The Flag of the Mughal Empire.

In the 16th century, Michelangelo finished the Sistine Chapel, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenburg Cathedral, Machiavelli wrote The Prince, and many other important things happened in the Western world. However, although we never cover this in rushed AP History classes, another decisive moment occurred in what is now Afghanistan. In those days, Afghanistan was not the war-torn, Taliban-infested, drone target it is today, but was instead the birthplace of a new empire. In 1526, the Mongolian Muslim leader known as Babur defeated an Afghan Sultan to seize control of the region. Following this victory, this warmongering descendant of the even more bloodthirsty Genghis Khan went on to defeat the Rajputs and more Afghan leaders. By his death, the Mughal (the Indian name for Mongol) Empire’s boundaries stretched across Northern India, from the Indus River to the Himalayas. These boundaries kept expanding as successive rulers conquered ever southward, until 1707 when the entirety of the Indian subcontinent, excluding a small area towards the tip of the peninsula, was under Mughal control. Following this height, the sprawling nation was torn apart by an invasion by the Persians, interior strife and rebellion, and finally the one, the only, British Empire in 1857.

Map of the Mughal Empire Over Time.

Through the course of the Mughal Empire, many interesting figures came to power. The first of these was Akbar the Great, the grandson of Babur, who was amazingly tolerant of religion at the time (he didn’t butcher everyone who wasn’t Muslim). One of his interesting ideas was Din-i-Ilahi (“Godism” in English), a combination of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity which motivated him to practice tolerance of all religions in his domain, even Sikhism. Akbar also enacted smart tax policies that adapted to the productivity of different areas, causing the Mughal economy to become richer than that of England at the time. Another remarkable ruler of the empire was Shah Jihan, who conquered land for the empire, unified and connected it with infrastructure, and used the resulting wealth to establish for himself and the nobility a gaudy lifestyle rivaling that of the French aristocracy. He ordered the creation of the ridiculously fancy “Peacock Throne” that was inlaid with over 200 emeralds, rubies, and pearls, as well as India’s most famous architectural wonder, the Taj Mahal, as a mausoleum for his wife. This massive expenditure of wealth and standard of wasteful spending started a chain reaction that would eventually bring about the fall of the empire.

The Taj Mahal in all its glory.

 Unfortunately, after Shah Jihan was a ruler with a polar opposite view of other religions. Aurangzeb, the sinister successor, was as brutal as his name was hard to pronounce. This tyrannical descendant of Temur imposed Sharia law, destroyed Hindu temples, and forced his subjects to pay exorbitant taxes to finance his many wars of conquest. His actions destroyed the unity that Shah Jahan and his predecessors had worked so hard to forge between all Indians, regardless of their religion or ethnicity and resulted in many civil uprisings against the state. After Aurangzeb’s terrible rule came to an end, the many more mediocre rulers allowed the empire to splinter into smaller kingdoms that became puppet states of the Europeans, and eventually the entirety of India was swallowed up by the ravenous British Empire.

Emperor Aurangzeb – He even looks unpleasant.

Despite its dramatic fall from grace, the Mughal Empire had a massive impact on the history of India. Mughal rulers used the massive wealth produced by the empire to fund amazing architectural projects, including the Taj Mahal, the Jama Masjid (the largest mosque in India), the Red Fort, and many others. Additionally, the Mughal effort to unite the entirety of the Indian subcontinent was the first of its kind, and foreshadowed the united Indian state of today. The governing system, especially under Akbar the Great, was extremely efficient, had decentralized states, separation of powers, and an efficient bureaucracy, something the DMV can learn a thing or two about. A final proof of the empire’s influence is the use of the English word Mogul to describe a successful and often market dominating businessman. I wonder how the countries that exist today will be remembered through language and history of civilizations in the future. Lets do our best assure that our country’s legacy is a great one.

Sources:

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mughal_Empire

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mughal-dynasty

http://www.history.com/topics/taj-mahal

http://www.fsmitha.com/time/ce16-4.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_architecture