The founder of the Mughal dynasty disliked India at first. In his memoirs Babur, a prince from Central Asia descended from both Timur and Genghis Khan, complained that Hindustan had no good horses, no grapes or musk melons, and no cold water. He also admired its wealth and its countless craftsmen, and he stayed. His descendants built one of the richest and most populous empires of the early modern world.
Founding and interruption
Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last sultan of Delhi, at the first battle of Panipat in 1526, using field guns and matchlock muskets that Indian armies had rarely faced. He died four years later. His son Humayun lost the empire to an Afghan rival, Sher Shah Suri, and spent fifteen years in exile. Sher Shah ruled only five years, but he reorganized land revenue, improved the great trunk road across the north, and issued a silver coin called the rupiya, the ancestor of today's rupee. Humayun returned in 1555 and died the next year after falling down a staircase.
Akbar
Humayun's son Akbar came to the throne at thirteen and reigned from 1556 to 1605. He conquered most of the north and center, but his lasting achievement was a system for ruling them. Under the mansabdari system, nobles held numbered ranks that set their pay and the cavalry they had to supply, and ranks were not hereditary, which kept nobles dependent on the emperor. Akbar married Rajput princesses and gave Rajput kings high ranks, turning former enemies into pillars of the empire.
He also changed the empire's relationship with its Hindu majority. Akbar abolished the jizya, a tax on non-Muslims, in 1564, and ended a tax on Hindu pilgrims. At his new city of Fatehpur Sikri he built the Ibadat Khana, a House of Worship where Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian and Christian scholars debated before him. His court promoted a principle called sulh-i kul, "peace with all", meaning that the ruler should treat every religious community fairly. His chronicler Abul Fazl portrayed him as a philosopher king. Orthodox Muslim critics such as Abd al-Qadir Badauni accused him of abandoning Islam. Akbar's toleration was real and unusual for its time, though it served imperial aims, and his campaigns could be brutal, as the massacre after the siege of Chittor in 1568 showed.
Splendor
Akbar's son Jahangir and grandson Shah Jahan presided over a court famous for painting, poetry and architecture. Jahangir's wife Nur Jahan issued coins in her own name and was one of the most powerful women in Mughal history. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, along with the Red Fort and a new capital at Delhi. The cost was immense. Shah Jahan was deposed by his son Aurangzeb in 1658 and spent his last years confined in the fort at Agra.
The empire's wealth was real. By one widely cited estimate by the economic historian Angus Maddison, South Asia produced roughly a quarter of the world's economic output around 1700, mostly because it held a similar share of the world's people. Indian cotton cloth was sold from Japan to West Africa and Europe.
Aurangzeb and the turn
Aurangzeb ruled from 1658 to 1707. Under Aurangzeb the empire reached its greatest extent, and in 1679 he reimposed the jizya. He spent his last decades fighting in the Deccan, where the Maratha leader Shivaji, crowned king in 1674, built an independent Maratha state using fast cavalry and hill forts. In 1675 the ninth Sikh guru, Tegh Bahadur, was executed in Delhi on Aurangzeb's orders.
Aurangzeb is the most argued about Mughal. Many historians and popular writers see him as a religious bigot who destroyed temples and alienated Hindus; others, such as Audrey Truschke, argue he was a pragmatic ruler whose policies were driven mostly by politics, noting that he also protected many temples and employed more Hindu nobles than his predecessors. The evidence supports parts of both pictures. What is clear is that after his death in 1707 the empire weakened quickly. The Persian ruler Nader Shah sacked Delhi in 1739 and carried off the Peacock Throne. Real power passed to regional rulers, the Marathas, and soon to a trading company from London.
Worked example: the House of Worship
Picture a Thursday evening in the Ibadat Khana around 1578. Muslim scholars argue among themselves so fiercely that Akbar loses patience with them. Over time he invites Brahmins, Jain monks, Zoroastrian priests and Jesuits from Goa. The Jesuits hope to convert him; the others hope for favor. Akbar listens, asks questions and commits to none of them fully.
How should we read this? One reading sees an early experiment in religious dialogue and tolerance, worth admiring in an age when Europe was fighting wars of religion. Another reading notes that Akbar was also elevating himself: by standing above all traditions as judge, he made the emperor the final authority over religion. Both readings fit the evidence. Toleration was a principle and a tool of power at once, and that combination is common in history. Asking what a policy did for both the governed and the governor is a habit that works for any era.