mughal empire research paper

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Agrarian/Rural
• Animal Studies
• Archaeology
• Art and Architecture
• Asian American
• Borderlands
• Central Asia
• Citizenship and National Identity/Nationalism
• Comparative
• Demography/Family
• Digital Methods
• Diplomatic/International
• Economic/Business
• Environmental
• Ethnohistory
• Film Studies
• Food and Foodways
• Historiography/Historical Theory and Method
• Indian Ocean Studies
• Indigenous Studies (except the Americas)
• Intellectual
• Material Culture
• Memory Studies
• Middle East
• Migration/Immigration/Diaspora
• Peace and Conflict
• Popular Culture
• Postcolonial Studies
• Print Culture/History of the Book
• Race and Ethnicity
• Science and Technology
• Southeast Asia
• World/Global/Transnational
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

The mughal empire.

• Michael H. Fisher Michael H. Fisher Department of History, Oberlin College
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.357
• Published online: 26 March 2019

Founded in 1526, the Mughal Empire expanded during the late 16th and 17th centuries across almost the entire Indian subcontinent (except for the southern peninsular tip). At its peak, the empire contained roughly 1.24 million square miles and about 150 million people (half of western Europe in size but double its population). The imperial dynasty was originally Turco-Mongol. But, especially under Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), the dynasty established the Mughal Empire by incorporating Hindu and other Indian cultures and mobilizing India’s human and natural resources more effectively than any previous state there. Nonetheless, emperors almost constantly faced rebellions and revolts by rival members of the dynasty, imperial administrators, army commanders, regional rulers, and popular movements. By the early 18th century, the empire fragmented into successor states, but the dynasty remained on the throne until 1858 when the British Empire finally displaced it.

Throughout, the imperial court patronized extensive histories and literature (in Persian and a range of Indian languages) and works of architecture and representational arts. The imperial administration compiled detailed records, including about the court, army, and the lands it ruled. Historians, from the time of the empire onward, have used these diverse source materials in their own analyses.

• ʿAlamgir/Aurangzeb

You do not currently have access to this article

Please login to access the full content.

Access to the full content requires a subscription

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Asian History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 08 July 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [81.177.182.154]
• 81.177.182.154

Character limit 500 /500

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Advance articles
• Editor's Choice
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• Why Publish with EREH?
• About European Review of Economic History
• About the European Historical Economics Society
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Contact the European Historical Economics Society
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Data availability, acknowledgements.

• < Previous

The evolutionary empire: demystifying state formation in Mughal South Asia (1556–1707)

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Safya Morshed, The evolutionary empire: demystifying state formation in Mughal South Asia (1556–1707), European Review of Economic History , Volume 28, Issue 2, May 2024, Pages 303–306, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head029

• Permissions Icon Permissions

This article summarizes my thesis, which studies the impact of conflicts on the Mughal South Asian state formation in the seventeenth century. This thesis examines the relationship between states, elites, and the peasantry in the face of changing conflict intensity. It uses newly collected conflict and state-personnel data to map the evolving structure of the state, arguing that the patterns indicate a localization of the state's administration. By comparing patterns to other large early modern land empires, the text reflects on our broader understanding of the way in which conflict affected changes in state institutions, and the evolving dynamics between core and periphery.

Since Charles Tilly’s ( Tilly 1990 ) groundbreaking work on the effect of war on state development, the literature on the relationship between conflict and state capacity has expanded considerably. Yet, despite being one of the most conflict affected regions in the early modern era ( Dincecco et al. 2022 ), precolonial South Asia has remained relatively unexplored in comparative debates. Part of the reason for the lack of attention paid to the Mughal empire is perhaps that the state has remained an enigma to many economic historians, especially as historians in an older literature have vehemently disagreed about the nature of the state ( Guha 2015 ). Where some economic historians have argued that the state was highly centralized and fiscally extractive, a more recent literature has taken issue with this interpretation through the examination of more local sources ( Hasan 2004 ). Whilst it seems more and more certain that the Mughal state did not have the extractive capacity it was once believed to have, there is still difficulty in reconciling this interpretation with existing sources and the wider comparative state capacity debates.

My doctoral thesis aims to shed new light on this. My research studies how conflicts affected state formation in the Mughal empire, specifically looking at the impact of rebellions and the state’s institutional responses to conflict change. It shows that the precarious relationship between the state and elites ( Mansabdars and Zamindars ) led the government to adopt policies which prioritized local governance and empowered the local elite. By examining state-periphery relationships and their evolution over time, the thesis offers explanations for the unusual patterns of state behaviour discovered in the data. By focusing on the seventeenth century, often considered to be the state's most centralized period, my findings have implications for wider debates on the great divergence ( Broadberry et al. 2015 ), the prevalence of the seventeenth century crisis ( Parker 2013 ), and the symbiotic relationship between the state and the economy.

Where recent literature on Mughal state has been more qualitative, I adopt a relatively more quantitative approach to measuring the effects of conflict on state development over time. By building or making accessible new datasets of Mughal conflicts and government officials, I map the empire's institutional transformation and identify critical periods of structural change. The first of these new datasets constructed is the Mughal Conflict dataset derived from contemporary state histories. I differentiate this from other conflict datasets on the basis of its focus on conflicts from the state perspective, and for the amount of detail the source affords. The first chapter of my thesis describes this dataset and explains why this method was most suitable for studying conflicts in South Asia where shared sovereignty with local elites was common. The second dataset I use is Athar Ali's ‘Apparatus of Empire’, which provides details of 10,735 official appointments in the Mughal government ( Ali 1985 ). This is a tremendous source for the study of the seventeenth century Indian state where data has otherwise been scarce. By digitizing and cleaning Ali's carefully compiled tables, I am able to analyse the state in more detail than past literature has allowed, consequently revealing previously unseen patterns.

The data reveal some fascinating insights. For example, the second chapter of my thesis explores the institutionalized practice or rebel forgiveness, where rebellious elites (and even the peasantry) were routinely reincorporated into the state with the return of their confiscated wealth and status. I show that 45 percent of a sample of 267 rebels were forgiven, despite these rebels often engaging in violence against the state ( Morshed 2023 ). I argue that rebel forgiveness was not indicative of weakness within the state, but a strategy to reduce administrative costs by retaining skilled administrators. Rebels’ local specific skillsets made them better able to administer their localities, yet their limited ambit of influence meant they often posed a low threat to the state even if they re-engaged in rebellion. Using logistic regressions, I show that rebels of ethnicities and religions more distant to that of the Mughals' were most likely to be forgiven, indicating that local and ethnic specific skillsets were key considerations in rebel forgiveness. I demonstrate this relationship further with the use of case-studies that explore the mechanisms involved and the reasoning of the state in their decisions. For example, one case study involves Sidi Yaqut, the Mughal admiral of African descent who was essential to the defeat of the East India Company during Child's War (1686). When the state considered replacing Sidi's men, the chronicler wrote: “The chief nobles, however, submitted that only the Abyssinians and particularly those trained by Sidi Yaqut, could administer those mountainous regions, command the fort of Rahiri and keep the sea passage to the House of Allah open” ( Khan 1975 ). Thus, the passage highlights the state's prioritization of administrator's abilities in determining their position in government.

The third chapter maps the phenomenal change in the intensity of conflicts the state faced, where the data from the Mughal Conflict Dataset indicate that wars and rebellions became more frequent but also larger in terms of the number of soldiers engaged in them. We can also see a transformation in the nature of conflicts, where the state increasingly faced rebellions from more localized elites and peasantry over time. By looking at the correlation of the timing of and frequency of famines and very large peasant conflicts, my thesis proposes the shift in conflict intensity can be explained by exogenous factors related climate as opposed to endogenous factors related to the state’s extraction of peasant resources, which was an explanation previously proposed in older literature ( Raychaudhuri 1982 ). The analysis shows that turbulence of peasant migration and desperation at the local level explains a dynamic shift between state and elite relations, where the influx of peasants on to Zamindar lands empowered local intermediaries fiscally and militarily.

The fourth chapter uses Ali’s dataset on official appointments to look at how state expenditure on officials changed between 1570 and 1658. State expenditure on Mansabdars is a good proxy for understanding state capacity, where it has been estimated that in 1595 around 80 percent of state expenditure was spent on the jagirdars , who were the administrative and military backbone of the empire ( Moosvi 2015 ). The results are again surprising. As expected, we see in the data an extraordinary increase in the total number of officials over time (even relative to population), yet after 1630 total expenditure on salaries practically flattens and average salaries fall significantly. I argue this pattern exhibits a localization of the Mughal state's structure in the face of greater internal conflict. The state was hiring more localized officials to increase its administrative capacity and to develop better information channels between centre and locality. Drawing on Ottoman state literature ( Koh 2021 ), I discuss an alternative interpretation of the state’s structure and take the view that larger conflicts incentivized the state to increase the number of administrators in the empire. By reducing the ambit of officials' jurisdictions of governance, the state's reach was increasingly targeted and present on the local level, allowing for more flexibility in administration.

In the last chapter, I explore the impact rebellions had on state formation in large agrarian empires by comparing the Mughal Indian experience to that of Qing China (1644–1911). The chapter highlights that despite both empires facing large internal rebellions, the institutional response to these conflicts by each state seems to have been very different, where state fiscal expansion stagnated in China in the face of peasant rebellions ( Chan 2008 ). I suggest a possible explanation for these differences is the degree of ethnic and religious diversity in India compared to China, where because the information costs of administering diverse groups was higher in India, the Mughal empire was more dependent on the influence of intermediaries. However, this mechanism is far from proven.

The fascinating case of the Mughal state formation process bares important lessons for our understanding of centre–periphery relationships. My thesis demonstrates that in the face of increased agricultural disturbance, the empire's institutions adapted further to local conditions and environments. There was a significant expansion in the total number of government officials, but these officials were overwhelmingly from more local communities, resulting in a shift of the locus of the empire to the local level. I argue the increased incorporation of localized elite should not be considered a sign of weakness of the state, but rather as a process of consolidation. These officials became part and parcel of the state’s apparatus, where their connections to local communities made them important resources for an empire increasingly grappling with internal unrest. Parcelling of control was therefore an effective tool for the government in increasing its capacity. Yet, in doing so, the state took into their employ officials with independent minds and objectives, as well as any grievances between the locals and these elites. The state apparatus thus exhibited a duality, becoming more pervasive on the local level, yet more vulnerable to loss of central control. The findings bear lessons in institutional adaption in the face of conflicts, and implications of understanding ‘what’ the state truly was in early modern history.

There is no new data analysis in this article that is not already available online. Data used in my research is discussed in detail in my thesis which is available online in the LSE dissertations archive, accessible via this link: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/4505/ . Statistics provided have references in my published article ( Morshed 2023 ).

I am very grateful to my supervisors, Professor Tirthankar Roy and Dr. Jordan Claridge, for their guidance in writing my thesis. I am also grateful to the LSE Economic History department faculty and PhD students for their insights. I am additionally grateful to the Economic History Society for providing support through the Bursary Scheme, as well as the Radwan Travel and Discovery Fund.There are many others whose advice and guidance has been very valuable in writing and conducting my research, though it is not possible to name all of them here due to limited space. A full list of these acknowledgements, as well as the references and sources used in the thesis, can be found in my submitted thesis which is available in the online LSE thesis archives.

Ali , A. ( 1985 ) The Apparatus of Empire: Awards of Ranks, Offices, and Titles to the Mughal Nobility, 1574-1658 . Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University .

Broadberry , S. , Custodis , J. and Gupta , B. ( 2015 ). India and the great divergence: an Anglo-Indian comparison of GDP per capita, 1600–1871 . Explorations in Economic History 55 , pp. 58 – 75 .

Google Scholar

Chan , K. ( 2008 ). Foreign trade, commercial policies and the political economy of the song and Ming dynasties of China . Asia Pacific Economic History Review 48 , pp. 68 – 90 .

Dincecco , M. , Fenske , J. , Menon , A. and Mukherjee , S. ( 2022 ). Pre-colonial warfare and long-run development in India . The Economic Journal 132 , pp. 981 – 1010 .

Guha , S. ( 2015 ). Rethinking the economy of Mughal India: lateral perspectives . Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 , pp. 532 – 75 .

Hasan , F. ( 2004 ). State and Locality in Mughal India: Power Relations in Western India, C . University of Cambridge Oriental : Publications , pp. 1572 – 730 .

Google Preview

Khan , K. ( 1975 ). Muntakhab ul Lubab, trans . Syed Moinul Haq Karachi : Pakistan Historical Soc .

Koh , C. ( 2021 ). The ottoman postmaster: contractors, communication and early modern state formation . Past & present 251 , pp. 113 – 52 .

Moosvi , S. ( 2015 ). The Economy of the Mughal Empire, C.1595: A Statistical Study. Revised and Enlarged . New Delhi : Oxford University Press .

Morshed , S. ( 2023 ). State of forgiveness: cooperation, conciliation, and state formation in Mughal South Asia (1556–1707) . Economic History Review pp. 1 – 30 . https://doi.org/gate3.library.lse.ac.uk/10.1111/ehr.13252 .

Parker , G. ( 2013 ). Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century . New Haven; London : Yale University Press .

Raychaudhuri , T. ( 1982 ). The State and the Economy. In T. Raychaudhuri and I. Habib (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , p. 1982 .

Tilly , C. ( 1990 ). Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 . Cambridge, Mass., USA : Blackwell .

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• The EHES Blog
• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1474-0044
• Print ISSN 1361-4916
• Copyright © 2024 European Historical Economics Society
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Brill | Nijhoff

Brill | Wageningen Academic

Brill Germany / Austria

Böhlau

Brill | Fink

Brill | mentis

Brill | Schöningh

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

V&R unipress

Open Access

Open Access for Authors

Transformative Agreements

Open Access and Research Funding

Open Access for Librarians

Open Access for Academic Societies

Discover Brill’s Open Access Content

Organization

Stay updated

Corporate Social Responsiblity

Investor Relations

Policies, rights & permissions

Review a Brill Book

Author Portal

How to publish with Brill: Files & Guides

Fonts, Scripts and Unicode

Publication Ethics & COPE Compliance

Data Sharing Policy

Brill MyBook

Ordering from Brill

Author Newsletter

Piracy Reporting Form

Sales Managers and Sales Contacts

Ordering From Brill

Titles No Longer Published by Brill

Catalogs, Flyers and Price Lists

E-Book Collections Title Lists and MARC Records

How to Manage your Online Holdings

LibLynx Access Management

Discovery Services

KBART Files

MARC Records

Online User and Order Help

Rights and Permissions

Latest Key Figures

Latest Financial Press Releases and Reports

Annual General Meeting of Shareholders

Share Information

Specialty Products

Press and Reviews

Share link with colleague or librarian

Stay informed about this journal!

• Get New Issue Alerts
• Get Advance Article alerts
• Get Citation Alerts

The Mughal Empire from Jahangir to Shah Jahan: Art, Architecture, Politics, Law and Literature , edited by Ebba Koch and Ali Anooshahr

Ebba Koch and Ali Anooshahr, eds., The Mughal Empire from Jahangir to Shah Jahan: Art, Architecture, Politics, Law and Literature. Mumbai: The Marg Foundation, 2019, 320 pp., ISBN 9789383243266. $90.00.

This beautifully produced and meticulously edited volume brings together a series of papers that were originally presented in Vienna in May 2014 at the workshop “The Mughal Empire under Shah Jahan,” organized by Stephan Popp and Ebba Koch. The choice to also include Jahangir within it must have been informed by the idea that there was a structural continuity between the reigns of father and son. Later in the book, Ebba Koch, the driving force behind this publication, deplores the fact that the scholarly trend that was initiated by Norbert Elias’ Die höfische Gesellschaft (1969) was never taken up in earnest within Mughal studies, which, in her view, remained dominated by economic and administrative issues for far too long. Hence, this book is about Mughal courtly society and is part of a cultural turn in precolonial South Asian studies, a process in which many of the authors in this volume have played a prominent role.

One such scholar is Corinne Lefèvre, who, since she defended her PhD thesis in 2005, has made her mark with various publications on Jahangir. In the first chapter, she revisits her earlier work but now more specifically raises the issue of continuity. It is mainly due to her earlier work that we know that the most significant figure who would disagree with the continuity argument would be Shah Jahan himself. In all the manifestations of his power—ranging from visual images to the panegyrics he commissioned—he attempted to distance himself from his father’s seditious reign. Consequently, Lefèvre notices some changes in the metaphorical register employed by Shah Jahan. In expressing his universal rule over the world, the latter used far fewer portraits of foreign monarchs in the “divan of kings” motif and instead introduced European-inspired globes and the biblical figure of Solomon as a royal model. Overall, though, Lefèvre stresses a pattern of “hidden indebtedness” that not only involved the Mughal ideology of universal rule but also that of mercantilism. The latter point is more convincing than the former. In the case of ideology, one may actually detect either a much longer continuity that goes back to Akbar and even to the earlier Timurids, or a break when taking account solely of Jahangir and Shah Jahan.

The longer continuity with Akbar’s reign is confirmed by the important second article by Anna Kollatz on Majālis-i Jahāngīrī by the Mughal historian and translator ʿAbd al-Sattar b. Qasim Lahauri. As it focuses on the king’s wise utterances, ʿAbd al-Sattar introduced the Sufi genre of malfūẓāt to the Mughal repertoire of imperial propaganda. By ranging rationality against bigotry, the aim was to curb the influence of Islamic scholars and to highlight the integrating power of the emperor as the “perfect man” and “the manifestation of all.” Far from being a proto-secularist idea, it is deeply mystical, the philosopher king acting as the mediator between the outward and the inner spheres. Being specifically about Jahangir, all this is perfectly in line with the imperial ideology formulated for Akbar by Abuʾl-Fazl. Simultaneously, though, one can already sense a break with Shah Jahan, who employed more orthodox Islamic bases for his rule.

In another fine chapter of close reading, Ali Anooshahr discusses another Mughal text, Bahāristān-i Ghaibī . Thus, we learn of the struggle of its author, the Mughal officer Mirza Nathan, to survive amidst fierce princely competition for the throne. As he communicates with his patron in a dream, it becomes clear that the mirza’s loyalty to the emperor derives not from the law but from mysticism. Discussing Shah Jahan, Anooshahr highlights that the Mughal officers sensed “very explicitly and humiliatingly the change of the imperial ‘ideology.’” By focusing on the 1626 coup, Munis Faruqui adds further detail to the conflict between father and son. His study of four different accounts corroborates Lefèvre’s position by showing how Shah Jahan could eclipse the “despotic” legacy of his father by directly linking with his grandfather Akbar. Moving to architecture, in Mehreen Chida-Razvi’s chapter we are again confronted with the discontinuity between the reigns of father and son. Stressing that Jahangir’s mausoleum in Lahore “is clearly not a part of Shah Jahan’s oeuvre,” she implicitly distinguishes between Jahangir’s more erratic designs and Shah Jahan’s superb sense of “symmetry, perfection of design, and hierarchical placement.” Although budget limitations may account for many of the mausoleum’s anomalies, she also refers to the increase in Islamic orthodoxy during Shah Jahan’s reign.

As in architecture, Shah Jahan’s feeling for decorum and orderliness also shows in his court ceremonial, as demonstrated in another excellent chapter by Harit Joshi. As a result, the more static and orthodox Islamic court under Shah Jahan stands in contrast to his father’s. Instead of poking fun at the religious classes—as seen in the Majālis at his father’s court—Shah Jahan wanted to appease them. In the next chapter on presents, Stephan Popp can but agree. He perceptively concludes that Shah Jahan systematized and bureaucratized the practice of giving and receiving courtly presents which, under Jahangir, had been more personal and therefore less predictable. A slight anomaly is the chapter by Roman Siebertz, which deals with the Dutch East India Company’s attempt to secure a new imperial decree from Shah Jahan. Ignoring the issue of continuity, the article is somewhat flawed by the suggestion that the VOC sought to become an imperial mansabdar .

The rich chapters by Sunil Sharma and Chander Shekhar on literature again hint at the differences between the volume’s two main protagonists. Sharma contrasts Jahangir’s interest in Indian flora and fauna with Shah Jahan’s interest in topographical and travel poems, particularly about Kashmir and increasingly by Panjabi poets. He also corroborates the conclusions coming from the important work of Busch and Truschke that the court in this period experienced a shift of interest from Sanskrit to the vernacular. In his chapter, Chander Shekhar discusses the (dis)continuity issue more in the longer term, referring to the model set out by Abuʾl-Fazl and again mentioning Shah Jahan’s focus on “the re-establishment of an Islamic code of governance.”

The greatest surprise of this volume appears in the groundbreaking essay by the art historian Ebba Koch, which focuses on Mughal legal custom and practice surrounding the ownership of real estate. In discussing the escheat of land and houses under Shah Jahan, Koch concludes that it was (in complete disregard of Islamic inheritance law) regular practice, also making the point that the higher the status of a noble, the greater the insecurity about what he could bequeath to his heirs. Koch thus supports the views of contemporary European travelers by stating that the prestige of a Muslim nobleman depended not on his right to own land but on his closeness to the emperor. Things were different, however, for the more rooted Rajput nobility and the simple homeowners at Agra whose properties Shah Jahan had to buy to be able to implement his building plans.

The penultimate chapters, by Susan Stronge and J. P. Losty respectively, are both more technically art historical. Stronge elaborates on the distinction of Shah Jahan’s use of tile revetments while Losty convincingly uses floral evidence to date the Dara Shukoh Album to the period of 1630-33. For this, Losty zooms in on the use of flowers and animals in Mughal albums and detects a more naturalistic use under Jahangir against a more decorative one under Shah Jahan. As is the case throughout the book, this chapter stands out for its magnificent illustrations, which support the argument superbly.

Finally, R. D. McChesney provides a fitting epilogue by showing how Shah Jahan’s legacy continued in the policies of the later Afghan rulers, ʿAbd al-Rahman Khan and his son Habib Allah Khan. In a way, their story nicely mirrors that of their Mughal models, albeit in this case the son was much closer to the erratic Jahangir whereas his father was much more like the bureaucratic Shah Jahan. Unfortunately, a lack of resources meant that it was impossible for them to achieve anything near the accomplishments of their role model; the days when one could carve out an Indian empire from Kabul were definitively over.

To conclude, this is a very important book and a highpoint in the current wave of philological and iconological studies that pay significant attention to the emic meaning of texts, images, and buildings that for too long have been sidelined. Contradicting its own objective, though, it demonstrates in fascinating detail the discontinuities between Jahangir and Shah Jahan and throws light on a transition from “cosmic” to “righteous” rule. Shah Jahan himself would certainly have been delighted with such an outcome.

Content Metrics

Reference Works

Primary source collections

COVID-19 Collection

How to publish with Brill

Open Access Content

Contact & Info

Sales contacts

Publishing contacts

Stay Updated

Newsletters

Social Media Overview

Terms and Conditions  

Privacy Statement  

Cookie Settings  

Accessibility

Legal Notice

Terms and Conditions   |   Privacy Statement   |  Cookie Settings   |   Accessibility   |  Legal Notice   |  Copyright © 2016-2024

Copyright © 2016-2024

• [81.177.182.154]
• 81.177.182.154

Character limit 500 /500

We’re fighting to restore access to 500,000+ books in court this week. Join us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

The Mughals of India

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

• Examines the history of the Mughal presence in India from 1526to the mid-eighteenth century
• Creates a new framework for understanding the Mughal empire by addressing themes that have not been explored before.
• Subtly traces the legacy of the Mughals’ world in today's India.

Editorial Reviews

"A rare blend of deep and convincing research with elegantliterary style ... a useful and pleasant reading for both thescholars and general public."  Vostok

"This book offers an entertaining, readable, and conciseconceptual analysis of courtly life in the Mughal era. Even expertson Mughal India will learn from Mukia's penetrating insights andfind a great deal to interest them in his lively descriptions ofcourt life."  South Asia News

Book Description

From the back cover.

Based upon a wide range of sources – court chronicles,official documents, poetry, paintings, travellers’ accounts,bazaar gossip and folktales – the book takes account of boththe tensions and harmonies within the court and the durability ofthe empire’s structures, together with the transient momentsof the Mughals' world and its lasting legacy in today’sIndia.

About the Author

Plus-circle add review comment reviews.

1,958 Views

29 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

In collections.

Uploaded by World Politics on December 17, 2021

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser.

World History Project - 1750 to the Present

Course: world history project - 1750 to the present   >   unit 1.

• READ: Ottoman Empire

READ: Mughal Empire

• READ: Tokugawa Shogunate
• READ: Sub-Saharan Africa
• READ: Americas in 1750
• READ: Oceania and the Pacific in 1750
• BEFORE YOU WATCH: The Omani Empire
• WATCH: The Omani Empire
• READ: Qing Shih (Graphic Biography)
• Expanding to a Global Scale

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Second read: key ideas and understanding content.

• Looking at the map, what do you notice about the changing shape and size of the Mughal Empire in the years leading up to 1750?
• What groups or classes of people were the most important supporters of Mughal rule?
• Like other empires, the Mughal Empire had lots of different communities. How did it successfully rule all of these groups until the mid-eighteenth century?
• According to the article, what was the role of the Mughal Empire in the global economy?
• What internal challenges did the Mughal emperors face in 1750?
• What external challenges did the Mughal emperors face in 1750?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

• Based on the evidence in this article, what aspects of the Mughal Empire in 1750 seem unique or distinctive, and what aspects seem to be part of a wider global pattern?
• If you could ask the author for one more piece of information about the Mughal Empire—that isn’t included in this article—what would it be?

The Mughal Empire

An empire in fragments, networks of trade and bureaucracy, building the mughal state, internal problems emerge, external rivals for power.

• A princely state, is simply a state where the authority is a prince.
• A zealot is someone who is excessively focused on what they believe in.

Want to join the conversation?

• Upvote Button navigates to signup page
• Downvote Button navigates to signup page
• Flag Button navigates to signup page

• Research Consultation
• How-to Guides
• People Search
• Library Databases
• Research Guides
• Find Periodicals
• Google Scholar
• Library Map
• Texts for Vets
• Interlibrary Loan - ILL
• Research & Instruction
• Computers and Laptops
• Services For...
• Reserve a Room
• APSU Records Management
• Library Collections
• Digital Collections
• Special Collections
• Veterans' Oral History
• Government Resources
• Subject Librarians
• Library Information
• Woodward Library Society
• New @ Woodward Library
• Celebration of Scholarship
• Join Woodward Library Society

Resources on Einstein, Gandhi, and Mughal India: Resources for Mughal India

• Find Film Reviews
• Find Book Reviews
• Article Databases
• Resources for Mughal India
• Citing Sources

General Resources

• Cambridge University’s Digital Himalaya
• Digital South Asia Library
• Fordham University’s Indian History Sourcebook
• Duke University’s Going Global in Mughal India
• The Packard Humanities Institute Persian Literature in Translation
• Digital South Asia Library’s Historical Atlas of South Asia
• Columbia University’s South Asian Literature Primary Sources
• Muktabodha Indological Research Institute
• National Archive of India Online Collection

Persian Records with English Translation

• Humayun Nama: The History of Humayun by Gul-Badan Begum
• The Akbar Nama & Ain-i Akbari of Abu'l-Fazl
• The Tabaqat-i-Akbari (in 3 Vols.) of Khwajah Nizamuddin Ahmad : 
• The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians by Henry Miers Elliot edited by‎ John Dowson : 

Architecture in Mughal India through the Lens of Taj Mahal

• “About the Taj” drop down menu
• Scroll to bottom of page to see links to other constructions, like the Agra Fort and the Akbar Tomb.
• List of archaeological museums in India
• Annotated bibliography compiled by the ICOMOS Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative  
• Cornell University Library’s “Beyond the Taj”
• Amal-i-Salih (a primary-source account of the life and reign of Shah Jahan)
• Note: An English translation can potentially be ordered through interlibrary loan. However, most library catalog’s that have this text list the language as Persian or Urdu.
• Jahangirnama
• Travels in the Mogul Empire , A.D. 1656-1668 , by Francois Bernier 
• Aga Khand Collections

Gender in Mughal India

• Memoirs of Gulbadan Banu Begum and her Ahval (incomplete, only one copy exists today): http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Or_166 ; http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00litlinks/gulbadan/index.html
• Documents like bainama (sale deeds), hibanama (gift deeds), nikahnama (marriage contract) give evidence of women inheriting and controlling property. These might be findable in the National Archive of India’s online portal: https://www.abhilekh-patal.in/jspui/
• A detailed analysis of artwork, writings, and records that depict women, can be used to make inferences about gender. See Professor Kavita Singh’s lecture on the portrayal of women in Mughal paintings for how this can be done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcRo5-gJkog&ab_channel=RanaSafvi
• “’Middle Class’ Women in Mughal India’ 2014, volume 75, p. 295-206
• “Women and Property in Mughal Inida” 2007, vol. 68, p. 406-415.
• “Representation of Professional and Working Women in Mughal Miniature Painting (16 th -18 th Century)” 2006, volume 67, p. 307-311
• “Rethinking Mughal India: Challening of a Princess’ Memoir” 2003, vol. 38, p. 53-65
• “Property Rights of Muslim Women in Mughal India” 1987, vol. 48, p. 261-270
• Bibliography and appendix of artwork from this thesis
• Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires , chapter 3: “ Hierarchies of Age and Gender in the Mughal Construction of Domesticity and Empire "

Religion of Akbar

• A History of India: Muntakhab-Ut-Tawarikh, Vol. 2 (excerpts)
• “The second volume covers the first forty years of Mughal Emperor  Akbar 's reign from 14 February 1556 to October 1595.  Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni  was Eye-witness of  Akbar 's era. This volume is an unusually frank and critical account of Akbar's administrative measures, particularly regarding religion and his conduct. This volume was kept concealed till Akbar's death and was published after Jahangir's accession (approximately in 1605).”
• S.M. Ikrams’ Muslim Civilization in India, Chapter 12: “Religion at Akbar’s Court” 
• Administrative reports from Akbar’s reign
• Dabistan: or, School of manners: the religious beliefs, observances philosophic opinions and social customs of the nations of the East
• The Din-i-Ilahi or The Religion of Akbar

Science in Mughal India

• The Madras Observatory: 1792 - 1931
• Madras Observatory: A Forgotten Page in History 
• Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts “Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics: Contributions and Contemporary Relevance”
• University of St. Andrew’s MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
• Primary sources cited in S.M. Razaullah Ansari’s “Introduction of Modern Western Astronomy in India During 18-19 Centuries
• The Met’s Astronomy and Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World
• U.S. National Library of Medicine’s “Islamic Culture and the Medical Arts” (contains primary sources)

How was Mughal India Modern?

Consider resources listed under all other topics – this topic can cover gender, architecture, science, religion, etc.

• S.M. Ikrams’ Muslim Civilization in India, Chapter 17: “ Economic and Social Development under the Mughals ”: 
• The British Museum’s 7,885 objects related to the Mughal dynasty
• “Akbar and Technology” in Social Scientist , Vol. 2, No. 9/10, p. 3-15
• Documents the administrative system of the Moghul Empire, the “Account of the Hindu Sciences,” revenue of the empire, and traditions and culture of its people

Any of the Mughal Emperors or their Family Members

• Penn Librarie’s Padshahnama image illustration
• Babur’s The Baburnama (Memoirs of Babur)
• The Tarikh-I Rashidi
• Humayun’s Qanun-I Humayuni (also called the Humayunama )
• Akbar’s The Akbarnama
• Muntakhab-ut-Tavarikh
• Jahangir’s The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri
• The 'Padshahnama' (Book of Emperors') of Adb Al-Hamid Labhori (illustrations)

Alauddin and Akbar

Look at sources above for primary sources on Akbar

• Rebel Sultans —Pillai 
• University of California, Berkley’s South Asian Primary Sources Guide
• Project Gutenberg’s Khilji Dynasty
• The Life and Works of Sultan Alauddin Khalji
• The Reign of Alauddin Khilji
• Library holdings for The Reing of Aluddin Khilji

Subject Guide

Ask The InfoHub

To view chat hours, submit an e-mail question, or view other contact options, please visit the Ask the InfoHub webpage .

E-resources Formatted for Your Mobile Device

• APSU Library Mobile Databases
• << Previous: Websites
• Next: Find Periodicals >>
• Last Updated: Jun 7, 2024 1:39 PM
• URL: https://libguides.apsu.edu/modernworldhistory

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

•  We're Hiring!
•  Help Center

Mughal Empire

• Most Cited Papers
• Most Downloaded Papers
• Newest Papers
• Palaces Follow Following
• The Gardens of Mughal India Follow Following
• Mughal Architecture Follow Following
• Indo-Persian Cultural History Follow Following
• Mughal painting Follow Following
• Imperial ideology and representation Follow Following
• Mughal Emperor Akbar Follow Following
• Indo-Islamic Art and Architecture Follow Following
• Mughal India Follow Following
• Islamic art and architecture Follow Following

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• Academia.edu Journals
•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024