HistoryMemes.com

Making Sense of History

Deccan wars: A Visual History

Get My 10 Best History Memes:

Visual history of a war

Aurangzeb spent the last 27 years of his life trying to crush the Marathas in the Deccan, and bankrupted the Mughal Empire doing it.

Fought
1680 to 1707
Duration
27 years
Dates
1680 to 1707
Deaths
Perhaps 5 million including famine and disease (contested)
Mughal side
Aurangzeb's imperial army, up to 500,000 with camp followers
Opponents
Marathas under Sambhaji, Rajaram, Tarabai; sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda
Result
Mughal Pyrrhic gains; Maratha survival and rise

The Deccan wars (1680-1707) were the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb's campaigns against the Maratha kingdom founded by Shivaji and the Deccan sultanates. Aurangzeb moved his court south in 1681, conquered Bijapur (1686) and Golconda (1687), and captured and executed Shivaji's son Sambhaji in 1689. But Maratha guerrilla resistance under Rajaram, Tarabai and commanders like Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji Jadhav wore down the imperial army for two more decades of sieges and raids. Aurangzeb died at Ahmednagar in 1707 with the Marathas unbroken and the treasury empty; the empire's decline followed.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Deccan wars. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

1400150016001700180019002000Deccan wars (1680 to 1707)Open: First Portuguese EmpireFirst Portuguese Empire (1415 to 1663)Open: Mughal EmpireMughal Empire (1526 to 1857)Open: First French colonial empireFirst French colonial empire (1534 to 1814)Open: Akbar's conquest of North IndiaAkbar's conquest of North India (1556 to 1605)Open: British EmpireBritish Empire (1583 to 1997)Open: Second Portuguese EmpireSecond Portuguese Empire (1663 to 1822)Open: Maratha EmpireMaratha Empire (1674 to 1818)Open: War of the Austrian SuccessionWar of the Austrian Succession (1740 to 1748)Open: Maratha invasions of BengalMaratha invasions of Bengal (1741 to 1751)Open: Seven Years' WarSeven Years' War (1756 to 1763)

Mughal territory

The empire reached its greatest nominal extent as its real strength drained away.

012341680: 3.21690: 41707: 41720: 31760: 1168016901700171017201730174017501760million km2 (approximate)

Timeline of the Deccan wars

  1. 1680
    Shivaji dies; Sambhaji succeeds
  2. 1681
    Aurangzeb marches to the Deccan
  3. 1686
    Bijapur falls
  4. 1687
    Golconda falls
  5. 1689
    Sambhaji executed
  6. 1698
    Gingee falls after eight years
  7. 1700
    Rajaram dies; Tarabai leads
  8. 1707
    Aurangzeb dies

Aurangzeb goes south

Shivaji died in 1680; his son Sambhaji sheltered Aurangzeb's rebel son Akbar, and the emperor marched south in 1681 with a moving city of tents, never to return to Delhi. He besieged and took Bijapur in 1686 and Golconda in 1687, ending the Deccan sultanates and adding their lands and the diamond mines to the empire, though the conquests unleashed unemployed soldiers into Maratha bands.

Sambhaji's death and the guerrilla war

Sambhaji was captured in 1689, tortured for weeks and executed; his capital Raigad fell. But his brother Rajaram escaped to Gingee in the far south, which withstood siege for eight years, and Maratha commanders raided Mughal supply lines and even Aurangzeb's camp. Mughal forces spent years capturing hill forts that Marathas retook as soon as they moved on. After Rajaram's death in 1700 his widow Tarabai led the resistance.

Exhaustion

Aurangzeb, in his eighties, personally directed sieges of Satara, Parli, Panhala and Torna at ruinous cost; the army's pay fell into arrears, north Indian revolts flared, and Marathas raided into Gujarat and Malwa. He died at Ahmednagar in March 1707, aged 88, writing that he had 'come alone and go as a stranger'. His sons fought for the throne, released Shivaji's grandson Shahu, and within a decade the Marathas were collecting chauth in Mughal provinces.

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

Wars of the same era and region

8 surprising things about the Deccan wars

  1. Aurangzeb never saw Delhi again after 1681 and spent 26 years living in tents.
  2. The Mughal camp in the Deccan was said to be 50 km round with half a million people.
  3. The siege of Gingee lasted about eight years, one of the longest in Indian history.
  4. Sambhaji was blinded and had his tongue cut out before execution for refusing to convert to Islam, by Maratha tradition.
  5. Aurangzeb himself is said to have said the war was 'a wound that will not heal'.
  6. The Deccan campaigns cost the Mughals an estimated 100,000 lives a year at their height, mostly from disease.
  7. The war's most feared Maratha raider, Santaji Ghorpade, once seized the golden finials of Aurangzeb's own tent.
  8. Aurangzeb was buried in a simple open grave at Khuldabad, paid for by his own sewing of caps, at his request.

Sources

Back to all empires and wars