Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir, Muhyi al-Din Muhammad, sixth ruler of the Mughal Empire (India) and last of the “Great Mughals,” was the third son of Emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. Aurangzeb reigned for half a century, from 1658 until his death in 1707. During his reign, the empire reached its greatest territorial extent but also saw the rise of the internal weaknesses and external threats that brought about its decline.
After defeating his brothers in a bloody war of succession, Aurangzeb crowned himself emperor and took the regnal title of ‘Alamgir (‘Ālamgīr, “conqueror of the world”) on July 21, 1658. He was already a seasoned administrator and military commander, having served as governor of Gujarat for three years and of the Mughal territories in the Deccan for eight years. From the beginning of his reign, Aurangzeb pursued an expansionist policy and attempted to extend the empire’s sway in Bengal and Assam in the northeast and in the Deccan in the south.
Aurangzeb’s reign was repeatedly challenged by rebellions and insurrections from various quarters. The Pathan tribes on the western front of the empire rebelled: the Yusufza’is in 1667 and the Afridis and Khattaks in 1672. The latter rebellion was a more serious challenge, requiring Aurangzeb’s personal intervention, and was not quelled until 1676. Beginning in 1678, an internal succession dispute among the Rajputs resulted in rebellion and provided the opportunity for Aurangzeb’s son, Prince Akbar, to rebel against his father and attempt to claim the throne. Aurangzeb’s defeat of both the Pathan and Rajput rebellions resulted from a successful combination of military might, diplomacy, bribery, and misinformation. Popular uprisings of the Jat peasantry in the region of Agra (1669, 1681, 1689) and the Satnami community (1672) were mercilessly crushed. In 1696, a revolt of the zamīndārs (landowners) in Bengal required both a military response and an administrative reorganization of the province.
During the latter half of his reign, Aurangzeb was occupied in continuous warfare in the Deccan. In order to crush the Maratha state and the Deccan sultanates, he brought the imperial army south and from 1681 onward made the military encampments his capital. By 1689, Bijapur, Golconda, and much of the Maratha territory had been conquered and annexed. However, Maratha resistance and raids continued and the war dragged on, causing great destruction and the impoverishment of both the populace and the imperial treasury.
Aurangzeb attempted to better regulate revenue collection and, during the early part of his reign, reduce the power of the nobility in relation to the royal household. However, by the end of his reign, the Mughal jāgīrdārī system, under which a military commander was paid with the revenue of an assigned area (or jāgīr), was in crisis. The policy of giving appointments to buy the loyalty of enemy commanders or conquered vassals resulted in a disproportionate number of appointments relative to jāgīrs available for assignment. At the same time, the power of the English, French, and Dutch East India Companies was rising. Aurangzeb was unable or, occupied with the Deccan War, unwilling to seize control of the autonomous fortified European trading centers at Bombay, Madras, Pondicherry, and Calcutta.
Many of Aurangzeb’s policies, especially in religious matters, reflected his sober and pious personality and his commitment to a shari‘a-oriented Islam. In a departure from the practice of his predecessors, he disallowed wine drinking, opium use, music, and dance at court; forbade the building of new Hindu temples and the repair of existing ones; restricted tax-free grants to only Muslim recipients; and, most radically, imposed the jizya (poll tax) on non-Muslims in 1679. Aurangzeb was not the patron of the arts that his father and grandfather had been. Instead, he commissioned the important compendium of Hanafi law, Fatawa-yi ‘Alamgiri (The ‘Alamgir compendium of legal rulings), and personally occupied himself with copying the Qur’an. Aurangzeb’s discriminatory policies toward his non-Muslim subjects have been seen by some scholars as a factor in the Rajput and Maratha rebellions and as a cause of general discontent and the ultimate destabilization of the empire.
See also Akbar the Great (1542–1605); Mughals (1526–1857)
Further Reading
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subramanyam, eds., The Mughal State 1526–1750, 1998; Robert C. Hallissey, The Rajput Rebellion against Aurangzeb: A Study of the Mughal Empire in Seventeenth-Century India, 1977; John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire, 1993.
AMINA STEINFELS