The Great Mughal Empire was an empire that at its greatest territorial extent ruled most of the Indian subcontinent, then
known as Bharat, and parts of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan (Balochistan), between 1526 and 1707. The empire was founded by the Timurid leader Babur in 1526, when he defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Delhi Sultans at the First Battle of Panipat. Mughal is the Persian word for "Mongol". The religion of the Mughal rulers was Islam.
The territory was largely conquered by the Pashtun Sher Shah Suri during the time of Humayun, the second Mughal ruler, but under Akbar the Great it grew considerably, and continued to grow until the end of Aurangzeb's rule. Jahangir, the son of Mughal
Emperor Akbar and Rajput princess Mariam-uz-Zamani, ruled the empire from 1605–1627. In October 1627, Shah Jahan, the son of Mughal Emperor Jahangir and Rajput princess Manmati, succeeded to the throne, where he inherited a vast and rich empire in India and at mid-century this was perhaps the greatest empire in the world". Shah Jahan commissioned the famous TajMahal (between 1630–1653), in Agra as a memorial of his wife Mumtaz Mahal.
The Mughals faced stiff resistance from the Marathas, and after Aurangzeb died in 1707, the empire started to decline in actual power, giving way to the rise of the Hindu Maratha Empire. The Mughals however managed to maintain some trappings of power in India for another 150 years. In 1739 they were defeated by an army from Persia led by Nadir Shah. In 1756 an army of Ahmed Shah Abdali took Delhi again. The British Empire finally dissolved the Mughal Empire in 1857, immediately prior to which it existed only at the sufferance of the British East India Company.
Religion
The Mughal ruling class were Muslims, although most of the subjects of the Empire were Hindu. Although Babur founded the Empire, the dynasty remained unstable (and was even exiled) until the reign of Akbar, who was not only of liberal disposition but also intimately acquainted, since birth, with the mores and traditions of India.
Political economy
The Mughals used the mansabdar system to generate land revenue. The emperor would grant revenue rights to a mansabdar in exchange for promises of soldiers in war-time. The greater the size of the land the emperor granted, the greater the number of soldiers the mansabdar had to promise. The mansab was both revocable and non-hereditary; this gave the center a fairly large degree of control over the mansabdars.
Present-day
descendants A few descendants of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, are known to be living in Delhi, Kolkata, and Hyderabad. The majority of direct descendants still carry the clan name Temur with four major branches today: Shokohane-Temur (Shokoh), Shahane-Temur (Shah), Bakshane-Temur (Baksh) and Salatine-Temur (Sultan). There is also a line of direct descendants who carry the name "Mirza", who now live in various areas of the world. Many claim direct descendants to the mughal empire, but few have the historical data to prove their claims.
Descendents of the Mughals in Hyderabad, India: The Living Mughals is the story of four lost generations of the Mughal dynasty after Bahadur Shah Zafar. Arijeet Gupta's film unearths the direct descendents of the dynasty who now live in Hyderabad and have been lost in the mists of time. The main protagonist of the film is the Hyderabad-based Begum Laila Umahani, the direct descendant of Bahadur Shah Zafar from his first wife Ashraf Mahal. Apart from Ashraf Mahal, Zafar had three more wives--Akhtar Mahal, Zeenat Mahal and Taj Mahal.