The Mughal Empire
A Timurid prince crosses the Khyber Pass with cannons and founds an empire that builds the Taj Mahal, then unravels under its own weight
In 1526 a displaced Central Asian prince named Babur used gunpowder artillery to shatter the Delhi Sultanate at Panipat and found the Mughal Empire. Over the next two centuries his descendants built one of the wealthiest states in the early modern world, ruled through Akbar's religious tolerance and Aurangzeb's iron orthodoxy alike, and raised the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. This timeline follows the empire from Babur's conquest through Aurangzeb's overextension, the Maratha challenge, Nader Shah's sack of Delhi, and the East India Company's rise, to 1857, when the British exiled the last Mughal emperor and ended the dynasty.
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- 1504 to 1525Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The arts of the Mughal Empire
The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.Babur, a Descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan, Turns Toward India
Zahir ud-Din Muhammad Babur was born in 1483 in the Fergana Valley, in what is now Uzbekistan, a Timurid prince descended from Timur (Tamerlane) on his father's side and from Genghis Khan on his mother's side through the Chagatai line. As a young ruler he tried repeatedly to hold and then reclaim Samarkand, Timur's old capital, and lost both that city and his home territory of Fergana to stronger Uzbek rivals. Driven out of Central Asia, he occupied Kabul in 1504 and ruled there for two decades before turning his ambitions toward Hindustan, the plains of northern India. He wrote his own account of these years in Turki, the Baburnama, one of the first true autobiographies in Islamic literature. In November 1525 he set out from Kabul on the expedition that would end the Delhi Sultanate.
Why it matters: Babur's failure in Central Asia is the reason the Mughal Empire exists in India at all: a prince who could not hold Samarkand redirected a lifetime of military experience and Timurid legitimacy toward the far richer, less defended plains beyond the Khyber Pass. His mixed Timurid-Genghisid lineage gave his descendants a claim to rule that blended Persian courtly culture with the memory of the Mongol conquests.
How we know: Babur's own memoirs, the Baburnama, survive in his native Chagatai Turki and were translated into Persian in 1589-90 under his grandson Akbar; the Victoria and Albert Museum holds an illustrated imperial copy and the British Library holds another dated to the early 1590s with 143 surviving paintings.
Born: 1483, Fergana Valley (modern Uzbekistan) · Paternal ancestor: Timur (Tamerlane) · Maternal ancestor: Genghis Khan, via the Chagatai line · Took Kabul: 1504 · +1 more
SourcesRelated timelines- The Mongol Empire → · Babur's mother's line traced back to Genghis Khan and the Chagatai Khanate that splintered from the Mongol Empire.
- April 21, 1526Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Timeline: Mughal Empire
The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry.Babur Wins the First Battle of Panipat With Cannon and Cart
At Panipat, about 50 miles north of Delhi, Babur's roughly 12,000 men met the army of Ibrahim Lodi, the Sultan of Delhi, whose forces are usually put between 30,000 and 100,000 with as many as 1,000 war elephants. Babur had no such numbers, but he had gunpowder: 15 to 20 field cannon under Ottoman-trained gunners, lashed behind a barricade of roughly 700 carts tied together with rawhide, an arrangement he had learned of from Ottoman use at the Battle of Chaldiran. Matchlock men fired from cover between the carts while cavalry under the tulughma tactic swept around both flanks. The cannon fire panicked Ibrahim's elephants, which trampled back through his own ranks, and Ibrahim Lodi was killed in the fighting along with thousands of his men.
Why it matters: The battle ended the Delhi Sultanate outright and put Babur in control of Delhi and Agra within days, giving him the base from which the Mughal Empire's near 200-year run over northern India began. It also demonstrated, on Indian soil for the first time at this scale, that a smaller force built around field artillery and coordinated cavalry could defeat a far larger army built around elephants and numbers.
How we know: Babur described the campaign and the battle in his own memoirs, the Baburnama, written in Chagatai Turki; his account of the cart-and-cannon defense and the tulughma flanking maneuver is the primary basis for modern reconstructions of the battle.
Date: April 21, 1526 · Location: Panipat, north of Delhi · Babur's force: About 12,000, with 15-20 cannon · Result: Ibrahim Lodi killed; Delhi Sultanate ends
SourcesRelated timelines- Ancient India → · The battle ended the last Delhi Sultanate and opened the deeper span of Indian history to Mughal rule.
- 1540 to 1555Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Timeline: Mughal Empire
The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry.Humayun Loses Delhi, Then Recovers It With Persian Help
Babur died in 1530, four years after Panipat, having built new gardens and a few buildings in the Persian style but leaving his conquest militarily fragile. His son Humayun succeeded him but, in the V&A's description, lacked his father's determination and military brilliance. Within ten years the Afghan noble Sher Shah Suri defeated Humayun's forces and drove him out of Hindustan entirely, taking Delhi and ruling from there himself; Sher Shah's own rule was short, but the V&A notes he instituted an extremely effective administrative system that outlasted him. Humayun fled with a small band of followers to the Safavid court of Shah Tahmasp in Iran. With Safavid backing he retook Kabul from his own brother Kamran, then launched a campaign back into Hindustan, and after nearly 17 years away from his former capital he defeated the remaining Sur forces and regained Delhi and Agra in 1555.
Why it matters: The loss shows how thin Babur's conquest still was at his death: a single capable rival could unseat his heir within a decade. Humayun's recovery, however incomplete his hold once he returned, kept the Mughal line alive and put the empire back in Mughal hands just as his son Akbar was old enough to inherit it; without this second conquest, the dynasty founded at Panipat would have ended within a single generation.
How we know: The V&A's institutional history of Mughal art traces Humayun's exile, Safavid-backed recovery, and death directly from Mughal court chronicles held in its manuscript collection.
Delhi lost to: Sher Shah Suri, within a decade of Panipat · Humayun's refuge: Court of Shah Tahmasp, Safavid Iran · Recovered Delhi and Agra: 1555, after nearly 17 years · Died: 1556, after a fall on his library stairs · +1 more
Sources - 1556 to 1605Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The arts of the Mughal Empire
The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.Akbar Expands Mughal Rule Across Northern India
Akbar became emperor in 1556 at 13 under the guardianship of Bayram Khan, an aristocratic Iranian noble who had served his father. Over the following 49 years Akbar extended Mughal rule over most of the north of the Indian subcontinent, from Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the east, and from Kabul and Kashmir in the north to the edge of the independent Deccan sultanates in the south. Some kingdoms were conquered outright; others signed treaties and entered imperial service rather than fight. A key step came in 1575 at the Battle of Tukaroi, where Mughal forces under Mun'im Khan decisively defeated the Sultanate of Bengal and Bihar under Daud Khan Karrani, leading directly to Bengal's annexation.
Why it matters: This nearly half-century of steady expansion turned the shaky conquest Babur and Humayun had fought for into a stable territorial empire, the base on which every later Mughal achievement, from Fatehpur Sikri to the Taj Mahal, was financed and built. Bengal's annexation in particular gave the empire one of the richest agricultural and trading regions in South Asia.
How we know: The scope and pace of Akbar's conquests are documented in the Akbarnama, the official chronicle commissioned by Akbar himself and written by his court historian Abu'l Fazl, along with Mughal administrative records summarized by the Victoria and Albert Museum's institutional history.
Reign: 1556 to 1605 · Early regent: Bayram Khan · Territorial reach: Gujarat to Bengal, Kabul and Kashmir to the Deccan frontier · Battle of Tukaroi: 1575, led to annexation of Bengal
Sources - from c. 1562Well documented
Peer-reviewed · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States
Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match).Akbar Builds Rajput Alliances Through Marriage and Rank
Rather than rule the Hindu-majority population purely by conquest, Akbar built political ties to the Rajput ruling houses of Rajasthan through marriage. He married daughters of Hindu Rajput rulers, and Hindus reached the highest levels of his administrative hierarchy, a policy the Victoria and Albert Museum's institutional history describes as central to how Akbar governed a population that was predominantly Hindu with a significant Muslim minority. Rajput nobles who accepted Mughal overlordship, rather than resisting it, could rise to high military rank inside the empire's mansabdar service cadre; Richard Eaton's scholarly account of Mughal-era temple patronage notes that the Rajput general Raja Man Singh, a mansabdar in Akbar's service, was permitted to build his own monumental Govind Deva Temple at Brindavan in 1590.
Why it matters: This policy of incorporation rather than pure subjugation let Akbar govern a vast, religiously mixed empire with a fraction of the ongoing warfare conquest alone would have required, and it created a Rajput-Mughal service elite whose loyalty (and, later under Aurangzeb, whose alienation) shaped Mughal politics for the rest of the dynasty's history.
How we know: The pattern of Rajput marriages and the rise of Hindu officers is recorded in the Akbarnama and confirmed independently by art-historical evidence: the Victoria and Albert Museum holds Mughal court paintings showing Hindu nobles at Akbar's court, and Richard Eaton's peer-reviewed study of Mughal temple patronage documents named Rajput mansabdars building temples under imperial permission.
Policy: Marriage alliances with Rajput ruling houses · Example mansabdar: Raja Man Singh, builder of the Govind Deva Temple, 1590 · Administrative effect: Hindu nobles reached the highest ranks of Mughal government
- c. 1562 to 1577Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The arts of the Mughal Empire
The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.The Golden Age of Mughal Painting Takes Shape Under Akbar
In the royal House of Books, or Ketabkhana, Akbar had Hindustani artists directed by two Iranian masters formerly in his father's service to produce a new style of book painting, combining the traditions of Hindu and Muslim craftsmen from across the subcontinent with those of Iranian masters. Their first major project was the Hamzanama, or Book of Hamza, illustrating traditional oral tales of the hero Hamza; contemporary sources put the work at 12 to 14 bound volumes of roughly 100 paintings each, produced over about 15 years, most likely between 1562 and 1577. Fewer than 200 of the original paintings survive, separated from their long-vanished bindings; the largest surviving groups are held today by the MAK museum in Vienna and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the latter having acquired 28 folios and two fragments in 1880-81 during a buying trip to Kashmir.
Why it matters: The Hamzanama project established the working method, in the House of Books, of teaming Hindu, Muslim, and Iranian artists on a single manuscript, and this hybrid workshop model produced the distinctive Mughal painting style that would reach its height under Jahangir and Shah Jahan. It marks the moment Mughal visual art stopped being an import and became its own tradition.
How we know: Surviving Hamzanama folios are physically dated by their materials and style, and museum acquisition records, including the V&A's account of Caspar Purdon Clarke's 1880-81 purchasing trip to Srinagar, trace how the surviving paintings left India and entered Western collections.
Project: The Hamzanama, or Book of Hamza · Scale: 12-14 volumes of about 100 paintings each · Production period: c. 1562 to 1577 · Surviving folios: Fewer than 200, split mainly between Vienna's MAK and the V&A
- 1564 (jizya abolished); debates broadened from 1575Well documented
General source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: AKBAR I
Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match).Akbar Abolishes the Jizya and Opens the Ibadat Khana to All Faiths
In 1564 Akbar abolished the jizya, the poll tax that Islamic law levied on non-Muslim subjects, a step the Encyclopaedia Iranica describes as taken primarily for reasons of state. The previous year he had already ended a pilgrimage tax on Hindus. From 1575 he built a meeting house at his new capital, Fatehpur Sikri, called the Ibadat Khana, or House of Worship, where he convened religious scholars for structured debate. According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, Akbar grew frustrated with the narrow, often bitter arguments of the Muslim clerics who first dominated these sessions, and progressively widened participation to include Shi'ite scholars, Sufi dervishes, and eventually Hindus, Jains, Parsis, and Christians. The experience pushed him toward his personal formula of sulh-i-kul, or peace with all.
Why it matters: Ending the jizya removed the empire's clearest institutional marker of religious inequality and signaled that Akbar meant to rule Muslims and non-Muslims on the same legal footing, a break from most of his predecessors. The Ibadat Khana debates fed directly into the syncretic religious ideas Akbar formalized later in his reign, and the jizya's abolition became the standard against which Aurangzeb's later reimposition of the tax would be measured by contemporaries and historians alike.
How we know: The jizya's abolition and the broadening of the Ibadat Khana debates are documented in Abu'l Fazl's Akbarnama and in the Muntakhab ut-Tawarikh of the more critical court historian Badauni; the Encyclopaedia Iranica's peer-reviewed entry on Akbar synthesizes both primary chronicles.
Pilgrimage tax on Hindus ended: 1563 · Jizya abolished: 1564 · Ibadat Khana built: 1575, at Fatehpur Sikri · Guiding principle: Sulh-i-kul, "peace with all"
Sources- Fritz Lehmann, Encyclopaedia Iranica. AKBAR I · reference
- Fritz Lehmann, Encyclopaedia Iranica. AKBAR I · reference
- 1571 to 1573, occupied until 1585Well documented
Primary source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Fatehpur Sikri
Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).Akbar Builds Fatehpur Sikri, His City of Victory
Between 1571 and 1573 Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri, a new planned capital about 23 miles from Agra, on a ridge where the Sufi saint Shaikh Salim Chishti lived and where the saint had foretold that Akbar would finally have a male heir. The city was the first planned city of the Mughals, enclosed by a 6-kilometer wall pierced with nine gates, and built almost entirely of red sandstone with little marble. Its centerpiece is the Jama Masjid, completed 1571-72, which holds Salim Chishti's tomb, and the 40-meter Buland Darwaza gate, completed in 1575 to mark the conquest of Gujarat. Akbar abandoned the city as his working capital in 1585, when he moved to Lahore.
Why it matters: Fatehpur Sikri was Akbar's clearest architectural statement of imperial and religious ambition, blending Persian planning with Indian materials and craftsmanship in a way that established a template for Mughal urban design later followed at Shahjahanabad. Its abandonment after little more than a decade also shows how fluid Mughal capitals were: prestige projects served a moment's political and symbolic needs rather than becoming permanent seats of government.
How we know: Fatehpur Sikri survives largely intact and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986; UNESCO's official documentation dates the main construction and identifies the specific buildings, including the Jama Masjid, Buland Darwaza, and the palace attributed to Jodha Bai.
Built: 1571-1573 · Capital until: 1585 · Key structure: Jama Masjid, with the tomb of Shaikh Salim Chishti · UNESCO inscription: 1986
Sources - c. 1582Debated
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Ibadat Khana
The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry.Akbar Proclaims the Din-i-Ilahi
Around 1582, after years of interfaith debate at the Ibadat Khana, Akbar formulated what the Encyclopaedia Iranica calls tawhid-i ilahi, an eclectic personal belief in a divine monotheism drawn largely from Sufi sources, including the teachings of Shaikh Mubarak, father of his chief minister Abu'l Fazl. Later writers gave this framework the name Din-i-Ilahi, the Religion of God. It borrowed selectively from Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and other traditions Akbar had encountered through the Ibadat Khana debates, and it was never a mass religion: it functioned more as a personal spiritual order for a small circle at court than a faith Akbar tried to impose on his subjects.
Why it matters: The Din-i-Ilahi is the clearest evidence of how far Akbar's religious thinking had moved from conventional orthodoxy by the 1580s, and it fed accusations from more conservative Muslim chroniclers, including Badauni, that Akbar had drifted from Islam altogether. It remains one of the most debated aspects of his reign: modern historians differ on whether to read it as a serious syncretic theology or a court ritual of loyalty with religious trappings.
How we know: Contemporary court chroniclers disagree sharply on the Din-i-Ilahi's nature and seriousness. Abu'l Fazl's official Akbarnama treats Akbar's religious project sympathetically, while Badauni's Muntakhab ut-Tawarikh, written by a critical insider, is far more hostile; the Encyclopaedia Iranica's academic entry weighs both accounts.
Formulated: c. 1582 · Scholarly name: Tawhid-i ilahi, later called Din-i-Ilahi · Influences: Sufi thought, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Islam · Scale: A small court circle, not a mass religion
Sources - 1605 (accession); 1611 (marriage)Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The arts of the Mughal Empire
The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.Jahangir Inherits a Wealthy Empire and Marries Nur Jahan
Akbar's son Salim succeeded him in 1605 and took the title Jahangir, World Seizer, inheriting what the Victoria and Albert Museum calls a stable and immensely wealthy empire with twelve separate treasuries feeding cash from every province into the royal household. In 1611 Jahangir, who already had several wives, married Mehr un-Nissa, from an aristocratic Iranian family whose father and brother had already reached the highest ranks of the Mughal hierarchy. He gave her the title Nur Jahan, Light of the World, and became devoted to her; she was the only Mughal queen ever to have coins issued in her own name, and she effectively ruled alongside him for the rest of his reign.
Why it matters: Nur Jahan's rise marks the high point of direct female political power in Mughal history, unusual enough that the V&A singles out her coinage as unique among Mughal queens. Her family's dominance at court, and the influence she exercised over succession politics, shaped the maneuvering that would determine which of Jahangir's sons became Shah Jahan.
How we know: Jahangir's own memoirs, the Jahangirnama or Tuzuk-e Jahangiri, describe court life and his marriage; the V&A's institutional history draws on these along with contemporary portraiture and coinage bearing Nur Jahan's name.
Jahangir's reign: 1605 to 1627 · Married Nur Jahan: 1611 · Title given: Nur Jahan, "Light of the World" · Distinction: Only Mughal queen with coins issued in her name
- 1612 to 1619Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Timeline: Mughal Empire
The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry.Sir Thomas Roe Secures East India Company Trading Rights
Between 1612 and 1619 the English ambassador Sir Thomas Roe secured permission from the Mughal court for the East India Company to establish its first factory, a fortified trading post, at Surat on India's western coast. Roe spent time at Jahangir's court in Ajmer and traveled with the imperial retinue, and the encounter went both directions culturally: Roe showed Jahangir a miniature portrait by the English painter Isaac Oliver, which so impressed the emperor that he had a court artist copy it, then tested Roe's ability to tell the copies from the original.
Why it matters: The Surat factory was the first permanent English commercial foothold in Mughal India, the seed from which the East India Company's trading network, and eventually its territorial empire, grew. What began as a favor granted by a wealthy, secure Mughal court to European merchants would, within a century and a half, help produce the Company army that fought at Plassey.
How we know: The grant of trading rights and Roe's presence at Jahangir's court are documented in Roe's own journal of his embassy and referenced in the Jahangirnama; the Victoria and Albert Museum's history of Mughal art independently confirms the Isaac Oliver miniature exchange from the same period.
Ambassador: Sir Thomas Roe · Years at court: 1612 to 1619 · Result: First East India Company factory, at Surat
SourcesRelated timelines- The British Empire → · The Surat factory was the first foothold of the trading company that later built British rule in India.
- 1621Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The arts of the Mughal Empire
The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.Jahangir's Court Painters Perfect Natural History and Portraiture
Like his great-grandfather Babur, Jahangir wrote his own memoirs, the Jahangirnama, and like Babur he had a deep interest in the natural world, but unlike Babur he commissioned artists to paint the animals, birds, and people he described. In 1621 a delegation presented Jahangir with an African zebra, an animal he had never seen and that struck him as a horse painted with stripes; he wrote that the painter of fate had left it on the page of the world with a strange brush. He assigned the commission to Mansur, one of his two leading artists, who signed the resulting painting, now in the V&A's collection, and Jahangir himself added notes in his own hand about how and when the animal arrived. Portraiture under Jahangir also reached a new level of naturalism, a shift historians usually connect to his artists' exposure to European portraits carried to his court by visitors like the English ambassador Sir Thomas Roe.
Why it matters: The zebra painting is a rare case where an emperor's own handwriting, the surviving artwork, and his memoirs all describe the same event, giving historians an unusually complete record of how Mughal naturalist art was actually commissioned and produced. It also shows the two forces, Jahangir's personal curiosity and European artistic contact, that pushed Mughal painting toward greater realism in this period.
How we know: The zebra painting survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection with Jahangir's own annotation naming the artist Mansur, cross-checked against his account of the event in the Jahangirnama.
Artist: Mansur, one of Jahangir's two leading court painters · Subject: An African zebra, gifted to the emperor in 1621 · Memoir: The Jahangirnama, or Tuzuk-e Jahangiri
- 1632 to 1653Well documented
Primary source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Taj Mahal
Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).Shah Jahan Builds the Taj Mahal for Mumtaz Mahal
Shah Jahan's wife Arjumand Banu Begum, known by the title Mumtaz Mahal, died in 1631 in Burhanpur while giving birth to their fourteenth child. Shah Jahan had her body moved to Agra and ordered a tomb built for her; construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632 and the main mausoleum was completed by 1648, with the mosque, guest house, main gateway, and outer courtyard finished in 1653. UNESCO's documentation credits Ustad Ahmad Lahori as the main architect, and describes masons, stone-cutters, inlayers, carvers, calligraphers, and dome builders drawn from across the empire and from Central Asia and Iran. The tomb sits deliberately off-center within its walled garden, an innovation UNESCO calls one of the site's most distinctive design choices, adding depth to the view from a distance; Shah Jahan's own cenotaph was added beside his wife's more than thirty years later, after his death in 1666.
Why it matters: The Taj Mahal stands as the clearest physical evidence of Mughal wealth and craftsmanship at its peak, and its off-center placement, unusual for a Mughal tomb, is treated by architectural historians as evidence of a deliberate late change to the original plan, since Shah Jahan's own tomb was never meant to occupy the obvious central spot. UNESCO regards it as the single greatest achievement of Indo-Islamic architecture.
How we know: Historical and Quranic inscriptions carved into the monument itself allowed historians to establish a precise construction chronology, corroborated by court chronicles from Shah Jahan's reign; UNESCO's official documentation for the World Heritage Site lays out these dates and the architectural sequence in detail.
Commissioned by: Shah Jahan, for his wife Mumtaz Mahal · Construction began: 1632 · Main structure completed: 1648 · Full complex completed: 1653 · +1 more
Sources - c. 1635Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Nadir Shah of Iran
The domain "asia-archive.si.edu" is on our Reputable source registry.Shah Jahan Commissions the Peacock Throne
Shah Jahan commissioned the Peacock Throne in the early seventeenth century for the Diwan-i-Khas, the Hall of Private Audiences, in what would become his Red Fort at Delhi. Contemporary accounts describe a throne extravagant even by the standards of the wealthiest Mughal court, reportedly costing roughly twice what the Taj Mahal itself had cost to build, set with an enormous quantity of gems. Jahangir had already left Shah Jahan an empire whose twelve separate treasuries, one dedicated purely to precious stones, gave his son the resources for a commission on this scale. The throne became the physical symbol of Mughal sovereignty and remained in the Red Fort until it was carried off as war plunder more than a century later.
Why it matters: The Peacock Throne's cost is a direct measure of how much surplus wealth the empire commanded at its height under Shah Jahan, wealth built on Akbar's administrative reforms and decades of stable, expanding territory. Its later theft by Nader Shah in 1739 would become shorthand, in Mughal and later histories, for the empire's fall from that peak.
How we know: The throne's construction and extravagant cost are described in Mughal court chronicles from Shah Jahan's reign and referenced in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art's institutional history of the objects Nader Shah later carried out of Delhi, including the throne itself.
Commissioned by: Shah Jahan · Location: Diwan-i-Khas, Red Fort, Delhi · Later fate: Taken to Iran by Nader Shah in 1739
- 1639 to 1648Well documented
Primary source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Red Fort Complex
Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).Shah Jahan Moves the Capital to Delhi and Builds the Red Fort
Shah Jahan commissioned the Red Fort in 1639 as the palace fort of Shahjahanabad, the new Mughal capital he built at Delhi, completing it in 1648. Named for its massive red sandstone walls, the fort's private apartments consist of a row of pavilions connected by a continuous water channel known as the Nahr-i-Behisht, the Stream of Paradise. UNESCO's documentation describes the fort's design as a fusion of Persian, Timurid, and Hindu architectural traditions built on an Islamic layout, and identifies it as representing what UNESCO calls the zenith of Mughal creativity under Shah Jahan. White marble from the Makrana mines in Rajasthan, carved or inlaid with semi-precious stones in imitation of imported Florentine pietre dure panels, became the defining decorative style of his reign, seen across textiles, metalwork, and book painting as well as architecture.
Why it matters: Moving the capital from Agra to Delhi and building the Red Fort fixed Delhi as the empire's political center for the rest of Mughal history and for the British Raj afterward; it is the same fort where, more than two centuries later, the last Mughal emperor would be tried for his role in the 1857 rebellion. The building's fusion style also directly shaped later architecture across Rajasthan, Delhi, and Agra, according to UNESCO's assessment.
How we know: The Red Fort's construction dates and design are documented in UNESCO's official World Heritage inscription and description, drawn from surviving Mughal architectural records and the fort's own surviving structure.
Commissioned: 1639 · Completed: 1648 · New capital: Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi) · UNESCO inscription: 2007
Sources - 1657 to 1658Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The arts of the Mughal Empire
The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.A War of Succession Ends With Aurangzeb Imprisoning His Father
In 1657 Shah Jahan fell seriously ill and was feared to be dying. He named his eldest son Dara Shikoh as his successor, but when the emperor unexpectedly recovered, a war of succession had already broken out between his sons. Aurangzeb emerged the victor, deposed his own father, and proclaimed himself emperor in 1658 under the title Alamgir. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum's account, he had all but one of his brothers put to death to eliminate future rivals, then imprisoned Shah Jahan in the fort at Agra, where the deposed emperor could see the tomb of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj Mahal, in which he himself would be buried when he died in 1666.
Why it matters: The brutality of the succession war, brother killing brother and son imprisoning father, marks a harder, more ruthless style of Mughal politics than the dynasty had shown since Babur's own generation, and it put in power the emperor whose policies would both extend the empire to its largest size and set in motion the conflicts that unraveled it. Aurangzeb's choice to imprison rather than kill his father, while still eliminating his brothers, shows a calculated distinction between eliminating rivals and erasing the dynasty's own legitimacy.
How we know: The succession crisis, Shah Jahan's imprisonment, and Aurangzeb's coronation as Alamgir are recorded in multiple contemporary Mughal chronicles and confirmed independently by European travelers present in India during these years; the V&A's institutional history synthesizes both strands.
Shah Jahan's illness: 1657 · Aurangzeb crowned: 1658, title Alamgir · Shah Jahan imprisoned at: Agra Fort · Shah Jahan died: 1666
Sources - 1674Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Shivaji and the Marathas
The domain "southasia.ucla.edu" is on our Reputable source registry.Shivaji Builds Maratha Power and Is Crowned Chhatrapati
Shivaji Bhonsle was born in 1627 into a family of Maratha bureaucrats and, according to UCLA's academic account, built a reputation as a guerrilla warrior plundering the countryside around Pune before turning his ambitions on the Sultanate of Bijapur. His most famous act came in 1659, when the Bijapur general Afzal Khan, sent with 10,000 troops to subdue him, met Shivaji in person under a supposed truce; Shivaji killed him with a dagger and steel tiger claws concealed in his sleeves, and the encounter is often credited as the birth of organized Maratha power. In 1664 Shivaji plundered the wealthy port of Surat, drawing a Mughal response under General Jai Singh that forced Shivaji into a period as an acknowledged Mughal vassal, though he escaped Aurangzeb's court in 1666 and by 1670 had retaken many of his surrendered fortresses. In 1674 he had himself crowned Chhatrapati, or sovereign, in a ceremony attended by tens of thousands, marking his formal break from Mughal overlordship.
Why it matters: Shivaji's rise created the first sustained, organized Hindu political and military challenge to Mughal authority in over a century, built on guerrilla tactics the Mughals struggled to counter in the Deccan terrain. His Maratha state would outlast the Mughal Empire itself in real power, eventually controlling much of India by the mid-1700s and playing a central role in the empire's decline after Aurangzeb's death.
How we know: UCLA's academic history of Shivaji draws on Mughal court chronicles and later biographical accounts, including the early 20th-century biography by historian Jadunath Sarkar, while cautioning against reading Shivaji's conflict with Aurangzeb purely through a lens of religious conflict, since Shivaji employed Muslim commanders including Didi Ibrahim.
Born: 1627 · Killed Afzal Khan: 1659 · Crowned Chhatrapati: 1674 · Died: 1680
Sources- MANAS, UCLA. Shivaji and the Marathas · reference
- MANAS, UCLA. Shivaji and the Marathas · reference
- 1669 to 1680Debated
Peer-reviewed · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States
Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match).Aurangzeb Reimposes the Jizya and Orders Temples Destroyed
In 1679 Aurangzeb reimposed the jizya, the tax on non-Muslim subjects that Akbar had abolished 115 years earlier, a step widely read at the time and since as a marker of a harder religious line than his predecessors. Around the same period Aurangzeb also ordered the destruction of specific, named temples: the Vishvanath temple at Banaras in 1669, associated with a Mughal officer suspected of aiding the escape of his enemy Shivaji, and the Keshava Deva temple at Mathura in 1670, tied to the leader of a Jat rebellion. Historian Richard M. Eaton's peer-reviewed analysis of the pattern across Indo-Muslim states finds these were not indiscriminate: Aurangzeb also formally ordered, in 1659, that Brahmin temple-keepers at Banaras be protected from harassment, writing that ancient temples should not be torn down under Islamic law even as he added that no new ones should be built there. Nine years after the jizya's return, in 1679 and 1680, Aurangzeb ordered several prominent Rajasthan temples destroyed, each one tied to a Rajput chieftain who had specifically withdrawn loyalty to the Mughal state.
Why it matters: Whether read as ideological retrenchment or, as Eaton argues from the documentary pattern, a targeted political tool aimed at temples tied to specific acts of disloyalty or rebellion rather than Hindu worship generally, the jizya's return and the temple destructions marked a real and lasting break from Akbar's policy, alienated Rajput allies whose ancestors had served the empire for generations, and became one of the most cited grievances behind the Rajput and Maratha resistance that grew through Aurangzeb's later reign.
How we know: Eaton's scholarship, drawing on the Ma'athir-i Alamgiri and other Mughal-era chronicles, catalogs specific documented instances of temple desecration by date, site, and the political circumstance behind each order, distinguishing it from undocumented claims of empire-wide, indiscriminate destruction; historians continue to debate how to weigh Aurangzeb's stated religious justifications against the political pattern Eaton identifies.
Jizya reimposed: 1679 · Banaras Vishvanath temple destroyed: 1669 · Mathura Keshava Deva temple destroyed: 1670 · Rajasthan temples destroyed: 1679-1680
- 1658 to 1707Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The arts of the Mughal Empire
The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.Aurangzeb Pushes the Empire to Its Greatest Size
Aurangzeb ruled from 1658 to 1707 and, in the words of the Victoria and Albert Museum's institutional history, extended the Mughal Empire to its greatest size, a project that required long campaigns to subdue the independent sultanates of the Deccan, in India's south-central plateau. These campaigns were eventually successful, bringing more territory under direct Mughal control than any previous emperor had held. But the cost was severe: years of almost constant warfare drained the empire's wealth, and Aurangzeb's personal absence from the northern capitals for nearly three decades while campaigning in the Deccan left those cities in economic decline.
Why it matters: The Deccan campaigns represent the empire's territorial high point and its structural turning point in the same decades: Aurangzeb won the most land any Mughal emperor ever controlled, but the V&A's account is explicit that this success left the empire's finances and its northern heartland weakened just as his death approached, setting up the rapid collapse that followed 1707.
How we know: The scale and cost of the Deccan wars are described in Mughal court records and confirmed by later historians' analysis of Mughal finances during Aurangzeb's reign, summarized in the V&A's institutional account of the dynasty's arc from peak to decline.
Reign: 1658 to 1707 · Title: Alamgir · Campaign: Subjugation of the Deccan sultanates · Cost: Decades of warfare drained imperial wealth
- 1707Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The arts of the Mughal Empire
The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.Aurangzeb Dies and the Empire Begins to Break Apart
Aurangzeb died in 1707 after 49 years on the throne, the longest reign of any Mughal emperor and the one that had brought the empire to its largest territorial extent. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum's account, the empire began slowly but irreversibly to break up almost immediately after his death, as regional governors became virtually independent and new rulers seized land that nominally still belonged to Delhi. Power drained away from the Mughal emperors toward regional courts, many of which continued to follow the artistic and architectural conventions Shah Jahan had established, though on a much reduced scale, since none could match the wealth of the Mughal court at its peak.
Why it matters: The speed of the collapse, breaking apart within a generation of the empire's greatest territorial extent, shows how much Aurangzeb's decades of Deccan campaigning had hollowed out the central government's finances and authority even while extending its borders. The regional successor states this collapse produced, in Bengal, Awadh, Hyderabad, and elsewhere, became the political order the East India Company would spend the next century picking apart.
How we know: The rapid fragmentation after 1707 is documented in Mughal administrative records showing declining tax revenue reaching Delhi and in the rise of independent regional dynasties, summarized by the V&A's institutional history and corroborated by the Smithsonian's overview of the empire's territorial contraction through the 18th century.
Aurangzeb's death: 1707 · Reign length: 49 years · Immediate effect: Regional governors become effectively independent
- 1739Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Nadir Shah of Iran
The domain "asia-archive.si.edu" is on our Reputable source registry.Nader Shah Sacks Delhi and Carries Off the Peacock Throne
The Iranian ruler Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, invaded northern India and sacked Delhi in 1739, in what the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art describes as a period of political and artistic decline following Aurangzeb's reign that left the Mughal Empire subject to outside invasion. Nader Shah's occupation turned violent after an initial period of calm, and estimates put the death toll at roughly 20,000 to 30,000 people killed in the city over the course of a single day. When his forces withdrew, they carried home a vast haul of treasure, including the Hamzanama manuscript, the Peacock Throne itself, and the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
Why it matters: The sack of Delhi stripped the Mughal treasury of the accumulated wealth of a century and exposed to every regional and foreign power watching that the empire could no longer defend its own capital. It stands as the single most visible blow marking the empire's fall from its Shah Jahan-era peak, permanently dispersing the artistic community that had made Delhi a center of Mughal painting and craft.
How we know: The sack and its toll are documented in Persian and Mughal court accounts from the period and in the collection history of the objects Nader Shah's forces removed, several of which, including the Hamzanama folios and portraits of Nader Shah himself, are now held in Western museum collections including the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art.
Year: 1739 · Conqueror: Nader Shah, Afsharid ruler of Iran · Estimated dead: 20,000 to 30,000 · Treasures taken: Peacock Throne, Koh-i-Noor diamond, the Hamzanama manuscript
- June 23, 1757Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Battle of Plassey
The domain "nam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.Clive Wins the Battle of Plassey and the Company Gains Bengal
On 23 June 1757, at the village of Plassey on the Bhagirathi-Hooghly River, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Clive's East India Company force of about 3,000 men, including 2,100 Indian sepoys, met the roughly 50,000-strong army of Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, backed by French artillery officers. A downpour ahead of the main engagement disabled the Nawab's uncovered gunpowder while Clive's men kept theirs dry under tarpaulins; when Siraj's infantry advanced believing the Company's guns were equally silenced, they were met, in the National Army Museum's account, by a storm of fire and withdrew in disarray. At the decisive moment Mir Jafar, commanding the Nawab's cavalry, had secretly agreed with Clive and the Jagat Seth banking family to betray Siraj in exchange for being installed as the new Nawab, and he refused to engage. Clive routed the remaining forces, losing only 22 killed to over 500 Bengali and French casualties, and Mir Jafar had Siraj killed and took his place, now effectively a Company puppet. In 1765 Clive secured the diwani, the right to collect Bengal's tax revenue, directly from the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II.
Why it matters: Plassey turned the East India Company from one commercial power competing with the French into the ruler of Bengal, India's richest province, and the 1765 diwani grant gave the Company a legal claim, however hollow, to govern in the Mughal emperor's name. From this point the Company's expansion in India was backed by Indian tax revenue and a growing private army, setting the template for a century of British territorial conquest that the nominal Mughal emperor could no longer resist.
How we know: The battle's course, casualty figures, and the 1765 diwani grant are documented in East India Company records and British military accounts from the period; the National Army Museum's institutional history draws on these alongside a contemporary description of the battle by the Bengali writer Ghulam Husayn Khan, written in 1781.
Date: June 23, 1757 · Company commander: Robert Clive · Opponent: Siraj-ud-Daulah, Nawab of Bengal · Diwani granted: 1765, by Emperor Shah Alam II
Sources- National Army Museum. Battle of Plassey · website
- National Army Museum. Battle of Plassey · website
Related timelines- The British Empire → · Plassey is the battle historians usually mark as the start of British territorial rule in India.
- by 1803Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: The Mughal Empire
The domain "asia-archive.si.edu" is on our Reputable source registry.The Mughal Emperor Becomes a Company Pensioner in a Shrinking Delhi
In the decades after Plassey and the 1765 diwani grant, Mughal authority contracted steadily as the East India Company, the Marathas, and regional rulers absorbed what had once been imperial territory. By 1803, according to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, Mughal territory had shrunk to the area immediately around Delhi itself. The emperor remained, in the Smithsonian's phrase, the symbolic center of authority in India even as actual power passed to the Company and to regional successor states, a titular sovereignty with no army, no independent revenue, and no real territory to speak of beyond his own palace walls.
Why it matters: This is the clearest illustration of how completely the Mughal Empire had become a legal fiction well before its formal end in 1857: contemporaries and the Company itself still treated the emperor as a source of legitimacy, since Clive had taken Bengal's revenue rights in the emperor's name, even though the empire he supposedly headed no longer existed as a functioning state.
How we know: The empire's territorial contraction is tracked through East India Company administrative and revenue records from the period and is summarized in the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art's institutional history of the dynasty's full arc from 1526 to 1857.
Mughal territory by 1803: Limited to the area around Delhi · Status of the emperor: Symbolic sovereign, no independent power
Sources - May to September 1857Well documented
Reputable source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Decisive events of the Indian Rebellion
The domain "nam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.Delhi Becomes the Center of the 1857 Rebellion
The rebellion against East India Company rule broke out at Meerut in May 1857 and spread rapidly across northern and central India, with its main centers at Delhi, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Jhansi, and Gwalior. Delhi, in the National Army Museum's account, became the center of the uprising because it was the seat of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the old and largely powerless Mughal emperor; the mutineers from Meerut went there immediately to seek his backing, which he gave reluctantly. British forces spent from June to September 1857 trying to retake the city, holding a ridge overlooking Delhi against more than 30,000 rebels through the summer heat and cholera outbreaks before reinforcements under Brigadier-General John Nicholson arrived in August with a siege train of 32 guns. The final assault came on 14 September, breaching the walls at the Kashmir Gate, and after a week of street fighting the city fell on 21 September; it was then ransacked in what the museum's account calls an orgy of looting and killing.
Why it matters: By lending his name and his palace to the rebellion, however unwillingly, Bahadur Shah Zafar gave the uprising a legitimizing figurehead that made Delhi's recapture the single most important British military priority of the war, and its fall was the decisive factor in suppressing the rebellion elsewhere. The scale of the reprisals that followed the city's capture, including executions carried out without trial, shows how completely the British treated the old emperor's court as the rebellion's political center rather than a bystander.
How we know: The siege of Delhi is documented in British military dispatches and eyewitness accounts from soldiers present, including officers under Nicholson's command; the National Army Museum's institutional history draws directly on these regimental and campaign records.
Rebellion begins: May 1857, at Meerut · Delhi assault: 14 September 1857 · Delhi falls: 21 September 1857 · British reinforcement: Brigadier-General John Nicholson, August 1857
SourcesRelated timelines- The British Empire → · The 1857 rebellion led directly to the Company's dissolution and the start of direct British Crown rule in India.
- 1858 (trial), died 1862 in exileWell documented
Primary source · 2 sourceswhy?
Best source: Bahadur Shah Zafar, Emperor of Delhi, 1859 (c)
Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).The British Exile Bahadur Shah Zafar and End the Mughal Dynasty
After Delhi's fall, Bahadur Shah Zafar was captured and held in Delhi awaiting trial for his role in the rebellion; a photograph in the National Army Museum's collection, taken by Robert Christopher Tytler, shows him in captivity reclining on a bamboo charpoy and smoking a hookah, a scene one visitor, William Hodson's wife, described firsthand. Although there were calls for his execution, the museum's account notes a promise had been made on his surrender that his life would be spared, and he was instead sentenced to exile in Burma; his sons suffered a harsher fate, most of them killed by the British after they had surrendered. Bahadur Shah Zafar died in exile in Rangoon in 1862, ending the Mughal dynasty founded by Babur at Panipat 336 years earlier.
Why it matters: The exile and death of the last titular emperor closed the final page of a dynasty whose real power had ended long before, at Plassey and in the decades of contraction that followed, but whose symbolic authority the British had still found worth destroying formally rather than simply ignoring. It marked the end of the East India Company's rule as well: the Company was dissolved the same year and direct British Crown rule, the Raj, began in its place.
How we know: Bahadur Shah Zafar's captivity, trial, and exile are documented in British military and administrative records from 1857-1858, and the National Army Museum holds a contemporary photograph of him in captivity along with objects looted from his palace during the sack of Delhi.
Captured: September 1857 · Sentence: Exile in Burma (Rangoon) · Died: 1862, in Rangoon · Dynasty founded: 1526, by Babur
SourcesRelated timelines- The British Empire → · Bahadur Shah Zafar's exile coincided with the end of East India Company rule and the start of direct British Crown government in India.