Mughal Army

The army of the Mughal Empire, founded by Babur following his 1526 victory at the First Battle of Panipat, was built around a combined-arms force integrating heavy and light cavalry, war elephants, and, increasingly through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, gunpowder artillery and matchlock infantry, organized under the mansabdari system in which nobles held ranked military-administrative positions obligating them to maintain and supply specified numbers of troops and horses for the emperor. Mughal artillery and firearms, decisive at Babur's founding victories and further developed under his successors, gave the empire a significant military edge over rival regional powers during its height under emperors including Akbar and Aurangzeb, who oversaw the empire's greatest territorial extent across the Indian subcontinent. The mansabdari system tied military service directly to an elaborate administrative and revenue hierarchy, allowing the Mughal state to mobilize very large armies, though the system's dependence on regional nobles' loyalty and resources also created recurring tensions and eventual fragmentation of central authority. Mughal military power declined markedly in the eighteenth century amid succession crises, regional rebellions and external invasions including Nadir Shah's 1739 sack of Delhi, opening the way for the East India Company's eventual rise to dominance across the subcontinent.