The
Mughal (or
Mogul) Empire was founded by
Babur in 1526, when he defeated
Ibrahim Lodi[?], the last of the
Delhi Sultans[?] at the
Battle of Panipat. It was largely conquered by
Sher Shah during the time of
Humayun, but under
Akbar, it grew considerably, and continued to grow until the end of
Aurangzeb's rule. After
Aurangzeb died in
1707, the empire started a slow and steady decline in actual power, although it maintained all the trappings of power for another 150 years. In
1739 it was defeated by an army from
Persia led by
Nadir Shah. In
1756 an army of
Ahmad Shah looted Delhi again. The final defeat was by the
British Empire in
1857.
The Mughal Empire was Islamic, although many of the subjects of the Empire, up to and including very high-ranking members of the court, were Hindu. When Babur first founded the Empire, he did not emphasize his religion, but rather his Turkic heritage. (The name Mughal, seems to have been attached somewhere in the 19th Century. It is derived from Mongol, another piece of Babur's ancestry.) Under Akbar, the court dropped use of the jizya[?], the tax on non-Muslims, and dropped use of the lunar Muslim calendar in favor of a solar calendar, more useful for agriculture. These actions were later retracted by Aurangzeb, known for his religiosity, but even under Aurangzeb, one quarter of his court princes were Rajput[?] hindus.
The Mughals used the mansabdar[?] system to generate land revenue. The emperor would grant revenue rights to a mansabdar in exchange for promises of soldiers in war-time. The greater the size of the land the emperor granted, the greater the number of soldiers the mansabdar had to promise. The mansab was both revocable and non-hereditary; this gave the center a fairly large degree of control over the mansabdars.
Greater Mughal Emperors:
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