Neha+and+Nurfazlin's+Mughal+Project



**__Origins__** 12-year-old Zahiruddin Muhammed, more commonly known as Babur, ascended the throne of the tiny Mughal province of Fergana in 1483. Unsatisfied, he then tried to conquer the neighboring province of Samarkand in 1497, but lost both and was resigned to wandering for three years in the mountains of Central Asia. In 1504 he became the king of Kabul. In November of 1525 he entered India with only 12,000 men, fought with the Lodi army—comprising of 100,000 men and 1000 elephants—at Panipat (80 kilometers north of Delhi) for five hours on April 21, 1526. Babur took possession of Agra. He made himself the ruler of northern India on March 10, 1527, at 44 years of age.


 * __ Social system __**

At the top of the social and economic level was a king followed by his nobles. Then came the middle class which was still a new development and it consisted of merchants, industrialists and carious other professionals. They could afford some luxuries. At the bottom was the poor class, the most oppressed and neglected part of the society. They were almost like slaves. The Mughal emperors promoted education. Female education also existed where girls from rich families got education through private tuition. The girl from the middle class attended same school as the boys. It was a society where stranger were grated and helped in a civil manner. Child marriage, dowry existed and a widow remarriage was not allowed. **__Religion__** Hindu and Muslim society were living together with peace. For Hindu, Sati which was a social evil was a prominent practice. It is a practice where a wife should be burned with her dead husband. Also they only allowed Hindus to hold power in government and military ranking. **Sati** **__Economy during the Mughal era__** With the arrival of the Mughals, the economy for trinkets expanded. The Mughal style of life was adopted by the elite; the demand for comfort and luxury goods stimulated trade and industry, as well as fostered new trade links with Europe. The Mughals preferred cash payment of the agricultural tax, so money replaced trade. Sometimes, to encourage expansion, lower taxes were charged on land that was just beginning to be farmed. However, this depended on the whims of the ruler, and it was never done on a scale sufficient to make a change. Regional trade and urbanization grew, but there was still a “lack of economic dynamism and social mobility (Eraly 180).”

**//__Handling of the economy__//** Wealth was hoarded, not spent—more often it was added to. Commoners buried their meager wealth in the ground to protect it from vultures; there was also an incredible amount buried under temples. Emperors were buried with their treasure, and it was thought disgraceful to use it unless in the direst of circumstances. During the Khilji invasion of South India, so much loot in gold and gems was found that soldiers left behind silver pieces, considering them to be of too little value. Peasants were subject to random seizure of their lands, money, and crops. Though peasants could own and bequeath land, the ownership meant nothing, because the state took as much produce as it pleased, leaving the peasant with just enough to stay alive. The tax rates was high, compared to tax rates before and after the Mughals. Normally, the tax claim was one-third or more of the total produce; in addition, the state would sometimes collect more. On top of that, peasants also had to deal with several illegal exactions. This would leave them with less than half of their total produce. “At the height of Mughal splendor under Shah Jahan, over a quarter of the gross national product of the empire was appropriated by just 655 individuals, while the bulk of the 120-odd million people of India lived on a dead level of poverty (Eraly 385).” Another burden the peasants had to bear was that of the jagirdari system. The jagirdar (landlord) to whom the peasant’s land was temporarily assigned had no interest in the land besides wringing whatever he could out of it before the land was allotted to another jagirdar. Sometimes officials simply took a farmer’s lands for themselves, leaving him with nothing but his house and perhaps a few cattle. There was no reason for the peasant to produce more, either, as the extra produce would simply be collected by one official or another under one pretext or another. The peasants were the last to benefit by any price rises, and the first to suffer from a fall. “The tyranny…was often so excessive as to deprive the peasant and artisan of the necessaries of life, and leave them to die of misery and exhaustion (Eraly 189).”

**//__Inefficiency of the work force__//** When Babur came to India, he noted that there was an abundance of people, thinking that more people meant a larger workforce, more cultivated land, more income for the state, more men in the army, and a more powerful empire. However, it didn’t work out that way. Instead, work was divided into absurdly minute specializations, which became increasingly minute as the number of servants enlarged. Servants would refuse to do the work of another servant. Multiple men would be assigned to do a job one man could do. There were servants for almost everything. Even the lowest soldier would have one or two people serving him. There were four to seven attendants for each royal elephant, and Jahangir employed four men to look after his favorite dog. “The royal stable even had an officer whose sole duty ‘was to burn certain seeds to guard against the evil eye (175 Eraly).” This useless division of labor, instead of augmenting productivity, increased inefficiency. Since productivity was so low, wages were too. The lowest class of servants received one dam (equivalent to one-fortieth of a rupee) per day, and the most skilled workers were paid no more than seven dams. Low productivity led to low wages, which led to low productivity, forming an endless circle. To add to this, the Indian work ethic was dreadful. The word //Sub-ba//, meaning tomorrow, was used for everything: the work will be done tomorrow, this would be given tomorrow, that would be taken tomorrow. Idleness prevailed. There were many Muslim traders within India, and many of the royals were involved in trade. However, the same respect was not accorded to merchants and artisans: they were barely tolerated, and that tolerance was only because they were needed to supply the royals with their trinkets. The Mughals didn’t value the economic contribution the merchants made, and therefore gave them little respect. Artisans were treated the same way.

**//__Profligacy of the royals__//** The royal family spent inconceivable amounts of money on frivolities. “The emperor had a couple of thousand sets of dress made for him every year (mostly for giving away as robes of honor to courtiers); the ornate chair in which Shah Jahan sat in durbar (the Peacock Throne) was valued at ten million rupees for materials alone; the diamond studded slippers of the wife of Aurangzeb’s Vizier Jafar Khan were said to be worth 100,000 rupees; Akbar’s confidant Abul Fazl had 100 dishes served to him at every meal, and he gave away his entire wardrobe to servants every year, and made fresh clothes (176).”

**__Technology__** Methods of agriculture and industry were archaic, and there were no advances in technology. Some improvements were made in the processes of dying and printing cloth, carpet weaving, rope making, and shipbuilding, but there was no change in the technological environment. Labor was cheap, so there was never any movement to provide labor-saving technology to the people. Sometimes more efficient methods were even banned in favor of old, inefficient, traditional ones. For example: There was no real irrigation system—as a result, much of the land was rendered infertile. Sea vessels were devoid of almost all nautical instruments, save the astrolabe. The massive Mughal monuments were constructed without the aid of basic tools like the wheelbarrow. There was no use of coal, no proper cast-iron, no screws with proper grooves, no knowledge of mining, and mechanical clocks and watches were unheard of. **__Downfall__** The last strongest Mughal emperors was Aurangzeb. Some large parts of the empire had already declared independents during his rule. There was a conflict among his sons for the throne and eventually the empire was divided between them. The later Mughal emperors were failures as good leaders as they were more interested in luxuries and pleasures of life than maintaining their size of the empire. towards the end, the kings became puppets and the power went to the nobles leading to further breaking of the empire into small kingdoms. Finally in such a chaotic state the Mughal empire made way for the European forces and eventually developing of the British empire. media type="youtube" key="AWaOd-QYP8w" width="425" height="350" __Legacy of the Mughals__ “Outwardly, the century from the accession of Akbar to the accession of Aurangzeb was a glorious period in Indian history (Eraly 384).” Culture thrived under the enthusiastic benefaction of the emperors, who were all patrons of learning and literature. Akbar and Jahangir, specifically, were patrons of painting, and Shah Jahan was a patron of music and dance. The Mughals standardized currency, weights, and measures, as well as fostering trade from their want of luxuries. Their major political achievement was that they were able to bring almost all of India under their control, though that became their downfall too, as their empire grew so big as to be ungovernable. Though the Mughal era is remembered with images of glory, prosperity, and splendor, there was another side to the story. The royals were profligacy incarnate, and as a result, the common people lived in squalor. Despite all this, there is a golden tint to the history of the Mughal Empire that no amount of untoward revelations will dim. The Mughal Empire will still be remembered as India's last Golden Age.



[[image:jahangir.jpg width="143" height="214" align="right" caption="Jahangir (http://elogedelart.canalblog.com/archives/2011/04/06/20824802.html)"]]
Work cited __Bibliography __ “Baber.” //1911 Encyclopedia Britannica – Free Online.// Web. 26 Jan. 2012. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Baber. Eraly, Abraham. The Mughal World: Life in India’s Last Golden Age. India: Penguin, 2007. Print.

"BBC - Religions - Islam: Mughal Empire (1500s, 1600s)." //BBC - Homepage//. N.p., 9 July 2009. Web. 26 Jan. 2012. .

 "The Mughal Empire - Society." //ThinkQuest : Library//. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2012. .