Hindu princes were restored and the empire extending into Kashmı ̄r and
into the Deccan was maintained; yet his military power began to wane and
the treasures of the court were increasingly depleted.
His son Aurangzeb(1658–1707) marks the last of the significant Mughal
rulers. Putting his own father under house arrest and usurping the throne,
Aurangzeb proved to be less flexible as a ruler. Most historians are not kind
to Aurangzeb as it seems he was more interested in Sunnı ̄ orthodoxy than
in administrative flexibility. He turned to the ‘ulama ̄‘ for legitimation and
sought to make the state more nearly “Islamic.” He was known to have
assassinated yet another Sikh guru, to have broken alliances with Hindu
leaders, and to have banned Hindu customs and music in the courts. He also
found himself trying to retain Mughal power against several forces at once:
Mara ̄tha ̄s, Sikhs, and Afghans, for example. This continuous fighting in
the Deccan managed to drain the treasury; he even moved his capital to the
Deccan – to the town now known as Aurangabad in an attempt to control
the Mara ̄tha ̄s. He abolished any taxes which were not explicitly required by
Islamic law (sharı ̄‘a) and reimposed the jizyahtax in 1679. The result of his
policies was fragmentation in the empire, disenchantment by formally
aligned sub-rulers, and the permanent weakening of the Mughal line. After
Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, the Mughals were effectively powerless even
though they retained modest hegemony in Delhi itself into the nineteenth
130 The Coming of Islam
Figure 5Jama Masjid, Delhi, the oldest and largest mosque in India. Photograph by Rob
F. Phillips.