Mughal dynasty

The Mughal dynasty (Persian: دودمان مغل, romanized: Dudmân-e Mughal) or the House of Babur (Persian: خاندانِ آلِ بابُر, romanized: Khāndān-e-Āl-e-Bābur), was a Central Asian dynasty of Turco-Mongol origin that ruled large parts of the Indian subcontinent from the early 16th to the 19th century. The dynasty was a cadet branch of the Timurid dynasty, which had ruled in parts of Central Asia and Iran in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The Mughals originated as a branch of the Central Asian Timurid Dynasty which belonged to the Barlas tribe, which was a branch of the Borjigin Clan. Babur (1483–1530), the founder of the Mughal dynasty, was a direct descendant of the Asian conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) through his father and Mongol emperor Genghis Khan through his mother. Many of the later Mughal emperors had significant Indian and Persian ancestry through marriage alliances.

During much of the Empire's history, the emperor functioned as the absolute Head of State, Head of government and Head of the military, while during its declining era much of the power shifted to the office of the Grand Vizier and the empire became divided into many regional kingdoms and princely states. However, even in the declining era, the Mughal Emperor continued to be the highest manifestation of sovereignty on the Indian subcontinent. Not only the Muslim gentry, but the Maratha, Rajput, and Sikh leaders took part in ceremonial acknowledgements of the Emperor as the sovereign of India.

After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was arrested by the British East India Company and put on trial for treason. He was then deposed and exiled to Rangoon in Burma, where he spent the last days of his life, marking the formal abolishment of the Mughal Empire on 21 September 1857. The British Empire declared the establishment of the British Raj the following year.