Mogul dynasty

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’.