The Mughal Emperors and the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran and Central Asia, 1206-1925


Book Description

Profiles rulers from the thirteenth through the twentieth centuries whose reigns and lands were affected by Mughal power throughout Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and north and central India, in a series of biographical portraits that includes coverage of Timur, Shah Abbas the Great, and Akbar the Great.




The Great Mughals and their India


Book Description

A definitive, comprehensive and engrossing chronicle of one of the greatest dynasties of the world – the Mughal – from its founder Babur to Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last of the clan. The magnificent Mughal legacy – the world-famous Taj Mahal being the most prominent among countless other examples – is an inexhaustible source of inspiration to historians, writers, moviemakers, artists and ordinary mortals alike. Mughal history abounds with all the ingredients of classical drama: ambition and frustration, hope and despair, grandeur and decline, love and hate, and loyalty and betrayal. In other words: it is great to read and offers ample food for thought on the human condition. Much more importantly, Mughal history deserves to be widely read and reflected upon, because of its lasting cultural and socio-political relevance to today’s world in general and the Indian subcontinent in particular. The Mughals have left us with a legacy that cannot be erased. With regard to the eventful reigns of Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb and their successors, crucial questions arise: Where did they succeed? Where did they fail? And more importantly, what should we learn from their triumphs and failures? The author believes that history books should be accurate, informative and entertaining. In The Great Mughals and Their India, he has kept these objectives in mind in an attempt to narrate Mughal history from their perspective. At the same time, he does not shy away from dealing with controversial issues. Here is a fascinating and riveting saga that brings alive a spectacular bygone era – authentically and convincingly.




A Short History of the Mughal Empire


Book Description

The Mughal Empire dominated India politically, culturally, socially, economically and environmentally, from its foundation by Babur, a Central Asian adventurer, in 1526 to the final trial and exile of the last emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar at the hands of the British in 1858. Throughout the empire's three centuries of rise, preeminence and decline, it remained a dynamic and complex entity within and against which diverse peoples and interests conflicted. The empire's significance continues to be controversial among scholars and politicians with fresh and exciting new insights, theories and interpretations being put forward in recent years. This book engages students and general readers with a clear, lively and informed narrative of the core political events, the struggles and interactions of key individuals, groups and cultures, and of the contending historiographical arguments surrounding the Mughal Empire.




The Empire of the Great Mughals


Book Description

Annemarie Schimmel has written extensively on India, Islam and poetry. In this comprehensive study she presents an overview of the cultural, economic, militaristic and artistic attributes of the great Mughal Empire from 1526 to 1857.




The Mughal Empire


Book Description

The Mughal Empire, also known as the Moghul Empire, lasted for about three centuries, and at its peak, it covered 3.2 million square kilometers, from the outer borders of the Indus Basin in the west to the highlands of Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and from Afghanistan and Kashmir in the north to the Deccan Plateau in the south.




The Emperor Jahangir


Book Description

Jahangir was the fourth of the six “Great Mughals,” the oldest son of Akbar the Great, who extended the Mughal Empire across the Indian Subcontinent, and the father of Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal. Although an alcoholic and opium addict, his reputation marred by rebellion against his father, once enthroned the Emperor Jahangir proved to be an adept politician. He was also a thoughtful and reflective memoirist and a generous patron of the arts, responsible for an innovative golden age in Mughal painting. Through a close study of the seventeenth century Mughal court chronicles, The Emperor Jahangir sheds new light on this remarkable historical figure, exploring Jahangir's struggle for power and defense of kingship, his addictions and insecurities, his relationship with his favourite wife, the Empress Nur Jahan, and with his sons, whose own failed rebellions bookended his reign.




The Emperors' Album


Book Description

Fifty leaves that form the sumptuous Kevorkian Album, one of the world's greatest assemblages of Mughal art. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.




The Last Mughal


Book Description

WINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER MEMORIAL PRIZE | LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 'Indispensable reading on both India and the Empire' Daily Telegraph 'Brims with life, colour and complexity . . . outstanding' Evening Standard 'A compulsively readable masterpiece' Brian Urquhart, The New York Review of Books A stunning and bloody history of nineteenth-century India and the reign of the Last Mughal. In May 1857 India's flourishing capital became the centre of the bloodiest rebellion the British Empire had ever faced. Once a city of cultural brilliance and learning, Delhi was reduced to a battered, empty ruin, and its ruler – Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last of the Great Mughals – was thrown into exile. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad: a fight to the death between two powers, neither of whom could retreat. The Last Mughal tells the story of the doomed Mughal capital, its tragic destruction, and the individuals caught up in one of the most terrible upheavals in history, as an army mutiny was transformed into the largest anti-colonial uprising to take place anywhere in the world in the entire course of the nineteenth century.




White Mughals


Book Description

James Achilles Kirkpatrick landed on the shores of eighteenth-century India as an ambitious soldier of the East India Company. Although eager to make his name in the subjection of a nation, it was he who was conquered—not by an army but by a Muslim Indian princess. Kirkpatrick was the British Resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad when in 1798 he glimpsed Khair un-Nissa—'Most Excellent among Women'—the great-niece of the Nizam's Prime Minister. He fell in love with Khair, and overcame many obstacles to marry her—not least of which was the fact that she was locked away in purdah and engaged to a local nobleman. Eventually, while remaining Resident, Kirkpatrick converted to Islam, and according to Indian sources even became a double-agent working for the Hyderabadis against the East India Company. Possessing all the sweep of a great nineteenth-century novel, White Mughals is a remarkable tale of harem politics, secret assignations, court intrigue, religious disputes and espionage.




Allahu Akbar


Book Description

That he was a medieval king who, with a progressive bent of mind, dared to look ahead to find that common ground for all his people to stand together. That he was a medieval king who is today tempting us to look back into the past to see our future through his eyes. Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government came to power in 2014 with Narendra Modi as the prime minister, an organised campaign began to vilify Emperor Akbar and the Mughals. While there were always voices that tried to project the Mughals as just another 'Islamic empire', ignoring the civilisational impact they had on India, even for them Akbar was a shining light in an otherwise era of darkness. Those talking in terms of easy binaries always found a 'good Muslim' in Akbar and a 'bad Muslim' in Aurangzeb. Academics and other liberals who could have countered this incorrect portrayal did not do it, dismissing such claims as mere screeches by the fringe that do not deserve any attention. But with the Hindu Right assuming political power, the fringe today has become the mainstream. And Akbar is no longer the 'good Muslim'. Why is there such hatred for Akbar, once the most loved king in India? What was the journey like, from being great to not-so-great? And how is this India different from Akbar's Hindustan? Has he become irrelevant in an India where growing Hindu nationalism threatens to alter the nature of the Indian state from a secular republic to a theocracy? Or is Akbar even more relevant today given the backdrop of hate that we all find ourselves in? Allahu Akbar seeks to find answers to these questions while providing a profile sketch of the emperor, his empire and his times.