Mughal or Mogul [mO'gul, mOgul'] , Muslim empire in India, 1526–1857.The greatest flourishing of northern Indian culture, art, and imperial strength undoubtedly took place during the reign of the Mughal monarchs of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Mughals were Central Asian descendents of the great Mongol warriors Ghengis Khan and Timur (Tamerlane), whose hordes of cavalry swept across the Eurasian steppe in the 13th and 14th centuries, conquering everything between Beijing and Budapest. But by the turn of the 16th century, the great Mongol empire has splintered; the many royal descendents of Ghengis and Timur fought over the territorial scraps and did their best to hold on to their own minor sultanates.

One of these sultans, Babur, was not satisfied with his small kingdom of Ferghana (now in modern-day Kyrgystan and eastern Uzbekistan), and he tried and tried again to permanently reconquer Timur's greatest prize, Samarkand. He never succeeded. So instead, Babur turned his attention south to the sultanate of Delhi in northern India, which had been ruled successively by five dynasties of muslim warriors from Afghanistan since the late 12th century. As history would show, Babur's campaign against the Delhi sultanate catalyzed the foundation of one of the greatest dynasties in the history of south Asia: the Mughal Empire.

The dynasty was founded by Babur, a Turkish chieftain who had his base in Afghanistan. Babur's invasion of India culminated in the battle of Panipat (1526) and the occupation of Delhi and Agra. Babur was succeeded by his son, Humayun, who soon lost the empire to the Afghan Sher Khan. Akbar, the son of Humayun and the greatest of the Mughal emperors, reestablished Mughal power in India. At the time of Akbar's death (1605), the empire occupied a vast territory from Afghanistan E to Orissa and S to the Deccan Plateau. Mughal expansion continued under Akbar's son Jahangir and under his grandson Shah Jahan, who built many architectural marvels at Delhi and at Agra (including the Taj Mahal). Aurangzeb, expanded Mughal territory to its greatest extent, but at the same time the empire suffered the blows of major Hindu revolts. The most serious of these was the Maratha uprising. Weakened by the Maratha wars, dynastic struggles, and invasions by Persian and Afghan rulers, the empire came to an effective end as the British established control of India in the late 18th and early 19th cent. However, the British maintained puppet emperors until 1857. Many features of the Mughal administrative system were adopted by Great Britain in ruling India, but the most lasting achievements of the Mughals were in art and architecture