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The Mughal Empire
The Persianate dynasty that ruled most of the Indian subcontinent and built the Taj Mahal
For two centuries the Mughal emperors presided over one of the richest states on earth, and by around 1700 they ruled perhaps a quarter of the world's people. Descended from both Timur and Genghis Khan, the dynasty made Persian the language of court and government, and from the meeting of Central Asian, Persian and Indian traditions came the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort of Delhi, the miniature painting of the imperial workshops and the growth of Urdu. Mughal silver rupees circulated across South Asia, and Mughal land-revenue methods shaped administration under the British and after. The empire's monuments draw millions of visitors to India and Pakistan, and its memory is still debated in both countries.
The empire centered on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the broad, fertile lowland watered by the Indus, the Ganges and the Yamuna, where its main cities of Agra, Delhi and Lahore stood. From there it reached northwest across the Khyber Pass to Kabul and, for periods, Kandahar, east to Bengal and the Brahmaputra delta, and south onto the Deccan Plateau, where Aurangzeb's campaigns in the late seventeenth century pushed it nearly to the southern tip of the subcontinent. At its peak around 1690 it covered about 4 million square kilometers, framed by the Himalaya to the north and the Thar Desert and the Arabian Sea to the west. Its territory now lies in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Babur, a Timurid prince from the Fergana Valley, defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526 and founded the dynasty. His grandson Akbar, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, expanded the empire, built a centralized service of ranked officers, sought alliances with Hindu Rajput rulers and promoted religious tolerance. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal and a new capital, Shahjahanabad, at Delhi. Aurangzeb, who ruled from 1658 to 1707, brought the empire to its greatest size but fought prolonged wars with the Marathas and other powers. After his death provincial governors became independent rulers, and the Persian ruler Nader Shah sacked Delhi in 1739. The British East India Company reduced the emperor to a figurehead, and after the rebellion of 1857 the British exiled the last emperor, Bahadur Shah II, to Burma, formally ending the dynasty.