topic 3.3 the Mughal Empire the third Empire in the southwest Asian region that will be discussing this week is the Mughal Empire the Mughals are different from the previous two cases that we discussed the Safavids and the Ottomans in which Islamic rulers governed a majority of Islamic subjects the Mughals who were Muslim governed a population which was primarily Hindu and this created a very unique character to their empire so the Mughal Empire which lasted from 1526 until 1707 covered most of the territory of the Indian subcontinent and was the product of Islamic Turkish warriors their rule marked a rare period of unity on the Indian subcontinent which had been divided into a great variety of small states tribes principalities and ethnicities for most of its history the first Mughal emperor babur got his start as the ruler of far Ghana which is in present-day whose becca stan in 1495 when he was only 12 years old but political infighting amongst his family meant that BABOR was ousted from his hereditary lands in 1502 forced to look elsewhere for land to rule that borough first established himself in Kabul in Afghanistan and from there pushed steadily south into India through the Khyber Pass by 1526 Bab Boers forces occupied much of the Indian subcontinent but his preoccupation with making new gains didn't really allow him to consolidate his control over the territories he had conquered in fact that bore son would be briefly driven out of India altogether by rebels he actually took shelter in Persia and established what would later be an important diplomatic contacts with the Safavids but by 1555 Mughal power had been restored in India it would be left though to the greatest of the Mughal emperors Akbar that Boers grandson to really consolidate this control now a quark came to the throne in 1556 after his father had died in an accident and by accident I mean he was carrying a large stack of books and I kid you not fell down the stairs and died but Akbar would be the greatest of the Mughal rulers and he reigned for nearly fifty years between 1556 and 1605 much like the other Islamic rulers we've discussed Akbar would extend the empire through both warfare and diplomacy furthermore Akbar crucially recognized that while the ruling elite like himself were Muslim almost 80% of the Indian population over which he ruled was Hindu Akbar acted deliberately to accommodate this and not only did not try to force conversions but he didn't even highlight Islam he even completely removed the tax on non-muslims that was standard in most islamic cairo Safavid and the ottoman akbar also worked to invest the hindu elite in the success of the empire because he knew that he would need their support in the military and the government to this end he incorporated its substantial numbers of hindus into the political military elite of the empire akbar also had no trouble supporting public works projects for all religions and funded the building of hindu temples alongside mosques and churches personally he remained very open to dialogue with many religions and actually constructed a special house of worship for himself which was not denominational and in which he would preside over intellectual discussions with representatives of many different religions and pretty much any religion that he could find a representative for they were invited to come to this house of worship this including Muslims of course Hindus of course but also Christians and Buddhists and Jews and chains and zoroastrians even in order to support some kind of unity APRA promoted a State cult and by cults I don't really mean like the cult we think of but essentially just a club a sort of a sort of sense of belonging which emphasized loyalty to the state itself and just promoted the idea that you should lead a virtuous life no matter what your religious persuasion happened to be but Akbar was not completely accepting of all different religious practices and he does a great deal of work during his reign to soften some of the Hindu restrictions on women for instance he disapproved of the strict regulations over the lives of women especially the practice of marrying them off where they were still small children he also encouraged the idea that Hindu widows should be allowed to remarry after their husband's death and discouraged the practice of sati which if you don't know what that is it's the practice of women throwing themselves on their husband's funeral pyres so the idea being that women are so bereft by the loss of their husbands and they see no point in continuing to live and just sort of throw themselves into the flames to be consumed alongside their husband's body Akbar also persuaded merchants to create special market days for women in which they could go out and shop and see one another and that thus limit their seclusion in the home overall though Akbar and his successors work to downplay the muscle and identity of the Empire in favour of something more cosmopolitan and this sort of hybrid Indian Persian Turkic culture now that policy while effective was not popular with everyone and it fostered some pretty sharp opposition among some Muslim thinkers many of whom believed that it was Akbar and his successors duty to renew authentic Islam these men called the ulama strongly objected to the Mughal cultural synthesis and believed that the widespread worship of saints the sacrifice of animals and support for Hindu religious festivals represented impure intrusions in authentic Islam many of these men were pretty viciously misogynistic as well and argue that it had been primarily women who because they were so stupid had introduced these impurities into pure Islamic practice the goal of the umama was to convince the Mughal Emperors who succeeded Akbar that it was their duty as Muslims to rias proposed Sharia or Islamic religious law and further remove non-muslims from high office now that strain of more extreme Muslim thinking found a supporter in the emperor Aurangzeb who governed between 1658 and 1707 orangs AB would reverse the successful policy of accommodation of different religious traditions and cultures and would seek to impose Muslim supremacy where Akbar had discouraged the practice of sati or Widow burning orangs I'm completely forbade it he also being music and dance at court and previously tolerated vices like gambling drinking and prostitution were now actively suppressed he destroyed Hindu temples many of which have been built with government funds under Akbar and he set up government officials as censors of public morals and posted them to large cities to make sure that Islamic religious law was being strictly observed orangs herbs religious policies combined with intolerable demands for taxes to support his wars for yet further expansion antagonized the Hindu majority this prompted a number of opposition movements which would fracture the Mughal Empire and when we next see them to see the Mughal Empire so weakened that it's going to open the way for a British takeover of the Indian subcontinent in the second half of the eighteenth century