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Power, pomp and the Peacock Throne: the Mughal empire at 500
Five centuries ago, the birth of the Mughal empire heralded a new era of social and religious tolerance, international trade, and artistic and intellectual flourishing. Jagjeet Lally traces the fortunes and legacy of the dynasty that transformed India
Published: April 20, 2026 at 4:46 PM
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Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall deeply in love. Boy’s disapproving father forbids their union. The pair strive to be together, against the odds – but, in a tragic denouement, their young love is thwarted forever.
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It’s a timeless trope that’s long been stock in trade of Bollywood cinema. But when the girl is a courtesan and dancer, and her suitor is an imperial prince whose father – the Mughal emperor Akbar – holds the power to sentence her to death by immurement (being bricked up in a wall), the result is a sensational, lavish box-office hit. Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Mughal), a 1960 blockbuster that smashed records for Indian cinema, is now an established classic.
That film, based on a legend about the prince who later ruled as the emperor Jahangir, is rooted in the popular consciousness of the Mughal empire. That mighty, influential and long-lasting power was, according to one definition, founded 500 years ago this month, and ruled much of India for som e three centuries. The film touches on themes of romance, power, conflict, control and more, all linked in many minds with that dynasty. But who were the real Mughals, how are they remembered today – and is that legacy accurate?
Dancer Anarkali is courted by Salim, son of the Mughal emperor Akbar, in the 1960 Bollywood blockbuster Mughal-e-Azam, based on a legend about the future ruler Jahangir (Image by Alamy)
The dynasty originated in 15th-century central Asia with a prince named Babur, whose ancestors included Genghis (or Chinggis) Khan. Babur was an even more direct descendant of Timur (Tamerlane), who died in 1405. Having created an empire stretching from the Black Sea to the borders of Ming China, Timur’s life later served as inspiration for the playwright Christopher Marlowe and composer George Frideric Handel.
By the time of Babur’s birth in 1483, however, Timur’s empire had shattered into numerous smaller emirates, with various pretenders hungry for power. Sucked into this maelstrom after being crowned Emir of Fergana (now in eastern Uzbekistan) in 1494, Babur was ousted from that throne at the turn of the 16th century.
Timeline: rise and fall of the Mughals 1504: Ousted as emir from the Fergana Valley (now eastern Uzbekistan), Babur and his followers head south and capture Kabul 1526: Babur defeats the Delhi sultan and establishes the foundations of the Mughal empire 1540: Babur’s son and successor, Humayun, is defeated by rival sultan Sher Shah Suri and exiled in Iran, retaking Mughal lands in 1555 1560–70s: Following a regency government, Humayun’s son Akbar comes of age and begins administrative reform and fresh expansion. He is succeeded in 1605 by his son Jahangir 1632: Construction of the Taj Mahal begins in Agra on the orders of Shah Jahan, who succeeded Jahangir in 1628 1638: Shah Jahan commissions a monumental walled city to serve as the new imperial capital, today known as ‘Old Delhi’ 1681: Aurangzeb, who took the throne from his father Shah Jahan in 1658, shifts his court to Aurangabad to manage territorial expansion 1707: Aurangzeb dies, and lengthy tussles among would-be successors follow, with seven more emperors taking the throne in less than 13 years 1717: Emperor Farrukhsiyar signs important trading rights over to the British East India Company, which proves pivotal to its expansion 1739: Nadir Shah of Iran defeats Mughal forces, seizing the Peacock Throne and other booty. His rivals also make bids for power, weakening the empire further 1757: Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah defeats the Mughals. The East India Company bests the Mughal governor of Bengal and begins its process of conquest 1857: Bahadur Shah Zafar backs the Indian Rebellion against Company rule in India. He is then deposed and exiled, ending centuries of Mughal monarchy
With a band of followers, he headed south and captured Kabul in 1504, proclaiming himself padshah (emperor) in 1508. His new kingdom lay on the long-distance trade routes connecting the Indian subcontinent with the ancient Silk Roads. Though Vasco da Gama had discovered a direct sea route from Europe to Asia a few years earlier in 1498, and the Portuguese were starting to embark on imperial enterprise in the Indian Ocean world, it would be several decades before ships replaced caravans in the east–west trade. So Babur was able to command tax revenues from the passing commercial traffic.
The real prize, though, was Al-Hind, or Hindustan, as north India was known by contemporaries in the region. (Ironically, Babur later lamented in his autobiography that India was “a place of little charm”, the lack of good horses and his beloved musk-melons chief among its many perceived defects.) So Babur and his followers launched raiding expeditions to the south.
Soon they were invited by disgruntled north Indian elites to challenge the last of the so-called Delhi sultans who ruled over Hindustan from their capital in that city. On 21 April 1526, in a battle at Panipat some 50 miles north of Delhi, Babur’s forces proved victorious.
Timur, who conquered swathes of Asia in the 14th century, pictured in a Mughal manuscript of c1600–01. Babur was his direct descendant (Image by Getty Images)
Delhi had been the capital of successive royal dynasties for centuries, attracting learned and wise men from far and wide to become a spiritual centre of great repute. These points were not lost on the Mughal empire’s founder, who was quick to pay homage at the gardens, tombs, mosques and monuments of Delhi’s important kings and saints. Timur had done the same in 1398 after his conquest of the city. Babur was effectively retracing his famous ancestor’s footsteps, linking himself to royal power and establishing his legitimacy as an emperor.
Turbulent decades
The first decades of Mughal rule were turbulent, the empire remaining fragile and far from consolidated. Besides the last vestiges of the old regime and numerous Indian rajas or kings resistant to Mughal power, challengers emerged from within Babur’s family itself. In keeping with Timurid political culture, Babur was seen as the first among equals by his relatives who considered themselves to possess as much legitimacy as him, and an equal claim to the throne. Some, such as Muhammad Zaman Mirza, chose to try their luck; his rebellion was quashed in the 1530s. Others – including Babur’s cousin Mirza Haydar Dughlat, who governed Kashmir – established toeholds of their own farther afield.
Babur died in 1530, having ruled the new empire for less than five years, and was succeeded by his son, Humayun. That emperor’s early reign was marked by near-constant threats to his authority, and in 1540 Humayun was toppled from the throne and exiled by Sher Shah Suri, a sultan with a base in northern India. In 1555, though, Humayun returned with the military support of the Safavid shah. His triumph was short-lived: he was dead within a year of his reconquest, following an accident. So the task of securing the Mughal imperium fell to his son, Akbar ‘the Great’ (reigned 1556–1605).
A late 16th-century miniature depicts the triumph of Babur’s forces at the battle of Panipat in 1526. This victory secured Delhi, and marked the moment when the Mughal empire really took root in India (Image by Getty Images)
Awareness of Akbar’s greatness did not originate in posthumous tributes but was carefully established by the emperor’s own courtiers, not least the Mughal grand vizier and polymath Abul Fazl. In biographical, genealogical and historical works that emphasised Akbar’s excellent pedigree and portrayed his birth as nothing short of a miracle, the padshah was presented as a supernatural figure, preternaturally well-tempered, wise and just. Artists represented him larger than life; thanks to the steady stream of pictures brought by Jesuit missionaries and ambassadors from European courts, Mughal painters appropriated iconographic elements including the solar nimbus or halo to distinguish the emperor as a saintly, otherworldly being.
Akbar’s greatness became a pillar of Mughal ideology, and was perpetuated by his heirs and most loyal nobles. All this would have rung hollow, however, had it not been accompanied by tangible achievements. It was from Akbar’s reign that the empire was consolidated, thanks to the standardisation of weights and measures, the wholesale re-surveying of the imperial lands to ascertain reliable figures of annual yields ahead of setting (reasonable) tax rates, and the transformation of the system of government. In a move aimed at reducing the tendency towards waywardness or rebellion, the institution of the imperial nobility was transformed into a graded and much more hierarchical system, with a steady rise in rank offered in return for loyalty to the emperor.
Mughal emperor Akbar the Great, portrayed with a solar nimbus or halo in a 17th-century painting. His courtiers strove to cultivate his image as an almost supernatural figure (Image by Alamy)
For commoners, what mattered most was that the kingdom was peaceful, society harmonious, and trade flourishing. Their point of view is reflected in the incredibly rich autobiography penned by a Jain merchant named Banarasidas. He was 19 at the end of Akbar’s reign, and lived to see the reigns of two further emperors. Overcome by the rumours of Akbar’s death (from dysentery), he swooned and split open his head in the courtyard of his home. Meanwhile, his fellow townsmen were also beset with grief at the loss of an emperor whose rule they linked to their personal security and wellbeing.
This outpouring of genuine affection was also connected with the interest in a broad range of religious teachings espoused by Akbar and, later, by his son Jahangir. The Mughals were Sunni Muslims, but the fruits of the emperors’ dialogues with other faith leaders was a short-lived syncretic religion or ethical system, Din-i Ilahi, and the much more enduring policy and practice of sulh-i-kul, universal civility or peace. Both pre-dated Enlightenment codes of tolerance by more than a century. Mughal toleration certainly aroused admiration among Europeans, and not only those who were religious minorities in their homelands. Indeed, Sir Thomas Roe – who left a widely cited account of the early 17th-century Mughal empire – noted the dramatic contrast with sectarian persecution and violence in England.
Inclusive empire
The Mughal empire was highly cosmopolitan, integrating people of different backgrounds and religions. It was also central to the success of the trading system that spanned the Indian Ocean. Indian cotton textiles were bartered for spices in south-east Asia. From the late 16th century, too, demand for spices and other Indian goods was swelling, fuelled by both Asian merchants and European trading organisations – first the Portuguese crown, then the English and Dutch private trading companies – with knock-on effects for the Mughals.
- Read more | Gulbadan Begum: the Mughal Jane Austen
The decision to expand the empire’s frontiers to Gujarat and Bengal did more than bring Mughal rule all the way to the Indian subcontinent’s western and eastern seaboards. It also resulted in the incorporation of two of the most prosperous provinces and their entrepôts, chief among them Surat, the Bandar-i Mubarak or ‘Auspicious Port’. Akbar’s successors continued the process of imperial expansion, though it was his great-grandson Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal emperor, who extended imperial rule over much of the peninsula, enlarging the imperial domain to its greatest extent.
As tax revenues from the growing empire poured into the imperial coffers, the Mughal court became more magnificent, impressing ambassadors from all over Europe and Asia. Akbar, Jahangir (reigned 1605–27), and Shah Jahan (r1628–58) are often called the ‘Great Mughals’, reflecting the flourishing of the arts, architecture and culture during their reigns. This was a time of innovation, when Indian, Islamic and European motifs, forms and techniques were blended into a new tradition – the Mughal style.
The emperor was, of course, key to this development. Jahangir’s interest in flora and fauna sat well alongside the naturalistic current in imperial painting prompted, in part, by the influx of Netherlandish art and he is said to have instructed court artists to make studies from life. Shah Jahan was more interested in buildings, and the complex of gardens and structures known as the Taj Mahal– its centrepiece an iconic, breathtaking white marble mausoleum – is a pinnacle of Mughal architecture.
The Taj Mahal, a mausoleum commissioned in 1631 by Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, was the apogee of that emperor’s architectural ambitions (Image by Getty Images)
Projects commissioned by Rajput ruler and general Man Singh and other important nobles were also pivotal to the formation of the Mughal style. So, too, was the cultural patronage of imperial and royal women. Take Shah Jahan’s daughter, Princess Jahanara, who was the most senior figure in the imperial harem, and the richest woman in the empire. She was the driving force behind several large-scale architectural projects – Chandni Chowk, the tree-lined boulevard of shops and squares bisected by a canal in what’s now Old Delhi, is among her most famous and enduring legacies. Sahifa Banu, meanwhile, was one of at least two women known to have been trained by Mughal masters such as Persian miniaturist Aqa Reza. Her portrait of an Iranian monarch (shown on the previous page) is in the V&A Museum’s collection in London.
Shah Jahan’s son and successor, Aurangzeb (r1658–1707), is seldom called a ‘Great Mughal’. Instead, he is more often portrayed as a devout Muslim whose zealotry spelled the end of Mughal patronage of the arts – and, worse still, upset the communal harmony pervading before his reign.
Princess Jahanara, here pictured in 1632 at the age of about 18, continued Shah Jahan’s architectural projects, pushing through major developments such as the Delhi boulevard called Chandni Chowk (Image by Alamy)
Contested legacy
This view is part and parcel of the politics of Mughal historiography, and leaves little room for a positive appreciation of Aurangzeb’s reign, much as the idea of Akbar’s greatness obscures that emperor’s errors and missteps. Aurangzeb’s most important legacy was in the realm of the law and the massive scholarly project of legal codification that served the increasing number of his subjects – and their progeny down the generations – who took their legal affairs and disputes to Mughal courts for resolution.
On Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, the empire faced a period of instability characterised by factionalism, high regnal turnover (four emperors occupied the throne in 1719 alone), and the installation of puppet rulers by powerful courtiers. But worse was to follow. First came the invasion in 1739 by Iranian general Nadir Shah. This humiliated the Mughals, though the invader was content to leave with a vast amount of booty – including the fabled Peacock Throne – never to return.
A portrait of a 16th-century Iranian Shah by Sahifa Banu, one of at least two Mughal women who became accomplished miniature painters (Image by Victoria and Albert Museum London)
Less than 20 years later, the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah emptied the coffers yet again, and publicly proclaimed the Mughal emperor his vassal. Not long after that ignominy, the Marathas – a rising Hindu-Indian power – followed in his wake. A popular saying from the times went: “What Nadir had spared, Ahmad Shah destroyed; what Ahmad Shah had overlooked, the Marathas carried away.”
These misfortunes drained the empire’s reserves and damaged the king’s majesty so grievously that imperial decentralisation became imperial decline, and power shifted decisively from the capital to the provinces and regional kingdoms. It was not only petty rajas and warlords waiting in the wings who felt emboldened to stake their claims of independent authority. News of Ahmad Shah’s invasion in 1757 stiffened the British East India Company’s resolve when it went to war with the Mughal governor of Bengal that same year. The Company’s victory marked its transition from a trading organisation to a sovereign power and, ultimately, the beginnings of its Indian empire.
The Mughal line clung on for another century before being extinguished once and for all following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when the emperor was coerced into supporting the forces fighting the East India Company. Until then, he had lived under the protection of whichever power dominated: first the Marathas and then, from 1803, the Company. The influence of Mughal power nonetheless endured long after 1757 and even 1857 – though more as an idea than in practice.
Having violently stamped out the rebellion, the British remained anxious about threats to their rule in India, and were eager to be seen as legitimate heirs to the Mughals. So they appropriated their symbols and visual language, evident in the pomp of the colonial durbars of 1877, 1903 and 1911, and more prevalently in the Indo-Saracenic or Mughal-Gothic building style rolled out across the subcontinent, from Aitchison College in Lahore to the Madras High Court in what’s now Chennai.
Ornately decorated elephants at the 1903 Delhi Durbar, celebrating the coronation of King Edward VII as emperor of India, recall the pomp and rituals of the Mughals (Image by Alamy)
Enduring achievements
Does 2026 truly mark the 500th anniversary of the Mughal empire’s founding, or merely 500 years since Babur’s conquest of north India? Babur had actually been using the language of empire long before 1526 – though the dynasty’s precarious first half-century calls into question whether the Mughal kingdom was truly an empire before the 1570s.
More importantly, ought we be celebrating a moment of conquest? Or, instead, remembering the achievements in statecraft and administration, the arts and culture, justice and trade witnessed during the Pax Mughalica in the longer term?
Setting aside the martial skills of Babur and his progeny, or their personalities and predilections, the making (and unmaking) of the Mughal empire owed a great deal to a wider cast of characters. These included bureaucrats and intellectuals including Abul Fazl, and women such as Jahanara Begum – Shah Jahan’s eldest surviving child – who patronised charitable efforts, learning, arts and architecture. The ruling elite depended on artisans and merchants such as Banarasidas, as well as every one of the emperor’s subjects who paid their taxes and helped produce goods traded overseas. Their labour kept the empire in good repair, and helped the memory of its glories burn bright to the present day.
Hindustani cinema – aka Bollywood – reflects how shifts in Indian politics and society have steadily reshaped popular conceptions of the Mughals. Film production in India really took off in the 1940s amid the struggle for independence from British rule. Whether intended to portray India’s rich history against the hardships and struggle under colonialism, or merely as a form of escapism, period pieces were popular. In 1944, Wajahat Mirza – who later co-wrote the 1960 epic Mughal-e-Azam about the emperor Jahangir’s youthful romance – directed Shahenshah Babar, a feature about the first Mughal emperor. After independence in 1947, the Mughal past seemed to offer an exemplar for the fledgling democratic, secular nation, especially after the horrors of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims before and during partition. The Mughals were, after all, a Muslim dynasty ruling over a majority non-Muslim population. Some films thus celebrated the relative social harmony of the high Mughal period – for example, with Adl-e-Jehangir (1955), a rather idealised depiction of Jahangir as a just ruler. Others (such as Baiju Bawra, 1952, about a musician at Akbar’s court) depicted the composite culture of the Mughal empire or focused on the emperors’ love lives. Most touched on sulh-i-kul, a policy of universal civility and peace. Two years after the death in 1964 of Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, his daughter, Indira Gandhi, became premier. That was soon followed by the release of Noor Jehan (1967) about Jahangir’s wife, who was widely maligned as power-hungry and ruthless. In 1975, Mrs Gandhi suspended India’s democracy upon declaring the Emergency, ushering a brief authoritarian interlude that lasted until 1977.
From the 1980s, India opened up to the world economy, unleashing economic growth but also a new kind of conspicuous consumption. Reflecting this, Jodhaa Akbar (2008), about Akbar’s marriage to a Hindu Rajput princess, is an extravagant gold and-jewel-encrusted vision of the Mughal past, fitting for the New India of the 2000s. But it was also intended to be a balm for the hurt unleashed by anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, and the communal strife that continued to plague India. Today, the Mughal past is being re-evaluated wholesale amid a rising tide of Hindu nationalism. A growing number of films paint the Mughals and other Muslim rulers not as heroes but as villainous invaders, among them Panipat (2019) and Tanhaji (2020), which valorise the Marathas and their conflicts with the Mughals. The Mughal past is more hotly contested than ever, and the 500th anniversary of the empire’s founding is as likely to be met with reflection on lessons it could provide for present problems as with calls for ‘retribution’ for past wrongs.
Jagjeet Lally is associate professor of the history of early modern and colonial India at University College London, and author of Badshah, Bandar, Bazaar: Commerce and Everyday Life in the Mughal World (Penguin Business, 2025)
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This article was first published in the May 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
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