Study Material For RRB Exam: General Knowledge (G.K.) - History: Medieval India
Study Material For RRB Exam - General Knowledge
Section : History
MEDIEVAL INDIA
After 1000 AD, of Tahmud of Ghazni (Afghanistan) encroached upon Indian territories for the first time and then made these invasions almost an annual feature-Later a herd of Muslim invaders followed, who in turn established, their kingdoms in India. Prominent among them were Muhammad Ghori.
She was followed by a very tough customer, Ghiyas-ud-din Balban (12661286 AD) who gave the Delhi Sultanate its character and finished the consolidation work. Now the Sultanate saw the rise of the Khaljis, together with Jala-ud-din Khalji (1290-1296 AD) and Ala-ud-din Khalji (1296-1316 AD), who were its first real dynasty.
The Mughal Dynasty
Period 1526 AD-1540 AD and 1555 AD-1857 AD
The first Mughal who invaded Delhi Sultanate was Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur (15261530 AD), who had the blood of the great central Asian families of Chingez Khan from his mother’s side and that of Timur from his father’s, had been hunting for a home to call his own since he was a teenager. He had been driven out of Samarkand and forced to set up a kingdom elsewhere by his cousins and uncles. Babur looked at Kabul in Afghanistan to start afresh. In 1526, he crossed over the Indus to reach Panipat, where he defeated Ibrahim Lodi in one of the most significant battles of Indian history. Babur was -a military general of formidable credentials and his troops would follow him everywhere, and indeed did for thoroughly battle-scarred his tenure. The first person he defeated was Rana Sanga, who was perhaps appalled at Babur’s obvious intentions of getting comfortable and staying on in Delhi.
In 1600 AD, Jahangir rebelled against Akbar when he was away in the Deeean engaged in battle. In the confusion of events to follow, Abul Fazl was killed, which made the great Mughal emperor lived with his son. In October 1605, Akbar fell ill and Jahangir was crowned emperor by him when he was on his deathbed. Jahangir married Nur Jahan in 1611. Nur Jahan was the real power behind Jahangir. She was a great queen, and a woman of amazing gifts. She was quite a beauty and set many trends in designs of clothes, textiles and jewellery. The attar (perfume) of roses was just one of this great lady’s innovations. She was also a very capable and shrewd administrator. No detail, however small, escaped the queen’s attention. Her ability to keep a cool head was almost legendary and she amazed even battlehardy generals with her calm and poise in the middle of crisis. She has been accused of nepotism and of giving rise to a class of nobility which composed entirely of her kith and kin, but that she was entirely in control is dear fns the fact that she rebuked even her brother when she thought so fit. However, Nur Jahan was not without failings and her biggest was ambition, not only for herself but for her child-a daughter from earlier marriage.
Jahangir was succeeded by his son Shahjahan. The reign of Shahjahan has been widely acclaimed as the golden period of the Mughal dynasty. Except for one drought in 1630 in the areas of Deccan, Gujrat and Khandesh, the kingdom was secure and free from poverty. The coffers of the state were brimming with the right stuff. So it’s no wonder that Shahjahan was the greatest and most assiduous builder of the Mughal dynasty. In 1639, he decided to shift his capital to Delhi and construct a new city there on the banks of the Yamuna, near Ferozabad. It was to be called Shahjahanabad and the famously spectacular peacock throne (the one that Nadir Shah took away) was transferred from Agra to the Red Fort, the new -seat of the Mughal rulers, on April 8,1648. His greatest and most memorable of achievements of course was the breathtaking Taj Mahal, which he built in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in child birth. The end of Shahjahan’s reign did not live upto the beginning; it saw one of the messiest battles of succession that Indian history ever witnessed. In September 1657, Shahjahan fell ill and it was rumored that the emperor was dead. This was enough to spark off intense intrigue in the court. All the four claimants to Shahjahan’s throne were the children of the same mother. in 1657, Dara Shikoh was 43, Shah Shuja 41, Aurangzeb 39 and Murad 33. All of them were governors of various provinces: Dara was the governor of Punjab, Murad of Gujrat, Aurangzeb of the Deeean and Shah Shuja of Bengal. Aurangzeb was the ablest of Shahjahan’s sons and a clear favorite for the throne. His credentials, both in battle and administration were legendary. Aurangzeb beat the armies of Dara Shikoh, Murad along with the Mughal armies twice in battle, and move towards Agra, where Shah Jahan was convalescing. Aurangzeb ruled the single largest state ever in Mughal history. Aurangzeb’s rise to the throne was ruthless. However, he was no more cruel than others of his family. He succeeded not because he was crueller but because he was more efficient and more skilled in the game of statecraft with its background of dissimulation; and if it’s any consolation, he never shed unnecessary blood. Once established he showed himself a firm and capable administrator who retained his grip of power until his death at the age of 88. He was an orthodox Sunni Muslim who thought himself a model Muslim ruler. In this zealousness to promote the cause of Islam, Aurangzeb made many fatal blunders and needless enemies. He alienated the Rajputs, whose valuable and trusted loyalty had been so hard won by his predecessors, revolted against him. Eventually he managed to make peace with them, but he could never be easy in his mind about Rajputana again, a fact that hampered his Deeean conquest severely. Then, he made bitter enemies in the Sikhs and the Marathas. Things came to such a head that Guru Teg Bahadur, the 9th Guru of the Sikhs was at first tortured and then executed by Aurangzeb for not accepting Islam; a martyrdom which is mourned to this day by the Sikh community. The 10th Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Govind Singh then raised an open banner of revolt against Aurangzeb. By the death of Aurangzeb in Aurangabad in 1707, there ended the mighty period of Mughal dynasty.