The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857

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These taxes, which amounted to well over half the output of a peasant cultivator, [25] were paid in the well-regulated silver currency, [22] and caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets. From the time of Akbar, Mughal camps were huge in scale, accompanied by numerous personages associated with the royal court, as well as soldiers and labourers. million square kilometres, including parts of what are now India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. As opposed to the polybolos and repeating crossbows used earlier in ancient Greece and China, respectively, Shirazi's rapid-firing gun had multiple gun barrels that fired hand cannons loaded with gunpowder. In contrast to Akbar, Jahangir came into conflict with non-Muslim religious leaders, notably the Sikh guru Arjan, whose execution was the first of many conflicts between the Mughal empire and the Sikh community.

After Aurangzeb, the Mughal capital definitively became the walled city of Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi). Although Shah Jahan fully recovered from his illness, there was a succession war for the throne between Dara and Aurangzeb.

Ousted from his ancestral domains in Turkistan by Sheybani Khan, the 40-year-old Prince Babur turned to India to satisfy his ambitions. He had been banished not so much for what he did during the mutiny as for what he represented to the mutineers - Hindus as well as Muslims - who regarded him as the touchstone of an old and deeply rooted way of life which the Victorian Evangelicals, who dominated the making and execution of British policy, were determined to replace with the prejudices and habits of muscular Christianity. Through warfare and diplomacy, Akbar was able to extend the empire in all directions and controlled almost the entire Indian subcontinent north of the Godavari River. I had thought that Dalrymple would never surpass his performance in writing From the Holy Mountain, but The Last Mughal has caused me to think again.

The Sur Empire (1540–1555), founded by Sher Shah Suri (reigned 1540–1545), briefly interrupted Mughal rule. Mughal power rapidly dwindled during the 18th century and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah II, was deposed in 1857, with the establishment of the British Raj. It was invented in Kashmir by Ali Kashmiri ibn Luqman in 998 AH (1589–90 CE), and twenty other such globes were later produced in Lahore and Kashmir during the Mughal Empire. A Marxist school (led by Irfan Habib and based at Aligarh Muslim University) emphasises excessive exploitation of the peasantry by the rich, which stripped away the will and the means to support the regime. After 1835 the Company no longer recognised the authority of the emperor, accepting him only as 'King of Delhi' and removing all references to him from their coinage.

Aurangzeb's son, Shah Alam, repealed the religious policies of his father and attempted to reform the administration. Sometimes this was necessitated by political and military demands, but shifts also occurred for ideological reasons (for example, Akbar's establishment of Fatehpur Sikri), or even simply because the cost of establishing a new capital was marginal.

Geared sugar rolling mills first appeared in Mughal India, using the principle of rollers as well as worm gearing, by the 17th century. But now William Dalrymple has magnificently rescued him from near anonymity, and in doing so has greatly increased our understanding of what went on in the old Mughal capital at the time of the Indian mutiny. Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia [2 volumes]: A Historical Encyclopedia. Contemporary chroniclers bewailed the decay they witnessed, a theme picked up by the first British historians who wanted to underscore the need for a British-led rejuvenation. In early modern Europe, there was significant demand for products from Mughal India, particularly cotton textiles, as well as goods such as spices, peppers, indigo, silks, and saltpeter (for use in munitions).Many monuments were built during the Mughal era by the Muslim emperors, especially Shah Jahan, including the Taj Mahal—a UNESCO World Heritage Site considered "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage", [31] attracting 7–8 million unique visitors a year. a b c Conermann, Stephan (4 August 2015), "Mughal Empire", Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Brill, doi: 10.