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The unwavering focus on the Mughal empire by the West, is a curious phenomenon. Is it because they built highly visible monuments like the Taj? Mughals didn’t even reach their zenith until 1680s and were vastly reduced by 1730s.
The Deccan Sultanates and Vijayanagara were more relevant to world history in the 16th Century India. The wonders of Bijapur, Golconda and Hampi would put 16th CE Delhi to shame.
As someone that’s studied the Mughals quite a bit, but hasn’t studied Indian history more broadly as extensively, here are a few thoughts:
- the monuments are obvious points; the Taj Mahal is probably one of the few buildings that the average Western person has heard of
- there is more of a connection, or appears to be, with other empires that Westerners are more familiar with. For example, the Mughals were functionally descendants of the Mongols (indeed the word itself came from it). They also were roughly contemporaneous with the Ottomans during key historical periods, so their categorization as a “gunpowder empire” along with Iran is a known thing.
The prestige languages of all three of these empires was also highly Persianized, which maybe made them more accessible to the West, which was familiar with the Arabic alphabet and Islamic civilization for a longer period than with India. IIRC a lot of foundational Indian works weren’t really translated from Sanskrit to western languages until the mid 1800s.
That is how I myself started reading more about the Mughals: via being interested in the Ottomans.
- And finally there are a number of unique Mughal figures that have managed to become well-known in the West. Akbar, Shah Jahan, etc. I’m sure there were equally interesting people from other Indian empires but they don’t seem to be talked about as much.
There are a lot of architectural marvels in India from Sun temple to Ajanta and Ellora caves and Kailasa Temple. I personally never understood why more was not written about them, very few know about them.
Mughals never ruled India for more than 200-300 years, and were challenged by many regional players including Maratha's.
India has far more to offer beyond Taj, and I would say if not more equally interesting architectural marvels like Kailasa temple.
Because ancient India was extremely bad at record keeping and maintaining written works (and the destruction of Nalanda university didn't help), and relied mostly on oral traditions to record history.
Compare that to the innumerable number of Chinese texts on nearly every topic from politics and history and governance to science and engineering (fun fact, the current Indian civil service was a product of the English civil service, which in turn was inspired by the Chinese one).
Compare that to the English, where you might even be able to find the exact amount of tax owed by some Yorkshire peasant in the 16th century.
Even the Indian and South East Asian monastic orders stuck to the oral tradition, in spite of writing material being significantly more abundant over the past millennia.
If you read the Baburnama, you'll even find him lamenting about India's poor record at tax keeping records and historical records relying on oral traditions, where the narrators are prone to exaggerations and embellishments.
Thankfully India's ancient temples are much more resilient than its books, which is why rock carvings themselves are also a rich source of Indian history. The Ashoka pillar in Mehrauli being a fine example (and in effect being a historical record in itself, which is how we know a lot about the Mauryas than some later kingdoms).
As someone interested in coinage, India is fascinating. Coins from the Sultanates and Mughal periods are just beautiful.
Great to see a fellow numismatist! Old coins are on my bucket list of stuff to buy once I hit the lottery.
Actually there are many more interesting people in Indian history. From Chandragupta Maurya, Kanishka to even Shivaji and others. Mughals are overglorified if anything and their own primary texts are ignored in this process.
May I ask what kind of study did you do on the Mughals? What stands out the most for you?
Fun fact: They called themselves "Gurkhaniye" and not "Mughals". It was a term mostly popularized by rivals like Marathas (which is also an exonym)
I mostly read a lot about Akbar, who was a fascinating figure. His “official biography” is really well written, as is his whole concept for creating a new religion:
The Gurkaniyan thing was true for Babur but I don’t think it was the case for later Mughals.
The poet Ghalib, who was the emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s contemporary, considered himself a descendant of the aristocracy and referred to himself as a “Mughal baccha” in a well-known quote (sourced from his letters, I believe).
Even the Mughal focus is superficial in nature. There just aren't many serious historians about Indian history in the West in the same manner that Sinology developed.
South Asia Studies in the West needs its John K Fairbanks, but that will not happen. Most India scholars who are decent end up returning to India where policymaking roles abound.
It was the same with how China Studies was treated in the West until the last 5 years - barely 15 years ago all China was in the western zeitgeist was Mao, the Great Wall, pollution, poverty, and ill-paid migrant workers.
> The Deccan Sultanates and Vijayanagara were more relevant to world history in the 16th Century India
It's not an either/or situation. There were a whole gamut of states all equally important.
True that. There is no interest in objectively studying history in India. It is just a tool to further the agendas of various parties involved.
One reason is financial. At its peak the Mughal empire was the largest economy in the world. Estimated to be about 25% of global GDP. That's close to the position US occupies in the modern world.
Yes but both the Maurya and Gupta empires have been estimated to have reached over 30% in their time.
Mughal empire was collection of many wealthy provinces, which were wealthy even before Mughals. After assuming power most Mughal ruler did nothing but wasted wealth on countless vanity projects, unlike Europeans where rulers still funded exploration and innovation.
I’m not an expert on Asian history but I feel like there isn’t a focus on the Mughal empire by the West. This history is just not well known. The way India was covered in school classes (at least in America) was that Britain came into India, colonized the country, oppressed Indians, and then Gandhi resisted without violence, which somehow led to the British leaving, but they split up India on their way out into India + Pakistan.
But it seems like India was not ruled by Indians (Hindus?) even before European colonization. Aren’t these previous Mughal rulers and the people before them also colonizers then, if they weren’t indigenous Indians / Hindus? Why aren’t they also discussed that way? When did Indians rule India then - was it in the first millennium?
To me, this is all basically outside of the public’s common knowledge and focus in the West.
It's again complex, yes to some extent Mughals were colonisers but they eventually simply wanted to rule. It's not discussed because most history before 11th-13th century was systematically wiped out over centuries.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have little to minorities or even the memory of past left, but that's mostly what happens with cultural imperialism. There were Hindus / Bhuddist or Zorastrian in those areas, now there are none. Infact India have more Zorastrians than modern day Iran, many fled to India around 16th Century escaping similar cultural imperialism.
My very personal take (which can be completely wrong) is that few dynasties were comparable to the vastness of Mughals in this particular era. All the Indian princely states were a lot smaller by comparison, in this time period at least. One that stands out to me is The Sikh Empire 1799–1849 that managed to rule much of North India + current day Afghanistan and Pakistan but for a relatively short period of time. The British East India company were a challenging force to beat, some allied with them which stunted their own ambitions, others like the Sikh Empire lost to them eventually.
I have nothing against Mughals, they had a great impact on the subcontinent history esp during 17th century. However the center of gravity was the Indian Ocean Spice trade network which was the South. This is what the Portuguese and various EICs wanted to connect to. We have records of the vast riches of these Deccan cities from these travelers.
> few dynasties were comparable to the vastness of Mughals
The Mauryas perhaps ruled a much larger area than Mughals. Khalji, Tughlaqs, Satvahanas, and Marathas also ruled over vast landscapes, but they are not much known outside India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha_Empire#/media/File:Ind...
The marathas were much larger and in a lot of ways a lot more interesting than the Mughals for a variety of reasons. The fact that you believe that that Indian princely states were smaller is... Bizarre and ahistoric. England's rule over India only became a sure thing when England defeated the Marathas. Until then it was just piecemeal colonization. The fact that you are discussing the Raj without mention of the Marathas underscores the very concern that was brought up that Indian history is highly editorialized
Part of the reason is that -- in the popular Western imagining -- India really refers to the Gangetic plain. Any book on India mainly attributes Gangetic culture to 'India' whole completely ignoring the south, west, east and north east all of which have unique cultural traits.
As someone of Indian ethnicity, this was extremely confusing to me because when we read about Indian history in books and people would ask me, I would literally have no idea. My particular ethnic group lived along the coast of the western ghats and greatly valued the ocean and seafaring... Almost completely the opposite of the Gangetic peoples. This bias is prevalent everywhere because, despite these individual cultures having enough population to be a country in their own right. They are marginalized by popular history.
The Marathas, the Bengal Subah, Durrani's Afghanistan, the Hyderabad Sultanate, the Konbaung Empire, Mysore, and Thanjvur were contemporaries similar or larger in scope and size than the Sikh Empire.
And this is OP's point.
Most "India History" in the West has an extremely colonial British bias which only concentrated on Delhi and unpartitioned Punjab.
I think it’s because they were they were the dominant power at the point when westerners began dominating the area. We see a similar fascination with Aztec, Iroquois, etc. westerners (or really all audiences of history) need to sense their presence in the story, even if it’s “just around the corner”.
The Mughals are known to me in two ways: even as a child, I heard the moniker “mogul” as a wealthy person who specializes in some industry or service. Most prominent is “Media Mogul” such as Ted Turner. A pundit on television or writing a newspaper article would often apply it.
Secondly, cuisine. At least one seminal Indian cookbook I owned had a section devoted to Mughal dishes and explaining how the Empire influenced the culture insofar as what people were permitted to eat, and what foods/ingredients were made available. The Muslim Mughal diet contrasts with the Hindu dishes, and the seafood of the coasts and Goa presents another dimension.
I think it traces back to Henry Avery and his capture of the Mughal treasure fleet [1]. It inspired an entire oral/print tradition and social zeitgeist in England (and the rest of Europe) which IMO directly led to an entire generation of privateers like Woodes Rogers and tied into the whole golden age of piracy, an endless source of drama for fiction authors.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Grand_Mughal_Fl...
They were the last "Big" Empire in the subcontinent before the British Raj. The EIC inherited a lot of Mughal-standard bureaucracy in the territories they took over, despite the territories themselves belonging to Sultanates distinct from the Mughal. The Crown kept the same alive too. Traces of Mughal administrative vocabulary are found to this day in Modern India's legalese.
>Digging a ditch strengthened the forest cover for his flanks
>The Mughal position was again fortified with a ditch and wagons linked by chains and the matchlockmen, placed in the front of the force, ‘broke the ranks of the pagan army with matchlocks and guns like their hearts’; they were black and covered with smoke. The Mughals had only about 12,000 troops at Kanua, whereas the Rajputs, allegedly, had 80,000 cavalry and 500 elephants
Digging the ditch during the battle is a typical and signature Persian war technique.
Not trying to be pedantic but the more correct word to use here is probably trench. The trench is called Khandaq in Persian and Arabic, the latter most probably a borrowed word from the former.
The main idea is to pre-emptively dig a trench beforeva battle just enough to prevent the enemies cavalry horses from jumping across.
It's succesfully used by early Islamic force against the much larger Meccan Quraish army including their allies during the famous Khandaq war in defending Yathrib (now Madinah) [1]. The idea was suggested by Salman al-Farisi, a Persian companian of Muhammad [2].
Fun facts, Mughals palace households were mainly speaking Persian language, and the Hindi/Urdu language is heavily influenced by the Persian moreso than Arab.
[1] Battle of the Trench:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trench
[2] Salman the Persian
> Mughals palace households were mainly speaking Persian language
They actually spoke Chagatai Turkish in the households and Persian was the court language. Urdu developed independently, mostly outside the royal patronage, and much later.
Thanks for the wonderful Wikipedia excursion I just enjoyed, I learned a lot.
Wait so these people invaded and took over India? For what reason - Land? Religion? Feuds? And it seems like they were displacing another Islamic colonial power that was already there? Weird to have this article discuss battles but skim over the context.
Is there ever a singular reason behind why conquerors conquer? Babur conquered and established an empire because there was an empire to be conquered and established. That reason in itself is enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turco-Mongol_tradition
Read that and you’ll get the context.
The Mughals were of Turkic descent but were not Turco-Mongol nomads. Steppe nomad culture had died out for a long time before Babur's rise.
A flowery description of conquest by the Islamic Mughals. Where is the indignation about the destruction of Hindu temples and idols, as documented in his memoirs, the Baburnama. About his disdain for indigenous religions which laid the foundation for Mughal atrocities continued under his successors?
Imagine a similar description of conquest by, say, the Christian Spaniards in the Americas. The noble conquests of the brave Hernan Cortés, in similarly flowery language. Imagine the shouts of protest against... well, there is no nedd to imagine since those protests are commonplace.
The Islamic conquest and colonisation of the middle- and far-east is one of the more bloody episodes in history rife with all the vices for which western colonisers are constantly blamed. Slavery was and in some places still is commonplace but the same voices which proclaim the vices of the west are silent or point at the virtues of others who were and sometimes still are guilty of the same. Why is that?
Tbf, Babur was equally disdainful about Islam and would wax eloquently about getting drunk on wine and high off opium.
He was just a Chagatai raider who somehow ended up the ruler of a principality.
The actual empire was built by Akbar and Shah Jahan.
Political Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism only arose in South Asia in 19th century with the collapse of the Mughal, Maratha, and Sikh Empires and early British attempts at mass Christian conversion which led to political religious movements arise in the late 19th century.
in those times religion was a scant sixth in order of reasons and rationalisations for conquest and empire, then as now it was a technological advantage, guns, and the rajputs didn't have them, mobility, the rajputs were agrarian, the mughals were mostly pastoralists and always on the move.
but just so that you know, I have traveled through north west punjub, to muree, and lundi khotal, and there are ruins of stupas and things much much older that litter the landscapes, so to pick one particular starting point is disingenious, or worse.
The Mughal empire was founded in 1526 and dissolved in 1857. Hernan Cortés was born in 1485, reached the Americas in 1504 and conquered the Aztec empire between 1519 and 1521, very close to the Mughal conquests. There are whole academic disciplines based around criticising Western colonisation and conquests but I am not aware of anything similar targeting non-Western history.
My reaction is not so much targeted at this specific example - religious (Islamic) conquest - but towards the lack of criticism of non-Western conquest and colonisation.
I am of Indian Christian stock (which is only relevant because I have no religious or creedal stake in any of these sites) but I have noticed this bias as well. The destruction of classical North Indian temples or religious sites by invading islamists forces is met with indifference in most of the world while similar invasions by Christian forces in the Americas or Africa are properly criticized. We have endless critical scholarship on Columbus and the Spaniards (which there should be), but the moment anyone says anything about the somewhat contemporaneous Islamic conquests in Asia, suddenly you are accused of islamophobia. For example, I have seen people lamenting the destruction of the universities at Nalanda and Taksashila being accused of islamophobia because they point out that Islamic radicalism was the intellectual basis for the burning of these institution.
People should be free to criticize all of these events as they see fit.
Yes, that is part of what I was getting at. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, if we're to criticise Christian conquest there is no reason whatsoever to refrain from criticising conquest under any other flag or religion, especially one like Islam which - not having undergone something like the Enlightenment - still has conquest of the world under Islamic rule as one of its basic tenets. There can be endless debates about whether the duty of all muslims towards jihad is to be interpreted as some form of spiritual conquest or in the way it is interpreted by groups like Boko Haram and Daesh but it is clear that Islamic scripture has been and still is used as a call to arms and conquest and with that it is just intellectual dishonesty to use terms like 'Islamophobia' towards those who point this out.
Abrahamic societies will naturally be sympathetic to the acts of other Abrahamic peoples and antagonistic to pagan and polytheistic cultures, especially if the non-Abrahamic culture rejects the Abrahamic proselytising that purports to "civilise the heathens" as many Indic societies did. To expect anything else under some expectation of fairness or empathy is nothing but childish naïveté.
Western Christian public culture is anything but sympathetic towards the acts of Western Christian colonisers. There is sympathy towards other cultures, Abrahamic or otherwise but towards its own there is mostly atonement of sins and self-chastisement, at least outwardly.
Islam and Christianity are Abrahamic religions. But some societies are both very Christian and very anti-Islam, or vice-versa.
The ignorance of Western people to think "Abrahamic bad", "Eastern good" is very aggravating. Modern times have given us plenty of violent Bhuddist and Hindu extremism right before our eyes, for example. And it isn't the first time in history for either of those either. No religion ends up being special, because, unfortunately, humans are fundamentally misbegotten.
Not to mention the ignorance in this thread of the basic fact that Muslim empires kept attacking and supplanting each other in South Asia, culminating in the Mughal defeat of another Muslim empire, which is exactly what this article describes. But instead of actually reading it, you'd rather bring naked biases and caricatures to the table.
Why is this on HN?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.