On November 29 1759 the Mughal emperor Alamgir II, the descendant of the great Babur and Akbar, was assassinated on the orders of his vizier, Imad ul-Mulk. Coming to power at an incredibly young age Imad ul-Mulk had played the intricate game of court politics as the power of the Mughals was collapsing. Today we will look at the internal politics of the Mughals, the decline of the empire, and how Imad ul-Mulk’s plans led to the rise of two empires.
The Decline of Mughal Power
Just a century earlier the Mughal Empire had stretched across the Indian subcontinent, dominated trade, and was a hub of science and art. A century later the Mughal emperor was a prisoner in his own court and the Mughal star had been eclipsed by other polities. Until the 1970s a common explanation placed the Mughal decline with the long reign of Aurangzeb (r.1658-1707) for his alienation of the Hindu masses by strict adherence to Islam and attempts at centralising an ungainly empire. Historians since then have added nuance to this view while acknowledging Aurangzeb’s piety certainly provided a catalyst for Hindu and Sikh revolt, policies predating Aurangzeb’s reign set the stage for Mughal state power diminishing. I personally align with the economic factors behind this, with Karen Leonard describing this as a favourite of Marxist historians of India. Specifically, the issues concerning the zamindars, semi-autonomous landlords, undermined the administrative power of Delhi. Zamindars and regional rulers called nawabs would pay tribute to Delhi, but when the political capital of the Mughal court dipped local rulers could utilise their economic base to exert their own authority. We have seen this on The Making of Today already – the nawab of Bengal was effectively independent and was intervening in European squabbles.
Aurangzeb was not simply swept along in the tide of history, helpless to stop the structures he had inherited. His military expansion and attempts to turn the Mughals into a specifically Islamic empire had alienated many local governments and placed greater stress on an already exploited peasantry. The rise of the Marathas to the south offered an alternate suzerain, especially as Delhi’s power was fractured by a series of succession wars following Aurangzeb’s death. However, the truly shattering event that devastated Mughal authority was the sack of Delhi undertaken by Nader Shah, ruler of Persia, in 1739. The Peacock Throne, the symbol of Mughal power, was taken from Delhi utterly humiliating the empire. The Marathas came close to effectively replacing the Mughals as the dominate power in South Asia, several times controlling who held power in Delhi. We have looked at one of these times when the Marathas kicked a token force of Afghans of the Durrani Empire out of Delhi in 1757. Meanwhile, breakaway states rose up and some of the richest regions simply stopped sending tribute, just neglecting to declare themselves in rebellion, such as Bengal and Hyderabad.
Viziers and Imad ul-Mulk
As mentioned in the introduction the Mughal emperor Alamgir II was assassinated on the orders of his vizier, Imad ul-Mulk. The vizier of the Mughal empire held the same role as viziers, chief ministers, and prime ministers throughout the early modern world. While the emperor, king, shah, sultan or nawab held actual power and guided policy, the vizier, chief or prime minister served as the main advisor and everyday policy. Of course this varied state-to-state – in contemporary Britain the prime minister was slowly eclipsing the power of the king whereas in France the king still firmly held the reigns. In absolute monarchies the power of the state was often centred around the power of the monarch, a strong monarch was seen as being able to exercise their power more effectively. However, whenever the monarch was unable to exercise power or were poor administrators it was expected that the court should fill the vacuum. In a system designed to concentrate power in one person this would often lead to infighting as figures clashed to bring themselves, or their court faction, to power.
During the 1750s the Mughal court was dominated by the vizier Imad ul-Mulk. Grandson of the founder of the Asif Jahi dynasty in Hyderabad Ghazi ud-Din Khan Feroze Jung III was brought to the Mughal court by the influential nobleman Safdar Jung, nawab of Awadh. Groomed to rule by his father he was taken to court at 16 where he was given the important position of Pay Master General, however the young Feroze Jung was a Machiavelli reborn. Historians and chroniclers during the late-eighteenth century were very critical of the eventual Imad ul-Mulk and this interpretation has continued to this day. William Dalrymple described him as having a ‘precocious intellectual achievement; but this was undermined by unbounded ambition and profound amorality that led to his turning on all who helped him’. Imad ul-Mulk was certainly ambitious and could be brutal to achieve this ambition. Thrusting himself into court politics he soon went to war against his former mentor Safdar Jung in bloody street fighting in Delhi. Mughal court chronicler Ghulam Hussain Khan later reported it in this way:
Old Delhi, which used to be even wealthier and more populous than even the new city, Shahjahanabad, was plundered and sacked so thoroughly that an infinity of people lost their consorts and children, and were totally ruined, besides numbers that were massacred…[For Safdar Jung] his shock and grief at his fall sent him to an early grave
Ghulam Hussain Khan quoted in Dalrymple, The Anarchy, 91
Showing how much Mughal power had retracted over just fifty years this battle was confined to Delhi itself instead of being an empire wide civil war. Finally securing his power as vizier, and now with the name Imad ul-Mulk, the 17 year old had emperor Ahmad Shah Gurgani and the emperor’s mother, the Qudsia Begum, deposed and tortured. To replace the emperor Imad ul-Mulk chose the man known to history as Alamgir II. The son of a previous emperor his branch of the Mughal nobility had lost the succession wars in the 1710s leading Alamgir II and his family to be prisoners in the lavish Red Fort until Imad ul-Mulk made him emperor aged 55. For Alamgir this was simply trading one gilded cage for another, Imad ul-Mulk used him as a puppet.
Imad ul-Mulk and Rivalries
While Imad ul-Mulk had successfully deposed one emperor and held another as his puppet, but his position was far from secure. He was just 17 when he secured Alamgir II on the throne and secured that position through force, so he lacked firm allies. Making matters worse for the young vizier Alamgir II’s son, Shah Alam, was reported as being good-looking, charismatic, and intellectual (he was a poet in four languages) – the perfect person for a conspiracy to revolve around. Imad ul-Mulk made no attempt, according to chroniclers, to hide that he envied the prince, and Shah Alam made it no secret that he did not trust the younger vizier. The prince ensured he was often out of Delhi, and when he was in the city he made sure to avoid the Red Fort.
Instead of finding allies within the court Imad ul-Mulk sought allies from outside, so outside that he was accused of betraying the Mughals themselves. He allied himself with the Marathas. By the 1750s the Marathas had extended their influence into northern India so Imad ul-Mulk found ready allies in the new empire. While the Mughals were not as powerful as they once had been they certainly held ceremonial power that was worth considerable respect among Indian polities. With the Mughal vizier reaching out to the Marathas it positioned the latter to style themselves as the successor to the former. This was even more prevalent after the Afghan invasion of 1757 (linked to above). The brash vizier had tried to re-extend Mughal power over the Punjab which brought the Afghan empire of Ahmad Shah Durrani down onto Delhi. Not only did the Afghans take Delhi but they also began minting coins in the city depicting Durrani who proceeded to marry into the Mughal royal family. Imad ul-Mulk relied on the Marathas to oust the Afghans from Delhi which effectively made them the de facto rulers of Delhi, and thereby the Mughal empire. As long as Maratha power held, so would Imad ul-Mulk’s.
Making a Murder
If Imad ul-Mulk had managed to use Marathan power in 1757 to solidify his rule why, just two years later, did he have Alamgir II murdered? With his power resting with external forces those same external forces threatened to oust him. The Punjab was rich in resources and taxes, so both the Afghans and Marathas hoped to bring the region into their respective empires. Following Ahmad Shah Durrani’s victory over rebels back in Afghanistan – the strong regional independence of the region meant that central state-building there was always difficult to achieve – the riches of the Punjab were in his sights again. It was clear that another clash between empires was on the horizon which the Mughals would be swept up in – partially as they were geographically located between the two, and Imad ul-Mulk’s earlier political manoeuvring had brought Delhi firmly into the Maratha camp. For the young vizier his puppet emperor began to look threatening. The emperor was a pious Muslim who would much rather ally with a fellow Islamic polity than the Hindu Marathas, and Ahmad Shah Durrani and his son had married into the Mughal royal family which now made Alamgir their relative. If the Afghans were to invade again Imad ul-Mulk feared Alamgir could shift court opinion to the Afghans which would see his own power vanish.
The other person who saw the writing on the wall was Shah Alam. Noticing that Imad ul-Mulk was trying to keep him in Delhi the prince realised that the vizier at least saw him as a threat. He fled Delhi seeking refuge with the nawab of Oudh in Ayodhya. With the crown prince out of the city the vizier knew he had to strike and with other conspirators who benefited from Marathan protection to kill the emperor. Utilising the emperor’s piousness they lured Alamgir into a trap by saying that an Afghan religious leader wished to meet with the emperor on November 29. Instead of discussing religion Alamgir was murdered. Chronicler Khair ud-Din Illahabadi wrote that ‘some ghoulish Mughal soldiers, who had been awaiting the King’s arrival, appeared out of the dark and stabbed the unarmed man repeatedly with their daggers. Then they dragged him out by the feet and threw his corpse down to the sandy river bank below, then stripped it of its coat and under-garments and left it lying naked for six watches before having it taken to be interred in the Mausoleum of Humayun.’
History Rhyming – Ottomans and Janissaries
Another Islamic empire also faced issues with administrators turning against the ruling monarch, and that is the Ottomans. The Ottoman administration and military was organised by a faction called the janissaries. Recruited by a brutal ‘boy tax’ called the devshirme from the Christian Balkan parts of the empire, these young boys were converted to Islam, circumcised, and given an education in administration and military affairs becoming the janissaries. Often the grand vizier of the empire, second only in power to the Ottoman sultan, was from the janissaries and they were an important counterweight to the Ottoman nobility. This gave the janissaries incredible influence in the Ottoman Empire, and while they never made sultans puppets as much as Imad ul-Mulk did to Alamgir they could sustain, or oust, the rule of sultans. Famously, in 1622 the sultan Osman II tried to shut down the janissary coffee shops as he wanted to break their power and it was in these coffee shops that janissaries came together. The janissaries soon realised what Osman was up to and strangled the sultan. A later sultan, Selim III, in 1806 would try and replace the janissaries with a westernised style system resulting in an uprising, and then the eventual assassination of the sultan.
Aftermath
Imad ul-Mulk was unopposed with his assassination of the Mughal emperor. Placing another obscure member of the royal family onto the throne his power, but his power would not last. In fact, Imad ul-Mulk’s actions began a snowball effect that would help another empire from outside of Asia itself to exert control over India. Shah Alam declared himself emperor but to officially take the throne he needed Delhi. In order to take Delhi he needed armies and resources to sustain an empire, but exiled in Awadh that was difficult. As a result, with loyal forces Shah Alam waged a series of wars to try and bring the wealthy breakaway states of Bengal and Bihar back under his control, from there he would swing back and seize Delhi. This would bring him into conflict with the newly rising British Empire and it is not a real spoiler to say that the British came out the victors in that. Meanwhile, Imad ul-Mulk’s victory was very short-lived. The Afghans would return shattering the Marathan army at Panipat in 1761, taking Delhi and Imad ul-Mulk lost his position. To further add insult to injury the Afghans declared Shah Alam the actual Mughal emperor, but it took until 1771 for him to return to Delhi. By that time the Mughals were sidelined as the Marathas and British fought over who would be supreme in India.
Other events in October to December 1759
Of course other things happened in the last quarter of 1759. Here are a few of those events:
- From October 30 a series of devastating earthquakes and aftershocks hit the eastern Mediterranean. In what is now Palestine and Lebanon hundreds to thousands were killed by powerful shakes with cities being levelled.
- On November 20, continuing Britain’s year of victories against the French the British navy wiped out a French fleet off the coast of Brittany. After this naval battle the French would be unable to muster another major fleet during the Seven Years’ War.
- Just a day later Marshall von Daun of the Austrian Empire managed to make an entire Prussian force to surrender at Maxan.
- On December 31 the Guinness Brewery would be leased in Dublin and is still one of Ireland’s best known exports.
Bibliography:
- William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, (London: Bloomsbury, 2019)
- Jadunath Sarkar, ‘The Condition of the People in Aurangzib’s Reign’, in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, (eds.), Themes in Indian History: The Mughal State, 1526-1750, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 301-322
- Karen Leonard, ‘The “Great Firm” Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire’, in Ibid, 398-420
- M. Athar Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006)
- Frank Perlin, ‘The Problem of the Eighteenth Century’, in P.J. Marshall, Themes in Indian History: The Eighteenth Century in Indian History, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 53-61
- Bipan Chandra, History of Modern India, (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2009)
- ‘Alamgir II’, Britannica.com, [Accessed 27/02/2024]
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