Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / The Mughal Navy That Never Was: Aurangzeb's Indian Ocean Ambitions
Transcript
- Lucas: You know, when we talk about Aurangzeb, we almost always picture a land empire — marching armies through the Deccan, besieging forts, taxing farmers. But there is a side of his reign that's almost completely overlooked: the Mughal navy. Luna: The Mughals had a navy? Lucas: They did, but it was never a proper blue-water fleet. It was more like a coastal defense force, cobbled together from local shipowners and a few African-origin admirals known as the Sidis of Janjira. Aurangzeb inherited this ramshackle maritime arm, and for a while he tried to turn it into something more ambitious. Lucas: His interest in the sea came from a practical problem: the Mughal economy depended heavily on trade through ports like Surat, which was the gateway for pilgrims heading to Mecca and for silk and spice exports. But Surat was vulnerable to attack from European navies and from pirates. Luna: So he wanted to protect his ports. Lucas: Exactly. And also to project power. In the 1660s, Aurangzeb ordered the construction of a proper imperial fleet. He appointed a man named Khawaja Anwar as his admiral — a native Mughal official, not a Sidi. And he gave him the task of building warships in the shipyards of Surat and along the coast of Gujarat. Lucas: But here's the tension: the Sidis of Janjira had been the de facto naval power on the west coast for decades. They were originally from East Africa, known as Habshis, and they had carved out a small but heavily fortified maritime state centered on the island fortress of Janjira, just south of Bombay. They were nominally loyal to the Mughals, but they operated with a lot of independence. Luna: So you had two rival fleets: the official Mughal one and the Sidis'. Lucas: Right. And Aurangzeb tried to play them off against each other. For a while, he relied on the Sidis to counter the Portuguese and the Marathas at sea. The Sidi admirals — men like Sidi Yaqut and later Sidi Qasim — commanded a fleet of armed dhows and were expert at coastal raiding. They even launched attacks on the Portuguese-held island of Diu in 1668. Lucas: But the Mughal official navy under Khawaja Anwar resented the Sidis' autonomy. There were constant disputes over authority. Aurangzeb himself seemed unsure which horse to back. He wanted a navy he could control, but the Sidis were simply more effective at sea. Luna: Did he ever try to unify them? Lucas: He did. In 1672, Aurangzeb ordered a joint expedition against the Portuguese fort at Diu. The idea was to combine the Sidi fleet with the Mughal ships under Khawaja Anwar. But the expedition was a disaster. The two commanders quarreled over strategy, the weather turned bad, and the Portuguese held out. Aurangzeb blamed Khawaja Anwar and dismissed him. Lucas: That was a turning point. After that, Aurangzeb essentially gave up on building a central Mughal navy. He fell back on the Sidis, but he never fully trusted them. And the Marathas, under Shivaji and later his son Sambhaji, were building their own coastal fleet — raiding Mughal shipping and even attacking Surat itself in 1664 and 1670. Luna: Wait, the Marathas had a navy too? Lucas: They did. Shivaji understood the importance of sea power for controlling the Konkan coast. He built a fleet of small, fast vessels and fortified several island outposts. The Mughals, by contrast, never really committed to naval warfare. Aurangzeb's land-centric mindset meant he saw the sea as a side show — important for trade, but not worth the massive investment needed to build a world-class fleet. Lucas: There was also another threat in the east: the Maghs of Arakan, in present-day Myanmar. These were pirates who raided the Sundarbans delta and the coast of Bengal, carrying off thousands of Bengalis into slavery. Aurangzeb sent expeditions against them in the 1660s, but the mangrove maze made it nearly impossible to root them out. Luna: So his naval policy was really reactive — trying to put out fires, not building a system. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a revealing failure. The Mughals were one of the great land empires of the early modern world, but they never became a maritime power. By contrast, their contemporaries — the Ottomans, the Safavids, the Europeans — all invested heavily in navies. Aurangzeb's half-hearted efforts show the limits of his imperial vision. He could conquer the Deccan, but he couldn't command the Indian Ocean. Lucas: By the end of his reign, the Mughal navy had shrunk to little more than a coast guard. The Sidis remained a force in the region until the British East India Company eclipsed them in the 18th century. And the Maratha navy, under the Angre family, actually rivaled the British for a time. So Aurangzeb's maritime legacy is one of missed opportunities. Luna: It makes you wonder what might have happened if he'd focused more on the sea. Lucas: Right. Could the Mughal Empire have checked European expansion in India if they'd built a powerful navy? Maybe. But Aurangzeb's priorities were always land — Deccan, Afghanistan, the northwest frontier. The ocean was just… there. He never truly mastered it.