State of India in 1526. Early life of Bábar, 1482-1526. CHAPTER X. THE MUGHAL EMPIRE (1526 TO 1761 A.D.). WHEN, therefore, BABAR invaded India in 1526, he found it divided among a number of local Muhammadan kings and Hindu princes. An Afghán Sultán of the house of Lodí, with his capital at Agra, ruled over what little was left of the historical kingdom of Delhi. Bábar, literally the Lion, born in 1482, was the sixth in descent from Timúr the Tartar. At the early age of twelve, he succeeded his father in the petty kingdom of Ferghána on the Jaxartes (1494); and after romantic adventures, conquered Samarkand, the capital of Tamerlane's line in 1497. Overpowered by rebellion, and driven out of the Valley of the Oxus, he seized the kingdom of Kábul in 1504. During twenty-two years, he grew in strength on the Afghán side of the Indian passes, till in 1526 he burst through them into the Punjab, and defeated the Delhi sovereign Ibráhím Lodí at Pánipat. This was the first of the three great battles which decided the fate of India on that same plain, viz. in 1526, 1556, and 1761. Having entered Delhi, he received the allegiance of the Muhammadans, but was speedily attacked Conquers by the Rájputs of Chittor. In 1527, Bábar defeated them at Fatehpur Sikri near Agra, after a battle memorable for its perils and for Bábar's vow, in his extremity, never again to touch wine. He rapidly extended his power as far as Múltán and Behar. He died at Agra in 1530, leaving an Empire which stretched from the river Amu in Central Asia to the borders of the Gangetic delta in Lower Bengal. Invades India, 1526. Battles of Northern India, 1526-30. Humáyún, His son, HUMAYUN, succeeded him in India, but had to 1530. Accession to the throne. Capture of Lahore and occupation of the Punjab by his rival brother Kámrán. Final defeat of the Lodís under Mahmud Lodí, and acquisition of Jaunpur by Humáyún. 1532. Humáyún's campaigns in Málwá and Guzerat. 1539. Humáyún defeated by Sher Shah, the Afghán ruler of Bengal, at Chapar Ghát, near Baxár, the Mughal army being utterly routed. Retreats to Agra. [1540. by Sher his throne. and at the same time was deprived of the base from which his father had drawn his supplies. The Mughal hordes who had accompanied Bábar were more hateful to the long settled Indian Afgháns than the Hindus themselves. After ten years of fighting, Humáyún was driven out of India by the Bengali Humáyún expelled Afgháns under Sher Shah, the Governor of Bengal. While flying through the desert of Sind, as an exile to Persia, his famous Sháh. son Akbar was born to him in the petty fort of Umarkot (1542). Sher Shah set up us Emperor, but was killed while storming Afghán the rock fortress at Kálinjar (1545). His son succeeded to Delhi, dynasty of his power. But under his grandson, the third of the Afghán 1540-56. house, the Provinces revolted, including Málwá, the Punjab, and Bengal. Humáyún returned to India, and Akbar, then only in his thirteenth year, defeated the Afghán army after a desperate battle at Pánipat (1556). India now passed finally Regains from the Afgháns to the Mughals. Sher Shah's line disappears; and Humáyún, having recovered his Kábul dominions, reigned again for a few months at Delhi, but died in 1556. AKBAR THE GREAT, the real founder of the Mughal Empire Akbar the as it existed for two centuries, succeeded his father at the fourteen.1 Born in 1542, his reign lasted for almost fifty years, from 1556 to 1605, and was therefore contemporary with that of our own Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603). His father, Humáyún, left but a small kingdom in India, scarcely extending beyond the districts around Agra and Delhi. At the time of Humáyún's death, Akbar was absent in the Punjab under the guardianship of Bairám Khán, fighting the revolted Afgháns. Bairám, a Túrkomán by birth, had been the support of the exiled Humáyún, and held the real command of the army which restored him to his throne at Pánipat. He now became the Regent for the youthful Akbar, under the honoured Bairám, Regent, title of Khán Bába, equivalent to the King's Father.' 1556-60. Brave and skilful as a general, but harsh and overbearing, he age of 1540. Humáyún finally defeated by Sher Shah near Kanauj, and escapes For dates see Thomas' Pathán Kings, pp. 379-380. Materials for Humá- 1 Materials for reign of Akbar: the Ain-i-Akbarí, of Abul Fazl (old translation by Francis Gladwin, 2 vols., 1800; best edition by Professor Blochmann, Calcutta, left, I believe, unfinished at his death); Sir Henry Elliot's Indian Historians, vols. i. v. and vi.; Firishta, vol. ii. pp. 181282; Elphinstone, 495-547 (1866). Great, 1556-1605. Akbar reigns for himself, 1560. Akbar's work in India. raised many enemies; and Akbar, having endured four years of thraldom, took advantage of a hunting party to throw off his minister's yoke (1560). The fallen Regent, after a struggle between his loyalty and his resentment, revolted, was defeated, but pardoned. Akbar granted him a liberal pension; and Bairam was in the act of starting on a pilgrimage to Mecca, when he fell beneath the knife of an Afghán assassin, whose father he had slain in battle. The chief events in the reign of Akbar are summarized below.1 India was seething with discordant elements. The earlier invasions by Túrks, Afgháns, and Mughals had left a powerful Muhammadan population in India under their own chiefs. Akbar reduced these Musalmán States to Provinces of the Delhi Empire. Many of the Hindu kings and Rajput nations had also regained their independence; Akbar brought them into political dependence to his authority. This double task he effected partly by force of arms, but in part also by Concilia alliances. He enlisted the Rájput princes by marriage and by a sympathetic policy in the support of his throne. then employed them in high posts, and played off his Hindu generals and Hindu ministers against the Mughal party in Upper India, and against the Afghán faction in Bengal. tion of Hindus. He On his accession in 1556, he found the Indian Empire confined to the Punjab, with the districts around Agra and Delhi. 1 REIGN OF AKBAR, 1556-1605 :— 1542. Born at Umarkot in Sind.' 1566. Invasion of the Punjab by Akbar's rival brother Hákim, who is 1561-68. Akbar subjugates the Rájput kingdoms to the Mughal Empire. 1572-73. Akbar's campaign in Guzerat, and its reannexation to the Empire. 1576. Akbar's reconquest of Bengal, its final annexation to the Mughal Empire. 1581-93. Insurrection in Guzerat. The Province finally subjugated in 1586. Akbar's conquest of Kashmir; its final revolt quelled in 1592. 1599. Second expedition against Ahmednagar by Akbar in person. Cap- [1601. extends the He quickly extended it at the expense of his nearest Akbar neighbours, namely, the Rájputs. Jaipur was reduced to a Empire. fief of the Empire; and Akbar cemented his conquest by marrying the daughter of its Hindu prince. Jodhpur was in like manner overcome; and Akbar married his heir, Salím, who afterwards reigned under the title of Jahángír, to the grand-daughter of the Rájá. The Rájputs of Chittor were Reduction overpowered after a long struggle, but would not mingle their of Rajputs, 1561-68 high-caste Kshattriyan blood even with that of an Emperor. They found shelter among the mountains and in the deserts of the Indus, whence they afterwards emerged to recover most of their old dominions, and to found their capital of Udaipur, which they retain to this day. They still boast that alone, among the great Rájput clans, they never gave a daughter in marriage to a Mughal Emperor. Akbar pursued his policy of conciliation towards every Hindu State. ment of Mall. He also took care to provide a career for the lesser Hindu Employ nobility. He appointed his brother-in-law, the son of the Hindus. Jáipur Rájá, Governor of the Punjab. Rájá Man Sinh, also a Man Sinh. Hindu relative, did good war-service for Akbar from Kábul to Orissa, and ruled as his Governor of Bengal from 1598 to 1604. His great finance minister, Rájá Todar Mall, was like- Todar wise a Hindu, and carried out the first land settlement and survey of India. Out of 415 mansabdárs, or commanders of horse, 51 were Hindus. Akbar abolished the jaziah, or tax on non-Musalmáns, and placed all his subjects upon a political equality. He had the Sanskrit sacred books and epic poems translated into Persian, and showed a keen interest in the literature and religion of his Hindu subjects. He respected their Reform of laws, but he put down their inhumane rites. He forbade trial by ordeal, animal sacrifices, and child marriages before the age of puberty. He legalized the remarriage of Hindu widows, but he failed to abolish widow-burning on the husband's funeral pile, although he took steps to ensure that the act was a voluntary one. Akbar thus incorporated his Hindu subjects into the Indian effective machinery of his empire. With their aid he reduced madan the independent Muhammadan kings of Northern India. He States subjugated the Musalmán potentates from the Punjab to reduced by Behar. After a struggle, he wrested Bengal from its Afghán 1601. Annexation of Khándesh, and return of Akbar to Northern India. 1605. His death at Agra. N.B.-Such phrases as 'Akbar's conquest' or 'Akbar's campaign' mean the conquest or campaign by Akbar's armies, and do not necessarily imply his personal presence. Hindu customs. Muham Akbar. princes of the house of Sher Shah, who had ruled it from 1539 to 1576. From the latter date, Bengal remained during two centuries a Province of the Mughal Empire, under governors appointed from Delhi (1576-1765). In 1765, it passed by an imperial grant to the British. Orissa, on the Bengal seaboard, submitted to Akbar's armies under his Hindu general, Todar Mall, in 1574. On the opposite coast of India, Guzerat was reconquered from its Muhammadan king (1572-73), although not finally subjugated until 1593. Málwá had been reduced in 1572. Kashmir was conquered in 1586, and its last revolt quelled in 1592. Sind was also annexed in 1592; and by the recovery of Kandahár in 1594, Akbar had extended the Mughal Empire from the heart of Afghánistán across all India north of the Vindhyas to Orissa and Sind. He removed Capital the seat of government from Delhi to Agra, and founded changed from Delhi Fatehpur Sikri as the future capital of the Empire. From this to Agra. project he was afterwards dissuaded, by. the superior position of Agra on the great water-way of the Jumna. In 1566, he built the Agra fort, whose red sandstone battlements majestically overhang the river to this day. Akbar's efforts in Southern India. Only annexed His efforts to establish the Mughal Empire in Southern India were less successful. Those efforts began in 1586, but during the first twelve years were frustrated by the valour and statesmanship of Chánd Bíbí, the queen-regent of Ahmednagar. This celebrated lady skilfully united the Abyssinian and the Persian factions' in the Deccan, and strengthened herself by an alliance with Bijápur and other Muhammadan States of the south. In 1599, Akbar led his armies in person against the princess; but, notwithstanding her assassination by her mutinous troops, Ahmednagar was not reduced till the reign of Shah Jahán, in 1637. Akbar subjugated Khandesh, and with this somewhat precarious annexation, his conquests in the Deccan ceased. He returned to Northern India, perhaps feeling that the conquest of the south was beyond the strength. of his young Empire. His last years were rendered unhappy by the intrigues of his family, and by the misconduct of his beloved son, Prince Salím, afterwards Jahángír. In 1605, he His death. died, and was buried in the noble. mausoleum at Sikandra, whose mingled architecture of Buddhist design and Arabesque tracery bear witness to the composite faith of the founder of the Mughal Empire. In 1873, the British Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, presented a cloth of honour to cover the plain marble slab beneath which Akbar lies. Khandesh. 1 Professing the hostile Sunni and Shiá sectarian creeds, ante, p. 232. |