At a glance
Era 9- Dates
- 1618-1707 CE; ruled 1658-1707 CE
- Who
- Mughal emperor under whom the empire reached its widest extent
- Era
- The Safavids & the Mughals
ProfileAurangzeb Alamgir
Aurangzeb was the third son of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. He won the throne in 1658 in a war against his brothers and confined his father in the fort at Agra.
He was personally devout. He prayed in congregation, memorised the Quran, copied Qurans and sewed caps by hand, and avoided wine. He had scholars compile the Fatawa-i Alamgiri, a great collection of Hanafi legal rulings, and built the Badshahi Mosque at Lahore. He also reimposed the jizya and ended court customs he considered un-Islamic. His treatment of Hindus and Sikhs is still argued over by historians.
From 1682 he campaigned in the Deccan, took Bijapur and Golconda, and fought the Marathas for twenty-five years. The war drained the empire. He died in 1707 at Ahmadnagar, about eighty-eight years old, and asked for a simple grave open to the sky.
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