Introduction

By the first decade of the sixteenth century, the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526), the dominant power in north India, was breaking up. Several autonomous states emerged to challenge the political supremacy of the Delhi Sultanate in the Ganga-Jamuna doab (the fertile tract of land between the rivers Ganga and Jamuna in north India). Deccan (the region between the rivers Godavari and Krishna) and south India had become independent of the Delhi Sultanate's control earlier during the mid-fourteenth century. The invasion of India by the Turkish warlord Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur in 1526 resulted in the replacement of the Lodi dynasty ruling the Delhi Sultanate with the Mogul Empire. The Moguls (Mughals; the nineteenth-century British officials and historians called them Moghuls) referred to themselves as Chagatai Turks or Timurids even though their family links with the Chagatai branch of the Chingizids were weak. The Moguls claimed that from their father's side they descended from Amir Timur and from their mother's side from the Chagatai Mongol branch. The newly born Mogul Empire was overthrown in 1540 by the Afghan warlord from east India named Sher Shah Suri. Babur's son Humayun staged a comeback in 1555.

The “real” founder of the Mogul Empire was indeed Akbar (Padshah, i.e. emperor, from 1556 to 1605). Akbar put an end to the political chaos in north India by subduing the Afghans and the Rajputs. Further, he reorganized the administration. By the time of Akbar's death in 1605, the Mogul Empire had established a stable administrative machinery in north and central India and was in the process of moving slowly into Deccan. Until the fourteenth century, the dominant mode of military recruitment in India was the mamluk system. The mamluks were slave soldiers of the Muslim world. However, by the end of the sixteenth century, due to Akbari reorganization, a sort of quasi-mercenary-cum-quasi-professional military employment known as the mansabdari system became dominant. The beginning of the seventeenth century witnessed the gradual expansion of Mogul power into Deccan under Akbar's son and grandson, named Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) and Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658) respectively. They continued to operate within the administrative fabric established by their illustrious predecessor.