History of the Mughal Empire

Babur’s victory over Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat in 1526 began Mughal rule in northern India, but it did not create a single state across South Asia. The dynasty descended from Timur, the Central Asian ruler, and its first emperors relied on armies, negotiated alliances and revenue from cultivated land to extend their authority. At its height, Mughal government linked distant provinces through ranked service and imperial appointments, while local rulers and revenue intermediaries retained important powers. After 1707, regional courts gained control of more of those resources even as they continued to use Mughal titles and institutions. The dynasty remained at Delhi until the uprising of 1857 and the exile of Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1858.

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Babur, Humayun and the Sur interlude

Babur ruled from Kabul before entering northern India. At Panipat, Babur arranged a defended line of about seven hundred carts lashed with rawhide ropes. Soldiers armed with matchlock guns, hand-held firearms ignited by a burning cord, fired from protective screens between the carts, while cannon supported the center. The town anchored one flank, while ditches and branches protected the other; gaps let mounted troops ride out. Babur also sent cavalry turning parties around both wings to attack Ibrahim’s rear with arrows. His account describes artillery as part of a coordinated operation involving defensive works, archers and cavalry. After defeating Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat, he moved quickly to secure the treasuries at Agra and Delhi, sending his son Humayun and trusted commanders toward the cities. The victory gave him a foothold, not settled rule: in 1527 Babur met a coalition of Rajput warrior lineages and ruling houses led by Rana Sanga at Khanwa, southwest of Agra, and had to fight to hold the northern plain. His death in 1530 left Humayun a throne still contested by Afghan warlords, regional rulers and his own brothers.

Humayun lost northern India to Sher Khan Sur, an Afghan leader who established the Sur dynasty. After defeat at Chausa in 1539, Humayun withdrew from the subcontinent in 1540. He sought support from Safavid Iran, regained Kabul and Kandahar, then returned to India and entered Delhi in 1555. The Sur interlude had interrupted Mughal rule for fifteen years. Its institutions also influenced the restored empire: Akbar’s revenue minister Todar Mal later built on Sher Shah’s work in land assessment.

Akbar’s alliances and governing system

Akbar became emperor in 1556, when his forces defeated Hemu at the second battle of Panipat. Under Akbar, campaigns brought Malwa, Gujarat and Bengal into the empire, while alliances drew some regional rulers into imperial service. In 1562 Raja Bharmal of Amber formed a marriage alliance with Akbar and entered the Mughal political order. Other Rajput rulers served at court, while Mewar resisted; Mughal sieges took Chittor in 1568 and Ranthambore in 1569. The conquest of Gujarat in 1572–73 then joined an important port and maritime province to the agricultural plains of Punjab and the Ganges basin.

Akbar made appointments and military service part of one hierarchy. A mansab was a rank assigned to a civil or military servant; it set precedence and pay and could carry a stated cavalry obligation. The emperor reviewed and transferred officers, and inspectors used horse branding to check the cavalry presented for service. Rather than pay every officer in cash, the state often assigned a jagir, the right to collect revenue from a designated area to fund an officer’s household and troops. A jagir was a revenue assignment, not unrestricted ownership of the land or its cultivators.

Land assessment connected that service structure to rural production. In 1579–80 Akbar’s administration adopted a system that used ten-year averages of planted area, crops, yields and prices to set demands; where fully applied, the expected state share was about one-third of average gross produce. The records let the court estimate income before assigning revenue to officers. Hereditary local chiefs and zamindars, landholders and revenue intermediaries with their own local influence, remained in place, and village knowledge was essential to collection.

Akbar’s court also moved between seats. His red-sandstone complex at Fatehpur Sikri served as an imperial residence chiefly from 1571 to 1585. In 1585 he moved the court to Lahore, closer to the northwestern frontier, while the empire continued to govern through provincial officers and traveling camps.

Expansion and the limits of conquest

Jahangir, emperor from 1605 to 1627, inherited the service system and a large territory. A truce ended the long Mewar campaign in 1615. Court influence was not confined to the emperor: Nur Jahan and members of her family shaped appointments and political alliances. Under Shah Jahan, ruler from 1628 to 1658, the court built a new capital, Shahjahanabad, with its Red Fort, and also continued campaigning beyond the north Indian heartland.

Succession was decided by political and military struggle rather than an automatic transfer to the eldest son. When Shah Jahan became ill in 1657, his sons raised armies and competed for control. Aurangzeb emerged victorious in 1658, confined his father at Agra and had his brother Dara Shikoh executed in 1659. The conflict showed how princes, military commanders and court factions could make the next emperor through force.

Aurangzeb’s Deccan campaigns expanded Mughal claims into south-central India. Mughal armies annexed Bijapur in 1686 and Golconda in 1687, ending two sultanates that had resisted imperial expansion. But the Marathas, a regional power based in the western Deccan, continued to fight and assert rights to collect taxes. Forts and provinces could be conquered without securing steady revenue or control of the countryside. Aurangzeb spent the later years of his reign campaigning in the south, while Maratha forces continued resisting Mughal authority.

Regional powers and the Delhi dynasty

After Aurangzeb died in 1707, central authority weakened through repeated succession struggles and challenges from provincial rulers, Sikh movements and local landholders. Many governors had begun as Mughal servants, but they built regional power by making alliances with military, commercial, scribal and landholding groups. In Awadh, Sa’adat Khan governed from 1722 to 1739 by confronting some powerful landholders and conciliating others. His successor Safdar Jang distributed revenue assignments to relatives and allies, strengthening a local ruling family while still using Mughal offices and titles. In Bengal, Alivardi Khan ruled from 1740 as a virtually autonomous governor, choosing many officials himself and sending revenue to the imperial center irregularly. In the Deccan, the Mughal viceroy Asaf Jah declared an independent Hyderabad state in 1724.

The imperial center remained vulnerable to external attack. Nader Shah of Iran pursued Afghan opponents across the Mughal frontier, then invaded India and defeated the Mughal army at Karnal in 1739. He made Emperor Muhammad Shah his vassal and allowed the plunder of Delhi after an attack on his troops. The emperor remained on the throne, but the invasion exposed how far the court’s military reach had weakened.

The English East India Company gained authority over revenue as well as trade. After its victory at Buxar in 1764, the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II granted it the diwani, the right to administer revenue, in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in 1765. Company forces took Delhi in 1803; Shah Alam remained emperor but under Company protection and constraint. In 1857, rebels invoked Bahadur Shah Zafar’s authority as they rose against Company rule. After British forces retook Delhi, the Company tried and exiled him to Rangoon in 1858. His removal ended the Mughal dynasty’s political role.