Table Of Contents
The Short Answer
The Mughal Empire fell slowly, over 150 years, from Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 to the British exile of Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1858. No single battle ended it.
Seven forces wore it down: decades of war in the Deccan, a shortage of land to pay its nobles, pressure on its peasants, weak emperors, breakaway regional powers, Nadir Shah’s 1739 raid on Delhi, and the East India Company.
Historians still argue about which of these mattered most. This guide explains each cause, names the historian who argued for it, and shows where the debate stands today.
Timeline Of The Decline, 1707–1858
The empire lost real power within 50 years of Aurangzeb’s death, but the dynasty kept its title for another century.
| Year | Event | What It Changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1681–1707 | Aurangzeb campaigns in the Deccan | Treasury and army drained for 26 years |
| 1707 | Aurangzeb dies; war of succession | Start of rapid turnover on the throne |
| 1707–1719 | Six emperors in 12 years | Nobles, not emperors, hold power |
| 1724 | Nizam-ul-Mulk sets up rule in Hyderabad | First major province goes its own way |
| 1737 | Maratha army under Peshwa Baji Rao I reaches Delhi | Empire cannot defend its capital |
| 1739 | Nadir Shah defeats the Mughals at Karnal and sacks Delhi | Treasury, Peacock Throne and Kohinoor lost |
| 1757 | Battle of Plassey | East India Company controls Bengal’s ruler |
| 1761 | Third Battle of Panipat (Abdali vs Marathas) | North India left without a dominant power |
| 1764 | Battle of Buxar | Mughal emperor defeated by the Company |
| 1765 | Shah Alam II grants the Company the diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa | Company collects the richest revenues |
| 1803 | British capture Delhi | Emperor becomes a Company pensioner |
| 1857 | Indian Rebellion proclaims Bahadur Shah Zafar its leader | Last stand of Mughal authority |
| 1858 | Zafar exiled to Rangoon | Dynasty formally ends |
The 7 Causes Of The Mughal Decline
1. Aurangzeb’s Deccan wars
Aurangzeb moved south in 1681 and never returned to the north. He conquered Bijapur in 1686 and Golconda in 1687, bringing the empire to its largest size. However, he spent the rest of his life fighting the Marathas, who had built a state under Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and kept resisting after his death.
The cost was enormous. The emperor, his court and a huge army lived in camps for 26 years, while governance in the north weakened. When Aurangzeb died in 1707, the empire was at its biggest on the map and weakest at the centre.
2. The jagirdari crisis: not enough land to pay the nobles
Mughal nobles were paid with jagirs, the right to collect revenue from a piece of land. As the empire recruited more nobles, especially from the Deccan, there was not enough income-producing land to go around. Officers waited years for a posting, a problem called be-jagiri.
Historian M. Athar Ali counted the nobility in The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (1966) and showed how fast it grew. Satish Chandra developed the idea into the “jagirdari crisis”. Unpaid nobles formed factions, and loyalty to the emperor collapsed.
3. The agrarian crisis: pressure on the peasants
Irfan Habib, in The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1963), argued the root problem was in the villages. Revenue demands were very high, and jagirs rotated often, so short-term holders squeezed peasants as hard as they could.
In Habib’s account, this drove peasants to flee and fuelled armed revolts by the Jats, Satnamis, and Sikhs under Banda Singh Bahadur. In his view, the jagirdari crisis was a symptom of this deeper agrarian crisis.
4. Weak emperors and court factions
Six emperors took the throne between 1707 and 1719. Powerful nobles, most famously the Sayyid brothers, made and removed emperors. Farrukhsiyar was blinded and killed in 1719.
Later rulers were often figureheads. Muhammad Shah (1719–1748) reigned for 29 years but could not stop provinces from breaking away. Shah Alam II was blinded by the Rohilla chief Ghulam Qadir in 1788.
5. Regional powers took over
Governors turned their provinces into hereditary states while still minting coins in the emperor’s name. The Nizam took Hyderabad in 1724, and Awadh and Bengal followed suit.
At the same time, new powers rose from below: the Marathas, who collected taxes across much of India by the 1750s; the Sikhs in Punjab; and the Jats around Agra and Bharatpur.
6. Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali
In 1739, the Persian ruler Nadir Shah defeated the Mughal army at Karnal and entered Delhi. After a riot in which some of his soldiers were killed, he ordered a massacre of the city’s people.
He left with the imperial treasury, including Shah Jahan’s Peacock Throne and the Kohinoor diamond. His haul is often estimated at around 70 crore rupees; it was so large that Nadir excused Persians from paying taxes for three years. His former general Ahmad Shah Abdali raided India repeatedly between 1748 and 1767, crushing the Marathas at Panipat in 1761.
7. The East India Company
The Company began as traders. After defeating the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey in 1757 and the combined forces of the Mughal emperor, Awadh and Bengal at Buxar in 1764, it became a ruler.
In 1765, Shah Alam II granted the Company the diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. A private company now collected revenue from the empire’s richest provinces. British troops took Delhi in 1803, and from then on the Mughal emperor lived on a Company pension. After the 1857 rebellion, the British exiled the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, to Rangoon, where he died in 1862.
The Historians’ Debate: Was It Really A Decline?
There is no single accepted explanation. Four main schools of thought have shaped how the Mughal decline is taught.
| School | Key Historians | Main Argument |
|---|---|---|
| Personality and policy | Jadunath Sarkar | Aurangzeb’s religious policies and personal rule alienated Rajputs, Marathas and Sikhs |
| Aligarh school | Irfan Habib, M. Athar Ali, Satish Chandra | Structural crisis: too many nobles for too little land, and peasants squeezed until they revolted |
| Regional (“Cambridge”) view | Muzaffar Alam, C. A. Bayly | The centre weakened, but regions such as Awadh and Punjab stayed prosperous; power moved, it did not vanish |
| “Great Firm” theory | Karen Leonard (1979) | Indian banking houses shifted their money from the Mughal court to regional rulers and the East India Company |
The regional historians made the most important correction. Muzaffar Alam’s 1986 study of Awadh and Punjab argued that what looked like collapse from Delhi looked like reorganisation from the provinces. Bayly showed that towns, trade and markets in north India often kept growing.
That is why many historians now prefer to speak of an 18th-century transformation rather than a simple fall. The Mughal centre failed, but under new rulers, much of India’s economy and many of its institutions carried on.
The Wealth Myth: What The “24% Of World GDP” Figure Really Means
You will often read that the Mughal Empire held a quarter of the world’s wealth. That misreads one number.
Economic historian Angus Maddison estimated that India produced about 24.4% of world GDP in 1700. That measures output, not wealth, and it covers the whole subcontinent, not the emperor’s treasury.
India’s large share mostly reflected its large population. By Maddison’s own figures, average income per person was only about $550 a year (in 1990 dollars) around 1700, roughly half the level in Western Europe. Peasants paid an estimated 15% of GDP in tax, and the wealth sat with the emperor and a small nobility.
India’s share of world GDP later fell to about 4% by 1950. Part of that was colonial extraction; part was the Industrial Revolution, which made Western economies grow far faster. Both sides of India’s long argument about the Raj cite Maddison, and both tend to quote only the half that suits them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the main cause of the decline of the Mughal Empire?
There is no single cause. Most historians point to a combination: Aurangzeb’s long Deccan wars, the jagirdari and agrarian crises, weak successors, the rise of regional powers, Nadir Shah’s 1739 invasion and the East India Company.
When did the Mughal Empire decline?
The decline began with Aurangzeb’s death in 1707. By 1765, the East India Company controlled Bengal’s revenue, and the dynasty formally ended in 1858.
Was Aurangzeb responsible for the fall of the Mughal Empire?
Partly. His Deccan wars drained the empire, and older historians such as Jadunath Sarkar blamed his religious policies. Later historians argue the empire’s structural problems with land and revenue would have caused trouble under any ruler.
What was the jagirdari crisis?
It was a shortage of revenue-producing land to assign to Mughal nobles as pay. As the number of nobles grew, many went unpaid, which weakened their loyalty to the emperor.
Who was the last Mughal emperor?
Bahadur Shah Zafar. The British exiled him to Rangoon (now Yangon) in 1858, and he died there in 1862.
Did Nadir Shah take the Kohinoor?
Yes. He took the Kohinoor and the Peacock Throne from Delhi in 1739. The diamond later passed to Ahmad Shah Abdali’s dynasty, then to Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and finally to the British in 1849.
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