Aurangzeb Rules Mughal Empire

In 1658, Aurangzeb seized the Mughal throne after a bitter war of succession and began a reign of nearly five decades. He presided over the largest territorial extent the empire ever reached, yet his rule is also associated with religious polarization, costly wars, and the weakening of central authority. Historians still debate how much of the empire's later decline can be traced to his personal choices and how much to deeper structural problems.

The background was a crisis within the ruling family. In 1657 the emperor Shah Jahan fell seriously ill, and his four sons, Dara Shikoh, Shah Shuja, Murad Bakhsh, and Aurangzeb, began competing for power. Dara, the eldest and his father's favorite, was known for his interest in mysticism and in dialogue between Islam and Hinduism. Aurangzeb, a capable general and administrator who had governed the Deccan, presented himself as a more orthodox Muslim ruler. After winning key battles in 1658, he imprisoned Shah Jahan in the fortress at Agra, where the old emperor remained until his death in 1666. Aurangzeb then eliminated his rivals, including Dara, who was executed in 1659.

As emperor, Aurangzeb was disciplined, personally austere, and deeply involved in governance. He promoted Islamic law in public life, and he is often said to have curtailed court music and certain ceremonies. In 1679 he reimposed the jizya, a tax on non-Muslims that Akbar had abolished. He also ordered the destruction of some Hindu temples, though scholars note that the pattern was uneven, and that he also made grants to other temples and employed many Hindu officials, in fact more than some of his predecessors. Interpretations of his motives range from sincere piety to political calculation.

Much of his reign was spent at war. He campaigned for decades in the Deccan, conquering the sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda in the 1680s. The Marathas, led first by Shivaji and later by his successors, fought a persistent guerrilla struggle that the Mughals never fully suppressed. Conflicts with Sikhs, Rajputs, and others added to the strain. The long campaigns drained the treasury, stretched supply lines, and kept the emperor away from the north for roughly the last twenty-five years of his life.

Aurangzeb died in 1707, and the empire fractured with surprising speed. Weak successors, factional struggles among nobles, and the rise of regional powers such as the Marathas, along with the breakaway of provinces like Bengal and Hyderabad, reduced the Mughals to a shrinking, largely symbolic authority within a few decades. This opened space for the later expansion of the British East India Company. His legacy remains contested in modern South Asia, viewed by some as a stern but effective ruler and by others as a source of lasting division.