Religious situation in northern India under the early Mughals

the history of medieval India has always attracted the attention of researchers. This is especially true in the late Middle Ages and early Modern times, when the largest Turkic-Muslim empires, represented by the Mamluk and Mughal sultanates, existed on this subcontinent. The article is devoted to the analysis of the religious policy pursued by the Turkic-Muslim elite of these states, reflected, among other things, in the tax system. Being Muslims, individual rulers of the Mughal dynasty made such changes in public life that, from the point of view of Muslim Fiqh, were clear deviations from Islam. The government's tolerance of other religions stems from several factors. The most important of them is the commitment of the inhabitants of this subcontinent to their ethnocultural traditional religion (Hinduism) in all its diversity. An equally important reason may be the enormous difference in the number of adherents of Islam and other faiths. Even the prolonged domination of Islam in the most important military, political and economic centers of the peninsula during the Mamluk and Mughal periods did not lead to a drastic change in the ratio. Instead, it led to the emergence of numerous syncretic beliefs and sects that incorporated elements of Muslim and local traditional dogmas and rituals. The early Mughal era laid the foundation for interreligious coexistence, which can be traced in the history of modern India.

late Middle Ages, sultanate, Babur, conquest, Agra, Islam, Hinduism, kharaj, jizya