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  1. Home
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  3. The Mughal Empire
  • Cited by 94
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2012
Print publication year:
1993
Online ISBN:
9780511584060
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511584060
Subjects:
Area Studies, South Asian History, Asian Studies, History, Regional History after 1500
Series:
The New Cambridge History of India
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Asian History
Information

Book description

The Mughal empire was one of the largest centralised states in pre-modern world history. It was founded in the early 1500s and by the end of the following century the Mughal emperor ruled almost the entire Indian subcontinent with a population of between 100 and 150 millions. The Mughal emperors displayed immense wealth and the ceremonies, music, poetry, and exquisitely executed paintings and objects of the imperial court created a distinctive aristocratic high culture. In this volume, Professor John Richards traces the history of this magnificent empire from its creation in 1526 to its breakup in 1720. He stresses the dynamic quality of Mughal territorial expansion, their institutional innovation in land revenue, coinage and military organisation, ideological change and the relationship between the emperors and Islam. Professor Richards also analyses institutions particular to the Mughal empire, such as the jagir system, and explores Mughal India's links with the early modern world.

Reviews

‘This excellent monograph sets for itself the goal of providing a one-volume synthesis accessible to the non-specialist, of a period in India’s past which has had an enduring impact and influence on the region’s political, economic and cultural history.’

Source: The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

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Contents

Contents
  • 1 - Conquest and stability
    pp 6-28
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses conquests of Mughal emperors namely, Babur, Humayun and Akbar. The emperor Humayun encountered massive difficulties in his efforts to retain and expand Babur's conquests in India. The source of one of his major problems was another of Babur's legacies. Akbar's changing strategic foci are reflected in the four successive sites, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Lahore, and Agra, adopted as royal capitals. Bairam Khan, a dominant member of Humayun's nobility, assumed the role of protector or regent for the young Akbar. A Mughal army under Asaf Khan, an Uzbek noble, invaded the kingdom in 1564. The Rajput queen, Rani Durgavati of the Candela lineage, died commanding her armies in a futile defense. The sieges of Chitor and Ranthambor were spectacular public events. The fall of these great forts demonstrated the reality of Mughal power for every warrior in North India. The Lahore, Agra, Allahabad, Ajmer quadri lateral formed a protective framework for Mughal imperial power.
  • 2 - The new empire
    pp 29-57
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In 1571 Akbar moved twenty-six miles from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri, a newly built city that would be his capital until 1585. During his fifteen year residence at Fatehpur Sikri Akbar directed major conquests and surmounted his most dangerous political crisis. Akbar employed the design and construction of Fatehpur Sikri to symbolize, in those early years, the regime's Islamic foundation. As Akbar's piety and reverence for the leading imperial jurists of the day declined, tension between him and the men learned in the sacred law of Islam, the ulema grew into a full-blown political conflict. Partly as a result of this struggle, Akbar formulated a new, broad-based political appeal centered on a radically new dynastic ideology. Akbar stayed on in Lahore for thirteen years in a successful effort to clamp imperial Mughal power over the entire northwest. The builder of the Mughal Empire was undoubtedly a superb military commander in a generally bellicose society.
  • 3 - Autocratic centralism
    pp 58-78
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Buoyed by conquest and plunder, Akbar and his advisers built a centralizing administration capable of steady expansion as new provinces were added to the empire. The Mughal nobility became and remained a heterogeneous body of free men who rose as their talents and the emperor's favor permitted. Each mansabdar was free to recruit men of own ethnicity and religion. Apart from kinsmen, each commander found experienced and proficient troops, whether mounted or foot, available for hire in any sizable town or city. All central troops received cash salaries direct from the treasury. Finally, the auditor general commanded a body of auditors who continually monitored and reviewed the records of fiscal transactions. In 1584 Akbar ordered a new coinage to reflect the ideological and political changes underway in his reign. Akbar, the epicenter, actively absorbed reports and issued orders on a daily basis. The Timurid Empire was both centralized and decentralized, both bureaucratic and patrimonial in its structure and operation.
  • 4 - Land revenue and rural society
    pp 79-93
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In 1580 Todar Mal began a drastic experiment designed to completely restructure the Mughal agrarian revenue system. The revenue ministry under Todar Mal established a fresh, accurate revenue assessment to be placed against each village, pargana, revenue circle, district, and province. In forcing its agrarian system upon the variegated aristocracy of the North Indian plain, the Mughals began to compress and shape a new social class. The social class found itself becoming more dependent upon the state for its prosperity and for an essential aspect of its identity. Mughal success in the countryside relied upon the services of numerous local members of a gentry class whose interests and activities were both rural and urban. Akbar's new policy forced grantees to shift their holdings to selected parganas and districts within the central provinces of North India where these tax-free land grants could be better managed and controlled. Such grants provided a living to a substantial number of Muslim and non-Muslim gentry.
  • 5 - Jahangir 1605–1627
    pp 94-118
  • View abstract

    Summary

    For Jahangir, the most irksome internal problem was that of the Rana of Mewar, head of the Sisodia clan of Rajputs at Udaipur who had successfully defied Akbar. The capitulation of the Rana of Mewar signalled that resistance to the Mughal was futile. Much of Jahangir energy was devoted to the courtly culture of the Mughals. A widely-known Muslim religious figure, Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi did not fare so well with Jahangir. His concern for Islamic revivalism and his anti-Hindu sentiments undoubtedly contributed to the sharpening division between the Islamic community and the Hindu community in the seventeenth century. As soon as Jahangir expired, the wazir Asaf Khan, who had long been a quiet partisan of Prince Khurram, acted with unexpected forcefulness and determination to forestall his sister, Nur Jahan's plans for Shahryar. He then proclaimed Khurram emperor under the title of Shah Jahan by having his name read in the Friday prayers.
  • 6 - Shah Jahan 1628–1658
    pp 119-150
  • View abstract

    Summary

    When Jahangir died Khan Jahan Lodi made the mistake of rebuffing an overture from Shah Jahan for support in the succession. His severed head went south to Shah Jahan who received his trophy in a pleasure boat on the Tapti river at Burhanpur. Shah Jahan's confident sense of Mughal grandeur found creative expression in monumental building at various scales. His first commissioned work, the Peacock Throne, set the tone for a new era of ceremonial display. The Taj Mahal was his second larger project, one which has been greatly admired as one of the triumphs of monumental building in world history. Shahjahanabad was his third project, which was a carefully designed courtly city. In 1648, Shah Jahan moved his court, army and household to the newly completed imperial capital, Shahjahanabad, at Delhi. By the end of Shah Jahan's reign, however the empire was moving towards its greatest political crisis.
  • 7 - The War of Succession
    pp 151-164
  • View abstract

    Summary

    During the last half of Shah Jahan's reign a long-standing political and intellectual conflict in the Mughal empire polarized around the two most able and forceful Mughal princes: Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb. An experienced military commander and administrator, Aurangzeb served as governor of the Mughal Deccan and Gujarat, and then as commander of Mughal armies in the invasion of Balkh and the first two sieges of Qandahar fort. Aurangzeb and Mir Jumla had for some time worked up a plan for the invasion of the kingdom as soon as the long-anticipated death of Muhammad Adil Shah occurred. When Shah Jahan fell ill, pent-up tensions between the mature Timurid princes exploded into a four-sided war of succession. On June 5, 1659, Aurangzeb sat on the throne in the Hall of Public Audience in the fortress at Shahjahanabad. It was Aurangzeb's insistence on Islamic exclusivity that shaped imperial policy over the next half century.
  • 8 - Imperial expansion under Aurangzeb 1658–1689
    pp 165-184
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Throughout the first thirty years of his reign Aurangzeb, who had added Alamgir or world-seizer to his titles, dedicated himself to fostering a more properly Islamic regime and to aggressive expansion on the empire's frontiers. Aurangzeb completed the transformation of Akbar's ideology and inclusive political culture begun by Shah Jahan. Aurangzeb's revivalism forced him to confront imperial policies toward non-Muslims. His edict of 1669 ordered that all temples recently built or repaired contrary to the Sharia be torn down. His new policies increased tensions with the still-expanding Sikh community in the Punjab plain and foothills. The most sensitive test for the new militant orthodoxy lay in the emperor's relationship with his Rajput nobles. On the surface the Rajputs had no immediate grounds for complaint. Aurangzeb's new emphasis on Islam as a major strand in the political relationship strained the Rajput-Timurid bond.
  • 9 - The economy, societal change, and international trade
    pp 185-204
  • View abstract

    Summary

    After more than a century of conquest and territorial expansion the Mughal emperor, Aurangazeb, possessed enormous resources. At the heart of Mughal finance was the revenue system which taxed agricultural production and urban trade. By the end of seventeenth century, the rural society was entered into a quickening process of change. For the century under review the rural economy of Mughal India prospered. The Mughal revenue system was biassed in favor of higher value cash crops like indigo, cotton, sugar-cane, tree-crops, or opium. Over time the stability of the Mughal agrarian system strengthened the contractual position of zamindars at all levels. During the seventeenth century economic growth in Mughal India was stimulated by the growing importance of a new, external connection: the link between Mughal India and early modern Europe. A recent analysis concludes that the Dutch trade, which primarily imported precious metals, caused a real increase in Bengal's output and income.
  • 10 - Maratha insurgency and Mughal conquest in the Deccan
    pp 205-224
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In the hilly areas of the western Deccan, around Puna, the Maratha leader Shivaji Bhonsla was carving out a self-sufficient state within the enfeebled shell of the Sultanate of Bijapur. The Bhonsla regime offered a new option for ambitious and aggressive men from both the Maratha warrior caste and literate Maratha Brahmin castes. Shivaji's successes shaped a new mode of aggressive political and military action against the Indo-Muslim powers. His insurgent state gained resources and confidence as it challenged imperial might. By the early 1660s the Maratha had adopted a new style of wide-ranging predatory raiding into Mughal and Bijapur lands. With the fall of the two Deccan Sultanates, Aurangzeb then turned his attention to the Marathas. Aurangzeb sent Muqarrab Khan immediately to capture both Shambhaji and his Brahmin chief minister who were hacked to death. Four new provinces were added to Mughal empire: Bijapur and the Bijapur Karnatak, and Hyderabad and the Hyderabad Karnatak.
  • 11 - The Deccan Wars
    pp 225-252
  • View abstract

    Summary

    With the exception of the Tamil regions of the Golconda and Bijapur Karnatak, but recently conquered in the 1640s, the western Deccan of the Marathas and the eastern Deccan of the Telugus had long been accustomed to Indo-Muslim rule. Mughal annexation and administration of Golconda proceeded smoothly in the years immediately after the conquest. Before conquest the ongoing alliance between the Bhonsla rulers and Golconda had ensured that the eastern Deccan was free from Maratha raids. Throughout the Jinji siege, Maratha commanders alternated between expeditions to the south to assist Rajaram and spells of campaigning in the western Deccan. Rajaram's Jats outmaneuvered the local imperial forces and occupied Sikandra where they succeeded in looting Akbar's tomb. Aurangzeb's long absence from the North Indian heartland of the empire and his obsession with the endless Deccan war strained imperial institutions.
  • 12 - Imperial decline and collapse, 1707–1720
    pp 253-281
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Failure to assign fully productive jagirs strained the loyalties and reduced the effectiveness of members of the nobility and the corps of mansabda. These strains in the imperial fabric found expression in the most important political crises to occupy Bahadur Shah: disaffection of the Rajputs, growing militancy among the Sikhs and Jats in the north, and continuing Maratha insurgency in the south. The tenth Sikh Guru, Govind Singh, who had supported Bahadur Shah in the war of succession, joined the royal entourage as the emperor marched to confront Kam Bakhsh in the Deccan. By mid-1718 the enmity between emperor and minister, barely concealed beneath rigid Mughal norms of court civility and decorum, erupted as the balance of power began tilting toward the Sayyids. For over a decade, instability and weakness caused by the bitter conflicts over the throne wrenched at imperial authority and efficiency.

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