Aurangzeb and the Marathas

Background

Chhatrapati Shivaji Bhonsle had built an independent Maratha kingdom in the western Deccan over several decades of conflict with the Bijapur Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, formalizing his sovereignty with a coronation at Raigad Fort in 1674. His death in 1680 was followed almost immediately by Aurangzeb's decision to commit the full weight of Mughal military resources to subduing both the Marathas and the remaining independent Deccan sultanates, a campaign that would occupy the rest of his reign.

Sambhaji's War and Execution

Shivaji's son and successor, Sambhaji, opened hostilities dramatically with a raid on the major Mughal city of Burhanpur in January 1681, demonstrating the Marathas' capacity to strike deep into Mughal territory. Aurangzeb responded by personally leading Mughal forces into the Deccan in 1682, beginning a campaign he would not abandon for the rest of his life. Mughal forces besieged and captured Bijapur in 1686, ending the Adil Shahi dynasty, and Golconda in 1687, ending the Qutb Shahi dynasty — victories that removed potential Maratha allies but stretched Mughal resources and manpower across an increasingly hostile territory.

In February 1689, Sambhaji was captured near Sangameshwar after being betrayed to a Mughal detachment led by Muqarrab Khan. Brought before Aurangzeb, he was reportedly offered clemency in exchange for conversion to Islam and disclosure of Maratha fort locations; he refused. He was tortured and executed at Tulapur on 11 March 1689. Rather than ending Maratha resistance, his death is generally understood to have hardened it.

Rajaram, Tarabai, and Continued Resistance

Sambhaji's half-brother Rajaram assumed leadership and, facing Mughal pressure in Maharashtra, relocated the Maratha administration to the fort of Jinji (Gingee) in the far south, in modern Tamil Nadu. Mughal forces under commanders including Zulfiqar Khan besieged Jinji from around 1690, but Rajaram escaped the fort before it finally fell in 1698 and continued directing resistance from Maharashtra until his death in 1700. Leadership then passed to his widow, Tarabai, who, acting as regent for her young son, organized an effective and sustained guerrilla campaign through the 1700s, harassing Mughal supply lines and recovering territory even as Aurangzeb's armies won individual sieges.

Guerrilla Commanders and the Fort Economy

Even during the years when the Maratha state lacked a unified central command, field commanders such as Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji Jadhav led independent cavalry campaigns that harried Mughal columns, raided territory as far as the Mughal camp itself, and denied Aurangzeb's forces secure control of the countryside even where individual forts had fallen. Mughal commanders, including Zulfiqar Khan, increasingly resorted to negotiated settlements in which captured Maratha forts were returned in exchange for payment, a practice that provided the Marathas with a recurring source of revenue and, according to several historians, effectively helped finance continued resistance even as the Mughals recorded formal territorial gains.

The Mughal Camp in the Deccan

From the 1680s until his death, Aurangzeb governed the empire from an enormous mobile military camp rather than returning to the traditional capitals of Delhi or Agra, an arrangement contemporaries described as effectively a moving city. The prolonged, inconclusive character of the Deccan wars steadily drained Mughal treasury reserves and exhausted the administrative and military structures built up by his predecessors, even as individual campaigns — the sieges of Bijapur, Golconda, and Jinji among them — ended in Mughal victories.

Aftermath

Aurangzeb died at Ahmednagar on 3 March 1707 with the Deccan war still unresolved. His death triggered a fresh Mughal succession struggle, won by his son Bahadur Shah I, who released Sambhaji's son Shahu, held in Mughal custody since childhood after his father's execution. Shahu's release set up a contest for Maratha leadership between his line and that of Tarabai, resolved militarily in Shahu's favor at the Battle of Khed in 1707. In 1713, Shahu appointed Balaji Vishwanath as his Peshwa (chief minister), beginning a period in which the Peshwa office became the effective center of Maratha power, presiding over the confederacy's expansion across much of the Indian subcontinent through the 18th century.