The Mughal Empire (1526–1857) built one of the most administratively sophisticated empires in early-modern history and created a political synthesis between Islamic governance and the Hindu civilization it ruled. How it managed that synthesis at its height, and why the synthesis broke down, is the entry’s central question.
For a century and a half, the Mughal emperors governed more people than any European ruler and extracted more revenue than any contemporary state. They did it by creating a working arrangement between Islamic authority and Hindu society. Understanding what held that arrangement together — and what broke it — explains much of South Asian history that followed.