THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 1526–1857 · Middle East & South Asia

Mughal Empire

Babur, a Central Asian prince descended from both Timur and Genghis Khan, invaded India and defeated the Delhi Sultanate at Panipat in 1526. His son Humayun lost the throne to Sher Shah Suri but regained it in 1555.

Humayun's son Akbar built a lasting empire through conquest and alliances with Rajput kings, a ranked nobility of mansabdars and a revenue system based on surveyed land, and he promoted dialogue among religions. Under Jahangir and Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, the court was among the richest in the world. Aurangzeb pushed the empire to its greatest size in the Deccan but exhausted it in endless wars. After his death in 1707 provincial governors, Marathas, Sikhs and the British carved it up, and the British deposed the last emperor after the rebellion of 1857.

Follow its story on the map

The Taj Mahal at Agra, built for the emperor Shah Jahan, 1632–1653
The Taj Mahal at Agra, built for the emperor Shah Jahan, 1632–1653 Yann; edited by King of Hearts · CC BY-SA 4.0
Years
1526–1857
Capital
Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Lahore and Delhi at different times
Greatest extent
1690, about 4.00 million km²
Region
Middle East & South Asia

c. 4.0M km² (Taagepera 1997; Turchin, Adams & Hall 2006); under Aurangzeb, covering almost the whole subcontinent

Legacy

Mughal architecture, painting, cuisine and the Urdu language left a deep mark on South Asian culture, from the Taj Mahal to Delhi's Red Fort.

Timeline of Mughal Empire

  1. Sher Shah Suri drives Humayun out of India

    Babur had founded the Mughal Empire in 1526, but his son Humayun faced a powerful rival in Sher Shah Suri, an Afghan commander who had built up power in Bihar and Bengal. Sher Shah crushed Humayun's army at Chausa on 26 June 1539, and Humayun barely escaped by swimming the Ganges. On 17 May 1540 the two met again at Kannauj (Bilgram), and the Mughals were routed. Humayun fled through Lahore and Sindh and eventually took refuge at the court of the Safavid Shah Tahmasp I in Persia. Sher Shah founded the Sur Empire, ruling from Delhi, and Mughal rule in India collapsed for 15 years.

  2. Humayun returns from Persia and retakes Delhi

    After Sher Shah's son Islam Shah died in 1554, the Sur Empire broke apart among quarrelling rivals. Humayun, who had spent years in exile in Persia and had won back Kandahar and Kabul with Safavid help, saw his chance and invaded the Punjab with his general Bairam Khan. On 22 June 1555 his army decisively defeated Sikandar Shah Suri at Sirhind, and on 23 July 1555 Humayun sat once again on the throne in Delhi. The Mughal Empire was restored, though Humayun died only six months later, in January 1556, leaving his 13-year-old son Akbar to rebuild it.

  3. Akbar's army wins the Second Battle of Panipat

    Soon after Humayun's death, Hemu (Hemchandra), a Hindu general of the Sur dynasty, defeated the Mughals at Delhi, took Delhi and Agra, and crowned himself king as Vikramaditya. Akbar, aged 13, and his guardian Bairam Khan marched to take them back. On 5 November 1556 the armies met at Panipat, near the site of Babur's victory 30 years earlier. Hemu seemed close to winning when an arrow struck him in the eye; he fell unconscious, his army fled, and he was captured and beheaded. The victory recovered Delhi and Agra and secured Akbar's throne, starting nearly 50 years of Mughal expansion.

  4. Malwa annexed

    Malwa, a rich plateau in central India, was ruled by Baz Bahadur, son of a former Sur governor, who had declared himself independent in 1555. Malwa controlled key routes between northern India, Gujarat and the Deccan. In 1561 Akbar sent an army under Adham Khan and Pir Muhammad Khan, which defeated Baz Bahadur at the Battle of Sarangpur on 29 March 1561. Baz Bahadur fled, and Mughal rule over Malwa was completed by 1562, when it became a Mughal province (subah). The conquest carried the empire's frontier south into central India, towards Gujarat and the Deccan sultanates.

  5. Chittorgarh falls after a long siege

    The Sisodia rulers of Mewar were the leading Rajput dynasty still refusing to accept Mughal overlordship, and their fortress of Chittorgarh, on a high rocky plateau, was one of the strongest in India. Akbar besieged it with a large army and artillery from 23 October 1567, while Rana Udai Singh withdrew to the hills and left the fort under Jaimal Rathore. After four months of mining and assaults, Jaimal was killed by a musket shot on 22 February 1568, and the fort fell the next day; many defenders and thousands of non-combatants were killed. The fall of Chittor led most other Rajput states to accept Mughal rule.

  6. Conquest of Gujarat completed

    Gujarat, on India's west coast, had rich farmland, a large textile industry and the busiest seaports in India, and it sheltered rebels against Akbar. In 1572 Akbar occupied Ahmedabad, the capital, and was proclaimed ruler of Gujarat, and by 1573 he had driven out the rebel Mirzas. The last sultan, Muzaffar Shah III, was taken prisoner to Agra, and Gujarat became a Mughal province in 1573. The conquest gave the empire its first outlet to the Arabian Sea, with ports such as Surat, and a link to the trade of Asia, Africa and Europe.

  7. Victory at Rajmahal secures Bengal

    Bengal, the rich delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, was ruled by the Afghan Karrani dynasty, whose last sultan, Daud Khan, had defied Akbar. Mughal armies under Khan Jahan and Todar Mal defeated Daud's forces at Rajmahal, on the Ganges at the gateway to Bengal, on 12 July 1576. Daud was captured and executed, and the Bengal Sultanate came to an end. Bengal became a Mughal province (subah), although Afghan and local chiefs went on resisting for years. Its wealth made it one of the empire's most valuable provinces, and it extended Mughal rule east to the Bay of Bengal.

  8. Kabul formally annexed

    Kabul, the old base of Babur and Humayun, had been ruled almost independently by Akbar's half-brother, Mirza Muhammad Hakim, who more than once tried to seize the Mughal throne. In the early 1580s Akbar's forces occupied Kabul and forced his brother into submission. When Muhammad Hakim died on 10 October 1585, Akbar took direct control, and Kabul was formally made a province of the empire. Akbar then moved his court to Lahore and spent the next thirteen years in the northwest. The annexation secured the empire's frontier in Afghanistan and its routes to Central Asia, and pushed its border towards the Hindu Kush.

  9. Asirgarh taken after Ahmadnagar (1600): Mughals enter the Deccan

    With northern India secured, Akbar turned south against the Deccan sultanates, which had refused to submit. After earlier campaigns, his forces took the fortress of Ahmadnagar in August 1600, defended earlier by Chand Bibi. Akbar then besieged Asirgarh, a hill fortress called the 'key to the Deccan', held by Miran Bahadur Shah of Khandesh, and took it on 17 January 1601, by some accounts through trickery rather than assault. Akbar created the provinces of Ahmadnagar, Berar and Khandesh. The Mughals now had a firm foothold in the Deccan, beginning a southward push that lasted a century.

  10. Aurangzeb besieges and takes Golconda; Deccan sultanates absorbed

    Aurangzeb, emperor from 1658, spent the last decades of his reign in the Deccan, fighting the Marathas and the sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda. After conquering Bijapur in 1686, he personally besieged Golconda, the great fortress of the Qutb Shahi kings, from 28 January 1687. The siege dragged on for about eight months amid famine, monsoon floods and epidemic, until a defector let Mughal troops in by a back entrance and the main gate was opened on 22 September. The last king, Abul Hasan Qutb Shah, was imprisoned. Golconda became the province of Hyderabad, bringing almost all of southern India under Mughal rule.

  11. Aurangzeb dies; the empire is at its greatest extent

    Aurangzeb died on 3 March 1707, aged 88, at Bhingar in the Deccan, where he had spent his last years campaigning. Under his rule the Mughal Empire had reached its greatest extent, spanning nearly the entire Indian subcontinent. But the long wars against the Marathas had drained the treasury, and his strict policies had alienated many Hindu, Sikh and Rajput subjects. His sons fought a war of succession, and the emperors who followed were weak. Within a few decades governors in Bengal, Awadh and Hyderabad became independent in all but name, and the Marathas took over large parts of the empire.

  12. Nader Shah of Persia sacks Delhi

    Nader Shah, the new ruler of Iran, invaded northern India in 1738, crossing the Indus at Attock. On 24 February 1739 his army routed the Mughals at Karnal, north of Delhi, and Emperor Muhammad Shah surrendered. The two entered Delhi together, but after riots on the night of 21 March in which some 3,000 Persian soldiers were killed, Nader ordered a massacre, and the city was sacked for several days. He carried off the Mughal treasury, the jewelled Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond, and annexed all Mughal lands west of the Indus. The raid exposed the empire's weakness and stripped it of much of its wealth.

  13. British East India Company wins at Plassey and takes control of Bengal

    In 1756 Siraj ud-Daulah, the young Nawab of Bengal, a governor who was now in practice independent of the Mughal emperor, captured the British East India Company's base at Calcutta. A Company force under Robert Clive retook it and then plotted with Siraj's commander, Mir Jafar, and wealthy bankers. On 23 June 1757, at Plassey, Clive's army of about 3,000 faced a Bengal army of around 50,000, but Mir Jafar's troops held back, and Siraj's army broke. Mir Jafar became nawab as a British puppet. Bengal, the richest Mughal province, came under the Company's control, the start of British rule in India.

  14. Indian Rebellion; Bahadur Shah II deposed after the siege of Delhi

    On 10 May 1857 Indian soldiers (sepoys) of the East India Company mutinied at Meerut and marched to Delhi, where they proclaimed the 81-year-old Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah II (Zafar), Emperor of Hindustan. The revolt spread across northern and central India. After a siege lasting from June to September 1857, British forces stormed Delhi; Bahadur Shah was captured at Humayun's Tomb on 20 September and later exiled to Rangoon in Burma, where he died in 1862. The Mughal dynasty, which had ruled since 1526, came to an end, and in 1858 the British Crown took over direct rule of India.

Periods and reigns

Rulers

Realms on the map

Chapters

Sources