The rise and fall of the Mughal Empire - Stephanie Honchell Smith
It’s 1526 in what is now Northern India,
and Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi is
about to face off against a prince
from Central Asia,
Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur.
To quash the threat, the Sultan brings
his war elephants to battle.
But it’s said that the explosions
of Babur’s cannons and muskets
startled the elephants and they trampled
the Sultan’s own army.
Babur had long harbored ambitions
of building his own empire.
Though he was descended from some
of the world’s most successful conquerors,
he struggled to gain a foothold
among the many ambitious princes
in Central Asia.
So he turned his attention to India,
where his descendants stayed
and built the Mughal Empire,
one of the wealthiest and most powerful
states in the early modern world
and home to nearly a quarter
of the global population.
Babur died just four years
after that fateful battle,
but his own memoirs and the work
of his descendants
immortalized him in colorful fashion.
His daughter, Gulbadan, recalled
in her own memoir how Babur—
having recently given up drinking—
filled a newly-constructed pool
with lemonade rather than wine.
His grandson, Akbar, commissioned
exquisite miniature paintings
of Babur’s stories—
one depicted the empire’s
founder riding through his camp,
drunkenly slumped over his horse.
It was Akbar who consolidated
Mughal power.
He established protections for peasants—
which in turn increased their productivity
and generated more tax revenue—
and embarked on military campaigns
to expand Mughal territory.
Princes who swore allegiance to him
were rewarded,
while he made brutal examples
of those who resisted,
killing them and many of their subjects.
His conquests opened access
to port cities on the Indian Ocean,
which connected the Mughals to Arab,
Chinese, Ottoman, and European traders,
bringing in incalculable wealth,
including silver and new crops
from the Americas.
As the Muslim ruler of a diverse,
multiethnic empire,
Akbar worked to create internal cohesion
by appointing members
of the Hindu majority to high positions
in his government,
marrying a Hindu bride,
and distributing translated copies
of the “Mahabharata,”
an ancient Indian epic poem,
to his Muslim nobles.
Akbar also hosted lively religious debates
where Sunni and Shia Muslims,
Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians,
and the newly arrived
Portuguese Jesuit missionaries
defended the merits
of their respective faiths.
While most participants viewed this
as an intellectual exercise,
Portuguese missionaries were disappointed
by their failure to convert Akbar.
The Mughals built
architectural masterpieces
such as the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort,
a palace three kilometers around,
that housed 50,000 people
and contained the magnificent gold
and jewel-encrusted Peacock Throne.
Just the throne took
seven years to construct.
During its first 180 years,
the Mughals had only six rulers,
which contributed
to the empire’s stability.
When the fourth emperor, Jahangir,
struggled with alcohol
and opioid addiction,
his wife, Nur Jahan,
took the reins as co-ruler.
When a traitorous general captured
her husband in an attempted coup,
she negotiated his release and rallied
the army to stop the rebellion.
She once led a hunting party to track down
a tiger that was terrorizing a village,
leading one poet to write:
“Though Nur Jahan be in form of a woman/
In the ranks of men she’s a tiger-slayer.”
Following the death of the sixth emperor,
Aurangzeb, in 1707,
seven emperors took the throne
over the next 21 years.
These frequent transitions
of power reflected
the larger political, economic,
social, and environmental crises
that plagued the empire
throughout the 18th century.
In response to this turmoil,
regional leaders started refusing to pay
taxes and broke away from Mughal control.
The British East India Company offered
military support to these regional rulers,
which in turn increased the company's
political influence,
enabling it to eventually take
direct control of Bengal,
one of the wealthiest regions in India.
By the 19th century, the East India
Company had massive political influence
and a large standing army,
which included Indian troops.
When these troops revolted in 1857,
aiming to force out the British
and restore Mughal influence,
the British government intervened,
replacing company rule
with direct colonial rule,
deposing the last Mughal emperor
and sending him into exile.
And so, over three centuries
after its founding,
the Mughal Empire came to an end.
