The Mughal Dynasty is a line of Muslim emperors who reigned in India from 1526 to 1858. Babur, the first mughal emperor, was a descendant of the Turkish conqueror Timur on his father's sided and of the Mongol (in Persian, mughal) conqueror Genghis Khan on his mother's side. He invaded India from Afghanistan and founded the Mughal Empire on the ruins of the Delhi Sultanate.
From 1526, when Babur defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, the ruler of Delhi, and established himself in neighbouring Agra, until 1638, when his great-great-grandson Shah Jahan built a new capital city in Delhi again, Agra was a repository for all the wealth and talent of one of the most extensive empires in the medieval world. The many elements that led to the creation of the Taj Mahal had their roots in the reigns of the earlier monarchs: 1) Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, each of whom contributed his particular aesthetic interests and endeavours to the establishment of what we have subsequently called the Mughal Style, a style which blended the Persian patterns brought by the Mughals with the indigenous genius for fine craftsmanship. |
