He spent fifteen years in exile, was helped by the Safavid Shah Tahmasp of Persia, and finally returned to Delhi in 1555 after defeating Sikandar Sur at Sirhind. Within six months, in January 1556, he died after a fall from the steps of his library, the Sher Mandal, in Delhi. His son Akbar had been born during the exile, at Amarkot (Sindh) in 1542.

Between Humayun's two reigns there is a short but brilliant gap of fifteen years, from 1540 to 1555, when Delhi was ruled by an Afghan, not a Mughal. This is the Sur interlude. In those few years Sher Shah Suri built so much of what Akbar later gets credit for, the road, the rupee, the revenue survey, the district officers, that historians call him the "precursor of Akbar". If you learn his reforms well, Akbar's administration becomes easy.

Sher Shah was born as Farid in a family of Afghan soldiers of the Sur clan; his father Hasan Khan held a jagir at Sasaram (Bihar). Farid killed a tiger with his sword and was given the title Sher Khan. He rose to be the ruler of Bihar, defeated Humayun at Chausa (1539), took the title Sher Shah, and won again at Kannauj (1540), after which he took Delhi. He ruled only five years (1540-1545) and died in 1545 while besieging Kalinjar fort, when a gunpowder shell exploded. His successors Islam Shah (1545-53) and then a series of weak rulers (Adil Shah and others) let the empire slip, and Humayun returned in 1555. Another name to remember is Hemu, the Hindu minister of Adil Shah, who briefly claimed Delhi as Vikramaditya and was defeated by Akbar's army at the Second Battle of Panipat (5 November 1556).

Sher Shah's reforms fall into five groups. Administration: he divided the empire into about 47 sarkars, each divided into parganas, a structure Akbar later inherited. Revenue: he had the land measured and fixed the state share at about one-third of the expected average produce, with a schedule (called rai) of rates by crop; farmers received a patta (title) and signed a qabuliyat (agreement); the payment was made in cash or kind. Coinage: he issued a pure silver coin, the rupaya (about 178 grains), and a copper dam, in fixed ratio; this silver rupee remained the standard for centuries. Army and justice: he paid soldiers directly, branded horses (dagh) and kept descriptive rolls of soldiers (chehra) to stop cheating; justice was swift and impartial. Communications: he built or repaired four great roads, including the Grand Trunk Road (Sadak-i-Azam) from Sonargaon (Bengal) to Peshawar (the Indus), with sarais (rest houses) every few miles, wells, shade trees and mosques, and a fast dak (post) system run by horse riders.

Why Sher Shah is a bridge, not an island: the sarkar-pargana structure, the measured revenue, the cash rupee and the horse-brand system were all taken over by Akbar (through Todar Mal, who had served under Sher Shah) and the Mughals. Sher Shah also built the tomb at Sasaram (Bihar), an octagonal red-sandstone mausoleum in the middle of an artificial lake, and the Purana Qila (Qila-i-Kuhna) and its mosque in Delhi. Under him the poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi wrote the Padmavat (1540). The history of his reign is told in the Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi of Abbas Khan Sarwani.

Akbar became emperor at thirteen, in a frightening year. His father had died after a fall, Hemu held Delhi, and the new empire had no money, no allies and no map. Within fifty years that boy turned a rough military camp into an empire that stretched from Kabul to Bengal and from Kashmir to the Deccan, and he did it with a simple idea: rule by agreement, not only by force. Learn Akbar through three questions: how did he win (conquests), whom did he include (Rajputs, Hindus, all faiths), and how did he rule (administration, which is the next topic).

The early years (1556-1562). Akbar was crowned at Kalanaur in 1556. His guardian Bairam Khan won the Second Battle of Panipat (5 November 1556) against Hemu and ran the empire until Akbar dismissed him in 1560. Bairam Khan was sent on the Hajj, was murdered on the way (1561) at Patan, and for two years Akbar's foster-mother Maham Anga and her son Adham Khan controlled the court (the "petticoat government"). Akbar broke free in 1562, removing Adham Khan, and began ruling in his own right. In that year he also married the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber, beginning his alliance with the Rajputs.

Policy towards the Rajputs. Akbar understood that the Rajputs were proud warriors who could be better allies than enemies. He offered them marriage alliances (the Amber princess became the mother of Jahangir), high mansabs (Man Singh, Bhagwan Das, Todar Mal), freedom to keep their faith and lands (watan jagirs), and abolished the pilgrim tax (1563) and jizya (1564) on non-Muslims. Almost every Rajput house accepted this deal. The great exception was Mewar under Maharana Pratap (who resisted at Haldighati in 1576 and fought on from the hills until his death in 1597); Mewar made peace only under Jahangir in 1615.

Sulh-i-Kul means "peace with all": the state treats every subject alike, whatever his faith, because a ruler's duty is to the people, not to one religion. It was the principle behind Akbar's abolition of the pilgrim tax and jizya, the translations of Sanskrit books, the debates of the Ibadat Khana, and the open recruitment of Hindus (Rajputs, Todar Mal, Birbal) into the nobility. Abul Fazl was its main thinker.

Religious ideas. In 1575 Akbar built the Ibadat Khana ("House of Worship") at Fatehpur Sikri, a hall for debate, first among Muslim scholars and from 1578 among Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and, from 1580, Jesuit priests from Goa. Disgusted by the quarrels of the ulama, in 1579 he issued the Mahzar (declaration), which made the emperor the final judge when religious scholars disagreed (the "Infallibility Decree"), ending the ulama's control over the state. In 1582 he founded the Din-i-Ilahi (Tauhid-i-Ilahi), a small ethical brotherhood of the emperor's chosen followers, with the emperor as spiritual guide. It was not a new religion with scripture or priests; it asked for virtues such as loyalty, truth, generosity and giving up pride. Only a handful joined, and Birbal was the only Hindu among them.

Other contributions. Akbar started the Maktab Khana (translation bureau) at Fatehpur Sikri, where Sanskrit works were put into Persian: the Mahabharata as Razmnama, the Ramayana, the Atharvaveda, the Rajatarangini, the Lilavati and the Singhasan Battisi. He ended the enslavement of prisoners of war, discouraged forced sati, raised the age of marriage, and started a new calendar, the Tarikh-i-Ilahi (1584). The capital moved from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri (1571-85), then to Lahore (1585-98) to watch the north-west frontier, and finally back to Agra. He died in 1605 and is buried at Sikandra, near Agra, in a tomb that Jahangir completed.

After Akbar the empire had three long reigns, each with its own colour. Jahangir (1605-1627) brought court polish, painting and the influence of his powerful queen. Shah Jahan (1628-1658) brought the great age of marble and building. Aurangzeb (1658-1707) brought the largest empire and the start of its undoing. A simple memory line: *Jahangir = justice and painting; Shah Jahan = stone and splendour; Aurangzeb = the sword and the Deccan.*

Jahangir (born Salim, 1569) rebelled once against his father but succeeded peacefully in 1605. He hung a golden chain of justice (Zanjir-i-Adl) outside the Agra fort so that any petitioner could ring for the emperor. His son Khusrau rebelled in 1606, and Guru Arjan Dev was executed in 1606 for blessing him. The real influence at court from 1611 was his wife Nur Jahan (Mehr-un-Nisa), with her father Itmad-ud-Daula and brother Asaf Khan; coins were struck in her name. Under Jahangir Mewar accepted Mughal overlordship (1615), Kangra was captured (1620), but Qandahar was lost to Persia (1622). The English envoy Sir Thomas Roe came to his court in 1615-19, and the English were allowed a factory at Surat. In 1626 Mahabat Khan briefly captured the emperor. He died in 1627 and was buried at Shahdara, Lahore. He wrote the memoir Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri and was a lover of painting and nature.

Shah Jahan (Khurram, ruled 1628-1658) took the throne after a short fight among brothers. His reign is called the golden age of Mughal architecture: the Taj Mahal (1632-53) for Mumtaz Mahal, the Red Fort and the new city Shahjahanabad at Delhi, the Jama Masjid, the Peacock Throne. The treasury was rich but military ventures failed: he annexed Ahmadnagar (1633) and forced Bijapur and Golconda to accept Mughal supremacy (1636), but his Central Asian campaign (Balkh, 1646-47) failed and Qandahar was lost to Persia for good (1649-53). In 1657 he fell ill, and his four sons, Dara Shikoh, Shuja, Murad and Aurangzeb, fought the war of succession. Aurangzeb won at Dharmat (April 1658) and Samugarh (29 May 1658), locked his father in the Agra Fort (1658-66), and had Dara executed. Shah Jahan died in 1666 and lies in the Taj Mahal.

Aurangzeb (Alamgir, ruled 1658-1707) was a hard-working, simple, pious ruler who took the title Alamgir (world-conqueror). In 1679 he re-imposed the jizya, forbade many court customs, and stopped music at court (though music was still written about in his reign). His rule faced revolts: the Jats of Mathura (1669), the Satnamis (1672, Narnaul), the Sikhs (Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed in 1675), the Rathores of Marwar after Jaswant Singh's death (1678; Durgadas Rathore), the Bundelas (Chhatrasal), and the Afghans of the north-west. In Assam, Mir Jumla took the Ahom capital in 1662, but the Ahoms recovered and Lachit Barphukan won at Saraighat (1671). Above all, there was the Deccan: Aurangzeb conquered Bijapur (1686) and Golconda (1687), captured and killed Sambhaji (1689), and spent his last 26 years (1681-1707) in the south, chasing the Marathas. The empire reached its greatest extent, but at huge cost of men and money. He died at Ahmadnagar in 1707 and is buried in a simple grave at Khuldabad near Aurangabad. People called him Zinda Pir (the living saint).

An empire as big as the Mughals' needs three things to survive: an army that obeys, money that arrives, and officers who do not become rivals. Akbar solved all three with one linked design: the mansabdari system for the army and the nobility, zabt / dahsala for revenue, and the jagir for paying nobles. Learn them as one machine and each part becomes easy.

Mansabdari. A mansab means a rank. Every noble and army officer got a mansab expressed in numbers. Akbar organised it around 1570-71. The number in the mansab was the zat: it fixed the person's personal rank, status and salary. A second number, the sawar, said how many horsemen he must keep ready. Ranks ran from 10 to 10,000 (the very highest, up to 12,000, were for princes and the highest nobles). Nobles with mansabs below 500 were mansabdars, from 500 to 2,500 amirs, and 3,000 and above amir-i-umara (grand nobles). The mansab was not hereditary: after a noble died, his property returned to the state, and the son had to start again. The mansabdar did not need to live where his income came from.

Why was the mansab not tied to one place? If a noble held the same land for life, his sons and his local soldiers would become a little king. By paying nobles through jagirs that were transferred every three or four years, and by making mansabs non-hereditary, the emperor made sure no noble could build a power base. This is the same idea as the Delhi Sultanate's iqta, but with ranks, salaries and army duties more strictly tied to each other. It is also different from the Vijayanagara amara-nayaka system.

Revenue. Land revenue was the main income of the state, usually between one-third and one-half of the produce. Akbar's finance minister Raja Todar Mal, helped by Muzaffar Khan, built the system. In 1573 a short experiment placed Karoris (collectors of one crore dams) in north India. In 1580 came the Dahsala (Ain-i-Dahsala) settlement: the average production and average prices of the previous ten years were calculated for each crop in each region, and the state's share was fixed in cash per bigha. Land was measured with an iron-jointed bamboo rod (jarib) and classified as Polaj (cultivated every year), Parauti (left fallow for a while), Chachar (fallow for 3-4 years) and Banjar (uncultivated for 5 years or more). This system is called Zabt, and it was mainly enforced in the core provinces from Lahore to Allahabad, and in Malwa, Gujarat, Bihar and Multan. Elsewhere other methods continued: Batai / Ghalla Bakhshi (crop-sharing) and Nasaq (rough estimate from past records).

Other features. The Mughal army had cavalry (the main force), infantry (matchlockmen, archers), artillery (topkhana) and war elephants; Akbar's navy was minimal. The zamindars were the hereditary local chiefs and landlords who helped collect revenue and kept a share (about 10 per cent, called nankar). The nobility was a mix of Turani (Central Asian), Irani (Persian), Afghans, Rajputs and Hindustani Muslims (the Shaikhzadas, Indian-born Muslims); its diversity kept any one group from controlling the state. Justice: Qazi in towns under Islamic law, panchayats in villages, the emperor's court as the last appeal.

The Mughals were not only conquerors; they were makers. Because the dynasty came from Persia-influenced Central Asia and ruled a land with a great Indian tradition of stone and colour, everything they made was a blend of Persian (Timurid-Safavid) and Indian (Rajput, Gujarati, Hindu) styles. This is why Mughal art looks both familiar and new. Think of a river in which the clear Persian stream meets the broad Indian one: that is Mughal architecture, painting and music.

Painting. Humayun brought two master painters, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad, from Safavid Persia. Under Akbar the royal workshop (Tasvir Khana) produced the Hamzanama (stories of Amir Hamza, begun about 1562, with over a thousand large paintings), and illustrated copies of the Razmnama, Akbarnama and Baburnama. Indian painters such as Basawan and Daswanth joined the Persian masters. Under Jahangir painting reached its peak: closer observation of nature, fine portraits, and bird and animal studies by Ustad Mansur and the court painter Abul Hasan. Jahangir himself claimed he could say who had painted any portrait, even if only the eyes or eyebrows were done. Shah Jahan preferred jewelled, formal pictures; under Aurangzeb court painting declined, and artists moved to the regional courts (this gave rise to Rajput and Pahari schools).

Music. Akbar patronised Tansen of Gwalior (a master of dhrupad, with ragas such as Miyan ki Malhar and Miyan ki Todi) and Baz Bahadur; Shah Jahan was himself a fine singer. Aurangzeb banned music at court, but more Persian books on Indian music were written in his reign than before. Literature. The Mughal court spoke and wrote in Persian, but regional languages flourished too. See the table of works below.