The Mughal Empire

The Later Mughals (1707–1857): Decline and Dissolution

The century and a half between the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 and the extinction of the dynasty in 1857 is conventionally treated as the period of Mughal decline, but this framing obscures a more complex reality. Several later Mughals presided over courts of genuine cultural importance, and the formal authority of the emperor was recognized by successor states well into the nineteenth century. The Mughal name still carried symbolic weight, and even the British, the ultimate beneficiaries of the empire’s dissolution, were careful to extract legitimacy from the puppet emperors of Delhi. The full arc of the decline is set out on the Mughal Empire overview and the decline of the Mughal Empire pillar, with the principal successor states examined on the rise of the Marathas, rise of the Sikh power, and British East India Company’s expansion pages.

Bahadur Shah I (r. 1707–1712)

The first of the Later Mughals was Aurangzeb’s eldest surviving son, Prince Muazzam, who ascended the throne at the age of sixty-four after defeating his brothers in a brief succession war. As emperor he took the title Bahadur Shah, and he attempted to address the structural problems of the empire by adopting a more conciliatory religious policy, attempting to reconcile the Rajput houses of Mewar and Marwar with the imperial court, and seeking a negotiated settlement with the Marathas. None of these efforts was successful, and the period was marked by a series of Maratha incursions into the heartland of Hindustan, the growing independence of provincial governors, and the rise of the Sikh community of the Punjab into a regional power. Bahadur Shah died in 1712, leaving a fragile empire to his four quarreling sons.

Jahandar Shah (r. 1712–1713)

The succession was contested by the four sons, of whom the eldest, Jahandar Shah, was raised to the throne with the decisive support of the noble Zulfiqar Khan. Jahandar Shah was personally indolent and politically weak, and effective authority passed to Zulfiqar Khan, who attempted a brief restoration of central administration. The reign was cut short by a rebellion in 1713, when the governor of the Punjab, Farrukhsiyar, marched on Delhi with the support of the Sayyid Brothers, two influential nobles named Husain Ali and Hassan Ali who dominated imperial politics for the next decade. The factional politics of the early eighteenth century are examined on the Mughal court and nobility page.

Farrukhsiyar and the Sayyid Brothers (r. 1713–1719)

Farrukhsiyar owed his throne to the Sayyid Brothers and was for most of his reign a puppet in their hands. The political history of these years is largely the history of the Sayyid Brothers’ attempts to manage the court, the mansabdari hierarchy, and the increasing threats from the Marathas, the Sikhs, and the governor of Bengal. The emperor eventually attempted to assert his independence, but the attempt failed; he was deposed in 1719, blinded, and killed. The political context is examined in detail on the Mughal court and nobility page and on the decline of the Mughal Empire pillar.

Two puppet emperors, Rafi ud-Darajat and Rafi ud-Dawlah, both of whom died of tuberculosis within months of their accession, were set up in 1719 by the Sayyid Brothers. The rapid turnover of rulers in 1719 marks the symbolic nadir of the dynasty’s effective authority.

Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–1748)

The accession of Muhammad Shah, the grandson of Bahadur Shah I, marked a brief stabilization of imperial authority. Muhammad Shah was an effective and energetic ruler who attempted to restore the fortunes of the dynasty by allying with the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Nawab of Awadh, and the Marathas against the Sayyid Brothers, whose power he broke in 1720. He also attempted to reform the mansabdari system, patronize the arts, and resume a more orthodox Islamic ceremonial at court. The court culture of the period, including the celebrated development of Urdu poetry, is examined on the Mughal literature page.

The Invasion of Nadir Shah (1739)

The most catastrophic single event of Muhammad Shah’s reign was the invasion of the Persian conqueror Nadir Shah, who in early 1739 marched an army into the Mughal heartland and, on 24 February 1739, defeated the emperor’s forces at the Battle of Karnal. Muhammad Shah was forced to surrender, and Nadir Shah entered Delhi in March 1739, where the famous massacre of the Delhi population and the looting of the imperial treasury took place. The Peacock Throne, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the Darya-ye Noor, and a substantial portion of the imperial treasury were carried off to Persia. The financial and political consequences of the invasion were severe and permanent: the empire’s reserve of bullion was exhausted, and the credibility of the imperial system was broken in a way that would never be repaired.

Ahmad Shah Bahadur (r. 1748–1754)

Muhammad Shah died in 1748 and was succeeded by his son Ahmad Shah, whose reign was dominated by the struggles of the nobles and the early phases of the Maratha ascendancy in North India. Ahmad Shah’s later years were marked by mental illness, and effective power passed to a series of competing nobles. The emperor was deposed in 1754 and imprisoned, dying in 1775. The political context of his reign is examined on the Mughal court and nobility page.

Alamgir II (r. 1754–1759)

The accession of Alamgir II, a grandson of Bahadur Shah I, marked a brief attempt to restore central authority under the protection of the Maratha chief Raghunath Rao. The attempt was unsuccessful, and the emperor was murdered in 1759 by a group of nobles acting in concert with the Rohilla Afghan chief Ghulam Qadir.

Akbar Shah II (r. 1806–1837)

Akbar Shah II was a titular emperor, ruling under British protection from the Red Fort, and the political reality of the period was the steady extension of British authority and the consolidation of the British Raj. The emperor was allowed the trappings of sovereignty, including the right to be addressed as Padshah, but the actual government of the regions that had once been the heartland of the empire was in the hands of the East India Company and its successors. The political context is examined on the British East India Company’s expansion page.

Bahadur Shah Zafar and the Rebellion of 1857

The last Mughal emperor was Bahadur Shah Zafar, who ascended the throne in 1837 at the age of sixty-one and reigned for twenty years as a pensioner of the British East India Company. He was an accomplished Urdu poet, a Sufi of the Chishti order, and a man of refined cultural sensibilities, but he wielded no political power and commanded no military force. He became, in 1857, the symbolic figurehead of the great rebellion that bears his name. The rebellion, which began in May 1857 at Meerut, gathered force in Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi, and Hyderabad, and drew into its orbit a heterogeneous coalition of sepoys, dispossessed princes, agrarian rebels, and religious figures of multiple communities. Bahadur Shah Zafar was proclaimed emperor of a restored Mughal Empire by the rebels in Delhi in May 1857.

Historiographical Note

The traditional historiography of the Later Mughals, derived principally from the works of Jadunath Sarkar and his successors, treated the period as a story of unrelieved decline, in which weak emperors, corrupt ministers, and foreign invasions combined to dismantle the institutions of the empire. More recent scholarship, including the work of Muzaffar Alam, Seema Alavi, and others, has emphasized the persistence of Mughal institutions, of Mughal symbolic authority, and of Mughal cultural models well into the nineteenth century. The Mughal emperor in Delhi was, even on the eve of 1857, the principal symbolic authority in northern India, and the British were careful to extract legitimacy from him. The historiographical debates are surveyed on the decline of the Mughal Empire page.

Legacy

The legacy of the Later Mughals is the legacy of a state in the process of becoming a memory. The architectural and cultural forms established under Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb survived in the courts of the successor states of Hyderabad, Awadh, Bengal, and the post-Mughal principalities of Rajputana. The Urdu language, the charbagh garden, the biryani, and the political vocabulary of South Asian public life all carry the imprint of the Mughal inheritance, even where the dynasty that produced them had ceased to be a political reality. The architectural legacy of the period is examined on the Mughal architecture pillar, and the cultural legacy on the Mughal culture and society pillar.

Sources

  • Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707–1748 (Oxford University Press, 1986).
  • C.A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (The New Cambridge History of India II.1, 1988), chs. 1–4.