The Safavid and Mughal Empires

A painted debate

In the 1570s, at his new palace city of Fatehpur Sikri in northern India, the Mughal emperor Akbar built a hall called the Ibadat Khana (House of Worship). There he invited Sunni and Shi'a Muslim scholars, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and, later, Jesuit priests from Portuguese Goa, to debate their beliefs in front of him. Court painters recorded scenes like this. Imagine a ruler of a mostly Hindu land, himself a Muslim, asking: Which of you can convince me?

This lesson looks at two great Islamic empires of the period, the Safavids in Iran and the Mughals in South Asia, and compares them with the Ottomans.

The "gunpowder empires"

The historians Marshall Hodgson and William McNeill grouped the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires as "gunpowder empires", arguing that cannons and firearms helped them conquer and centralize. Other historians think the label is too simple: these empires also relied on cavalry, alliances, religion, skilled administration and trade. Treat the term as a useful comparison tool with limits.

The Safavids of Iran

• In 1501, Ismail I, the young leader of a Sufi religious order whose followers were mostly Turkmen tribesmen (the Qizilbash), was crowned shah in Tabriz.
• He declared Twelver Shi'a Islam the state religion and imposed it on a population that was mostly Sunni at the time. Over the next century Iran became mainly Shi'a, as it remains today. This is a powerful example of a ruler shaping identity.
• At Chaldiran (1514), the Ottoman army, with artillery and Janissaries, defeated Ismail's cavalry. The Ottomans and Safavids fought on and off for over a century, partly over territory and partly as Sunni versus Shi'a rivals.

Shah Abbas I (ruled 1588 to 1629) rebuilt the state:

• He created regiments of ghulams: soldiers and officials taken from Christian peoples of the Caucasus (Georgians, Armenians, Circassians), converted, and loyal to the shah alone. This reduced his dependence on the Qizilbash chiefs. Compare the Ottoman devshirme.
• He moved the capital to Isfahan and built the great square (Naqsh-e Jahan), mosques and bazaars. A Persian saying called Isfahan "half the world".
• He moved Armenian merchants to New Julfa, a suburb of Isfahan, and used their trading networks for the silk trade.
• With help from the English East India Company's ships, he took the island port of Hormuz from the Portuguese in 1622.

The Mughals of South Asia

• Babur, a Central Asian prince descended from Timur (and, on his mother's side, from Genghis Khan), invaded northern India and won the First Battle of Panipat (1526) against the Delhi sultan, using field guns and cavalry tactics. He wrote a remarkable memoir, the Baburnama.
• His son Humayun lost the empire, spent years in exile in Safavid Iran, and won it back in 1555.
• Akbar (ruled 1556 to 1605) built the empire's lasting structure:
• Mansabdari system: every official held a rank (mansab) that set his pay and the number of cavalry he had to provide. Ranks were not hereditary.
• Land revenue: under the finance minister Todar Mal, land was measured and taxes set according to average crop yields.
• Alliances with Hindu Rajput rulers: Akbar married Rajput princesses and appointed Rajputs as top commanders.
• Religious policy: he abolished the jizya on non-Muslims (1564), held the Ibadat Khana debates, and promoted sulh-i kul ("peace with all"). His court circle Din-i Ilahi is sometimes called a new religion, but it was a small discipleship of courtiers.
• Jahangir (ruled 1605 to 1627) and his wife Nur Jahan, who issued orders and coins in her own name, presided over a brilliant court. In 1615 the English ambassador Sir Thomas Roe arrived seeking trading rights.
• Shah Jahan (ruled 1628 to 1658) built the Taj Mahal at Agra as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in 1631.

Religion, identity and the Sikh tradition

South Asia was religiously diverse. In the Punjab, Guru Nanak (1469 to 1539) founded the Sikh tradition, teaching devotion to one God, equality and honest work, and rejecting caste distinctions in worship. The fifth Guru, Guru Arjan, compiled the Sikh scripture, the Adi Granth, in 1604, and was executed in 1606 under Jahangir. Sikhs remember him as a martyr; the community became more organized in response. Today many Sikh Canadians trace their faith to these Gurus.

Caste (jati and the older varna categories) organized much of Hindu social life: birth into a group shaped occupation, marriage and status. Mughal rulers generally left local social structures in place and worked through local elites.

Wealth and exchange

The Mughal Empire was among the richest states in the world. Its population was perhaps 100 million or more around 1600 (estimates vary). India's cotton textiles were exported across the Indian Ocean and, later, to Europe; Indian merchants traded with East Africa, Arabia and Southeast Asia. European companies came as small traders seeking permission, not as rulers. That would change much later (see the sibling unit The World, 1789–1900).