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Mughal India

1526 CE – 1757 CE

The Mughal Empire from Babur's victory at Panipat to the eve of British ascendancy — Akbar, Aurangzeb, and the empire that built the Taj Mahal.

211 events · 426 people · 2 eras

Key events

1. Battle of Panipat1526 CE
   The First Battle of Panipat, on 21 April 1526 was fought between the invading forces of Babur against Ibrahim Khan Lodi, the Sultan of Delhi, in North India. Babur's forces, employing gunpowder firearms and cannons, defeated Ibrahim. This was one of the earliest battles involving gunpowder arms on the Indian subcontinent. The victory marked the beginning of Mughal rule in India.
2. Carnatic Wars1746 CE
   The Carnatic wars were a series of military conflicts in the middle of the 18th century in India's coastal Carnatic region, a dependency of Hyderabad State, India. The first Carnatic wars were fought between 1740 and 1748.
3. Battle of Talikota1565 CE
   The Battle of Talikota, also known as that of Rakshasi–Tangadi, was a watershed battle fought between the Vijayanagara Empire and an alliance of the Deccan sultanates. The battle resulted in the defeat of Aliya Rama Raya which led to the eventual collapse of the polity and reconfigured Deccan politics.
4. Revolt of the Three Feudatories1681 CE
   The Revolt of the Three Feudatories, also known as the Rebellion of Wu Sangui, was a rebellion lasting from 1673 to 1681 in the early Qing dynasty of China, during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor. The revolt was led by Wu Sangui, Shang Zhixin and Geng Jingzhong, the three ethnic Han lords of Yunnan, Guangdong and Fujian provinces whose hereditary titles were given to them for defecting to and helping the Qing dynasty conquer China proper, who rebelled after the Qing central government started abolishing their fiefs. The feudatories were supported by Zheng Jing's Kingdom of Tungning on the island of Taiwan, which sent forces to invade Mainland China. Additionally, minor Han military figures, such as Wang Fuchen, and the Chahar Mongols, also revolted against Qing rule.
5. Battle of Karnal1739 CE
   The Battle of Karnal was a decisive victory for Nader Shah, the founder of the Afsharid dynasty of Iran, during his invasion of India. Nader's forces defeated the army of Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah within three hours, paving the way for the Iranian sack of Delhi. The engagement is considered the crowning jewel in Nader's military career as well as a tactical masterpiece. The battle took place near Karnal in Haryana, 110 kilometres (68 mi) north of Delhi, India. As a result of the overwhelming defeat of the Mughal Empire at Karnal, the already-declining Mughal dynasty was critically weakened to such an extent as to hasten its demise. According to Axworthy, it is also possible that without the ruinous effects of Nader's invasion of India, European colonial takeover of the Indian subcontinent would have come in a different form or perhaps not at all.
6. Battle of Panipat1556 CE
   The Second Battle of Panipat was fought on 5 November 1556, between the Mughals under Akbar and king Hemu, titularly known as Hemchandra Vikramaditya. Hemchandra had conquered Delhi and Agra a few weeks earlier by defeating Mughal forces under Tardi Beg Khan in the Battle of Delhi. He crowned himself Vikramaditya at Purana Quila in Delhi.
7. First Carnatic War1746 CE
   The First Carnatic War (1744/1746–1748) was the Indian theatre of the War of the Austrian Succession and the first of a series of Carnatic Wars that established early British dominance on the east coast of the Indian subcontinent. In this conflict the British and French East India Companies vied with each other on land for control of their respective trading posts at Madras, Pondicherry, and Cuddalore, while naval forces of France and Britain engaged each other off the coast. The war set the stage for the rapid growth of French hegemony in southern India under the command of French Governor-General Joseph François Dupleix in the Second Carnatic War.
8. Siege of Diu1531 CE
   The siege of Diu occurred when a combined Ottoman-Gujarati force defeated a Portuguese attempt to capture the city of Diu in 1531. The victory was partly the result of Ottoman firepower over the Portuguese besiegers deployed by Mustafa Bayram, an Ottoman expert.
9. Siege of Diu1538 CE
   The siege of Diu occurred when an army of the Sultanate of Gujarat under Khadjar Safar, aided by forces of the Ottoman Empire, attempted to capture the city of Diu in 1538, then held by the Portuguese. The siege was part of the Ottoman-Portuguese war. The Portuguese successfully resisted the four-month long siege.
10. Battle of Swally1612 CE
    The naval Battle of Swally, also known as Battle of Suvali, took place on 29–30 November 1612 off the coast of Suvali a village near the Surat city and was a victory for four English East India Company galleons over four Portuguese galleons and 26 barks.
11. Child's War1686 CE
    The Anglo-Mughal war, also known as the Child's War, was the first Anglo-Indian war on the Indian subcontinent.
12. Campaigns of Nader Shah1720 CE
    The campaigns of Nader Shah, or the Naderian Wars, were a series of conflicts fought in the early to mid-eighteenth century throughout Central Eurasia primarily by the Iranian conqueror Nader Shah. His campaigns originated from the overthrow of the Iranian Safavid dynasty by the Hotaki Afghans. In the ensuing collapse and fragmentation of the empire after the capture of the Iranian capital of Isfahan by the Afghans, a claimant to the Safavid throne, Tahmasp II, accepted Nader into his service. After having subdued north-west Iran as well as neutralising the Abdali Afghans to the east and turning Tahmasp II into a vassal, Nader marched against the Hotaki Afghans in occupation of the rest of the country. In a series of incredible victories the Afghans were decimated and Tahmasp II returned to the throne as a restored Safavid monarch.

Notable people

• Akbar1542 CE – 1605 CE
• Babur1483 CE – 1530 CE
• Shah Jahan1592 CE – 1666 CE
• Aurangzeb1618 CE – 1707 CE
• Abbas the Great1571 CE – 1629 CE
• Humayun1508 CE – 1556 CE
• Jahangir I1569 CE – 1627 CE
• Nader Shah1688 CE – 1747 CE
• Ahmed Shahe Durrani1722 CE – 1772 CE
• Ahmed III1673 CE – 1736 CE
• Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj1627 CE – 1680 CE
• Mahmud I1696 CE – 1754 CE

Cultural works

Eras spanning this view

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Events from Wikipedia/Wikidata (CC-BY-SA); base map © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); era boundaries are a hand-curated set in v1. Spotted a mistake? Email [email protected].