Kinlore
1206–1857

The Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals

For more than six centuries Muslim dynasties rule much of India from Delhi, creating an Indo-Islamic civilisation whose memory is fiercely contested today.

  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press (2006)
  • Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States — Richard M. Eaton, Journal of Islamic Studies 11 (3), Oxford University Press (2000)
  • India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
  • Akbar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)
  • The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals — Stephen F. Dale, Cambridge University Press (2010)
  • Mystical Dimensions of Islam — Annemarie Schimmel, University of North Carolina Press (1975)
  • Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
  • The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
  • Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
  • India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
  • A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
  • Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation — Pew Research Center (2021)

Debated by historians empirereligionidentitymemoryfaithculture

Part of the story of India and Pakistan.

Muslims had lived in India since the early days of Islam, as traders on the western coast and, from 711, as rulers of Sindh. Around 1000 the Turkish ruler Mahmud of Ghazni raided northern India repeatedly, sacking rich temple cities such as Somnath. But lasting Muslim rule in the heartland began when Muhammad of Ghur defeated the Rajput king Prithviraj Chauhan at Tarain in 1192. His general Qutb al-Din Aybak became the first Sultan of Delhi in 1206.

  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press (2006)

The sultanates

For three centuries a series of dynasties ruled from Delhi. They built the Qutb Minar, held off the Mongols, who devastated much of Asia but never conquered India, and at times stretched their power to the far south. In the south, the Hindu empire of Vijayanagara (1336–1565) became one of the richest states of its day, and regional sultanates flourished in Bengal, Gujarat and the Deccan.

  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press (2006)

The Mughals

In 1526 Babur, a descendant of Timur and Chinggis Khan from Central Asia, defeated the last Delhi sultan at Panipat. His grandson Akbar (1556–1605) built one of the largest and richest empires in the world, governed with Hindu Rajput allies, abolished the tax on non-Muslims (jizya) and hosted debates among scholars of every faith. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal and Delhi’s Red Fort.

  • Akbar — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press (2006)

Lahore was a second Mughal capital. Akbar held court there in the 1580s and 1590s, Jahangir is buried across the river at Shahdara, Shah Jahan laid out the Shalimar Gardens and Aurangzeb built the Badshahi Mosque, completed in 1673; Lahore Fort and the Shalimar Gardens are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Pakistan.

  • The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals — Stephen F. Dale, Cambridge University Press (2010)
  • Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica

Aurangzeb (1658–1707) expanded the empire to its greatest extent but ruled as a stricter Sunni, reimposing the jizya in 1679 and destroying major temples, including at Varanasi and Mathura; he also executed the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur. He fought the Marathas under Shivaji and his successors for decades. After his death the empire fragmented, and by the late eighteenth century the Mughal emperor in Delhi held little real power. Punjab passed to Sikh rule (1799–1849) before Britain annexed Sindh in 1843 and Punjab in 1849, and the British exiled the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, in 1858 after the revolt of 1857.

  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • India: A History — John Keay, HarperCollins (2000)
  • Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)

What it left

These centuries produced a culture shared across faiths. Courts spoke Persian, but soldiers and markets mixed Persian, Arabic and Turkish words with local speech to create Urdu or Hindustani.

  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals — Stephen F. Dale, Cambridge University Press (2010)
There were also Hindustani classical music, Mughal painting and gardens, the domes and arches of Indo-Islamic architecture, and dishes such as biryani and kebabs. Sufi shrines like that of Nizamuddin in Delhi and Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer still draw Hindus and Muslims alike, and the verses of Baba Farid, Bulleh Shah in Punjabi and Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai in Sindhi are sung across religious lines.
  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • Mystical Dimensions of Islam — Annemarie Schimmel, University of North Carolina Press (1975)

It also left grievances. Temple destruction did happen. Richard Eaton identified about 80 well-attested cases between 1192 and 1760 and argued they were mostly political acts aimed at defeated kings; critics say his count is far too low and the religious motive real.

  • Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States — Richard M. Eaton, Journal of Islamic Studies 11 (3), Oxford University Press (2000)
By the twentieth century about a quarter of British India’s people were Muslim, mostly descendants of local converts, especially in Bengal and Punjab. That history, and how to tell it, became central to Partition and remains central to India’s politics today.
  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • The Partition of India — Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, Cambridge University Press (2009)

How it's seen
Most academic historians

The sultans and Mughals were rulers of their age, motivated mainly by power, revenue and legitimacy. They fought Muslim as well as Hindu rivals, relied on Hindu nobles, officials and soldiers, and sometimes desecrated temples as political acts against enemy kings while also patronising others. Conversion was slow and concentrated on frontiers such as Bengal and Punjab. The result was a shared Indo-Persian culture, not a simple story of oppression.

  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States — Richard M. Eaton, Journal of Islamic Studies 11 (3), Oxford University Press (2000)
  • India Before Europe — Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, Cambridge University Press (2006)

Hindu nationalist view

A thousand years of foreign rule and humiliation, from the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni to Aurangzeb, marked by temple destruction, forced conversion, the jizya tax and massacres. Heroes are those who resisted, such as the Rajputs, the Vijayanagara kings and the Maratha Shivaji. Reclaiming sacred sites and renaming Mughal-era places is seen as healing a civilisational wound.

  • The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics — Christophe Jaffrelot, Hurst (1996)
  • Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)

Secular nationalist view

The view of Nehru and of many Indian historians after independence: the Mughals, especially Akbar, became Indian rulers who built a composite culture, the "Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb", in language, music, food and architecture. Aurangzeb's intolerance was the exception. Critics say this view sometimes played down real violence.

  • India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy — Ramachandra Guha, Macmillan / Picador (2007)
  • A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)

Many Indian Muslims

This is part of their own Indian heritage, from the Sufi shrines to Urdu poetry and the Taj Mahal. Many resent being called descendants of "invaders" when most are descendants of local converts, and feel that hostility to the Mughals is really hostility to them.

Pakistani view

An age of Muslim greatness and the cultural root of the nation, from Lahore's Mughal monuments to Urdu and the Sufi poets of Sindh and Punjab. Its decline under British pressure is often read as the prelude to the struggle for Pakistan.

  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765 — Richard M. Eaton, Allen Lane (2019)
  • The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals — Stephen F. Dale, Cambridge University Press (2010)

Why it matters today

India

How to remember these centuries is one of the most divisive questions in Indian politics. Arguments over renamed cities, school textbooks, the Taj Mahal and disputed mosques such as Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura are all, at bottom, arguments about this period and about the place of India's 200 million Muslims in the nation.

Pakistan

The Mughal age is the cultural memory Pakistan draws on most: its architecture, its food, its poetry and Urdu itself. Many Pakistanis feel the loss of that power after 1857 as the start of the story that ended in 1947.