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Chapter 4 • Political Transformations, 1450–1750 237

in his time, strongly objected to this cultural synthesis. The worship of saints, the AP
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sacrifice of animals, and support for Hindu religious festivals all represented impure CONTINUITY AND
intrusions of Sufi Islam or Hinduism that needed to be rooted out. In Sirhindi’s view, CHANGE
it was primarily women who had introduced these deviations: “Because of their What are the continuities
utter stupidity [Muslim] women pray to stones and idols and ask for their help. . . . and changes in the way
women were treated in
Women participate in the holidays of Hindus and Jews. They celebrate Diwali India over the course of
[a major Hindu festival] and send their sisters and daughters presents similar to Mughal rule?
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those exchanged by the infidels.” It was therefore the duty of Muslim rulers to
impose the sharia (Islamic law), to enforce the jizya, and to remove non-Muslims
from high office.
This strain of Muslim thinking found a champion in the emperor Aurangzeb
(ow-rang-ZEHB) (r. 1658–1707), who reversed Akbar’s policy of accommoda-
tion and sought to impose Islamic supremacy. While Akbar had discouraged the
Hindu practice of sati, Aurangzeb forbade it outright. Music and dance were now
banned at court, and previously tolerated vices such as gambling, drinking, pros-
titution, and narcotics were actively suppressed. Dancing girls were ordered to
get married or leave the empire altogether. Some Hindu temples were destroyed,
and the jizya was reimposed. “Censors of public morals,” posted to large cities,
enforced Islamic law.
Aurangzeb’s religious policies, combined with intolerable demands for taxes to
support his many wars of expansion, antagonized Hindus and prompted various
movements of opposition to the Mughals. “Your subjects are trampled underfoot,”
wrote one anonymous protester. “Every province of your empire is impoverished. . . .
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God is the God of all mankind, not the God of Mussalmans [Muslims] alone.”
Such sentiments motivated opposition movements, such as the self-consciously
Hindu Maratha Confederacy, which battled the Mughal Empire from 1680 to
Aurangzeb’s death in 1707. These conflicts fatally fractured the Mughal Empire and
opened the way for a British takeover in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Thus the Mughal Empire was the site of a highly significant encounter between AP ® EXAM TIP
two of the world’s great religious traditions. It began with an experiment in Remember that an
multicultural empire building and ended in growing antagonism between Hindus empire that unites South
and Muslims. In the centuries that followed, both elements of the Mughal experi- Asia is the exception to
the typical organization
ence would be repeated. of South Asian politics.
Completing the quartet of Muslim empires that structured the Islamic world
during the early modern era was that of Songhay (song-GAH-ee) in West Africa,
named for its dominant ethnic group. Between the 1460s and 1590s, the Songhay
Empire encompassed a huge region running from the Atlantic coast to what is now
northeastern Nigeria, including almost the entire Niger River basin and extending
well into the Sahara Desert. It was the largest and the latest of a series of imperial
states (Ghana and Mali, for example) that had given a measure of political unity to
an emerging West African civilization since at least 1000 c.e. (see Chapter 2).
Like these earlier empires, Songhay relied on trade for much of its wealth because it
was well positioned to dominate the Sand Road commerce across the Sahara as well as
the river-based trade along the Niger. Gold and salt were major trade items, but horses
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
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