Aurangzeb

Title & tenure

6th Mughal Emperor (1658–1707)

In office: 1658 – 1707

Predecessor:

Shah Jahan

Successor:

Bahadur Shah I

Biography

Aurangzeb seized the throne by defeating and imprisoning his father Shah Jahan and executing his brothers in a bitterly fought war of succession, and went on to rule for nearly 49 years, expanding the Mughal Empire to its greatest territorial extent.

Achievements

• Expanded the Mughal Empire to its largest-ever territorial extent, bringing almost the entire Indian subcontinent under Mughal rule
• Codified Islamic law into the Fatawa-i-Alamgiri, a comprehensive compilation of Hanafi jurisprudence
• Reigned for nearly 49 years, the second-longest of any Mughal emperor after Akbar

Key events

• War of succession (1658–59): defeated his brothers Dara Shikoh, Shah Shuja and Murad Baksh, and imprisoned his father Shah Jahan, to seize the throne
• Decades-long military campaigns in the Deccan against the Marathas under Shivaji and his successors, which drained the empire's resources without achieving decisive victory
• Reimposed the jizya tax on non-Muslims in 1679, reversing Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and straining relations with the empire's Hindu and Sikh subjects

Legacy

Aurangzeb remains one of the most debated Mughal emperors: credited with the empire's largest territorial extent and a devout, austere personal life, but also widely blamed by historians for policies of religious intolerance and decades of costly warfare that left the empire overextended and set the stage for its decline.

How it ended

Died of natural causes in 1707 at age 88, after which his sons fought a war of succession and the empire entered a long decline, never again ruled by an emperor of comparable authority.