Mughal dynasty
gigatos | February 18, 2022
Summary
The Great Moguls or Baburids are a dynasty of padishahs of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857), founded by the descendant of the Emir Timur padishah Zahir ad-Din Babur. The name “Great Moguls” was given to the dynasty by Europeans, who mistakenly considered its representatives to be Mongols.
According to a number of researchers, the term “Mogol” goes back to the Persian, Indian, as well as Arabic name of the Mongols, and it emphasized the Mongolian origin of the Timurid dynasty. In turn, V.V. Bartold adds that Timur was descended from the Barlas tribe.
Baburids were a branch of the Timurid dynasty: the father of the dynasty founder Babur, Amir of Ferghana Umar Sheikh Mirza, was the paternal grandson of Sultan Muhammad, son of Amirzade Jalal ad-din Miran-shah, third son of Tamerlane. Babur”s mother, Qutlug-nigar-khanim (1459-1505), was a daughter of the Mogulistan ruler Yunus-khan, so Babur was a descendant of Genghis Khan. In 1494 Zahir ad-din Babur inherited the Fergana Valley from his father, where he ruled until 1500. In 1503 Babur married his cousin Aisha Sultan-begum, the third daughter of Timurid Sultan Ahmad- Mirza, who became his principal wife.
In 1500-1505 Sheibani Khan pushed Babur out of Fergana into Afghanistan. In 1504 Babur took Kabul, which became the capital of his new state. In 1526 Babur incorporated the territory of Delhi sultanate into his state and took the title of padishah. The new state received from the European contemporaries the name of the Great Mogul Empire (or Mogul Empire). Babur”s son and heir, Padishah Humayun, was forced to cede Northern India to the Surid dynasty of Afghanistan in 1540. After 15 years he managed to regain power over North India and restore the Mughal Empire.
The next 150 years were the period of unprecedented prosperity and power of the Baburid state, the territory of which was gradually spreading over the entire peninsula of Hindustan. The first four padishahs of the dynasty (Babur, Humayun, Akbar and Jahangir) succeeded each other relatively peacefully, passing the throne from father to eldest son. The first padishahs of the dynasty took as wives mostly only Muslim women; the mothers of Humayun and Akbar were women of Iranian origin. The first Padishahs of the dynasty took as wives only Muslim women; the mothers of Humayun and Akbar were women of Iranian origin.
Among the closest descendants of Padishah Akbar destructive features of personality characterized by alcohol and opium abuse are revealed: two sons of Akbar, Shahzadeh Sultan Daniyal-mirza (1572-1604) and Sultan Murad-mirza (1570-1599), died in Berar from excessive drinking, incompatible with the local climate. The second son of Padishah Jahangir, Sultan Parvez-Mirza (1590-1626), also died of drunkenness. Jahangir himself was a chronic alcoholic from the age of 17, which is described in minute detail in his diary Jahangir-nameh, as well as a chronic opium addict.
The son and heir of Akbar, the fourth padishah Jahangir (“Conqueror of the World”) was the first ruler of the Baburid dynasty to have Indian blood in his veins: his mother was Rani Rajkumari Hira Kunwari Sahiba (1542-1623), daughter of Raja Dhundhar Bharmal. Under Jahangir (1605-1627) the inner harmony of the Baburid family came to an end: just as Jahangir himself rebelled against his father Akbar in 1599 (but then reconciled with him), Jahangir”s eldest son Shahzadeh Sultan Khusrau-mirza continued this unkind tradition by rebelling against his father at the beginning of his rule. The rebellion was put down and Shahzadeh Sultan Khusraw- Mirza was deprived of the right of succession to the throne and subsequently blinded and then strangled by order of his father. The third son of Jahangir was appointed heir to the throne, Shah Jahan Bahadur, who also rebelled against his father in 1622 and rebelled intermittently until the death of Padishah Jahangir in 1627.
Beginning in 1611, Jahangir”s beloved wife Nur-Jahan (“Light of Peace”) and her brother Abdul Hasan Asaf-khan gained enormous influence over Padishah Jahangir and, consequently, over state decision-making, whose power became virtually undivided after the Padishah”s health became so compromised in 1620 that it became difficult for him to engage in direct management of the empire. However, a latent power struggle soon began between brother and sister. After Jahangir”s death the first internecine war broke out for the throne, which in addition to Shah Jahan Bahadur was claimed by his younger brother Sultan Shahriyar Mirza (supported by Nur Jahan) and the son of the murdered Sultan Khusrau Mirza Sultan Davar Bakhsh (proclaimed as Padishah Asaf Khan). The internecine war ended in a bloody massacre: by order of Shah Jahan, Asaf-khan in January 1628 killed all potential claimants to the throne – Sultan Davar Bakhsh, Sultan Shahriyar-mirza and two sons of Sultan Danial-mirza, Taimurasp-mirza and Khushang-mirza. This became another unkind tradition of the Baburid dynasty.
Having eliminated all rivals, Shah Jahan Bahadur ascended the throne under the name of Shah Jahan I. His mother was also a Hindu Rani, daughter of Raja Marwar, Rajkumari Sri Manavati Baiji Lall Sahiba. Shah Jahan himself had 6 wives, but the main and favorite wife, who gave birth to the Emperor 8 sons, is the daughter of Vakil Abul Hasan Asaf-khan Arjumand Banu Kadsiya-begum, better known under her mansab Mumtaz-Mahal (“Palace Beautification”). After her untimely death in childbirth of their fourteenth child in 1631, the grieving Padishah began the extensive construction of her majestic tomb in Agra, which lasted more than 20 years. The result was the magnificent white marble Taj Mahal mausoleum on the banks of the river Jamna, now recognized as the “jewel of Muslim art in India,” the construction of which required about 32 million rupees from the state treasury.
The stable revenues of the treasury and the relative calmness in the central suburbs allowed Shah Jahan to devote himself completely to his favorite pastime – architecture. The construction of many magnificent white marble examples of Mughal architecture, including the already mentioned Taj Mahal, the Jama Masjid, the Moti Masjid and other masterpieces, required astronomical financial expenses, which constantly depleted the treasury.
In 1648, Shah Jahan I moved the capital of the empire from Agra to Delhi, where he built for himself a completely new city, Shahjahanabad, with the red-brick fortress of Lal Qila at its center. The famous peacock throne, created especially for the coronation of Shah Jahan, was transferred to this city. The throne was surmounted by a canopy held on twelve emerald pillars, and on its top, on either side of a tree made of an obscenely large variety of precious stones and pearls, sat two peacocks. A ton of gold and 200 kilograms of precious stones were spent to create the throne.
Shah Jahan began to change the empire”s religiously tolerant policy by ordering the destruction of all newly built Hindu temples in 1632 and prohibiting further construction. A huge number of these temples were destroyed throughout the empire, especially in Benares. The orthodox Muslims began to occupy consistently leading positions in the court of the Padishah, subsequently electing as their leader an orthodox Muslim, Shahzadeh Aurangzeb, the third son of Shah Jahan.
After the death of his wife, Shah Jahan, giving all his free time to his architectural projects, lost interest in military campaigns and other large-scale activities outside the main imperial cities (Lahore, Agra and Shahjahanabad). He began to entrust the leadership of military operations to his four sons, who gradually began to gain support among the troops and get a taste for power, while the rivalry between the brothers grew, each of whom began to think about the throne of the Padishah. The logical outcome of this policy was that at the end of 1657 the brothers unleashed an internecine war that cost Shah Jahan his throne. In September 1657 the padishah succumbed to a severe bout of uremia, and many in the empire hastily decided that Shah Jahan had gone to his death. Shah Jahan”s eldest son and heir at court, Padshahzadeh Dara Shikoh, decided to conceal his father”s real condition, which prompted his brothers to act decisively: in November of that year, Shah Shuja (who declared himself the second Alexander and the third Timur) and Shahzadeh Murad Bakhsh proclaimed themselves padishahs. Shah Jahan, who had recovered by that time, gave direct control of the empire to the heir to the throne, Dara Shikoh, and himself withdrew to Agra. The third son of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, Shahzadeh Aurangzeb, won the war for the peacock throne. In June 1658 he took Agra and imprisoned his father under house arrest, where Shah Jahan spent the rest of his days (the next 8 years) watching Aurangzeb destroy his sons and grandchildren one by one. In keeping with tradition, Aurangzeb massacred his obvious and potential rivals: on Aurangzeb”s orders, the head of the executed Dar Shikoh was presented on a silver platter to his father Shah Jahan, Dar Shikoh”s eldest son Sultan Sulayman Shukoh was poisoned in prison, the younger was imprisoned for life and Murad Bakhsh was beheaded in the prison of the Gwalior fort.
On July 21, 1658, near Delhi, Shahzadeh Aurangzeb was crowned padishah, taking the throne name Alamgir (“Conqueror of the Universe”). As might be expected, the new Padishah, a devout Muslim and the son of a Muslim woman, began to pursue an anti-Hindu policy of subjecting the whole of society to the strictures of Islam. One of the first decrees of Alamgir I was to appoint a mukhtasib, who supervised the observance of Shariah norms. The strictest bans on alcohol, hemp, opium, Hindu music and fine clothes were introduced into the empire. A law was reintroduced prohibiting the erection of new Hindu temples and requiring the destruction of recently built ones. In 1679 the jizya, a tax on infidels, which had been abolished a century earlier by Padishah Akbar I, was introduced. Under Alamgir I continued the construction of magnificent buildings of expensive materials, especially mosques, the most famous of which are Moti Masjid (“Pearl Mosque”) in Delhi and Badshahi Masjid (“Mosque of the Padishah”) in Lahore, but soon the lack of funds in the treasury forced the Padishah to build more simple buildings of less expensive materials (for example, the Mausoleum of Bibi-ka-Makbar).
One manifestation of orthodox Islamic policy was the senseless and harmful conflict of Alamgir I with the Rajput princedoms of Rajputana (1679), with whom his predecessors had prudently maintained peace. The war with the Rajputs, oddly enough, led to an intra-dynastic conflict in the Padishah”s family. Shahzadeh Sultan Muhammad Akbar, the fourth and favorite son of Alamgir, who had commanded the army in Rajputana since 1680, conspired with the Rajput leaders and in January 1681 revolted against his father, intending to overthrow him from the throne. The mutiny was soon put down, the shahzadeh fled to the Marathas of Sambhaji, and in 1686 he moved to Persia, abandoning his political ambitions.
Under Padishah Alamgir I, the Baburid empire “reached dimensions which it had not yet had in the past and which it was not destined to have in the future. However, the Padishah”s power over this territory was very fragile, especially in the Deccan subhumans. Alamgir spent the rest of his long life in endless military campaigns, suppressing constant rebellions, repulsing attacks in Deccan and besieging insignificant mountainous Maratha forts, striving hard to preserve the ghostly unity of his exorbitantly vast state. The countless treasures accumulated by the three previous Padishahs were squandered by Alamgir I to maintain the stability of an empire that was bursting at the seams and collapsed immediately after his death.
Padishah Alamgir I died on February 20, 1707, at the age of 88 in Ahmednagar. His family, which remained after his death, presented a very peculiar picture, vividly demonstrating Alamgir”s complete inability to be not only an effective leader but also a normal father. Alamgir”s eldest son, Shahzadeh Muhammad Sultan Mirza, did not catch his father”s death – he died in prison at the age of 37 after 16 years of imprisonment by order of the Padishah. The second son, Shahzadeh Sultan Muhammad Muazzam-Mirza, was imprisoned along with his sons in 1687 on suspicion of theft, where he spent the next 8 years, while his beloved wife Nur un-Nisu Begum was imprisoned separately from them and exposed to humiliating treatment; in 1695 Muhammad Muazzam-Mirza was released, but for the next 12 years Alamgir deliberately showed his contempt. The fourth and once favorite son of Alamgir, Shahzadeh Sultan Muhammad Akbar-mirza, rebelled against his father in 1681, after which he fled to Persia, where he died a year before the death of the Padishah. The youngest, Shahzadeh Sultan Muhammad Kam Bakhsh Bahadur, also served a year in his father”s prison. Even the Padishah”s eldest daughter, the famous poetess Zeb un-Nisa, created her poetic masterpieces behind bars in Salimgarh prison, where she spent the last 21 years of her life for her correspondence with her brother Muhammad Akbar Mirza during his rebellion. An odd exception in the family of Alamgir I was his third son, Shahzadeh Sultan Muhammad Azam Tara-mirza, who was never sent to prison or exile by him during his father”s lifetime.
Two sons (Azam Tara-Mirza and Kam Bakhsh Bahadur) and three grandsons of Alamgir I were killed in the war for the throne that broke out between the three brothers. His throne eventually went to his second son, 64-year-old Muazzam Mirza, known in history by two throne names, Bahadur Shah I and Shah Alam I, who died five years later (February 27, 1712). His death signaled to his four sons (Muiz ad-din Muhammad-mirza, Muhammad Azim-mirza, Muhammad Rafi al-Qadr-mirza and Hujayista Akhtar-mirza) the traditional war for the peacock throne, in which the elder, Sultan Muiz ad-din Muhammad-mirza, soon slaughtered three of his brothers and some of their sons, taking the throne as Jahandar Shah.
Less than a year later Padishah Jahandar Shah, under whom the empire was actually ruled by his wife, the former dancer Lal Kunwar, was overthrown by one of his surviving nephews, Jalal ad-din Muhammad Mirza, captured and soon strangled in the presence of his wife by order of his nephew. The new padishah became known as Farrukh Siyar (1713-1719) and was only the nominal head of the empire. It can be said that it was with Farrukh Siyar that the era of puppet padishahs, used by powerful ethno-political groups to legalize their power, began. Farrukh Siyar came to power thanks to two warlords, brothers Sayyid Hasan Ali-khan Barha (d. 1722) and Sayyid Hussein Ali-khan Barha (d. 1720), referred to in history as the Sayyid brothers, who ruled the empire from 1713. In early 1719, the Sayyid brothers overthrew Farrukh Siyar, who had become out of control, imprisoned him in prison and starved him to death. At the end of February the former Padishah was blinded, and at the end of April he was strangled in prison. The brothers installed another grandson of Bahadur Shah I, 20-year-old Rafi ud-Darajat, as the new Padishah, who died in the summer of that year, passing the throne to his own brother, 19-year-old Rafi ud-Dawla. The rival Sayyid brothers” court group, led by Minister Birbal, proclaimed Niku Siyar, son of Shahzadeh Sultan Muhammad Akbar Mirza, as Padishah in May 1719, but in August the Sayyid brothers won and Niku Siyar went to prison. The new Padishah Rafi ud-Daula took the throne name Shah Jahan II, but in September of the same year 1719 he died suddenly. Then the Sayyid brothers placed another grandson of Bahadur Shah I, the 17-year-old Muhammad Shah (1719-1748), son of Shahzadeh Sultan Khujaist Akhtar Mirza and Fakhr un Nisa begum Sahiba, on the throne of the padishah.
As early as the following year, Muhammad Shah attempted to free himself from the tutelage of the Sayyid brothers and assisted the vizier Nizam ul-Mulk in the murder of Sayyid Husayn Ali-khan. In response, the second brother, Sayyid Hasan (Abdallah) Ali-khan, proclaimed the younger brother of the deceased Shah Jahan II Sultan Muhammad Ibrahim-mirza as padishah. Muhammad Shah, at the head of his troops, defeated Sayyid Hasan near Hasanpur, imprisoned him himself, and then ordered him to be poisoned.
Having thrown off the tutelage of the Sayyid brothers, Padishah Muhammad Shah at some point discovered that his real power extended to a very small part of India: the empire, for the possession of which the heirs of Alamgir I had fought so furiously, had effectively ceased to exist. The Padishah”s possessions became even smaller after Nadir Shah Afshar sacked Delhi in 1739 and annexed the territories west of the Indus River (Sindh, Peshawar and Kabul). Symbolically, Nadir Shah confiscated the famous peacock throne, the symbol of the monarchical power of the Mughal padishahs. Later the throne was dismantled into pieces in Persia. The Northern India that remained under Muhammad Shah”s rule had little control over it: the Punjab was gradually coming under the rule of the rebellious Sikhs, the Jats were expanding their territory in the Jamna-Ganga area and the Maratha confederation was successively advancing from the south. Desperate as he was, Muhammad Shah began to abuse opium in earnest and by the end of his life had lost all sense of what was going on around him.
The weak-willed Padishah Ahmad Shah (1748-1754), his son by the dancer Udham Bay, succeeded Muhammad Shah and faced a new enemy which further reduced the territory of the Baburid state – the newly emerged Pashtun power Durrani. Under Ahmad Shah the state was actually ruled by his Grand Vizier (Wazir ul-Mamalik-i-Hindustan), Nawab Auda Safdar Jang (d. 1754), who, however, failed to restore the military might of the empire. In 1751 Ahmad Shah Durrani subjugated all of Punjab, where he was stubbornly opposed by the Sikhs, and in 1752 he annexed Kashmir. The territory of the Baburid state shrank to the metropolitan region of Delhi. Soon, as a result of a confrontation between palace factions, Safdar Jang was removed from power and returned to Aud.
On June 2, 1754, the grandson of the great vizier Nizam ul-Mulk, Ghazi ad-din-khan Firoz Jang, who carried the mansab Imad ul-Mulk, with the support of the Marathas, overthrew the Padishah Ahmad Shah, blinded him and threw him into prison (where he spent the last 20 years of his life). Imad ul-Mulk enthroned the blind son of Padishah Jahandar Shah, Shahzade Muhammad Aziz ad-Din Bahadur, who took the throne name Alamgir II. Imad ul-Mulk himself took under him the post of grand vizier, concentrating in his hands the real power. During the reign of Alamgir II, there was complete feudal anarchy in the country. In 1756 Ahmad Shah Durrani reconquered the Punjab, and in the following year he captured and plundered Delhi, Agra, and Mathura. Imad ul-Mulk fled the capital, and an Afghan vizier was placed under the padishah. Alamgir II was forced to formally recognize Ahmad-shah Durrani”s rights to Punjab, Kashmir and Sindh. Ahmad Shah married the daughter of Muhammad Shah az-Zamani Hazrat Begum Sahiba, and he married his son Timur Shah to Alamgir II”s daughter Gauhar un Nisa Afraz Banu Begum Sahiba. However, as soon as Ahmad-shah Durrani left India, Imad ul-Mulk in alliance with the Marathas took Delhi and returned to power. Suspecting Padishah Alamgir II of supporting the Afghans, Imad ul-Mulk sent assassins to him on November 29, 1759.
In December 1759 the grandson of Shahzadeh Sultan Muhammad Kam Bakhsh Bahadur, Muhammad Mukhi al-Millat, who took the throne name of Shah Jahan III (“Lord of Peace”), was enthroned as the Padishah. However, as early as the fall of 1760, Ahmad-shah Durrani, in alliance with the nawab of Auda Shuja al-Daula Haydar, retook Delhi, finally removed Imad ul-Mulk from power and deposed Shah Jahan III.
The new padishah, at the will of Ahmadshah Durrani, was confirmed as the son of Shah Alamgir II, Mirza Abdallah Ali Gauhar, who took the throne name of Shah Alam II (“Lord of the Universe”). Despite such an impressive name, the new padishah also had no real power in his state. In 1763 he was embroiled in a war with the British East India Company, in which he suffered a crushing defeat at Buxar in 1764. The next year, in 1765, the Padishah acknowledged the rights of the East India Company to control Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa and was exiled by the British to Allahabad, where he lived peacefully until 1771, receiving an annual pension of 26 lakhs (2,600,000) rupees from the British East India Company. All this time northwest India, including Delhi, was under the rule of the Afghan Rohilla tribe.
In 1771 Shah Alam II decided to get rid of the tutelage of the British and seized Delhi on 25 December with the help of Nawab Auda Shuja al-Dawla. The short-lived revival of the real power of the Mughal padishah that followed is associated with the name of Mirza Najaf-khan, a Persian who was appointed the empire”s new grand vizier. In 1776 Mirza Najaf-khan won significant military victories over the Jats and the Afghan Rohilla, and in 1779 he defeated the Marathas. The political prestige of the padishah, who, as before, showed little interest in the affairs of state, began to rise steadily. In April 1782, however, Mirza Najaf Khan died, and with him finally died the hope of recreating the Mughal Empire.
Shah Alam II was left alone, surrounded by external enemies and internal feudal factions fighting for power. In June 1788, one of the padishah”s commanders, Ghulam Qadir Khan of Afghanistan, captured and sacked Delhi. The captured Shah Alam II was forced to appoint Gulam Qadir Khan as grand vizier.
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