Aurangzeb

1. Accession and the character of Mughal sovereignty

Aurangzeb gained administrative and military experience as a prince through provincial appointments, including service in the Deccan and Gujarat. Shah Jahan’s illness in 1657 triggered a succession struggle among Dara Shikoh, Shah Shuja, Aurangzeb and Murad Bakhsh. Mughal succession had no binding rule of primogeniture: princes competed through military strength, noble support and control of imperial resources.

Aurangzeb allied with Murad and defeated the imperial army led by Raja Jaswant Singh at Dharmat in April 1658. Their victory over Dara Shikoh at Samugarh, near Agra, in May proved decisive. Aurangzeb confined Shah Jahan in Agra Fort, where the former emperor died in 1666. Dara was defeated again, captured and executed in 1659; Murad was eventually executed, while Shuja fled towards Arakan.

Aurangzeb adopted the title Alamgir, meaning world-seizer. His authority rested on familiar Mughal institutions: the emperor, mansabdari hierarchy, provincial administration and revenue assignments. His reign was therefore not an institutional break with earlier Mughal rule, even though his personal religiosity and public policies differed substantially from Akbar’s.

• Prelims distinction: Dharmat preceded Samugarh; the two battles had different principal opponents.
• Shah Jahan’s confinement began in 1658, but his death occurred only in 1666.

2. Religious policy, law and cultural patronage

Aurangzeb publicly emphasised Sunni Islamic orthodoxy. He discontinued practices such as jharokha darshan, the emperor’s ceremonial appearance before subjects, and appointed muhtasibs to supervise public morality and observance of prescribed norms. Scholars working under imperial patronage compiled the Fatawa-i-Alamgiri, a major digest of Hanafi jurisprudence. It was not a modern, uniformly enforced statutory code replacing all customary and administrative law.

The reimposition of jizya on non-Muslims in 1679 marked a departure from Akbar’s policy. It was a poll tax with recognised exemptions, not a land-revenue assessment. Aurangzeb also issued orders against certain temples and religious institutions. The destruction of the Vishvanath temple at Banaras and the Keshava Deva temple at Mathura are prominent examples. Religious ideology, punishment of political opposition and assertions of sovereignty could overlap in such actions.

Policy was nevertheless neither uniform nor reducible to a single formula. Documentary evidence also records protection or grants to some Hindu religious establishments, and Hindu officers continued to serve in the imperial elite. Religious discrimination should therefore be recognised without assuming the complete exclusion of non-Muslims from administration.

Courtly cultural patronage changed but did not disappear. Aurangzeb withdrew patronage from court singing, yet music continued among nobles and members of the royal household, while musical scholarship flourished. Major architectural works associated with his reign include Delhi’s Moti Masjid and Lahore’s Badshahi Mosque. Bibi ka Maqbara at Aurangabad was commissioned by his son Azam Shah.

3. Regional resistance and imperial negotiations

Several conflicts during the reign involved agrarian grievances, local authority and imperial intervention as well as religion. Jat resistance around Mathura under Gokula erupted in 1669; later leaders such as Raja Ram strengthened regional organisation. The Satnami uprising near Narnaul in 1672 grew from a local confrontation into an armed challenge that imperial forces suppressed.

Rajput relations deteriorated sharply after the death of Jaswant Singh of Marwar in 1678. Imperial intervention in the succession threatened Rathor autonomy and the claims of his infant son Ajit Singh. Durgadas Rathor led resistance, while Mewar also entered the conflict. However, Rajputs were not a single anti-Mughal bloc: several Rajput houses continued imperial service.

Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed at Delhi in 1675 on Aurangzeb’s orders. Sikh tradition remembers his defence of religious freedom, particularly in connection with Kashmiri Pandits. Under Guru Gobind Singh, the founding of the Khalsa in 1699 strengthened Sikh collective identity and military organisation. These developments should not be collapsed into one event or attributed to only one immediate cause.

In the northeast, Mughal expansion faced the Ahom kingdom. At Saraighat in 1671, Ahom forces led by Lachit Borphukan defeated a Mughal force commanded by Raja Ram Singh. The battle demonstrates the limits of imperial power and the importance of riverine warfare and local geography.

4. The Deccan and the Maratha challenge

The Deccan became the principal theatre of Aurangzeb’s later reign. In 1665, the Treaty of Purandar, negotiated by the Mughal commander Jai Singh, required Shivaji to surrender several forts and accept specified obligations. Shivaji visited Aurangzeb’s court at Agra in 1666, was placed under restraint and escaped. His coronation at Raigad in 1674 asserted an independent kingship.

Aurangzeb moved to the Deccan in 1681, partly in the context of the rebellion of his son Akbar, who sought Maratha support. Bijapur’s Adil Shahi kingdom fell in 1686 and Golconda’s Qutb Shahi kingdom in 1687. These conquests removed major successor states of the Bahmani kingdom and brought the empire close to its maximum territorial extent.

The capture and execution of Sambhaji in 1689 did not end Maratha resistance. Rajaram continued the struggle, including from Jinji in present-day Tamil Nadu. After his death in 1700, Tarabai provided leadership. Mobile Maratha forces, dispersed forts and attacks on supply lines prevented the Mughals from translating repeated battlefield successes into durable control.

Long campaigns stretched communications, increased military expenditure and drew imperial attention away from northern India. Annexation thus produced a paradox: more territory did not necessarily yield proportionately more secure revenue or effective administration.

5. Administration, economy and the decline debate

Mansabdars received ranks and usually drew their remuneration through jagirs, assignments of revenue rather than ownership of land. Expansion increased the number of claimants to these assignments. Differences between assessed revenue, jama, and actual collections, hasil, weakened the capacity of some jagirs to support military obligations. Warfare and contested authority intensified these difficulties.

Historians have explained Mughal weakening through several connected factors: jagirdari pressures, agrarian exploitation, competition among nobles, regional state formation and the costs of Deccan warfare. Aurangzeb’s religious choices and strained political alliances mattered, but a purely personality-based explanation overlooks these structural conditions.

The empire did not collapse immediately upon his death near Ahmadnagar in 1707. Bahadur Shah I succeeded after another succession struggle, and Mughal institutions retained influence even as regional powers expanded. For examination answers, distinguish territorial overstretch, fiscal strain and declining political legitimacy rather than treating them as interchangeable explanations.

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