Mogul dynasty

Mogul emperor Jalal ud-Din Muhammad Akbar leading the Mogul army about 1580.

Third of the emperors of the Mogul dynasty, Jahangir. Jahangir was the son of Akbar who was considered to be the greatest of the Moguls. Jahangir's reign was marred by an addiction to alcohol and opium.

The Mogul emperor Shah Jahan in 1630. Shah Jahan's reign is noteworthy not only for its great architectural projects (of which the Taj Mahal is the most famous), but also for its literary activity and the fostering of arts such as calligraphy and painting. He reputedly had one of the finest collections of jewels in the world, and his court was renown for its magnificence and opulence.

Northern Indian dynasty 1526–1858, established by Babur, Muslim descendant of Tamerlane, the 14th-century Mongol leader. The Mogul emperors ruled until the last one, Bahadur Shah II, was dethroned and exiled by the British; they included Akbar, Aurangzeb, and Shah Jahan. The Moguls established a more extensive and centralized empire than their Delhi sultanate forebears, and the Mogul era was one of great artistic achievement as well as urban and commercial development.

When Akbar died 1605 the Mogul empire had a population of 70–100 million, but it was at its largest under Aurangzeb (ruled 1658–1707), who briefly subdued the Deccan and the south-central states of Bijapur and Golconda. However, Mogul authority never extended into the far south and, although more bureaucratized than the Delhi sultanate, power waxed and waned between central and local rulers. As the Dutch trader Francisco Pelsaert (1595–1630) commented, while Mogul emperors were ‘kings of the plains and open roads’, they effectively ruled barely a half of the dominions over which they claimed sovereignty, there being ‘nearly as many rebels as subjects’.