CHAPTER X: THE MUGHAL DYNASTY, 1526-1761

Babar, 1482-1530

When, therefore, Babar the Mughal invaded India in 1526, he found it divided among a number of local Muhammadan kings and Hindu princes. An Afghan Sultan of the house of Lodi, with his capital at Agra, ruled over what little was left of the historical kingdom of Delhi. Babar, literally ’the Lion,’ born in 1482, was the sixth in descent from Timúr the Tartar. At the early age of twelve, he succeeded his father in the petty kingdom of Ferghana on the Jaxartes (1494); and, after romantic adventures, conquered Samarkand, the capital of Tamerlane’s line, in 1497. Overpowered by a rebellion, and driven out of the valley of the Oxus, Babar seized the kingdom of Kabul in 1504. During twenty-two years he grew in strength on the Afghan side of the Indian passes, till in 1526 he burst through them into the Punjab, and defeated the Delhi sovereign, Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat. This was the first of three great battles which, within modern times, have decided the fate of India on that same plain of Panipat, viz. in 1526, 1556, and 1761. Having entered Delhi, Babar received the allegiance of the Muhammadans, but was speedily attacked by the Rajputs of Chitor. Those clans had brought all Ajmere, Mewar, and Malwa under their rule, and now threatened to found a Hindu empire. In 1527, Babar defeated them at Fatehpur Sikri, near Agra, after a battle memorable for its perils, and for Babar’s vow in his extremity never again to touch wine. He rapidly extended his power as far as Multan in the Southern Punjab, and Behar in the eastern valley of the Ganges. Babar died at Agra in 1530, leaving an empire which stretched from the river Amu in Central Asia to the borders of the Gangetic delta in Lower Bengal.

Humayun, Emperor, 1530-1556

His son, Humayun, succeeded him in India, but had to make over Kabul and the Western Punjab to his brother and rival, Kamran. Humayun was thus left to govern the new conquest of India, and at the same time was deprived of Afghanistan and the Punjab frontier from which his father had drawn his armies. The descendants of the early Afghan invaders, long settled in India, hated the new Muhammadan or Mughal hordes of Babar even more than they hated the Hindus. After ten years of fighting, Humayun was driven out of India by these Afghans under Sher Shah, the Governor of Bengal. While Humayun was flying through the desert of Sind to Persia, his son Akbar was born in the petty fort of Umarkot (1542). Sher Shah, the Afghan governor of Bengal, set up as emperor of Delhi, but was killed while storming the fortress of Kalinjar (1545). His son succeeded. But, under Sher Shah’s grandson, the Indian Provinces (including Malwa, the Punjab, and Bengal) revolted against the Afghan dynasty from Bengal. Humayun returned to India, and Akbar, then only in his fourteenth year, defeated the Afghan army of Sher Shah’s dynasty after a desperate battle at Panipat (1556). India now passed finally from the Afghans to the Mughals. Sher Shah’s line disappears from Northern India and the Delhi throne, although it lingered on for a time in Lower Bengal. Humayun, having recovered his Kabul dominions, reigned again for a few months at Delhi, but died in 1556.

The Reign of Akbar, 1556-1605

Chronological Summary

1542. Born at Umarkot in Sind.

1543. Regains the Delhi throne for his father, Humayun, by the victory over the Afghans at Panipat (Bairam Khan in actual command). Succeeds his father a few months after, under the regency of Bairam Khan.

1544. Assumes the direct management of the kingdom. Revolt of Bairam Khan, who is defeated and pardoned.

1545. Invasion of the Punjab by Akbar’s rival brother, Hakim, who is defeated.

1561-1568. Akbar subjugates the Rajput kingdoms to the Mughal Empire.

1572-1573. Campaign in Gujarát, and its re-annexation to the Delhi Empire.

1576. Akbar’s conquest of Bengal; its final annexation to the Mughal Empire.

1581-1593. Insurrection in Gujarát. The Province finally subjugated in 1593 to the Mughal Empire.

1586. Conquest of Kashmir; its final revolt quelled in 1592.

1587. Conquest and annexation of Sind to the Mughal Empire.

1588. Subjugation of Kandahar, and consolidation of the Mughal Empire over all India north of the Vindhyas as far as Kabul and Kandahar.

1589. Unsuccessful expedition of Akbar’s army into the Deccan against Ahmadnagar under his son, Prince Murad.

1590. Second expedition against Ahmadnagar by Akbar in person, who captures the town, but fails to establish Mughal rule.

1591. Annexation of Khandesh, and return of Akbar to Northern India.

1592. Akbar’s death at Agra.

Akbar the Great, 1556-1605

Akbar the Great, the real founder of the Mughal Empire as it existed for one and a half centuries, succeeded his father at the age of fourteen. Born in 1542, his reign lasted for almost fifty years, from 1556 to 1605, and was therefore contemporary with that of our own Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603). His father, Humayun, left but a small kingdom in India, not so large as the present British Province of the Punjab: Akbar expanded that small kingdom into an Indian Empire. At the time of Humayun’s death, Akbar (a mere boy) was absent in the Punjab, under the guardianship of Bairam Khan, fighting the revolted Afghans. Bairam, a Turkoman by birth, had been the support of the exiled Humayun, and held the real command of the army which restored him to his throne at Panipat. He now became the regent for the youthful Akbar, under the honoured title of Khan Baba, equivalent to ’the King’s Father.’ Brave and skilful as a general, but harsh and overbearing, he raised many enemies; and Akbar, having endured four years of thraldom, took advantage of a hunting party to throw off his minister’s yoke (1560). The fallen regent, after a struggle between his loyalty and his resentment, revolted, was defeated, and pardoned. Akbar granted him a liberal pension; and Bairam was in the act of starting on a pilgrimage to Mecca, when he fell beneath the knife of an Afghan assassin, whose father he had slain in battle.

Akbar’s Work in India

The reign of Akbar was a reign of pacification. On his accession in 1556 he found India split up into petty Hindu and Muhammadan kingdoms, and seething with discordant elements; on his death in 1605, he bequeathed it an almost united empire. The earlier invasions by Turks, Afghans, and Mughals had left a powerful Muhammadan population in India under their own Kings. Akbar reduced these Musalman States to Provinces of the Delhi Empire. Many of the Hindu kings and Rajput nations had also regained their independence: Akbar brought them into political dependence upon his authority. This double task he effected partly by force of arms, but in part also by alliances. He enlisted the Rajput princes by marriage and by a sympathetic policy in the support of his throne. He then employed them in high posts, and played off his Hindu generals and Hindu ministers alike against the Mughal party in Upper India, and against the Afghan faction in Lower Bengal.

Reduction of the Rajputs, 1561-1568

Humayun, as we have seen, left but a small kingdom, confined to the Punjab, with the Districts round Delhi and Agra. Akbar quickly extended it, at the expense of his nearest neighbours, namely, the Rajputs. Jaipur was reduced to a fief of the empire; and Akbar cemented his conquest by marrying the daughter of its Hindu prince. Jodhpur was in like manner overcome; and Akbar married his son, Salim, who afterwards reigned under the title of Jahangir, to the grand-daughter of the Raja. The Rajputs of Chitor were overpowered after a long struggle, but would not mingle their high-caste Hindu blood even with that of a Muhammadan emperor. They found shelter among the mountains and deserts of the Indus, whence they afterwards emerged to recover most of their old dominions, and to found their capital of Udaipur, which they retain to this day. They still boast that alone, among the great Rajput clans, they never gave a daughter in marriage to a Mughal emperor.

Conciliation of the Hindus

Akbar pursued his policy of conciliation towards all the Hindu States. He also took care to provide a career for the lesser Hindu nobility. He appointed his brother-in-law, the son of the Jaipur Raja, Governor of the Punjab. Raja Man Singh, also a Hindu relative of the Emperor’s family, did good war service for Akbar from Kabul to Orissa, and ruled as his Governor of Bengal from 1589 to 1604. Akbar’s great finance minister, Raja Todar Mall, was likewise a Hindu, and carried out the first regular land-settlement and survey of India. Out of 415 mansabdars, or commanders of horse, 51 were Hindus. Akbar abolished the jaziah, the hated tax on non-Musalmans, and placed all his subjects upon a political equality. He had the Sanskrit sacred books and epic poems translated into Persian, and showed a keen interest in the religion of his Hindu subjects. He respected their laws, but he put down their inhumane rites. He forbade trial by ordeal, animal sacrifices, and child marriages before the age of puberty. He legalized the re-marriage of Hindu widows; but he failed to abolish widow-burning on the husband’s funeral pile, although he took steps to ensure that the act should be voluntary.

Muhammadan States reduced

Akbar thus incorporated his Hindu subjects into the effective force, both civil and military, of his empire. With their aid he reduced the independent Muhammadan kings of Northern India. He subjugated the petty Hindu potentates from the Punjab to Behar. After a struggle, he wrested Lower Bengal in 1576 from its Afghan princes of the house of Sher Shah (see page 133). From the time of Akbar’s conquest of Lower Bengal, it remained for nearly two centuries a province of the Mughal Empire, under governors from Delhi (1576-1765). In 1765, it passed by an imperial grant to the British. Orissa, on the Bay of Bengal, submitted to Akbar’s armies, under his Hindu general, Todar Mall, in 1574. On the opposite coast of India, Gujarát was reconquered from its independent Muhammadan king (1572-73), although not finally subjugated until 1593. Málwá had been reduced in 1572. Kashmir was conquered in 1586, and its last revolt quelled in 1592. Sind was also annexed in 1592; and by the recovery of Kandahar in 1594, Akbar extended the Mughal Empire from the heart of Afghanistan across all India north of the Vindhyas, eastward to Orissa, and westward to Sind. He removed the seat of government from Delhi to Agra, and founded Fatehpur Sikri as the future capital of the empire. From this project he was afterwards dissuaded, by the superior position of Agra on the great waterway of the Jumna. In 1566, he built the Agra fort, whose red sandstone battlements majestically overhang the river to this day.

Akbar’s Wars in Southern India

Akbar’s efforts to establish the Mughal Empire in Southern India were less successful. Those efforts began in 1586, but during the first twelve years they were frustrated by the valour and statesmanship of Chand Bibi, the Musalman queen of Ahmadnagar. This celebrated lady skilfully united the usually hostile Abyssinian and Persian settlers in Southern India, together with their armies, and strengthened herself by an alliance with Bijapur and other Muhammadan States of the south. In 1599, Akbar led his armies in person against the princess; but notwithstanding her assassination by her mutinous troops, Ahmadnagar was not reduced till the reign of Akbar’s grandson, Shah Jahan, in 1636. Akbar subjugated Khandesh, and with this somewhat precarious annexation his conquests in Southern India ceased. He returned to Northern India, perhaps feeling that the conquest of the south was beyond the strength of his young empire.

Akbar’s Death

His last years were embittered by the intrigues of his family, and by the misconduct of his beloved son, Prince Salim, afterwards the Emperor Jahangir. In 1605, he died, and was buried in the noble mausoleum at Sikandra, whose mingled architecture of Buddhist design and Saracenic tracery bears witness to the composite faith of the founder of the Mughal Empire. In 1873, British Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, presented a cloth of honour to cover the plain marble slab beneath which Akbar lies.

Akbar’s New Faith

Akbar’s conciliation of the Hindus, and his interest in their literature and religion, made him many enemies among the pious Musalmans. His favourite wife was a Rajput princess; another of his wives is said to have been a Christian. On Fridays (the Sabbath of Islam), he loved to collect professors of many religions around him. He listened impartially to the arguments of the Brahman and the Musalman, the Zoroastrian, the Jew, the Jesuit, and the sceptic philosopher. The history of his life, the Akbar-namah, records such a conference, in which the Christian priest Rediff disputed with a body of Muhammadan mullas before an assembly of the doctors of all religions, and is allowed to have had the best of the argument. Starting from the broad ground of general toleration, Akbar was gradually led on by free discussion to question the truth of his inherited Muhammadan creed. The counsels of his friend Abul Fazl, coinciding with that sense of superhuman omnipotence which is bred of despotic imperial power, led Akbar at last to promulgate a new State religion, called ‘The Divine Faith,’ based upon natural theology, and comprising the best practices of all known forms of belief. Of this made-up creed Akbar himself was the prophet, or rather the head of the Church. Every morning he worshipped in public the sun, as the representative of the divine soul which animates the universe, while he was himself worshipped by the ignorant multitude. It is doubtful how far he encouraged this popular adoration of his person, but he certainly allowed his disciples to prostrate themselves before him in private. The stricter Muhammadans accused him, therefore, of accepting a homage permitted only to God.

Akbar’s Organization of the Empire

Akbar not only subdued all India to the north of the Vindhya mountains, he also organized it into an empire. He partitioned it into Provinces, over each of which he placed a governor, or viceroy, with full civil and military control. This control was divided into three departments—the military, the judicial, including the police, and the revenue. With a view to preventing mutinies of the troops, or assertions of independence by their leaders, he re-organized the army on a new basis. He substituted, as far as possible, money payments to the soldiers for the old system of grants of land (jagirs) to the generals. Where this change could not be carried out, he brought the holders of the old military fiefs under the control of the central authority at Delhi. He further checked the independence of his provincial generals, by a sort of feudal organization, in which the Hindu tributary princes took their place side by side with the Mughal nobles. The judicial administration was presided over by a lord justice (mir-i-adl) at the capital, aided by kadis or law-officers in the principal towns. The police in the cities were under a superintendent or kotwál, who was also a magistrate. In country districts, where police existed at all, they were left to the management of the landholders or revenue officers. But throughout rural India no regular police force can be said to exist.

Footnotes

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INDIAN PEOPLES

THE MUGHAL DYNASTY

India. Out of 415 mansahdars, or commanders of horse, 51 were Hindus. Akbar abolished the jaziah, the hated tax on non-Musalmans, and placed all his subjects upon a political equality. He had the Sanskrit sacred books and epic poems translated into Persian, and showed a keen interest in the religion of his Hindu subjects. He respected their laws, but he put down their inhumane rites. He forbade trial by ordeal, animal sacrifices, and child marriages before the age of puberty. He legalized the re-marriage of Hindu widows; but he failed to abolish widow-burning on the husband’s funeral pile, although he took steps to ensure that the act should be voluntary.

Muhammadan States reduced.

Akbar thus incorporated his Hindu subjects into the effective force, both civil and military, of his empire. With their aid he reduced the independent Muhammadan kings of Northern India. He subjugated the petty Hindu potentates from the Punjab to Behar. After a struggle, he wrested Lower Bengal in 1576 from its Afghan princes of the house of Sher Shah. From the time of Akbar’s conquest of Lower Bengal, it remained for nearly two centuries a province of the Mughal Empire, under governors from Delhi (1576-1765). In 1765, it passed by an imperial grant to the British. Orissa, on the Bay of Bengal, submitted to Akbar’s armies, under his Hindu general, Todar Mall, in 1574. On the opposite coast of India, Gujarát was reconquered from its independent Muhammadan king (1572-73), although not finally subjugated until 1593. Málwa had been reduced in 1572. Kashmir was conquered in 1586, and its last revolt quelled in 1592. Sind was also annexed in 1592; and by the recovery of Kandahar in 1594, Akbar extended the Mughal Empire from the heart of Afghanistan across all India north of the Vindhyas, eastward to Orissa, and westward to Sind. He removed the seat of government from Delhi to Agra, and founded Fatehpur Síkri as the future capital of the empire. From this project he was afterwards dissuaded, by the superior position of Agra on the great waterway of the Jumna. In 1566, he built the Agra fort, whose red sandstone battlements majestically overhang the river to this day.

Akbar’s Wars in Southern India.

Akbar’s efforts to establish the Mughal Empire in Southern India were less successful. Those efforts began in 1586, but during the first twelve years they were frustrated by the valour and statesmanship of Chand Bíbí, the Musalman queen of Ahmadnagar. This celebrated lady skilfully united the usually hostile Abyssinian and Persian settlers in Southern India, together with their armies, and strengthened herself by an alliance with Bijapur and other Muhammadan States of the south. In 1599, Akbar led his armies in person against the princess; but notwithstanding her assassination by her mutinous troops, Ahmadnagar was not reduced till the reign of Akbar’s grandson, Shah Jahán, in 1636. Akbar subjugated Khándesh, and with this somewhat precarious annexation his conquests in Southern India ceased. He returned to Northern India, perhaps feeling that the conquest of the south was beyond the strength of his young empire.

Akbar’s Death.

His last years were embittered by the intrigues of his family, and by the misconduct of his beloved son, Prince Salím, afterwards the Emperor Jahángír. In 1605, he died, and was buried in the noble mausoleum at Sikandra, whose mingled architecture of Buddhist design and Saracenic tracery bears witness to the composite faith of the founder of the Mughal Empire. In 1873, British Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, presented a cloth of honour to cover the plain marble slab beneath which Akbar lies.

Akbar’s New Faith.

Akbar’s conciliation of the Hindus, and his interest in their literature and religion, made him many enemies among the pious Musalmans. His favourite wife was a Rajput princess; another of his wives is said to have been a Christian. On Fridays (the Sabbath of Islam), he loved to collect professors of many religions around him. He listened impartially to the arguments of the Brahman and the Musalman, the Zoroastrian, the Jew, the Jesuit, and the sceptic philosopher. The history of his life, the Akbar-námah, records such a conference, in which the Christian priest Redíf disputed with a body of Muhammadan mullás before an assembly of the doctors of all religions, and is allowed to have had the best of the argument. Starting from the broad ground of general toleration, Akbar was gradually led on by free discussion to question the truth of his inherited Muhammadan creed. The counsels of his friend Abul Fazl, coinciding with that sense of superhuman omnipotence which is bred of despotic imperial power, led Akbar at last to promulgate a new State religion, called ‘The Divine Faith,’ based upon natural theology, and comprising the best practices of all known forms of belief. Of this made-up creed Akbar himself was the prophet, or rather the head of the Church. Every morning he worshipped in public the sun, as the representative of the divine soul which animates the universe, while he was himself worshipped by the ignorant multitude. It is doubtful how far he encouraged this popular adoration of his person, but he certainly allowed his disciples to prostrate themselves before him in private. The stricter Muhammadans accused him, therefore, of accepting a homage permitted only to God.

Akbar’s Organization of the Empire.

Akbar not only subdued all India to the north of the Vindhya mountains, he also organized it into an empire. He partitioned it into Provinces, over each of which he placed a governor, or viceroy, with full civil and military control. This control was divided into three departments—the military, the judicial, including the police, and the revenue. With a view to preventing mutinies of the troops, or assertions of independence by their leaders, he re-organized the army on a new basis. He substituted, as far as possible, money payments to the soldiers for the old system of grants of land (jágirs) to the generals. Where this change could not be carried out, he brought the holders of the old military fiefs under the control of the central authority at Delhi. He further checked the independence of his provincial generals, by a sort of feudal organization, in which the Hindu tributary princes took their place side by side with the Mughal nobles. The judicial administration was presided over by a lord justice (mir-i-adl) at the capital, aided by kázis or law-officers in the principal towns. The police in the cities were under a superintendent or kotwál, who was also a magistrate. In country districts, where police existed at all, they were left to the management of the landholders or revenue officers. But throughout rural India no regular police force can be said to have existed for the protection of person and property until after the establishment of British rule. The Hindu village-system had its hereditary watchman for each hamlet. These village watchmen were in many parts of the country taken from the predatory castes, and were as often leagued with the robbers as opposed to them. The landholders and revenue officers had each their own set of personal police, who plundered the peasantry in their names.

Akbar’s Revenue System.

Akbar’s revenue system was based on the ancient Hindu customs, and survives to this day. He first executed a survey or actual measurement of the fields. His officers then found out the produce of each acre of land, and settled the Government share, amounting to one-third of the gross produce. Finally, they fixed the rates at which this share of the crop might be commuted into a money payment. These processes, known as the land settlement, were at first repeated every year. But, to save the peasant from the extortions and vexations incident to an annual inquiry, Akbar’s land settlement was afterwards made for ten years. His officers strictly enforced the payment of a third of the whole produce and Akbar’s land revenue from Northern India exceeded what the British levy at the present day. From his fifteen Provinces, including Kábul beyond the Afghan frontier, and Khándesh in Southern India, he demanded 14 millions sterling per annum; or, excluding Kabul, Khandesh, and Sind, 12½ millions. The British land tax from a much larger area of Northern India was only 12 millions in 1883. Allowing for the difference in area and in purchasing power of silver, Akbar’s tax was about three times the amount which the British take. Two later returns show the land revenue of Akbar at 16½ and 17½ millions sterling. The Provinces had also to support a local militia (bímí), in contradistinction to the regular royal army, at a cost of at least 10 millions sterling. Excluding both Kabul and Khándesh, Akbar’s demand from the soil of Northern India exceeded 22 millions sterling per annum, under the two items of land revenue and militia cess. There were also a number of miscellaneous taxes. Akbar’s total revenue is estimated at 42 millions sterling.

Akbar’s Ministers.

Akbar’s Hindu minister, Rájá Todar Mall, conducted the revenue settlement, and his name is still a household word among the husbandmen of Bengal. Abul Fazl, the man of letters, and finance minister of Akbar, compiled a statistical survey of the empire, together with many vivid pictures of his master’s court and daily life, in the Ain-i-Akbari, which may be read with interest at the present day. Abul Fazl was killed in 1603, at the instigation of Prince Salím, the heir to the throne. The fate of Abul Fazl was the disgrace of Akbar’s old age.

Jahangir, Emperor, 1605-1627.

Salím, the favourite son of Akbar, succeeded his father in 1605, and ruled until 1627, under the title of Jahángír, or Conqueror of the World. His reign of twenty-two years was spent in reducing the rebellions of his sons, in exalting the influence of his wife, and in festive self-indulgence. He carried on long wars in Southern India or the Deccan, but he added little to his father’s territories. India south of the Vindhyas still continued apart from the northern Empire of Delhi. Málik Ambar, the Abyssinian minister of Ahmadnagar, maintained, in spite of reverses, the independence of that kingdom. At the end of Jahángír’s reign, his own son, Prince Shah Jahán, was a rebel and a refugee in the Deccan, in alliance with Malik Ambar against the imperial troops. The Rajputs also began to reassert their independence. In 1614, Prince Shah Jahán, on behalf of his father the emperor, defeated the Udaipur Raja. But the conquest was only partial and for a time. Meanwhile the Rajputs formed an important contingent of the imperial armies, and 5000 of their cavalry aided Sháh Jahán to put down a revolt in Kábul. The Afghán Province of Kandahár was wrested from Jahángír by the Persians in 1621. The land tax of the Mughal Empire remained at 17½ millions under Jahángír, but his total revenues are estimated at 50 millions sterling.

The Empress Núr Jahán.

The principal figure in Jahángír’s reign is his empress, Núr Jahán, the ‘Light of the World,’ otherwise known as Núr Mahál, the ‘Light of the Palace.’ Born in great poverty, but of a noble Persian family, her beauty won the love of Jahángír while they were both in their first youth, during the reign of Akbar. The old emperor tried to put her out of his son’s way, by marrying her to a brave soldier, who obtained high employment in Lower Bengal. Jahángír, on his accession to the throne, commanded her divorce. The husband refused, and was killed. The wife, being brought into the imperial palace, lived for some time in chaste seclusion as a widow, but in the end emerged as the Empress Núr Jahán, the Light of the World. She surrounded herself with her relatives, and at first influenced the self-indulgent emperor Jahángír for his good. But the jealousy of the imperial princes and of the Mughal generals against her party led to intrigue and rebellion. In 1626, her successful general, Mahábat Khán, found himself compelled, in self-defence, to turn against her. He seized the emperor, whom he kept, together with Núr Jahán, in captivity for six months. Jahángír died in the following year, 1627, in the midst of a rebellion against him by his son, Sháh Jahán, and his greatest general, Mahábat Khán.

Jahangir’s Personal Character.

Jahángír’s personal character is vividly portrayed by Sir Thomas Roe, the first British ambassador to India (1615). Agra continued to be the central seat of the government, but the imperial army on the march formed in itself a splendid capital. Jahángír thought that Akbar had too openly severed himself from the Muhammadan faith. The new emperor conformed more strictly to the outward observances of Islam, but lacked the inward religious feeling of his father. While he forbade the use of wine to his subjects, he spent his own nights in drunken revelry. He talked religion over his cups until he reached a certain stage of intoxication, when he ‘fell to weeping, and to various passions, which kept them to midnight.’ In public he maintained a strict appearance of virtue, and never allowed any person whose breath smelt of wine to enter his presence. On one occasion, a courtier who had shared his midnight revel, indiscreetly alluded to it next morning. The Sultán gravely examined him as to who could possibly have been the companions of such a debauch, and bastinadoed them so severely that one of them died. When sober, Jahángír tried to work wisely for his empire. A chain hung down from the citadel to the ground, and communicated with a cluster of golden bells in his own chamber, so that every suitor might apprise the emperor of his demand for justice, without the intervention of the courtiers. Many European adventurers repaired to his court, and Jahángír patronized alike their arts and their religion. In his earlier years he had accepted the new religion, or ‘Divine Faith’ of his father Akbar. It is said that on his accession he had even permitted the divine honours paid to Akbar to be continued to himself. Jahángír’s first wife was a Hindu princess. Figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary adorned his rosary; and two of his nephews embraced Christianity with his approval.

Shah Jahan, Emperor, 1628-1658.

On the news of his father’s death, Shah Jahán hurried north from the Deccan, and proclaimed himself emperor at Agra in January 1628. He put down for ever the court faction of the Empress Núr Jahán, by confining her to private life upon a liberal allowance; and by murdering his brother Shahriyár, with all the other members of the house of Akbar who might become rivals to the throne. But he was just to his people, blameless in his habits, a good financier, and as economical as a magnificent court, splendid public works, and distant military expeditions could permit. Under Sháh Jahán the Mughal Empire was finally shorn of its Afghán Province of Kandahar; but it extended its conquests in Southern India or the Deccan, and raised the magnificent buildings in Northern India which now form the most splendid memorials of the Mughal dynasty. After a temporary occupation of Balkh, and the actual reconquest of Kandahar by the Delhi troops in 1637, Shah Jahan lost much of his Afghan territories, and the Province of Kandahar was severed from the Mughal Empire by the Persians in 1653. On the other hand, in the Deccan, the kingdom of Ahmadnagar (to which Ellichpur had been united in 1572) was at last annexed to the Mughal Empire in 1636; Bídar fort was taken in 1657; while the two other of the five kingdoms, namely Bijápur and Golconda, were forced to pay tribute, although not finally reduced until the succeeding reign of Aurangzeb. But the Maráthas now appear on the scene, and commenced, unsuccessfully at Ahmadnagar in 1637, that series of persistent Hindu attacks which were destined in the next century to break down the Mughal Empire. The imperial princes, Aurangzeb and his brothers, carried on the wars in Southern India and in Afghanistan for their father Shah Jahán.

Shah Jahan’s Buildings.

Except during one or two military expeditions, Sháh Jahán lived a magnificent life in the north of India. At Agra he raised the exquisite mausoleum of the Taj Mahál, a dream in marble, ‘designed by Titans and finished by jewellers.’ His Pearl Mosque, the marble Mott Masjid, within the Agra fort, is perhaps the purest and loveliest house of prayer in the world. Not content with enriching his grandfather Akbar’s capital with these and other architectural glories, Shah Jahan planned the re-transfer of the seat of government to Delhi, and adorned that city with buildings of unrivalled magnificence. Its Great Mosque, or Jamá Masjid, was commenced in the fourth year of his reign, and completed in the tenth. The palace at Delhi, now the fort, covered a vast parallelogram, 1600 feet by 3200, with exquisite and sumptuous buildings in marble and fine stone. The entrance consists of a deeply recessed gateway leading into a vaulted hall, which springs up two storeys high, like the nave of a gigantic Gothic cathedral, 375 feet in length;—’the noblest entrance,’ says Fergusson, the historian of architecture, ’to any existing palace.’ The Diwán-i-Khás, or Court of Private Audience, overlooks the river,—a masterpiece of delicate inlaid work and poetic design. Sháh Jahán spent many years of his reign at Delhi, and prepared the city for its destiny as the most magnificent capital in the world under his successor Aurangzeb. But exquisite as are its public buildings, the manly vigour of Akbar’s red-stone fort at Agra, with its bold sculptures and square Hindu construction, has given place to a certain effeminate beauty in the marble structures of Sháh Jahán.

Shah Jahan’s Revenues.

Under Sháh Jahán, the Mughal Empire attained its highest union of strength with magnificence. His son and successor, Aurangzeb, added to its extent, but at the same time sowed the seeds of its decay. Akbar’s land revenue of 17½ millions had been raised, chiefly by new conquests, to 22 millions sterling under Shah Jahán. But this sum included Kashmir, and five Provinces in Afghanistan, some of which were lost during his reign. The land revenue of the Mughal Empire within India was 20½ millions. The magnificence of Shah Jahán’s court was the wonder of European travellers. His Peacock Throne, with its tail blazing in the shifting natural colours of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, was valued by the jeweller Tavernier at 6½ millions sterling.

Rebellion of Prince Aurangzeb, 1657.

Akbar’s dynasty lay under the curse of rebellious sons. As Jahangir had risen against his most loving father, Akbar, and as Shah Jahan had mutinied against Jahangir; so Shah Jahan in his turn suffered from the intrigues and rebellions of his family. In 1657, the old king fell ill; and Aurangzeb, after a treacherous conflict with his brethren, deposed his father, and proclaimed himself emperor in 1658. The unhappy emperor was kept in confinement for seven years, and died a State prisoner in the fort of Agra in 1666.

THE REIGN OF AURANGZEB, 1658-1707

Chronological Summary

1658. Deposition of Shah Jahan, and usurpation of Aurangzeb.

1659. Aurangzeb defeats his brothers Shuja and Dará. Dará, being betrayed by a chief with whom he had sought refuge, is put to death.

1660. Continued struggle of Aurangzeb with his brother Shuja, who ultimately flies to Arakan, and there perishes miserably.

1661. Aurangzeb executes his youngest brother, Murad, in prison.

1662. Unsuccessful invasion of Assam by Aurangzeb’s general, Mir Jumla. Disturbances in the Deccan. War between Bijapur and the Marathas under Sivaji. After various changes of fortune, Sivaji, the founder of the Maratha power, retains a considerable territory.

1662-1665. Sivaji the Marathi in rebellion against the Mughal Empire. In 1664, he assumes the title of Raja, and asserts his independence. In 1665, on a large army being sent against him, he makes submission, and proceeds to Delhi, where he is placed under restraint, but soon afterwards escapes.

1666. Death of the deposed emperor, Shah Jahan. War in the Deccan, and defeat of the Imperial Army from Delhi by the King of Bijapur.

1667. Sivaji makes peace with Aurangzeb, and obtains an extension of territory. Sivaji levies tribute from Bijapur and Golconda.

1668. Sivaji the Maratha ravages Khandesh and the Deccan, and there levies for the first time chauth, or a contribution of one-fourth of the revenue.

1669. Defeat of the Mughal or Imperial troops by Sivaji.

1670. Aurangzeb revives the jaziah, or poll-tax on non-Muhammadans.

1671. Aurangzeb at war with the Rajputs. Rebellion of Prince Akbar, Aurangzeb’s youngest son, who joins the Rajputs, but whose army deserts him. Prince Akbar is forced to fly to the Marathas.

1673-1680. Progress of the Marathas in the Deccan. Sivaji crowns himself an independent sovereign at Raigarh in 1674. His wars with Bijapur and the Mughal or Imperial troops. Sivaji dies in 1680, and is succeeded by his son, Sambhaji.

1683. Aurangzeb invades the Deccan in person, at the head of his Grand Army.

1686-1688. Aurangzeb conquers Bijapur and Golconda, and annexes them to the empire.

1689. Aurangzeb captures Sambhaji, the head of the Marathas, and barbarously puts him to death.

1690. Guerilla war with the Marathas under their various leaders.

1691. Aurangzeb’s general captures Ginji, from the Marathas.

1699-1701. Capture of Satara and Marathi forts by Aurangzeb. Apparent ruin of the Marathas.

1702-1705. Fresh successes of the Marathas.

1706. Aurangzeb retreats to Ahmadnagar; and,

1707. Miserably dies there.

Aurangzeb, Emperor, 1658-1707.

Aurangzeb proclaimed himself emperor in 1658, in the room of his imprisoned father, under the title of Alamgír, the Conqueror of the Universe, and reigned until 1707. Under Aurangzeb the Mughal Empire reached its widest limits. But his long rule of forty-nine years merely presents on a more magnificent stage the usual tragic drama of a Mughal reign. In its personal character, it began with his rebellion against his father; consolidated itself by the murder of his brethren; and darkened to a close amid the mutinies, intrigues, and jealousies of his own sons. Its public aspects consisted of a magnificent court in Northern India; conquests of the independent Muhammadan kings in the south; and wars against the Hindu powers, which, alike in Rajputana and in Southern India or the Deccan, were gathering strength for the overthrow of the Mughal Empire.

Aurangzeb murders his Brothers.

The year after his accession, Aurangzeb defeated and put to death his eldest brother, the noble but impetuous Dára (1659). After another twelve months’ struggle, he drove out of India his second brother, the self-indulgent Shuja (1660), who perished miserably among the insolent savages of Arakan. His remaining brother, the brave young Murad, was executed in prison the following year (1661). Aurangzeb had from boyhood been a Muhammadan of the stern puritan type. Having now killed off his rival brethren, he set up as an orthodox sovereign of the strictest sect of Islam; while his invalid father, Shah Jahán, lingered on in prison, mourning over his murdered sons, until his own death in 1666.

Aurangzeb’s Campaigns in Southern India.

Aurangzeb continued, as emperor, that persistent policy of the subjugation of Southern India which he had brilliantly commenced as his father’s lieutenant. Of the five Muhammadan kingdoms of the Deccan, Bidar and Ahmadnagar with Ellichpur had fallen to his arms, as the prince in command of the Imperial armies, before his accession to the throne. The two others, Bijapur and Golconda, struggled longer, but Aurangzeb was determined at any cost to annex them to the Mughal Empire. During the first half of his reign, or exactly twenty-five years, he waged war in the south by means of his generals (1658-83). A new Hindu power had, as we have seen, arisen in the Deccan—the Maráthas, whose history will be traced in more detail in a subsequent chapter. The task before Aurangzeb’s armies was not only the old one of subduing the Muhammadan kingdoms of Bijápur and Golconda, but also the new one of crushing the quick growth of the Hindu or Maratha confederacy.

Slow Conquest of Southern India.

During a quarter of a century, his utmost efforts failed. Bijapur and Golconda were not conquered. In 1670, the Maratha leader, Sivaji, levied chauth, or one-fourth of the revenues, as tribute from the Mughal Provinces in Southern India; and in 1674 he crowned himself an independent sovereign at Raigarh. In 1680-1681, Aurangzeb’s son, Prince Akbar, having rebelled against his father, joined the Maratha army. Aurangzeb felt that he must either give up his magnificent palace in the north for a soldier’s tent in the Deccan, or he must relinquish his most cherished scheme of conquering Southern India. He accordingly prepared an expedition, on an unrivalled scale of numbers and splendour, to be led by himself. In 1683, he arrived at the head of his Grand Army in the Deccan, and spent the next half of his reign, or twenty-four years, in the field in Southern India. Golconda and Bijapur fell after another severe struggle, and were finally annexed to the Mughal Empire in 1688.

The Marathas, 1688-1707.

But the conquests of these last of the five Muhammadan kingdoms of the Deccan only left the arena bare for the operations of the Marathas. Indeed, the attacks of the Marathas on the two Muhammadan States had prepared the way for their annexation by Aurangzeb. The emperor waged war during the remaining twenty years of his life (1688-1707) against the rising Hindu power of the Marathas. Their first great leader, Sivaji, had proclaimed himself king in 1674, and died in 1680. Aurangzeb captured his son and successor, Sambhaji, in 1689, and cruelly put him to death; seized the Maratha capital, with many of their forts; and seemed in the first year of the new century to have almost stamped out their existence (1701). But, after a guerilla warfare, the Marathas again sprang up into a powerful fighting nation. In 1705, they recovered their forts; while Aurangzeb had exhausted his health, his treasures, and his troops, in the long and fruitless struggle. His soldiery murmured for arrears; and the emperor, now old and peevish, told the malcontents that if they did not like his service they might quit it, while he disbanded some of his cavalry to ease his finances.

Aurangzeb hemmed in.

Meanwhile the Marathas were pressing hungrily on the imperial camp. The Grand Army of Aurangzeb had grown during a quarter of a century into an unwieldy capital. Its movements were slow, and incapable of concealment. If Aurangzeb sent out a rapid small expedition against the Marathas, who plundered and insulted the outskirts of his camp, they cut it to pieces. If he moved out against them in force, they vanished. His own soldiery feasted with the enemy, who prayed, with mock ejaculations, for the health of the emperor as their best friend.

Aurangzeb’s Death.

In 1706, the Grand Army was so disorganized, that Aurangzeb opened negotiations with the Marathas. He even thought of submitting the Imperial or Mughal Provinces to their tribute or chauth. But the insolent exultation of the Maratha chiefs led to the treaty being broken off; and Aurangzeb, in 1706, found shelter in Ahmadnagar, where he died in February of the following year (1707). Dark suspicion of his sons’ loyalty, and just fears lest they should subject him to the cruel fate which he had inflicted on his father, left him solitary in his last days. On the approach of death, he gave utterance in broken sentences to his worldly counsels and adieus, mingled with terror and remorse, and closing in an agony of desperate resignation: ‘Come what may, I have launched my vessel on the waves. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!’

Mir Jumla’s Expedition to Assam, 1662.

The conquest of the Deccan or Southern India was the one inflexible purpose of Aurangzeb’s life, and has therefore been dealt with here in a continuous narrative. In the north of India, great events had also transpired. His general Mir Jumla led the imperial troops as far as Assam, the extreme eastern Province of India (1662). But amid the pestilential swamps of the rainy season his army melted away, its supplies were cut off, and its march was surrounded by swarms of natives, who knew the country and were accustomed to the climate. Mír Jumla succeeded in extricating the main body of his troops, but died of exhaustion and a broken heart before he reached Dacca, in the Bengal Delta.

Aurangzeb’s Bigoted Policy.

In the north-west of India, Aurangzeb was not more fortunate. During his time the Sikhs (a theistic and military sect of Hindus) were growing into a power, but it was not till the succeeding reigns that they commenced the series of operations which in the end wrested the Punjab from the Mughal Empire. Aurangzeb’s bigotry arrayed against him all the Hindu princes and peoples of Northern India. He revived the jaziah, or insulting poll-tax on non-Musalmans (1677); drove the Hindus out of the administration; and oppressed the widow and children of his father’s faithful Hindu general, Jaswant Singh. A local sect of Hindus in Northern India was persecuted into rebellion in 1676; and in 1677, the Rajput States combined against him. The emperor waged a protracted war against them,—at one time devastating Rajputana, at another time saving himself and his army from extermination only by a stroke of genius and rare presence of mind. In 1680, his rebel son, Prince Akbar, went over to the Rajputs with his division of the Mughal or Imperial army. From that year the permanent alienation of the Rajputs from the Mughal Empire dates; and the Hindu chivalry, which had been a source of strength to Akbar the Great, became an element of ruin to Aurangzeb and his successors. The emperor pillaged and slaughtered throughout the Rajput States of Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Udaipur. The Rajputs retaliated by ravaging the Muhammadan Provinces of Malwa, defacing the mosques, insulting the mullás, or priests of Islam, and burning the Kuran. In 1681, the emperor patched up a peace in order to allow him to lead the Grand Army into the Deccan, from which he was destined never to return. But Akbar’s policy of conciliating the Hindus, and welding them into one empire with his Muhammadan subjects, came to an end under Aurangzeb.

Aurangzeb’s Revenues.

All Northern India except Assam, and the greater part of Southern India, paid revenue to Aurangzeb. His Indian Provinces covered nearly as large an area as the British Empire at the present day, although their dependence on the central government was less direct. From these Provinces his net land revenue demand is returned at 30 to 38 millions sterling—a sum which represented at least three times the purchasing power of the land revenue of British India at the present day. But it is doubtful whether the enormous demand of 38 millions was fully realized during any series of years, even at the height of Aurangzeb’s power, before he left Delhi for his long southern wars. It was estimated at only 30 millions sterling in the last year of his reign, after his absence of a quarter of a century in the Deccan. Fiscal oppressions led to evasions and revolts; and one or other of the Provinces was always in open war against the emperor. The standard return of Aurangzeb’s land revenue was net, £34,505,890; and this remained the nominal demand in the accounts of the central exchequer during the next half-century, notwithstanding that the empire had fallen to pieces. When the Afghán invader, Ahmad Shah Durani, entered Delhi in 1761, the treasury officers presented him with a statement showing the land revenue of the empire at £34,506,640. The highest land revenue of Aurangzeb, after his annexations in Southern India, and before his final reverses, was returned at 38½ millions sterling; of which nearly 38 millions were from Indian Provinces, and the remainder from Kashmir and Kabul. The total revenue of the Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb, from all sources, was estimated in 1695 at 80 millions sterling, and in 1697 at 77½ millions sterling. The gross taxation levied from British India, deducting the opium excise, which is paid by the Chinese consumer, averaged 38 millions sterling during the ten years ending 1883.

Character of Aurangzeb.

Aurangzeb tried to live the life of a model Muhammadan emperor. Magnificent in his public appearances, simple in his private habits, diligent in business, exact in his religious observances, an elegant letter-writer, and ever ready with choice passages alike from the poets and from the Kurán, his life would have been a blameless one, if he had had no father to depose, no brethren to murder, and no Hindu subjects to oppress. But his bigotry made an enemy of every one who did not share his own faith; and the slaughter of his kindred compelled him to entrust his whole government to strangers. The Hindus never forgave him; and the Sikhs, the Rajputs, and the Marathas, immediately after his reign, began to close in upon the empire. His Muhammadan generals and viceroys, as a rule, served him well during his vigorous life; but at his death they usurped his children’s inheritance.

Decline of the Mughal Empire.

The succeeding emperors were puppets in the hands of the too powerful soldiers or statesmen who raised them to the throne, controlled them while on it, and killed them when it suited their purposes to do so. The subsequent history of the empire is a mere record of ruin. The chief events in its decline and fall are summarized below. For a time Mughal emperors still ruled India from Delhi. But of the six immediate successors of Aurangzeb, two were under the control of an unscrupulous general, Zul-fikar Khan, while the four others were the creatures of a couple of Sayyid adventurers, who well earned their title of the ‘king-makers.’

Independence of the Deccan and of Oudh.

From the year 1720 the breaking up of the empire took a more open form. The Nizam-ul-Mulk, or Governor of the Deccan, severed the largest part of Southern India from the Delhi rule (1720-1748). The Governor of Oudh, originally a Persian merchant, who had risen to the post of wazir, or prime minister of the empire, practically established his own dynasty as the Nawab Wazir of Oudh which had been committed to his care (1732-1743).

Hindu Risings: Sikhs and Marathas.

The Hindu subjects of the empire were at the same time asserting their independence. The Sikh sect in the Punjab was driven by the oppression of the Delhi Emperors into revolt, and was mercilessly crushed (1710-1716). The indelible memory of the cruelties then inflicted by the Mughal troops nerved the Sikh nation with that hatred to Delhi which served the British cause so well in 1857. Their leader, Banda, was carried about in an iron cage, tricked out in the mockery of imperial robes, with scarlet turban and cloth of gold. His son’s heart was torn out before his eyes, and thrown in his face. He himself was then pulled to pieces with red-hot pincers; and the Sikhs were exterminated like mad dogs (1716). The Hindu princes of Rajputana were more fortunate. Ajit Singh of Jodhpur asserted his independence, and Rajputana practically severed its connection with the Mughal Empire in 1715. The Marathas having enforced their claim to black-mail (chauth) throughout Southern India, burst through the Vindhyas into the north, and obtained from the Delhi emperors, the cession of Malwa (1743) and Orissa (1751), with an imperial grant of tribute from Bengal (1751).

Invasions from Central Asia, 1739-1761.

While the Muhammadan governors and Hindu subjects of the empire were thus becoming independent of the Delhi emperors, two new sets of external enemies appeared; one set from Central Asia, the other set from the sea. In 1739, Nadir Shah, the Persian monarch, swooped down on India, with his destroying host, and, after a massacre in the streets of Delhi and a fifty-eight days’ sack, returned through the north-western passes with a booty estimated at 32 millions sterling. The destroying host of the Persian king was succeeded by a series of invasions from Afghanistan. Six times the Afghans burst through the passes under Ahmad Shah Durani, pillaging, slaughtering, and then scornfully retiring to their homes with the plunder of the Mughal empire. In 1738, Kabul, the last Afghan Province of the Mughals, was severed from Delhi; and, in 1752, Ahmad Shah obtained the cession of the Punjab from the miserable emperor. The cruelties inflicted upon Delhi and Northern India during these six Afghan invasions form an appalling tale of bloodshed and wanton cruelty. The wretched capital opened her gates, and was fain to receive the Afghans as guests. Yet on one occasion it suffered for six weeks every enormity which a barbarian army can inflict upon a prostrate foe. Meanwhile the Afghan cavalry were scouring the country, slaying, burning, and mutilating, in the meanest hamlet as in the greatest town. They took especial delight in sacking the holy places of the Hindus, and murdering the defenceless votaries at the shrines.

Misery of the Provinces.

A single example must suffice to show the miseries inflicted by the invaders of India from the North-west. A horde of 25,000 Afghan horsemen swooped down upon the sacred city of Muttra during a festival, while it was thronged with peaceful Hindu pilgrims engaged in their devotions. ‘They burned the houses,’ says the Tyrolese Jesuit Tieffenthaler, who was in India at that time, ’together with their inmates, slaughtering others with the sword and the lance; haling off into captivity maidens and youths, men and women. In the temples they slaughtered cows’ (the sacred animal of the Hindus), ‘and smeared the images and pavement with the blood.’ The borderland between Afghanistan and India lay silent and waste; indeed, Districts far within the Indian frontier, which had once been densely inhabited, and which are now again thickly peopled, were swept bare of inhabitants. Thus Gujranwala, the seat of the ancient capital of the Punjab in Buddhist times, was utterly depopulated. Its present inhabitants are immigrants of comparatively recent date. The District, which was stripped of its inhabitants in the last century, has now a new population of a million.

Fall of the Empire, 1761-1765.

The other set of invaders came from over the sea. In the wars between the French and English in Southern India, the last vestiges of the Delhi authority in the Karnatik disappeared (1748-61). Bengal, Behar, and Orissa were handed over to the English by an imperial grant in 1765. We obtained these three fertile Provinces as the nominee of the emperor; but the battle of Panipat had already reduced the throne of Delhi to a shadow. That battle was fought in 1761, between the Afghan invader Ahmad Shah and the Maratha powers, on the memorable plain of Panipat on which Babar and Akbar had twice won the sovereignty of India. The Afghans defeated the Marathas; but although the Muhammadans could still win victories, they could no longer rule India. During the anarchy which followed, the British patiently built up a new power out of the wreck of the Mughal Empire. Puppet emperors continued to reign at Delhi over a numerous seraglio, under such lofty titles as Akbar II. or Alamgir II. But their power was confined to the palace, while Marathas, Sikhs, and Englishmen were fighting for the sovereignty of India. The last of these pensioned Mughal kings of Delhi emerged for a moment as a rebel during the Mutiny of 1857, and died a State prisoner in Rangoon, the capital of British Burma, in 1862.

Causes of its Fall.

Akbar had rendered a great Empire possible in India by conciliating the native Hindu races. He thus raised up a powerful third party, consisting of the native military peoples of India, which enabled him alike to prevent new Muhammadan invasions from Central Asia, and to keep in subjection his own Muhammadan Governors of Provinces. Under Aurangzeb and his miserable successors this wise policy of conciliation was given up. Accordingly, new Muhammadan hordes soon swept down from Afghanistan; the Muhammadan Governors of Indian Provinces set up as independent potentates; and the warlike Hindu races, who had helped Akbar to create the Mughal Empire, became, under his foolish posterity, the chief agents of its ruin.

The British won India, not from the Mughals, but from the Hindus.—Before we appeared as conquerors, the Mughal Empire had broken up. Our final and most perilous wars were neither with the Delhi king, nor with his revolted Muhammadan viceroys, but with the two Hindu confederacies, the Marathas and the Sikhs. Muhammadan princes fought against us in Bengal, in the Karnatik, and in Mysore; but the longest opposition to the British conquest of India came from the Hindus. Our last Maratha war dates as late as 1818, and the Sikh Confederation was overcome only in 1849. The following summary must suffice to show the principal events in the ruin of the Mughal Empire after the death of Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughal emperors, in 1707.

The Decline and Fall of the Mughal Empire, 1707-1862

1707. Succession contest between Muazzim and Alam, two sons of Aurangzeb; victory of the former, and his accession with the title of Bahadur Shah; but under the complete control of his military prime minister, Zul-fikar Khan. Revolt of Prince Kambaksh; his defeat and death.

1708. Expedition by the Mughal emperor against the Sikhs.

1709. Death of the emperor Bahadur Shah, and accession of his eldest son, Jahandar Shah, who only ruled as the creature of his prime minister, Zul-fikar Khan. Revolt of his nephew, Farukhsiyyar; and murder of the emperor, Jahandar Shah, and his wazir.

1710. Accession of Farukhsiyyar as emperor under the control of the two Sayyid ‘king-makers,’ Husain Ali and Abdulla.

1711. Invasion of the imperial territories by the Sikhs; their defeat, and cruel persecution.

1712. Deposition and murder of the emperor Farukhsiyyar by the two Sayyids. They nominate in succession three boy emperors, the first two of whom die within a few months; the third, Muhammad Shah, commences his reign in September 1719.

1713. Overthrow of the two Sayyids, the ‘king-makers.’

1720-1748. The Governor of the Deccan or Southern India, or Nizam-ul-Mulk, establishes his independence at Haidarabad.

1732-1743. The Governor of Oudh, who was also wazir or prime minister of the empire, becomes practically independent of Delhi.

1735-1751. General decline of the empire; revolts within it; invasion of Nadir Shah from Persia (1739). First invasion of India by Ahmad Shah Durani (1747). Marathas finally secure the cession of Malwa (1743); and of Southern Orissa and tribute from Bengal (1751).

1748-1750. Accession of the emperor Ahmad Shah, son of Muhammad Shah; disturbances by the Rohillas in Oudh, and defeat of the imperial troops.

1751. The Rohilla insurrection crushed by the imperial troops, with the aid of the Marathas.

1751-1752. Second invasion from Afghanistan by Ahmad Shah Durani, and cession of the Punjab to him.

1754. Deposition of the emperor, and accession of Alamgir II.

1755. Third invasion from Afghanistan by Ahmad Shah Durani, and sack of Delhi.

1756. Fourth invasion of Ahmad Shah Durani, and murder of the emperor Alamgir II. by his prime minister, Ghazi-ud-din. Maratha conquests in Northern India, and their capture of Delhi.

1761-1805. Third battle of Panipat, and defeat of the Marathas by the Afghans (1761). The nominal emperor on the death of Alamgir II. is Shah Alam II., who resides till 1771, at Allahabad, a pensioner of the British. The Marathas then practically become masters of the Delhi territories and of the person of the emperor. The emperor is blinded and imprisoned by rebels; rescued by the Marathas, but virtually a prisoner in their hands till 1803, when the Maratha power is overthrown by Lord Lake.

1806-1837. Akbar II. succeeds as emperor, under British protection, but only to the nominal dignity.

1837-1863. Muhammad Bahadur Shah, the seventeenth Mughal emperor, and last of the race of Timur. For his complicity in the Mutiny of 1857 he was banished to Rangoon, where he died in 1863.