NCERT Class 7 - Our Pasts II • NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part II, Chapter 9

Mughal Art, Architecture and Decline

Mughal art fused Persian technique with Indian subject and craft. In architecture the result was the garden tomb and the white marble mosque; in painting it was the illustrated history and the naturalist study. The empire that produced them collapsed within fifty years of Aurangzeb's death.

Painting

• Akbar set up a large atelier (tasvir khana) headed by the Persian masters Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad, staffed mostly by Indian artists.
• The huge Hamzanama, painted on cloth, was its first great project; illustrated copies of the Akbarnama and Razmnama followed.
• Under Jahangir painting reached its peak, turning to portraits and natural history - Ustad Mansur painted birds and animals with scientific accuracy.
• Under Shah Jahan painting became formal and jewel-like; under Aurangzeb court patronage fell away and artists moved to regional courts, which is how the Rajput and Pahari schools were enriched.
• Mughal painting uses fine line, layered colour and European devices of shading and perspective, and is on paper in small format, made for albums rather than walls.

Architecture

• Humayun's Tomb introduced the charbagh - a walled garden divided into four quarters by water channels, with the tomb at the centre.
• Fatehpur Sikri, built by Akbar in red sandstone, includes the Buland Darwaza, the Panch Mahal, the Diwan-i-Khas with its central pillar, and the tomb of Salim Chishti.
• Shah Jahan shifted to white marble with pietra dura inlay of coloured stones, and the cusped arch and bulbous dome.
• The Taj Mahal places the tomb at the edge of the garden overlooking the river, not at the centre - a deliberate departure from the charbagh plan.
• The Red Fort and Jama Masjid at Delhi, and the Moti Masjid at Agra, complete the classic phase.

Causes of decline

• Weak successors after 1707 and repeated wars of succession, with nobles making and unmaking emperors.
• The jagirdari crisis - too many mansabdars chasing too few productive jagirs, producing oppression and revolt.
• Constant Deccan warfare drained the treasury and kept the emperor away from the north for decades.
• The rise of independent regional powers - Marathas, Sikhs, Jats, and the successor states of Bengal, Awadh and Hyderabad.
• Foreign invasions - Nadir Shah in 1739 defeated the Mughals at Karnal, sacked Delhi and carried away the Peacock Throne and the Kohinoor; Ahmad Shah Abdali invaded repeatedly.
• The Third Battle of Panipat, 1761, in which Abdali defeated the Marathas, left no Indian power able to hold the north, opening the way for the English.
• The last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was deposed after the revolt of 1857.