At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.

[24] There was more conspicuous consumption among the Mughal elite,[25] resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture, especially during the reign of Shah Jahan.

[34] The Mughal designation for their dynasty was Gurkani (Gūrkāniyān), a reference to their descent from the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur, who took the title Gūrkān 'son-in-law' after his marriage to a Chinggisid princess.

[43] In the decisive Battle of Khanwa, fought near Agra a year later, the Timurid forces of Babur defeated the combined Rajput armies of Rana Sanga of Mewar, with his native cavalry employing traditional flanking tactics.

[48] Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) was born Jalal-ud-din Muhammad[49] in the Umarkot Fort,[50] to Humayun and his wife Hamida Banu Begum, a Persian princess.

One way he did this was by bestowing many more madad-i-ma'ash (tax-free personal land revenue grants given to religiously learned or spiritually worthy individuals) than Akbar had.

[67][60][61] From the imperial perspective, conversion to Islam integrated local elites into the king's vision of a network of shared identity that would join disparate groups throughout the empire in obedience to the Mughal emperor.

[68] He led campaigns from 1682 in the Deccan,[69] annexing its remaining Muslim powers of Bijapur and Golconda,[70][69] though engaged in a prolonged conflict in the region which had a ruinous effect on the empire.

In 1719 alone, four emperors successively ascended the throne",[40] as figureheads under the rule of a brotherhood of nobles belonging to the Indian Muslim caste known as the Sadaat-e-Bara, whose leaders, the Sayyid Brothers, became the de facto sovereigns of the empire.

After a crushing defeat in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 which he nominally led, the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was deposed by the British East India Company and exiled in 1858 to Rangoon, Burma.

[85] Historians have offered numerous accounts of the several factors involved in the rapid collapse of the Mughal Empire between 1707 and 1720, after a century of growth and prosperity.

From the time of Akbar, Mughal camps were huge in scale, accompanied by numerous personages associated with the royal court, as well as soldiers and labourers.

This compendium of Hanafi law sought to serve as a central reference for the Mughal state that dealt with the specifics of the South Asian context.

Such officials included the kotwal (local police), the faujdar (an officer controlling multiple districts and troops of soldiers), and the most powerful, the subahdar (provincial governor).

[97] Jahangir was known to have installed a "chain of justice" in the Agra Fort that any aggrieved subject could shake to get the attention of the emperor and bypass the inefficacy of officials.

[111] The Mughals adopted and standardised the rupee (rupiya, or silver) and dam (copper) currencies introduced by Sur Emperor Sher Shah Suri during his brief rule.

[105] In early modern Europe, there was significant demand for products from Mughal India, particularly cotton textiles, as well as goods such as spices, peppers, indigo, silks, and saltpetre (for use in munitions).

[147] Cities acted as markets for the sale of goods, and provided homes for a variety of merchants, traders, shopkeepers, artisans, moneylenders, weavers, craftspeople, officials, and religious figures.

However, modern historians such as André Wink, Jos J. L. Gommans, Anatoly Khazanov, Thomas J. Barfield, and others, argued the Mughals originated from nomadic culture.

[160][161] Mughal architecture is distinguished, among other things, by bulbous domes, ogive arches, carefully-composed and polished façades, and the use of hard red sandstone and marble as construction materials.

The palaces, tombs, gardens and forts built by the dynasty stand today in Agra, Aurangabad, Delhi, Dhaka, Fatehpur Sikri, Jaipur, Lahore, Kabul, Sheikhupura, and many other cities of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh,[165] such as:The Mughal artistic tradition, mainly expressed in painted miniatures, as well as small luxury objects, was eclectic, borrowing from Iranian, Indian, Chinese and Renaissance European stylistic and thematic elements.

[167] Miniatures commissioned by the Mughal emperors initially focused on large projects illustrating books with eventful historical scenes and court life, but later included more single images for albums, with portraits and animal paintings displaying a profound appreciation for the serenity and beauty of the natural world.

[170]According to Mughal court historian Aminai Qazvini, by the time of Shah Jahan, the emperor was only familiar with a few Turki words and showed little interest in the study of the language as a child.

[171] Though the Mughals were of Turko-Mongol origin, their reign enacted the revival and height of the Persian language in the Indian subcontinent, and by the end of the 16th-century Turki (Chagatai) was understood by relatively few at court.

[173][174] Historian Muzaffar Alam argues that the Mughals used Persian purposefully as the vehicle of an overarching Indo-Persian political culture, to unite their diverse empire.

Babur used this formation at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, where the Afghan and Rajput forces loyal to the Delhi Sultanate, though superior in numbers but without the gunpowder weapons, were defeated.

The decisive victory of the Timurid forces is one reason opponents rarely met Mughal princes in pitched battles throughout the empire's history.

Sidi Marjan was mortally wounded when a rocket struck his large gunpowder depot, and after twenty-seven days of hard fighting, Bidar was captured by the Mughals.

The use of mines and counter-mines with explosive charges of gunpowder is mentioned for the times of Akbar and Jahangir.A new curriculum for the madrasas that stressed the importance of uloom-i-muqalat (Rational Sciences) and introduced new subjects such as geometry, medicine, philosophy, and mathematics.

These Karkhanas were producing arms, ammunition, and also various items for the court and emperor's need such as clothes, shawls, turbans, jewelry, gold and silverware, perfumes, medicines, carpets, beddings, tents, and for the imperial stable-harnesses for the horses in irons, copper and other metals.