Published By: Sayan Paul

how-and-why-the-mighty-mughal-empire-began-to-crumble-after-aurangzebs-death

From Babur to Aurangzeb, the Mughal Empire’s graph rose steadily. But after Aurangzeb’s death, it began an equally steady and dramatic fall.

We describe any great journey with the phrase “the rise and fall.” History shows us that whatever climbs to great heights is bound, sooner or later, to come down. And the Mughal Empire is surely no exception. We all read about Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb, who shaped an era of grandeur. Now, the curious might recall a few more, like Azam Shah or Bahadur Shah, but those names rarely get the same attention. And there’s a reason; the empire’s story after Aurangzeb’s death was far less glorious. However, why did the might of the Mughals crumble so quickly after reaching its peak? The answer lies in a web of political missteps, economic strain, internal rivalries, and shifting powers that slowly bled the empire’s strength. In this story, we’ll journey through the turning points to see not only how the Mughals rose, but why their fall became inevitable once Aurangzeb was gone.

Aurangzeb's Death: The Beginning of the End

On a morning in early 1707, in Ahmadnagar, far from Delhi’s marble halls, an old emperor lay waiting for the end. Aurangzeb, ruler for nearly half a century, had stretched the Mughal realm farther than any before him. From the passes of Kabul to the fishing towns of the Coromandel, his authority was law. But the cost was visible with empty treasuries and provinces smouldering with revolt.

In one of his final letters, he wrote with disarming clarity, “I came alone and am going alone. I have not done well for the country and the people…” Whether the words carried regret or resignation, they captured the truth that the empire was exhausted. And within months of his death, its decline began in earnest from a tangle of crises that, together, began pulling at the seams.

Succession Without Stability

Aurangzeb’s death opened the familiar theatre of Mughal succession, such as brothers turning on brothers, courtiers picking sides, and armies clashing. Three sons claimed the Peacock Throne - Mu’azzam in Kabul, Azam Shah in the Deccan, and Kam Bakhsh farther south.

The fighting was, as expected, bloody. Mu’azzam prevailed and took the name Bahadur Shah I, yet ruled for barely five years. Even in that short span, factional politics at court deepened. Power drifted from the throne to men who mastered intrigue better than battle. Nobles such as Zulfiqar Khan and, later, the Sayyid Brothers became kingmakers, installing and discarding emperors with startling ease. By the 1720s, Delhi’s authority rested less on imperial command and more on who controlled the court’s back corridors.

(Credit: Syed Ubaidur Rahman) 

The Price of Endless War

Aurangzeb’s long Deccan campaigns had been meant to secure the south. They did, but at ruinous expense. Armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands needed grain, horses, and silver. Supply lines stretched across mountains and river valleys. On the other hand, famines, disease, and desertion thinned the ranks. Chroniclers describe villages emptied and corpses left unburied in fields.

The military machine that had sustained Mughal expansion began to grind down. Land grants to nobles (the jagirs) became scarce. While the number of officers kept growing, the land to support their salaries did not. Hence, corruption and tax resistance followed. Revenue collapsed, and loyalty (always fragile in a hired army) grew uncertain.

The Provinces Break Away

With Delhi distracted, the provinces looked to their own. The Marathas demanded tribute (the chauth and sardeshmukhi) from Mughal territories, enforcing their claims through swift cavalry raids. In 1724, Nizam-ul-Mulk turned Hyderabad into a virtually independent kingdom. Bengal and Awadh followed similar paths, their nawabs building local courts that matched Delhi in splendour, if not in scale.

Other challenges came quickly as well. Sikh forces under Banda Bahadur in Punjab, Jat uprisings around Agra, Rajput rulers reasserting autonomy. And just like that, the idea of a single, unifying imperial centre began to dissolve. Mughal culture still travelled (in architecture, painting, poetry, and others), but the political allegiance behind it was fading.

Invasions That Broke the Spell

Nothing stripped away the aura of invincibility like Nadir Shah’s invasion in 1739. His victory at Karnal opened the road to Delhi. What followed was slaughter and plunder. The Peacock Throne, the Koh-i-Noor, chests of gold and silver were all carried off to Persia. And thousands were killed in the streets.

(Credit: indianhistorypics) 

Two decades later, Ahmad Shah Durrani’s raids pushed the wound deeper. His decisive victory over the Marathas at Panipat in 1761 reshaped the balance of power in the north. The Mughals still sat in Delhi, but now as rulers in name only.

The European Advantage

As the empire’s traditional enemies closed in, a new kind of rival appeared along the coasts. The British East India Company was still officially a trading body, but it moved with a soldier’s discipline and a banker’s reach. In Bengal, the Company exploited court intrigue to defeat Siraj-ud-Daulah at Plassey in 1757. Seven years later, at Buxar, its forces broke the combined strength of the nawabs and the Mughal emperor.

(Credit: Today In History) 

The 1765 Treaty of Allahabad gave the Company the right to collect revenues in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. For the first time, a foreign corporation, not the emperor, controlled the empire’s richest provinces. Delhi’s fiscal heart had been cut out.

Power Without Patronage

As the treasury thinned, so did the emperor’s role as patron. Delhi could no longer dominate the cultural life of the subcontinent. Poetry, music, and scholarship found new homes in Lucknow, Murshidabad, and Hyderabad. These courts borrowed Mughal forms but owed nothing to Mughal authority.

Aurangzeb’s own religious policies remain debated. Some saw his temple demolitions and restrictions on non-Muslims as acts that alienated allies; others argue they were pragmatic moves within a broader statecraft. Whatever the motive, his reign left the court more rigid, and the empire less able to knit together a diverse elite.

The View from History

For early historians like Jadunath Sarkar, Aurangzeb’s “intolerance” stood at the heart of the collapse. Later scholars shifted the lens. Satish Chandra and Irfan Habib traced the decline to the agrarian crisis and the breakdown of the jagirdari system. John F. Richards emphasised overextension; Muzaffar Alam saw the rise of strong regional centres; Audrey Truschke argued for a more complex, pragmatic Aurangzeb.

If there is a consensus, it lies in recognizing that no single cause brought the Mughals down. The empire’s fall was as much about slow erosion from within as it was about pressure from outside.

By the time Bahadur Shah Zafar was sent into exile in 1858, the emperor’s seal had long ceased to command obedience. What remained was the memory of a court that had once ruled from the Hindu Kush to the Bay of Bengal, and the lesson (repeated through history) that even the grandest empires can fall when the centre fails to hold.