Mughal Culture, Society, and Daily Life: A Comprehensive Guide

Quick facts

Court language: Persian (with Turki in the imperial household)

Vernacular synthesis: Urdu (Rekhta), emerging from the contact of Persian, Arabic, Turki, and the Hindi vernaculars

Founding synthesis: Persian bureaucratic form + Turko-Mongol military tradition + Indian religious, artistic, and craft inheritance

Painting apex: the imperial kitab khana under Akbar and Jahangir (Mir Sayyid Ali, Abd us-Samad, Abu’l Hasan, Ustad Mansur)

Architectural apex: Shah Jahan’s reign — Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Jama Masjid of Delhi

Cuisine: the imperial bawarchi khana and the Mughlai tradition; the regional kitchens of Delhi, Lucknow, and Hyderabad

Key religious syntheses: Bhakti–Sufi interaction, the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, the Sikh Gurus’ relationship to the imperial court

The cultural world of the Mughal Empire was one of the most cosmopolitan and creative of the early modern age. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the dynasty and the broader society it governed produced a recognisable imperial idiom that expressed itself in language, literature, painting, architecture, cuisine, costume, music, and the elaborate rituals of court life. The Mughals ruled a population of perhaps 150 million people at their zenith, drawn from a dozen major linguistic communities, half a dozen major religious traditions, and an almost infinite variety of regional cultures. The imperial court at Delhi, Agra, Lahore, and later Shahjahanabad was the stage on which this diversity was managed, celebrated, and selectively suppressed, and the texture of Mughal culture emerges from the tensions and accommodations among princes, mansabdari nobles, merchants, Brahmin scholars, Sufi masters, Rajput warriors, Persian painters, Jesuit missionaries, Armenian bankers, the Sikh community of the Punjab, and the peasantry of the Ganges plain.

This overview surveys the principal dimensions of that culture: the syncretic foundations of the imperial style, the languages of the court, the religious and philosophical currents of the period, the development of Mughal literature, the flowering of Mughal art, the distinctive character of Mughal cuisine, the elaboration of Mughal costumes and personal adornment, the cycle of festivals and court entertainments, the position of music and dance, the social structure of the empire, the situation of women, the institutions of education and scholarship, the role of slavery and eunuch service, the patterns of daily life in city and countryside, and the funerary customs of the period. The cluster pages linked throughout the text provide deeper treatment of individual topics.

The Cultural Synthesis: Persian, Turko-Mongol, and Indian Elements

The dynasty that Babur founded in 1526 was, in cultural terms, a Timurid and Chinggisid enterprise transplanted onto Indian soil. Babur himself was a Central Asian prince who wrote in Turki and who professed a deep attachment to the landscapes of Samarkand and Kabul. His memoirs, the Babar-nama, are filled with comparisons between the parched plains of Hindustan and the watered gardens of his lost Central Asian homeland. Yet within a single generation, the Mughal court had begun to absorb Indian influences with a thoroughness that Babur himself would have found surprising: by Akbar’s reign, the imperial atelier was producing paintings drawing on Hindu epic iconography, the official chronicles cited Sanskrit authorities on Indian religion and philosophy, and the court patronised Hindu musicians, Jain merchants, and Portuguese Jesuit visitors with equal curiosity.

The resulting synthesis was neither a simple Persianisation of India nor a wholesale Indianisation of the Timurid inheritance. Persian administrative and literary forms provided the grammar of official life, Turko-Mongol traditions of horsemanship, falconry, and Central Asian cuisine supplied the social vocabulary of the aristocracy, and Indian religious, artistic, and craft traditions contributed the materials, the pigments, the gods, the saints, and the artisans who gave the imperial culture its particular South Asian character. The mechanics of this synthesis can be traced in concrete institutional settings. The imperial kitab khana, or library-atelier, brought together Persian, Indian, and occasionally European painters in a single workshop. The mushairah, the formal poetry gathering, included both Persian and Urdu poets reciting in the same evening. The royal kitchen absorbed Indian vegetarian and meat cookery alongside Persian rice dishes and Central Asian noodles. The durbar, the formal court ceremony, used Persian titles and procedures but incorporated the nazar (gift-offering) customs of the Rajput courts.

Persian Cultural Hegemony

For most of the imperial period, Persian served as the dominant language of administration, high culture, and interregional communication. It was the language of the court chronicles, the diplomatic correspondence, the firmans of the emperor, the waqfnama documents that endowed religious institutions, the manuals of statecraft, and the bulk of the literary output. Persian cultural hegemony was reinforced by the personal tastes of the rulers. Jahangir was a connoisseur of Persian painting and poetry, Shah Jahan’s court maintained Persianate conventions, and even as the vernacular languages expanded in the later imperial period, Persian retained its prestige as the medium of formal historiography, religious scholarship, and diplomatic exchange.

Central Asian and Turko-Mongol Elements

The Central Asian and Turko-Mongol inheritance was most visible in the conventions of the court and the martial culture of the state. The use of Turki as a private language of the imperial family persisted into the eighteenth century, and the Timurid genealogical claims of the dynasty shaped its self-presentation. Central Asian forms of entertainment, including the qara-jargu played by the ladies of the harem, were maintained in the women’s quarters; the kopek and baheliq, the hunting dogs and trained cheetahs of the imperial hunt, were imported from Central Asia. The polo ground, the parade ground, and the encampment with its circular otaq tents were all Central Asian institutions adapted to Indian conditions. The pilaf, the kebab, the kofta, and the halim of the imperial kitchen are recognisably Central Asian in origin, and they became foundational elements of the broader Mughal cuisine that evolved over the imperial period.

The Indian Substrate

Indian contributions to the imperial culture were equally substantial. Painters of the imperial atelier, even when working in the Persian idiom of the album and the illustrated manuscript, drew on indigenous iconographic traditions, Indian textile patterns, Indian pigments, and Indian paper-making techniques. The architectural idiom of the period combined Persian iwan and dome forms with the trabeate construction, the bracket capitals, and the carved stone ornament of pre-Islamic India. The religious vocabulary of the court absorbed Hindu philosophical concepts, the guru and the darshan, alongside the more familiar Islamic terms. Indian food, languages, religious specialists, and artistic traditions entered the imperial court through the Rajput marriages of Akbar and his successors, the recruitment of Hindu nobles into the mansabdari hierarchy, the inclusion of Indian scholars in the translation projects of the imperial maktab khana, and the daily interactions of the court with the wider society in which it was embedded.

Languages of the Mughal Court

Persian and Turki

Persian, in its Indianised form sometimes called Farsi-ye-Hindi or “Indian Persian,” was the official language of the Mughal state. It served as the medium of imperial correspondence, the language of the court chronicles and the firmans, the administrative vocabulary of the diwani offices, the literary idiom of high poetry, and the diplomatic lingua franca connecting the Mughal court to the Safavids, the Uzbeks, the Ottomans, and the various Central Asian and Iranian polities. Every provincial capital maintained a daftar khana staffed by Persian scribes, the madrasas taught Arabic and Persian as the two foundational languages of Islamic scholarship, and the imperial court attracted Persian poets and scholars from Iran and Central Asia throughout the imperial period.

Turki, the Chagatai literary language of Central Asia, was the mother tongue of the Timurid imperial family and remained a private language of the court throughout the imperial period. The Babar-nama was originally composed in Turki and only later translated into Persian and (much later) into English. Jahangir, who composed poetry in both Persian and Turki, used the language in his private correspondence, and the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri contains many passages in Turki.

Sanskrit and the Indian Vernaculars

Sanskrit retained a prestigious place as the language of the Brahmanical religious establishment, the shastras and the puranas, the traditional sciences, and the courts of the Rajput and other Hindu aristocrats who entered into alliances with the Mughals. The Razmnama, the Persian translation of the Mahabharata commissioned by Akbar, was produced in collaboration with a committee of Sanskrit scholars. The Atharva Veda, the Lilavati of Bhaskara, the Rajatarangini of Kalhana, and the Singhasan Battisi were all translated into Persian under imperial patronage. The Indian vernaculars, including Braj Bhasha, Avadhi, Maithili, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, and the Dravidian languages of the Deccan, retained their importance as the languages of regional administration, local literature, popular religion, and ordinary social life.

The Rise of Urdu

The development of Urdu as a distinct literary language is linguistic events of the Mughal period. Sometimes called Hindi, Hindustani, Rekhta, or Zaban-i-Urdu, it emerged from the prolonged contact of Persian, Arabic, Turki, and the Indo-Aryan vernaculars of North India. The earliest documented Urdu poetry is generally assigned to the Deccan courts of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, particularly to the literary circles of the Bahmani and Adil Shahi sultanates, and the tradition was carried north during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the Mughal north, Urdu was patronised by Muslim nobles, Sufi communities, and the soldiers and merchants of the cosmopolitan cities. The mushairah tradition, the poetic symposium in which Urdu ghazals were recited, became a central institution of urban Muslim culture, and the great Urdu poets of the late Mughal period, including Mir Taqi Mir, Sauda, Momin, Ghalib, Dagh, and Bahadur Shah Zafar himself, all worked in a tradition that owed much to the cultural patronage of the Mughal aristocracy. The history of Urdu poetry in the Mughal period is treated in greater detail on the Mughal literature cluster page.

Religion and Religious Practices

The religious life of Mughal India was extraordinarily varied. The dynasty was officially Sunni Muslim, and the legal, fiscal, and ceremonial institutions of the state operated within a broadly Islamic framework. Yet the population over which the dynasty ruled was overwhelmingly Hindu, and the religious life of the empire was shaped as much by Hindu temples, Buddhist monasteries, Jain mercantile communities, and Sikh congregations as by mosques, madrasas, and Sufi lodges.

The official religious establishment of the state was dominated by Sunni Islam, of the Hanafi school in matters of law. The qazi, the muhtasib, the mufti, and the sadr-us-sudur occupied important positions in the legal and religious administration, and the imperial patronage of mosques, madrasas, Sufi lodges, and religious endowments formed a substantial part of the public budget. The Shia tradition also had a presence at the Mughal court, particularly during the reign of certain emperors with Shia sympathies. The Timurid and Mughal rulers cultivated diplomatic relations with the Safavid shahs of Iran, and Humayun’s early exile at the Safavid court in the 1550s reinforced the Shia connection.

Sufi Orders and the Veneration of Saints

Sufi orders played a central role in the religious life of the empire. The Chishti order, founded by Khwaja Mu’in-ud-din Chishti of Ajmer in the twelfth century, was the most prominent, and Akbar’s devotion to the Chishti shrine at Ajmer was one of the most conspicuous features of his religious life. The Naqshbandi order, originally Central Asian, also acquired great influence at the Mughal court, and the relationship between the court and the principal Naqshbandi masters was a constant theme of the political and religious history of the period. The Qadiri, Suhrawardi, and other orders maintained important establishments in the cities of the empire, and the dargah of the Sufi master served as a focus for popular devotion, scholarly activity, and political networking. The veneration of saints, Muslim and Hindu alike, was a central feature of religious life: the tombs of the great Sufi masters, the pirs and babas of the various orders, were the destination of pilgrimage, the site of annual urs festivals, and the focus of substantial imperial patronage.

Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and Other Traditions

The Hindu religious establishment of the empire was both large and diverse, encompassing the Brahmanical establishment of the Gangetic plain, the temple networks of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and the Deccan, the Jain mercantile communities of western India and Rajasthan, the Buddhist monasteries of the eastern regions, and the various bhakti and devotional movements. Akbar’s attempts to engage with Hindu religious leaders, including his famous discussions in the Ibadat Khana at Fatehpur Sikri, and the translation of Hindu religious texts into Persian are well documented. The Sikh community of the Punjab, founded by Guru Nanak in the late fifteenth century, grew substantially during the Mughal period, particularly under the leadership of Guru Arjan and Guru Hargobind, and the relationship between the Sikh Gurus and the Mughal court was a defining feature of the period. The Hindu-Muslim relations in Mughal India cluster examines these interactions in detail.

Syncretism and the Din-i-Ilahi

The most famous expression of religious syncretism in the Mughal period is the Din-i-Ilahi, the “Religion of God,” promulgated by Akbar in 1582. The new faith drew on elements of Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, and Christianity, and was presented as a kind of imperial spiritual fellowship centred on the person of the emperor. Its historical status is debated: some historians have seen it as a sincere attempt at religious synthesis, while others have viewed it as a political instrument designed to neutralise the religious opposition of the ulama to Akbar’s religious policies. The movement never attracted more than a small number of adherents and effectively ended with the death of Akbar, but it remains one of the most discussed episodes in the history of Mughal religious policy.

Mughal Cuisine and Food Culture

The cuisine of the Mughal court and the broader society that grew up around it is and influential of the early modern world. The imperial kitchen, the bawarchi khana, was an enormous institution with a hierarchy of master cooks, rakabdars (stewards), spice specialists, bread-makers, halwais (confectioners), and bhandaris (storekeepers), and it was traditionally divided into Muslim, Hindu, and other specialised sections to accommodate the dietary requirements of the court.

The foundations of the imperial cuisine were the Central Asian pilafs, grilled meats, and stuffed breads of the Timurid tradition. To these were added the rich, spiced meat cookery and the dum style of slow cooking in sealed pots of the Kashmiri tradition, the refined vegetarian cookery of the Hindu and Jain traditions, the sweet-and-sour dishes of the Persian Gulf, and the local vegetables, fruits, and grains of the various provinces. The result was a cuisine of extraordinary range and refinement, characterised by the careful use of spices, the importance of rice as a starch, the centrality of lamb and goat meat, the abundant use of dried fruits and nuts, the elaborate techniques of dum cooking, the preference for clarified butter (ghee) over oil, and the elaborate rituals of presentation and serving.

Mughal cuisine is the cuisine of the great biryani, the kebab, the kofta, the pulao, the korma, the rogan josh, the nargisi kofta, the shahi tukda, the gulab jamun, the jalebi, and the sheer korma. Many of these dishes, which today constitute a substantial part of the culinary heritage of South Asia, were developed or codified in the imperial kitchens of the Mughals and the regional courts they patronised. The history of Mughal food culture, the principal dishes, the regional variations, and the elaborate rituals of the imperial table are treated in detail on the Mughal cuisine cluster page.

Mughal Literature, Poetry, and Historical Writing

The literary output of the Mughal period is vast, multilingual, and diverse, encompassing historical chronicles, biographical dictionaries, manuals of statecraft, religious and ethical treatises, dictionaries, translations of Sanskrit and Arabic works, anthologies of poetry, mathematical and astronomical works, medical and natural history texts, and an extensive body of vernacular literature.

The Court Chronicles

The principal literary monuments of the imperial court are the official histories written under imperial patronage. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, completed in the 1590s, is the most famous of these, and its third volume, the Ain-i-Akbari, is single sources for the social, administrative, and economic history of the period. The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, the autobiographical memoirs of Jahangir, is a more personal document, full of observations on natural history, the misdemeanors of his nobles, and the formalities of justice. The Padshahnama, the official history of the first decade of Shah Jahan’s reign, was produced in two celebrated illustrated versions, the Badshahnama of Abdul Hamid Lahori and the Padshahnama of Muhammad Waris. The Babar-nama, the memoirs of the founder of the dynasty, was originally composed in Turki and later translated into Persian by Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan; it remains one of the most vivid and self-revealing personal narratives of the early modern Islamic world. Other important historical works include the Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh of Abdul Qadir Badauni, a critical counterpoint to Abu’l Fazl; the Tabaqat-i-Akbari of Nizam-ud-din Ahmad; the Ma’asir-i-Rahimi of Abdul Baqi Nihawandi; the Alamgirnama of Mirza Muhammad Kazim; and the Ma’asir-ul-Umara of Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami, a biographical dictionary of the Mughal nobility.

Poet Laureates, Calligraphy, and the Imperial Mashq

The Mughal court maintained a tradition of malka-shu’ara, or poet-laureate, and a number of the most distinguished poets of the period held this appointment or its equivalent. Faizi, the brother of Abu’l Fazl, served as the poet-laureate of Akbar’s court and was Persian and Arabic poets of the period. Abu’l Fazl himself, in addition to his historical and administrative writings, was a poet of considerable accomplishment. Bedil, the great mystical poet of the late seventeenth century, was associated with the court of Muhammad Shah, although he was famously indifferent to imperial patronage. The Hindi, Braj, and Sanskrit poets of the court, including Tulsidas, Surdas, and the various Braj Bhasha poets of the Krishna devotional tradition, were also patronised by the Mughal aristocracy, particularly during the reigns of Akbar and Jahangir.

The imperial mashq, the formal calligraphy practice, was another important literary institution. The great calligraphers of the period, including Muhammad Husain al-Kashmiri, Mir Imad al-Hasani, and the various masters of the nasta’liq tradition, produced masterworks of the naskh, nasta’liq, shikasta, and kufic scripts, and calligraphy was considered one of the highest of the imperial arts.

Translation Projects and Religious Literature

The translation projects of the imperial maktab khana, the “translation bureau” established by Akbar, were among the most ambitious cultural enterprises of the period. The translation of the Mahabharata into Persian as the Razmnama, the translation of the Ramayana, the Atharva Veda, the Lilavati, the Rajatarangini, the Singhasan Battisi, and a number of other Sanskrit works, together with translations from Arabic, Turkish, and European languages, constituted a sustained effort to bring the literary heritage of the wider world into the Persianate literary system of the Mughal court.

Religious literature, both Muslim and Hindu, also flourished under imperial patronage. The ulama of the period produced extensive commentaries, juridical manuals, biographical dictionaries, and devotional works in Persian, Arabic, and the Indian vernaculars. The Hindu religious establishment produced the great devotional poetry of the Bhakti period, including the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, the Sur Sagar of Surdas, the Padmavat of Malik Muhammad Jayasi, and a substantial body of bhakti poetry in the various South Indian languages. The Sikh scripture, the Adi Granth, was compiled in 1604 by Guru Arjan and includes compositions in Punjabi, Braj, and several other North Indian languages.

Mughal Art: Miniature Painting, Calligraphy, and the Imperial Atelier

The painting tradition of the Mughal court is and influential in the history of Indian art. It emerged in the second half of the sixteenth century from the encounter between the Persian painting tradition of the Timurid and Safavid courts and the indigenous Indian traditions of Rajput, Pala, and Deccani painting, and it developed into a recognisably imperial idiom characterised by refined naturalism, careful attention to facial types, vivid but balanced colour, and the integration of Persian and Indian decorative elements.

The Imperial Atelier

The imperial kitab khana, the “book house” or library-atelier, was the institutional setting in which the painting tradition was developed. The atelier was established by Humayun, who brought back from his exile in Iran the Persian painters Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd us-Samad, and it was expanded by Akbar into a substantial workshop employing more than a hundred painters, calligraphers, illuminators, and binders. The workshop produced illustrated manuscripts of the Hamzanama, the Akbarnama, the Razmnama, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, the Padshahnama, and a long series of other historical, literary, and religious works; it also produced single-page paintings for albums (muraqqa), portraits of the emperor and the principal nobles, and a substantial body of natural history, botanical, and zoological painting. The principal painters of the imperial atelier, including Daswanth and Basawan under Akbar, Mansur and Abu’l Hasan under Jahangir, and Bichitr, Balchand, and Chitra under Shah Jahan, are among the most accomplished artists of the early modern world. The dismissal of the principal painters from Aurangzeb’s court dispersed the imperial tradition into the provincial courts of Rajasthan, the Punjab hills, the Deccan, and the successor states. The Mughal art cluster page treats the painting tradition, the decorative arts, and the materials of the imperial workshop in greater depth.

Mughal Costumes, Jewelry, and Personal Adornment

The court costume of the Mughal aristocracy, the textile tradition that supported it, and the elaborate culture of personal adornment that surrounded it are among the most distinctive features of the period. The jama, the long-sleeved robe buttoned down the front; the angarkha, a similar garment tied at the side; the shalwar and kurti of the female and informal male costume; the pagri, the turban; the patka, the waist sash; and the doshala, the double shawl, were all standard elements of the imperial wardrobe.

The textile tradition that supported this costume was one of the most sophisticated in the early modern world. Indian muslins, calicoes, silks, brocades, and embroidered fabrics were prized in European, West Asian, and Southeast Asian markets, and the imperial workshops of Ahmedabad, Lahore, Agra, and Burhanpur produced fabrics of extraordinary refinement. The dabbi (block printing), the chikan (white embroidery) of Lucknow, the kantha of Bengal, the phulkari of the Punjab, the zardozi (gold embroidery) of the imperial court, and the gota (gold lace work) of the Rajput courts all flourished under imperial patronage.

The jewelry tradition of the period was equally elaborate. The Mughal kundan setting, the meenakari enamel work of Jaipur, the jade carving of the imperial court, the use of diamonds from Golconda, the mughal cut of the larger stones, the jhumar and sarpech headdresses, the bajuband armlets, the haar necklaces, the bazuband amulet boxes, and the elaborate use of pearls, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires in court ceremonial all belong to this tradition. The detailed treatment of the costume, the textile tradition, the personal ornaments, and the court ceremonial of personal adornment is provided on the Mughal costumes and jewelry cluster page.

Mughal Festivals, Entertainment, and Court Spectacle

The ceremonial life of the Mughal court was structured by an elaborate calendar of festivals, religious observances, and court entertainments. The most important of the formal festivals were the two Eids; the Milad-un-Nabi, the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday; the Shab-i-Barat, the night of forgiveness; the Juma (Friday) congregational prayers at the imperial mosque; the solar and lunar New Year festivals (Nawroz); the birthday celebrations of the emperor; the Shahi Ashura of the Shia observance; and the various regional and Hindu festivals that the imperial court occasionally joined or acknowledged.

The durbar, the formal court assembly held in the Diwan-i-Am, was the principal daily ceremony of the imperial court. The emperor would appear in state on the jharokha of the palace, receive the nazar (gift-offering) of the principal nobles, hear petitions, and dispense justice. The Diwan-i-Khas, the private audience hall, was the setting for more intimate consultations, diplomatic receptions, and the emperor’s encounters with scholars, poets, and Sufi masters. Court entertainments included the qara-jargu and other Central Asian games, the chowgan (polo), the elephant processions, the shikar (hunting) expeditions, the naqqar khana (drum house) music of the formal court, the qawwali and marsiya devotional performances, the mushairah poetry gatherings, and the elaborate Mughal gardens in which much of the court social life took place. The detailed treatment of the festival calendar, the court ceremonial, and the principal forms of entertainment is provided on the Mughal festivals and entertainment cluster page.

Music and Dance

Music held a central place in the cultural life of the Mughal court. The principal court musicians, particularly those of the Seni, Kachhwaha, Rababi, and Kalawant traditions, were highly paid and held important positions in the imperial household. The naqqar khana regulated the daily life of the palace, the timings of prayer, the calls to the imperial banquet, and the ceremonial processions. The mehfil, the formal musical gathering, was a recognised institution of court life, and the qawwali devotional singing of the Sufi lodges was an important popular counterpart. The theoretical literature on music in the period was substantial, drawing on the earlier Persian and Sanskrit traditions: the Raga Darpan, the Sangita Ratnakara, the Ain-i-Akbari’s account of musical classification, and the various treatises of musicians of the period together constitute a substantial body of musicological writing. The principal ragas and talas of the period, the gharana system of musical lineages, and the synthesis of the Persian, Central Asian, and Indic musical traditions are all treated on the Mughal art cluster page.

The place of dance in Mughal court life is more complex. The Mughal elite did not generally perform dance, although they patronised musicians and dancers, particularly the tawaif tradition of the courtesan culture. The Kathak tradition of North Indian classical dance, which developed in the courts of the Nawabs of Awadh and the Rajput princes, was closely related to the broader Kshatriya dance tradition of the region, and it drew on both the bhakti devotional dance of the temple tradition and the mujra performance tradition of the courtly courtesan.

The social structure of Mughal India was a complex hierarchy of caste, religion, occupation, and regional custom. The imperial court and the mansabdari nobility occupied the apex of the social order, with the emperor as the supreme authority and the umara (great nobles) of the highest mansabs as the principal executives of the state. The mansabdari nobility, discussed in detail on the Mughal administration overview page, included Muslims of foreign origin, Indian converts, and a substantial body of Hindu Rajput and other indigenous nobles, particularly after the policy of religious tolerance pursued by Akbar and his successors.

The merchant class, the sahukar and banya of the cities and the market towns, formed a second important element of the social order. The great merchant families of Gujarat, the Coromandel coast, Bengal, and the Punjab handled the long-distance trade of the empire, the supply of the imperial household, and the financing of agricultural and commercial operations. The principal trading communities included the Multani, the Marwari, the Bohra, the Khoja, the Armenian, the Jain Shravak, the Chettiar, and the various European trading companies.

The artisan class, the karigar, included the master craftsmen of the imperial workshops, the urban guilds of the principal craft cities, the village craftsmen of the agricultural hinterland, and the specialised craft communities of particular regions. The textile workers of Ahmedabad, Dhaka, and Varanasi, the metalworkers of Gujarat, the stonecutters of Makrana, the painters of the imperial kitab khana, the embroiderers of the imperial court, and the shipbuilders of Gujarat and the Konkan were all part of the broad artisan class that produced the manufactured goods of the empire. The peasantry, the raiyat and kisan, constituted the great majority of the population. The peasant household, the ghar and khandan, was the basic unit of agricultural production, the basic unit of the state’s revenue assessment, and the basic unit of the broader social order. The detailed treatment of the peasant economy, the revenue assessment, the relations between the peasantry and the mansabdari jagirdars, and the periodic famines of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is provided on the Mughal administration overview pillar page.

The Position of Women in Mughal Society

The position of women in Mughal society varied considerably by class, region, religion, and period. The women of the imperial family, particularly the wives, mothers, and daughters of the emperor, exercised substantial political and economic power. The institution of the zenana, the women’s quarters of the palace, was a recognised arena of political activity, and the influence of figures like Nur Jahan, Jahanara, and Roshanara Begum on imperial politics The purdah convention, the seclusion of women from public life, was widely observed by the upper classes, although it was less rigidly enforced among the lower classes, the rural population, and the various regional communities.

The economic and social position of women in the broader society was shaped by the conventions of Muslim law, the customs of the Hindu and other religious communities, the regional traditions of dress, marriage, and inheritance, and the practical realities of agrarian and urban life. Women in the merchant and artisan classes were often active in family businesses, the management of household workshops, and the supervision of agricultural operations. Women of the peasant class, the kisans, often worked in the fields alongside their husbands and were responsible for the production of food, the management of livestock, and the care of children.

The imperial court patronised a number of women scholars, poets, and mystics. Jahanara Begum, the eldest daughter of Shah Jahan, was a celebrated Sufi scholar and the author of a biography of the Chishti saint Mu’in-ud-din Chishti and a commentary on the Padshah-nama of the imperial court. Zeb-un-Nissa, the eldest daughter of Aurangzeb, was a celebrated poet in both Persian and Urdu and one of the most accomplished women of letters of the period. The treatment of the position of women in the broader Islamic, Hindu, and Sikh communities of the period is a complex topic, and the Hindu-Muslim relations cluster page treats some of the inter-religious dimensions of the question.

Education, Madrasas, and Scholarship

The educational system of Mughal India was plural and decentralised. The principal institutions of Muslim education were the maktab, the elementary school attached to a mosque, and the madrasa, the higher school of religious and legal instruction. The madrasa curriculum centred on the Quran, the hadith, the fiqh (jurisprudence), the usul, the tafsir, the kalam, and the auxiliary sciences of grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, and astronomy. The principal madrasas of the empire, including those at Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Jaunpur, and Gulbarga, were important centres of scholarship and were frequently endowed by the emperor, the princes of the blood, and the great nobles.

Hindu education was provided by the traditional guru-shishya lineage, the pathshala, and the tol of the Sanskrit learning tradition, the gurukula of the Brahmanical tradition, and the various regional schools of vernacular learning. The principal centres of Sanskrit learning were the vidyapeeth of Mithila, the pathshalas of Bengal, the tols of Varanasi, and the various temple colleges of the South. The Jesuit missionaries, particularly in the South Indian mission, also established European-style schools that taught Latin, Portuguese, and elements of European learning. The imperial maktab khana, the translation bureau established by Akbar, was an important centre of scholarly activity, and it brought together scholars of different religious traditions in a sustained effort of translation, commentary, and discussion. The detailed treatment of the institutions of education, the curriculum, the principal scholars, and the relationship between the court and the religious establishment is provided on the Mughal administration overview page.

Slavery, Eunuchs, and Court Service

The institution of slavery, although less extensive than in some other early modern Islamic states, formed part of the social structure of Mughal India. The emperor and the great nobles maintained substantial establishments of domestic slaves, including soldiers, servants, concubines, and eunuchs. The eunuchs, the khwaja sara and the hijra, occupied a particular and complex place in the social order, often serving as guardians of the zenana, administrators of the imperial household, and intermediaries between the women’s quarters and the outside world.

The bandagan, the personal slaves of the emperor, formed an important part of the imperial establishment, and several emperors, including Akbar, came to power with the support of the bandagan. The bandagan of the imperial court were often military commanders, governors, and high officials, and the system of training and patronage that surrounded them was a distinctive feature of the Timurid-Mughal political tradition. The court service, the dagh, the chehrah, the siyada, and the elaborate apparatus of palace protocol were important elements of the imperial establishment, and the hierarchy of court titles, the mansab, the zabt, the sihr, the khel’at, the sar-o-pa, the tosh khana, and the atah khana are treated in detail on the Mughal administration overview and Mughal court and nobility cluster pages.

Daily Life in the Cities and the Countryside

Urban Life

The cities of the Mughal Empire were major centres of population, commerce, craftsmanship, and cultural activity. The principal imperial cities, including Delhi, Agra, Lahore, Ahmedabad, Burhanpur, Dhaka, and Kabul, were among the largest urban centres of the early modern world, with populations estimated in the hundreds of thousands. The typical Mughal city was a dense agglomeration of houses, havelis, caravanserais, mandis (markets), bazaars, mosques, temples, dargahs, madrasas, hammams, and royal buildings, all enclosed by a defensive wall.

The rhythms of urban life were regulated by the azan of the mosques, the time-keeping of the imperial naqqar khana, the regular opening of the markets, the seasonal festivals, and the formal hours of prayer, work, and rest. The urban household, the khandan, was the basic unit of social life, and the household economy, the ghar, included the family, the extended family, the servants, the slaves, the apprentices, and the various dependents that constituted the typical urban household. The mohalla, the neighbourhood, was the basic unit of urban social organisation, and the mohalla mosque, the mohalla well, the mohalla shrine, and the mohalla festival were important elements of local identity.

Rural Life

The vast majority of the empire’s population lived in villages, and the rhythm of rural life was structured by the agricultural calendar, the seasonal rains, the kharif and rabi cropping cycles, and the periodic famines. The typical Mughal village was a cluster of houses, surrounded by agricultural land, with a chardhi, a chaupal (village meeting place), a small mosque or temple, a pir or saint’s tomb, a kothi or landlord’s house, a kuan (well) or bawdi (stepwell), and the agricultural fields that supported the village.

The peasant household, the kisan and kisansani, was the basic unit of agricultural production, and the ghar and khandan provided the labour, the management, and the inheritance of the agricultural operation. The village chaupal was the centre of community life, the place where the village elders met, the agricultural news was exchanged, the disputes were settled, and the village festivals were held. The sardar of the village, often a chaudhri or mukhiya, was the principal intermediary between the village and the state, and the patwari, the village accountant, maintained the village records of landholding, the revenue assessment, and the agricultural production. The relationship between the village, the zamindar (landlord), the jagirdar (revenue assignee), and the state was a central concern of the imperial administration, and the detailed treatment of the revenue administration and the agrarian relations of the period is provided on the Mughal administration overview and Mughal land revenue cluster pages.

Death, Mourning, and Funerary Customs

The imperial court, the great nobles, and the religious establishment of the empire maintained elaborate conventions for death, mourning, and funerary commemoration. The death of the emperor was a major event, marked by a formal period of mourning, the cessation of music and entertainment, the wearing of mourning clothes, the distribution of alms, and the elaborate ceremonies of the imperial funeral. The julus, the formal procession of the imperial body to the place of burial, was an important ceremonial occasion, and the construction of the imperial maqbara (tomb) was one of the principal architectural enterprises of the reign.

The funeral customs of the empire were shaped by the religious traditions of the deceased. The Muslim funeral, the namaz-e-janaza, the ritual washing, the shrouding in kafan, the carrying of the body to the qabristan (cemetery), and the burial in a simple grave with the body turned toward Mecca, was the standard Muslim practice. The Hindu funeral, the antyesti rites, the cremation of the body, the immersion of the ashes in a sacred river, and the shraddha ceremonies for the deceased, was the standard Hindu practice. The Sikh, Jain, and Christian communities maintained their own distinctive funerary customs. The Mughal imperial mausolea, the maqbara tradition, included some of the most famous buildings of the period. The tomb of Humayun in Delhi, the tomb of Akbar at Sikandra, the tomb of Jahangir at Lahore, the Taj Mahal at Agra, the tomb of Safdarjung in Delhi, and the tomb of Itimad-ud-Daulah in Agra all belong to this tradition. The Mughal tombs cluster page treats the funerary architecture in greater detail.

The Cultural Legacy of the Mughals

The cultural legacy of the Mughal Empire is one of the most extensive and pervasive of any early modern state. The Urdu language, the nasta’liq script, the gharana system of music, the kundan tradition of jewelry, the charbagh garden, the biryani and kebab of South Asian cuisine, the kurti and salwar of the South Asian wardrobe, the meena work of the decorative arts, the mushairah of the literary gathering, the durbar of the formal court, and the very word Mughal as a culinary adjective are all, in different ways, parts of this legacy.

The imperial architectural tradition, the painting tradition, the literary tradition, and the broader cultural synthesis of the Mughals have been subject to varied and contested interpretations in the modern period. The British colonial period, the independence movement, the partition of 1947, and the post-Independence politics of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have all engaged in different ways with the Mughal heritage, and the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, the Fatehpur Sikri complex, the Lahore Fort, and the Badshahi Mosque have all become contested symbols of pre-colonial sovereignty and contested sites of contemporary cultural identity.

The study of Mughal culture, society, and daily life has been transformed over the last half century by a new generation of historians, art historians, and literary scholars who have moved beyond the court chronicles to reconstruct the social, cultural, and material life of the broader population of the empire. The detailed work on the jagirdari crisis, the peasant economy, the regional cultures, the religious traditions, the linguistic developments, and the gender relations of the period has produced a richer and more complex picture of Mughal society than was available to earlier generations of historians. The cluster pages linked throughout this overview offer deeper treatment of particular aspects of the culture, society, and daily life of Mughal India.