The Mughals were the last powerful descendants of the Mongols. Despite their illustrious ancestors, the Mughals started humbly.
Babur: Babur the Tiger came to power in 1483 and ruled till 1530. He ruled over a very small kingdom in Turkestan. With significantly small armies he managed to conquer Afghanistan and the Delhi sultanate and all of Hindustan. He over came his enemies with a new technology: firepower. The Mughals were known as the first Gunpowder Empire. Babur was succeeded by his son, Humayun.
Humayun: Humayun inherited one of the largest empires in the world at the time and nearly ruined it. Between 1530 and 1540 he managed to lose all the land that his father worked so hard to get through rebellions from Afghanistan and India. He was sent into exile in Persia and created a small army. He ended up eventually regaining all the lands back but is looked upon as one of the worst Mughal emperors. At the end of his conquests he fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. He was succeeded by his son Akbar which in Arabic means" Great One."
Akbar: Muslim, Indian and Western Historians all see Akbar as the greatest ruler throughout Indian history. He became emperor at the age of thirteen in 1556. He immediately began seizing land in Hindustan. He conquered more lands than any of his ancestors before him had. He was very wise in his rulings and tried to govern all his people equally and fairly. Since his conquered lands were so many he assigned governors to each region called mansabars. If the governors abused this power and mistreated the poor or the weak they were punished severely sometimes even with death. The most important part of his bureaucracy was tax collection. He like most other rulers taxed the people one third of their lands and produce, but he taxed everyone fairly including the nobility, which was a radical movement in those days. He also got rid of the taxes placed on the non-believers or non-Muslims. Through out the Muslim history there was always a tax on the non-believers called the jizya, Muslims also placed a tax on non-Muslims that went on pilgrimages to holy Hindu sites. Akbar got rid of this tax in 1564. Because of these actions even the Hindus were favoring him and the rebellions stopped. He was very much in favor for equality between the Muslims and the Hindus. One third of his assigned bureaucrats were Hindu. He even allowed the Hindu regions to maintain their own courts and laws as long as they corresponded with the Emperors laws.
Akbar took very seriously that he was not only a ruler for the people but a spiritual leader. He devoted considerable amounts of time to sort out the common truth in multiple religions. From all of this researching he created a new religion called Din-I Ilahi or " The Religion of God." This new religion was of course mainly based on Muslim, which is a very rationalistic religion, but it also included parts of Christianity, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Jainism. Finally in 1605 Akbar died and his entire empire was left to his son Jahangir.
Jahangir: Akbar was succeeded by his favorite son, Jahangir, who ruled the empire from 1605 to 1628. Jahangir did not pursue military conquests as forcefully as his father, but he did manage to extend the empire into Bengal. His father had once said that any Empire that is not expanding is in decline. Jahangir had a great passion for the arts: painting, culture architecture, philosophy, and literature. He was known to carry the Mughal Empire through their richest cultural period.
Shah Jahan: Jahangir's successor, Shah Jahan, inherited Akbar's obsession with the military. Shah Jahan ruled from 1628 1658. By the end of his reign, the Mughal Empire was expanding and seemed in charge and stable. He built a new capital and many other buildings. The most famous of all is the Taj Mahal in Agra. When his favorite wife died while giving birth to her fourteenth child, Shah Jahan decided to build her the most beautiful tomb that the world had ever seen and that was exactly what he did. Till this day the Taj Mahal is known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Taj Mahal took over twenty years to build and over twenty thousand men. All of his lavish building projects, though, eventually ran the treasury dry. Because of this he raised the taxes on all the people and raised a lot of hostility towards himself.
Aurangzeb: Aurangzeb rose to power in a very violent way. He had his father Shah Jahan imprisoned and his eldest brother executed. He ruled for an incredibly long time from the years 1658-1707. Under his rule the Mughal Empire reached its greatest limits. He conquered a lot of lands and attacked their main enemy's chieftains. He conquered so many lands that he could not look after them all. The conquering of many lands led to the empire's down fall. He outlawed many Hindu practices and reinstated many of the taxes against the non- believers. The downfall of the Mughal Empire began with him.
Links Used:
"The Mughals, Akbar." <http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MUGHAL/AKBAR.HTM>
http://encarta.msn.com/find/MediaMax.asp?pg=3&ti=761557562&idx=461562691