Mughal Empire

The Mughal Empire was the dominant power of the Indian subcontinent for over two centuries and one of the wealthiest and most culturally productive empires of the early modern world.

It was founded in 1526 when Babur, a Timurid prince descended from both Timur and Genghis Khan, used field artillery and cavalry tactics to defeat the much larger army of the Delhi Sultanate at the First Battle of Panipat. After an early interruption when Babur's son Humayun was driven into exile, the empire was firmly established by Humayun's son Akbar the Great, whose long reign created the institutions that defined Mughal rule. Akbar built a centralised administration with a ranked imperial service (the mansabdari system), reformed taxation, and pursued a policy of religious tolerance and integration that won the loyalty of Hindu Rajput elites and helped bind a vast and diverse population. The empire reached its cultural apex under Shah Jahan, whose reign produced the Taj Mahal and a golden age of Indo-Islamic architecture, painting, and courtly splendour. Under Aurangzeb in the late seventeenth century the empire reached its greatest territorial extent, controlling almost the entire subcontinent, but his long and costly wars in the Deccan, religious policies, and administrative overstretch strained its foundations. After Aurangzeb's death in 1707 the empire fragmented rapidly as provincial governors, the Marathas, and other powers asserted independence, and a devastating invasion by Nader Shah sacked Delhi in 1739. Reduced to a shadow confined largely to the area around Delhi and increasingly dependent on the British East India Company, the empire endured nominally until 1857, when the failed Indian Rebellion led the British to depose and exile the last emperor, Bahadur Shah II, formally ending Mughal rule.

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