JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA

FACULTY OF LAW

PROJECT(HISTORY)

PROBLEMS AND THEORIES OF THE DECLINE OF

MUGHAL EMPIRE

Submitted to –

Dr. GULRUKH KHAN

Guest Faculty (Faculty of Law)

Submitted by –
SHADAB ANWAR
B.A.LL.B (REGULAR) 2nd Sem.
Roll No. 55
Student ID. 201904055
Batch (2019-2024)

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my teacher Dr.

Gulrukh khan, who gave me the golden opportunity to do this wonderful
project of History on “the problem and theories of the decline of the
Mughal Empire”, who also helped me in completing my project. I came
to know about so many new things I am really thankful to them.
Secondly, I would also like to thanks my parents and friend who helped
me a lot in finalizing this project within the limited time frame.

SHADAB ANWAR

B. A.LL.B (REGULAR) 2nd SEM.

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The objective of this project is to provide us with an overview of the problem and
theories of the decline of the Mughal Empire. I have aimed at giving the information
on the different views expressed by scholars on the problem of decline of the Mughal
Empire, and a comparative assessment of the evidence garnered in support of these
varying views.

INTRODUCTION
The Mughal rule in India established in 1526 by Babur gradually consolidated itself
under the great Mughals: Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan and reached its pinnacle of
glory as a vast empire in the first half reign of Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal.
Aurangzeb’s death marked the end of an era in Indian history. When Aurangzeb died,
the empire of the Mughals was the largest in India. Yet, within about fifty years of his
death, the Mughal Empire disintegrate.

The twilight of the Mughal reign began in 1707 following Aurangzeb's death and the
fall and disintegration of the Mughal dynasty saw its logical end by 1761 AD and the
kingdom lingered as a residual entity until 1857, the year in which Bahadur Shah
Zafar, the last of the Mughals, was exiled to Rangoon in Burma and executed in 1862.

The reasons for the Mughal rule's fall and disintegration caught the attention of a
number of writers, both Indian and foreign. Nevertheless, among historians the cycle
of decay and the advent of national policies has been intensively debated. This was
also a subject on which academic opinion is split more deeply than on any other
aspect of Mughal history. There have been several efforts to describe the process of
degradation and disintegration from various viewpoints and experiences.1

1
http://www.historydiscussion.net/essay/decline-and-disintegration-
of-the-mughals-in-india/2032(last visited on April 17,2020)

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CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE

1. Wars of Succession:

The Mughals did not follow any law of succession, such as the law of feudalism. As a
result, a war of succession between the brothers for the throne started every time a
ruler dies. This weakened the Mughal Empire, particularly after Aurangzeb. By taking
sides with one or the other candidates, the nobles increased their own strength.

2. Aurangzeb’s Policies:

Aurangzeb may not have known that the vast Mughal Empire relied on the willing
support of the people. He lost the support of the Rajputs, who had made a great
contribution to the power of the Empire. They had served as pillars of solidarity, but
Aurangzeb's policies turned them into bitter enemies. The wars with the Sikhs, the
Marathas, the Jats and the Rajputs have exhausted the capital of the Mughal Empire.

3. Weak Successors of Aurangzeb:

Aurangzeb's successors were weak and became victims of the intrigues and
conspiratories of the faction-ridden nobles. They were weak generals and unable to
suppress revolts. The absence of a powerful emperor, an effective bureaucracy, and a
competent army made the Mughal Empire weak.

4. Empty Treasury:

Shah Jahan’s zeal for construction had depleted the treasury. Aurangzeb’s long wars
in the south had further drained the exchequer.

5. Foreign Invasions:

Foreign invasions also sapped the remaining power of the Mughals and hastened the
process of disintegration. The invasions of Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali
contributed to further draining of resources. The very integrity of the empire shook
these invasions.

6. Size of the Empire and Challenge from Regional Powers:

The Mughal Empire had grown too large to be governed by any ruler from a single
region, i.e. Delhi. The Early Mughals were effective and had power over ministers

4
and the army, but the later Mughals were weak managers. As a result, distant
provinces have become independent. The rise of independent states has led to the
disintegration of the Mogul Empire.2

THEORIES OF THE DECLINE OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE

The historical perspective on the Mughal decline can be divided into two broad
sections. First, the Mughal-centric approach, i.e., historians attempt to identify the
causes of the decline within the structure and functioning of the Empire itself.
Secondly, the region-centric approach where the perspective goes out of the precincts
of the Empire into the regions to look for the causes of turmoil or instability in
different parts of the Empire.

EMPIRE-CENTRIC APPROACH
The Empire-centric approach for explaining Mughal decline has progressed through
different stages. The empire-centric approach can be divided into two phases - pre-
independent and post-independent approaches and perspectives.

The historians Jadunath Sarkar, Stanley Lanepoole, V.A. Smith and W. Irvin were in
the pre-independent period. Irvine adopted the empire-centered view and attributed
the fall to a weakening of the rulers' and their nobles' personalities. Then, J.N. Sarkar,
who studied the changes in the empire in the light of law and order, argues that
Aurangzeb was largely responsible for the fall and disintegration of the Mughal
Empire, and in particular through his religious fanaticism, Aurangzeb eroded Hindus'
support for the state.3

He was ambitious and wanted to increase the geographical limits of his empire even
though it cost him heavily in terms of men and money. His hard headed attitude
towards the Marathas, Rajputs and the Jats and the refusal to grant them regional
autonomy broke the former loyalty that existed between them and the Mughal
Empire. Another cause offered was the weak successors of Aurangzeb. It is true that
the later Mughals were mostly weak, imbecile and steeped in luxury and were partly
responsible for the decline. None of them had the ability to overcome the centrifugal

2
Satish Chandra, History of Medieval India 355 (Orient Blackswan Private Limited, New Delhi, 2014)
3
http://www.historydiscussion.net/essay/decline-and-disintegration-
of-the-mughals-in-india/2032(last visited on April 17,2020)

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forces and to unite the empire. Most of them were puppets in the hands of powerful
nobles who ran the administration on their behalf.4

Upon studying Mughal India's political system, historians Satish Chandra, M. Athar,
S. Nurul Hassan, and Irfan Habib proposed instability in the Jagirdari and Agrarian
realms as being largely responsible for the collapse and disintegration of the Mughal
Empire in post-independent India. In this strategy, the emphasis was moved from
individual rulers' identities and policies to the study of the main structures,
Mansabdari and Jagirdari on which the Mughal super-structure was based. Irfan
Habib argues that the system for raising the empire's revenue was fundamentally
faulty and that the empire's political and social structure was undermined as a result of
the peasant movements in various parts of India. J.F. Richards, P. Hardy and M.N.
Pearson conducted a re-examination of the situation and differed from those of Satish
Chandra, M. Athar Ali, S. Nurul Hassan and Irfan Habib in their findings.5

1. Jagirdari Crisis:

The first and foremost among them is the thesis put forward by Satish Chandra in his
Parties and Politics of the Mughal Court (1959). He build up the hypothesis of a
Jagirdari Crisis. According to him, the crisis was (a) contracting hasil from the
mahals; (b) an increase in the number of total masabdars; and (c) a general tendency
to allot increasingly high mansabs. All this, according to Satish Chandra led to a state
of bejagiri. According to Chandra, Mughal decline has to be seen in the Mughal
failure, towards the end of Aurangzeb’s reign, to maintain the system of the
mansabdar and jagirdar. As this system went into disarray, the Empire was bound to
collapse.6

This work was expanded further by M. Athar Ali (Mughal Aristocracy under
Aurangzeb [1966]), who made the Mughal empire list of nobles. The proportion of
the khānazāds and the Rajputs started to decline, as the Deccanis and the Marathas
rose, according to his count of nobles of the rank of 1000 and above. In other words,

4
Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire (Orient Blackswan Private Limited, New Delhi, 1 st edn.,
2007)
5
http://www.historydiscussion.net/essay/decline-and-disintegration-
of-the-mughals-in-india/2032(last visited on April 17,2020)
6
Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court (Department of History, Aligarh Muslim
University, 1959)

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the makeup of the bourgeoisie as such underwent a profound transition. According to
Athar Ali, under Akbar there were only 17 nobles in the number in 1000 and above.
At the beginning of the reign of Aurangzeb, the number rose to 486. At the close of
the reign of Aurangzeb the number has risen to 575. Compared to him, all this led to a
collapse in the empire.7

Through this paper, further developments were made by J.F. Richards who found out
that the bejāgīrī situation was triggered by a systematic strategy of increasing the
share of khalisa revenues, and not by Aurangzeb in the Deccan allocating jagirs in
pāibāqi. This culminated in a more clamor by the nobles for jagirs and from 1687
onwards accumulation of more funds with the state.8

2. Agrarian Crisis:

In his Agrarian System (1963) Irfan Habib established the second major principle of
the post-independent empire-centric strategy. He thought up the 'Agrarian Crisis'
theory. He seeks to figure out the reasons of the Mughal Empire's collapse through a
social system that doesn't only avoid naming classes but stretches to describe the
Mughal empire as 'the exploited class's defensive arm.' Habib holds that this agrarian
crisis gave rise to the Jagirdari crisis. The argument is missing in Satish Chandra and
Athar Ali's theories.

The basic features of this ‘Agrarian Crisis’ as propounded by Irfan Habib are: (a) high
rate of demand built in the zabt system (more than half of the actual produce); (b)
increasing gap between the actual hasil and the expected jama; (c) rotation of jagirs,
pressurising the peasants and ruination of agriculture; (d) ruination and flight of
peasantry from the jagirs, which affected the zamindars also as they were closely
linked to the Village Community; and (e) breakout of agrarian revolts which were
manifestations of peasant discontent.9

According to Habib, the revenue-gathering process developed by the Mughals was

fundamentally faulty. Imperial strategy was to set the revenue at the highest possible
7
M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1997)

8
https://history583380908.blog/2018/03/30/theories-for-the-decline-
the-aligarh-school/ (last visited on April 18, 2020)
9
https://history583380908.blog/2018/03/30/theories-for-the-decline-
the-aligarh-school/(last visited on April 18,2020)

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pace to protect the Empire's greatest military power, the nobility. On the other side,
they managed to suck the most out of their jagirs, even though it devastated the
peasantry and eroded the area's paying ability for revenue. Because the jagirs of the
nobles were liable to be constantly moved, they did not find it appropriate to pursue a
far-sighted agricultural growth strategy. When the pressure on the peasantry grew,
they were also deprived of their very livelihood means. The latter had no choice but to
strike in response to this gross oppression of the peasantry. In Medieval India the
modes of rural agitation were varying in nature. The peasants took to flight in many
places. Thanks to the large-scale relocation of the peasants to the towns or other
settlements, whole settlements were left abandoned. Quite frequently, by failing to
pay the taxes, the peasants agitated against the state and were up in arms against the
Mughal. Habib argued that the demonstrations by these peasants undermined the
Empire's political and social structure.10

From these conceptions, as well as from the work of Noman Ahmad Siddiqui (Land
Revenue Administration under the Mughals, 1970), it is possible to draw, as Peter
Hardy points out, a diagram of conflicts between ruler (padshah), military or noble-
service (mansabdar), landowner (zamindar) and peasant (raiyat) which, if retained in
equilibrium, created order and peace but which, if allowed. Such a free pull happened
when the Marathas forcefully jerked at the bit of Mughal influence as zamindars and
defied domestication within the Mughal system. Mughals' attempts to increase tax
money and people to conquer the Marathas resulted in tensions within the aristocracy,
and intolerable friction on both zamindars and peasants who, if not deliberately
revolting, at least passively defied the Mughal income collector. A mixture of the
Emperor's over-lavish appointments and the Marathas' military victories produced
bejagiri status. Therefore, the services needed to support the contingents were made
insufficient and therefore the number of successful contingents of Mughal dropped
and the Mughal military machine slowly became unable to manage the ever-
increasing military and rural aristocracy.11

10
Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (Oxford India Paperbacks, New Delhi, 3rd edn.,
2013)
11
Noman Ahmad Siddiqui, Land Revenue Administration Under the Mughals, (Aligarh Muslim
University, Aligarh, 1970)

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3. Re-examination of Crisis:

J.F. Richards, M.N. Pearson and P. Hardy also give a pivotal position to the Mughal
involvement in the Deccan and the affairs of the Marathas in their explanation of the
decline of the Empire. J.F. Richards, M.N. Pearson and P. Hardy undertook the re-
examination of the crisis and differed in their conclusions from those of Satish
Chandra, M. Athar Ali, S. Nurul Hassan and Irfan Habib.12

M.N Pearson analyzed the position of the Maratha threat, and concluded that the
Mughals could never fully destroy them. He argued that Aurangzeb was faced with
the "illusion of progress" that is to say, the rejuvenation of the alliances and the
confidence of the aristocracy in the person of the emperor had not happened to the
Deccan. He claimed that Aurangzeb awarded the most chosen lands in the new
territories as jagirs to the provincial elite's top end and those fighting against the
Marathas, and then made more expansionary thrusts. This was achieved to reinforce
his most important relationships and heighten his ability to dominate the aristocracy.
The Deccan imbroglio was a strong indication that the political structure that
functioned the institutions of rule was seriously disrupted, mostly as a result of the
Marathas' revolutionary tacticla sense of guerrilla warfare. He argued that the
aristocracy was bound to the idea of the Mughal Empire and that this idea ceased to
exist as the patronage geared towards them diminished due to the military advances in
the south and thereby induced anxiety.13

In the 1970s, J.F Richards introduced a new aspect to this claim by supporting the
view that the jagirdari problem was not an administrative but a managerial issue. He
was of the view that Aurangzeb reserved the Deccan's fertile tracts for the khalisa
lands and refused to dispense with the newly inducted nobles' rising needs. This
class's pacification was not properly done and crumbled under the heat. He also
digresses the belief that resources were necessary for the empire's smooth operation,
but never established close relations with the region's extraordinary rulers to obtain
unfettered access to these resources. As a king, he refused to give military guarantee

http://www.historydiscussion.net/essay/decline-and-disintegration-
12

of-the-mughals-in-india/2032(last visited on April 18,2020)

13
M.N. Pearson, “Shivaji and the Decline of Mughal Empire”35 The Journal of Asian Studies 221-235
(1976)

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to the region's jagirdars for revenue collection and therefore provided these nobles an
organization to pursue protection in the enemy's camps. Hence their contributions to
the Mughal campaigns appeared bleak at a later stage. Thus, the crisis owes its roots
to non-functionality and not bejagiri. However, in his study he succeeded in removing
the catastrophic effect such campaigns had on those areas.14

At this point, Satish Chandra answered the problem by making a distinction between
the jagirdari framework crisis and the bejagiri crisis. He identified the network of
relationships that constituted medieval rural society pointing to a tripolar co-relation
between the peasants, the zamindars and the jagirdar / mansabdar. The mansabdar /
jagirdar was largely responsible for raising revenue from the zamindar and keeping
the peasants under cultivation. To preserve the relationship, Jagirdars needed military
strength. Nevertheless, the mughals' socioeconomic instability resulted in the financial
pressure in the 17th century. From the end of Shah Jahan's reign the conspicuous
disparity between the jama and the hasil had acquired greater popularity. As a result,
the mansabdars were unable to sustain their troops for periods longer than 5 months
due to the revenue produced, resulting in a drastic shrinkage of the armed forces. This
time was much shorter in the Deccan, and did not last longer than three months. If this
assault had been endured by the military government, the tripolar link deteriorated. He
pointed to two obvious ways of preventing the catastrophe. The first was that the
Mughals had reconciled with the zamindars and negotiated with Marathas, the result
may have been diametrically opposed. But when peace was reached Marathas had
become dominant after Aurangzeb and the Mughal elite had collapsed. This further
deepened the jagirdari crisis that eventually led to the Mughal Empire's collapse. The
other approach proposed by him was if both agrarian and non-agrarian industries grew
rapidly in the economy. Trade has always been complimentary and there is no
conclusive proof as to whether such funds have been pumped into the market or
allocated for the nobles' ostentatious lives. However, merchants were not wealthy or
powdery and evidence shows that Mughal's administrative policy was mostly targeted
at maintaining small-scale farmers economy. Therefore, besides being share croppers
they had very few opportunities and thus degrading their positions. The only way that
they could rise was by being intermediate zamindars or mahajans. This development
never happened, as the agrarian growth remained slow. As a result, it may be inferred

14
John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire, (Cambridge University Press,1st edn., 2016)

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that this mechanism reared the disciplinary system, the two behaving and responding
to one another. Many other factors, such as the growth of the ruling class size, the
increasing ostentatious lifestyle of the nobility, which reduced the surplus available
for expanding production and resulted in slow economic development, were
contributing factors to the crises' rise.15

Karen Leonard also measured the fall of the Mughal empire in political terms by his
theory of 'Great Companies.' It utilizes secondary references, and also expands
imperial decline's economic prongs. He prophesied that the Mughals were invaluable
allies of local banking companies, but the major firms started to diverge their capital,
both finance and commerce, from the Mughals to other political forces in the
subcontinent that led to the empire's demise. This slowdown coincided with the
decreased presence of banking companies in national and local revenue collection, in
addition to their continued loan allocation to the Central Mughal government.
Between 1650 and 1750, bankers became more actively active in political-power roles
throughout India. This close alliance with regional forces, including the English East
India Company, would result in political defeats at the end of the 1750s as a result of
their systemic program ejection.16

REGION-CENTRIC APPROACH

Coming to the second specific definition of Mughal decline, the region's core point of
view relies on Muzaffar Alam's detailed studies in the comparative examination of the
Mughal subas of Punjab and Awadh and Chetan Singh's study of 17th century Punjab.
Muzaffar Alam and Chetan Singh used regional-centred approach in their works to
describe Mughal decline (M. Alam, The Crisis or Empire in Mugha). Contradicting
the empire-centred approach of the educated scholars, Muzaffar Alam and Chetan
Singh adopted the region-centred approach to understand the Mughal Empire's
collapse based on the growth of Awadh and Punjab in the Mughal Sub. Muzafar Alam
takes the opinion that, at various stages, the Mughal Empire served as a balancing
mechanism between the interests of the competing cultures and the various
indigenous socio-political structures. Their studies are important in that both the

15
Satish Chandra, Medieval India: society, the jagirdari crisis, and the village (Macmillan, Delhi, 1982)
16
Leonard, KB,“The Great Firm Theory of Mughal Decline”21 Comperative Studies in Society and
History 2 (1979)

11
essence of the Mughal Dynasty as well as the cycle of its collapse and subsequent fall
in the 17th and early 8th centuries are given new light.17

Looking at the empire from Awadh's regional literature, Alam asserted that the
Mughal empire had been functioning as a coordination body among the different
established cultures and competing strata. The empire's base rested in the negative
because influence was extracted from the fact that these territorial forces were unable
to achieve control outside narrow boundaries and thus their system was weak due to a
lack of political participation. This was essentially based on the co-ordination of the
interests and political movements led by local magnates of the different social classes.
It was followed by the latter knowing that their position and influence emanated
directly from the emperor himself did not amass riches by themselves. They had no
inherited estates to hand on to their descendants and eventually they epitomized the
Mughal image. And even within the walls of the bourgeoisie they had issues. Jagir
transfer strategy was introduced to test the power of the jagirdar in the local affairs of
that geographic area but only went on to inconvenience those who opposed it as its
execution differed from one location to the next. This strategy remained enacted in
several areas until the 17th century. The other tribal community that comprised lower-
level officials from different groups were the madad-e-maash holders who established
pockets of Mughal influence to curb the forces of the recalciterant zamindars in far-
flung regions of the empire. And such power systems were implicit in the
countryside's social and political well-being. Nevertheless, it was found in the 18th
century that an unwillingness arose to maintain this equilibrium between the granting
of the peasants, jagirdar, zamindar and madad-e-maash. There was a divide toward
autonomous colonies carved out by zamindars and a increasing propensity to
encroach upon the other class's wealth. This was not entirely incompatible with the
structure of the empire but at the time when the empire was already amidst a gradual
decline with the loss of military might, it added to the pace of events.

Muzaffar Alam's key interest was to understand what caused this imbalance in the
eighteenth century and not at a time before it. He finds that this was an era of
economic prosperity against the feelings of Satish Chandra and others who thought
the country was engulfed in a prolonged financial crisis. Alam claimed that it was
http://www.historydiscussion.net/essay/decline-and-disintegration-
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of-the-mughals-in-india/2032(last visited on April 19,2020)

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from these economic changes that the forces once obedient to the state find agency to
infringe on certain people's freedoms and privileges. In these conditions, the
company's institutional edifice was expected to fail. Alam concluded that these
circumstances culminated in the creation of a separate subadari and autonomous
provincial divisions in Punjab and Awadh. The marked distinction was that in Awadh,
there emerged a stable dynastic rule while Punjab crumbled away.

Muzafar Alam concludes that the Mughal decline in the 18th century was because of
its failure to maintain checks and balances between the key institution holders, i.e.,
the Mansabdars, Jagirdars and the local indigenous elements. The decline and
disintegration of the Mughal Empire appears to be very complex as many factors,
empire-centric and region-centric were cumulatively responsible for bringing together
the core and the periphery and for the emergence of regional identities in the
successor states of Mughal India.18

Muzaffar Alam's line of reasoning has been further advanced by Chetan Singh's
research in his book, 'Place and Politics,' which not only looks closely at the political
changes that occurred in Punjab's Mughal suba in the 18th century, but also compares
it with the much broader view of political trends in the Western Asian world. He
argued that the administrative structure undeniably linked the region to the
administrative center, but there were some antagonisms to this incorporation. He also
argued that local society and governance were stripped of such pressures and that the
administration responded by ignoring the government's structured administrative
divisions and subdivisions. It was true for both general and tactical reasons which
resulted in the inherent versatility of offices and revenue collection. Therefore, over
time, those norms and requirements emerged, imposed by rules and regulations which
formed the basis of the Mughal Empire's stability. Singh further analyzes the causes
for the breakdown of separate alignments in Punjab and cites the phenomenon of
extreme silting in the 17th century Punjab river basin, which culminated in a virtual
traffic slowdown and an adverse impact on Punjab's heavily commercialized
economy. Turkey's diplomatic events, Qandahar's fall to Iran's Shah, and the Mughal's
effort to regain it all contributed to the deteriorating situation. This coincided with the
North-West Punjab 1667 Yusufzai rebellion and the 1678 Afridi rebellion which

18
Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of the Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and Punjab (Oxford India
Paperbacks, New Delhi, 2nd edn., 2013)

13
eroded the economic prongs on which Punjab thrived. Thus, Singh argued that the
socioeconomic upheavals reflected economic pressures. Within areas with intense
commercialisation, these rebellions were more likely to occur because the impact of a
disintegrating economy became stronger here. He pointed to the uneven spread of
uprisings owing to the difference of marketing strength in these regions.

Therefore, he concluded that these rising powers had been at work secretly long
before it gathered traction in the 18th century. That is where the mooted issue of
'Empire crisis' introduces a new layer. He responds that, when considering the various
causes for the dissociation of different territories, a very different picture of the
empire appears, one in which the powers of downfall were at play even during the
empire's hey-day. Gradually they worked to erode and induced the magnitude of
subas from the Mughal centre and contributed to the rise of separate provincial
successor states.19

19
Chetan Singh, Region and Empire: Punjab in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford India Paperbacks, New
Delhi, 1991)

14
CONCLUSION:
It was originally assumed that the fall of the Mughal Empire was the result of an
administrative maladjustment due to which a crisis in the jagir regime emerged and
eventually led to the rise of regional powers. Subsequently, the inquiries pertaining to
the Mughal's economic base point to an agrarian crisis at the end of the seventeenth
century, which gave rise to Jats, Satnamis and Sikhs rebellions. Therefore, we can
infer that the collapse of the Mughal Empire was not the result of administrative
maladjustment which led to the Jagirdari crisis, which in turn led to the emergence of
regional forces as successor states of the Mughal-power in India. There is not one
common cause that relates to the decline of the Mughal Empire as a whole, but there
are several reasons that caused the delicate political edifice of the Mughal polity to be
unbalanced and led to the resurgence of national identities as expressed in the
emergence of regional powers.

Finally, the inference that could undoubtedly be derived from the scholars' sentiments
was that the empire's collapse was originally conceived as finding its origins in the
maladjustment of administrative institutions that formed the base of Mughal's peace
and strength. Gradually, modern historiographical lines pointed to the change of focus
to the geographical institutions that could not be tailored in the Mughal centre's
immediate past and applied to a more comprehensive view. Thus, it is fundamentally
obvious that it was not possible to conceptualize the implementation of one unified
philosophy that integrated any strand of growth in each territory within the empire,
since each territorial area was defined by unique circumstances. The final blow to the
empire came with Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah Abdali's series of foreign invasions
which were the results of the empire's decline, stripped from resources and military
strength. It was the rise of the British threat that swept away the promise of a crisis-
ridden empire reviving. So, drew to a close the Mughal empire which ruled the
subcontinent for two centuries.

15
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1. http://www.historydiscussion.net/essay/decline-and-disintegration-of-the-
mughals-in-india/2032

2. https://history583380908.blog/2018/03/30/theories-for-the-decline-the-
aligarh-school/

3. Leonard, KB,“The Great Firm Theory of Mughal Decline”21 Comperative Studies in

Society and History 2 (1979).

4. Chetan Singh, Region and Empire: Punjab in the Seventeenth Century.

5. Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of the Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and Punjab.

6. Satish Chandra, Medieval India: society, the jagirdari crisis, and the village.

7. John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire.

8. Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India.

9. Noman Ahmad Siddiqui, Land Revenue Administration Under the Mughals.

10. Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court.

11. M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb.

12. M.N. Pearson, “Shivaji and the Decline of Mughal Empire”

13. Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire

14. Satish Chandra, History of Medieval India

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