The Mughals were a Muslim dynasty, founded when a ruler from

Turkestan, Babur, defeated the Sultan of Delhi in 1526. His grandson

Akbar further secured the throne and encouraged greater unity between
Muslims, Hindus and Christians, while also promoting the arts and
education.
The British Librarys Mughal India exhibition was the first to document
the entire period, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, through more than
200 exquisite objects.
photograph from 1858 shows a feeble and frail octogenarian who happens to
be the last Mughal emperor. Bahadur Shah II(pictured below right), reclining
in his wretched prison in Delhi, awaiting trial, is about to be exiled to
Burma. Many of his family and his retinue would be summarily executed, the
civilian population murdered, and a number of the great Mughal monuments
of Old Delhi ruined. The British were on the rampage, finally quelling the 1857
Indian mutiny which had spread through the sub-continent. It was both a tragic
and a pathetic ending to one of the greatest dynasties the world has seen: 15
emperors who had held sway over much of the Indian subcontinent.
That dynasty is celebrated in this treasure trove of an exhibition, featuring illustrated manuscripts
from the three-plus centuries 1526-1858 of the Mughal emperors reign. Here are leaves from
albums of histories, portraits, narratives, poems, biographies, epics, cookbooks, domestic manuals,
as well as paintings of palaces, cities and villages, painted parades of fantastical and opulent
durbars, and a 15-foot panorama of Delhi as the city was in 1846. There are also several Korans.
Objects indicating the grandeur of the Mughals material wealth include a Mughal crown (see
gallery overleaf), a giant jade tortoise, a suit of 17th-century Mughal armour and a jewelled
flywhisk.