Babur (AD 1526-30) not only founded the Mughal rule in India, he also made a modest beginning of the architectural style which was later developed, on a massive scale, by his grandson Akbar (1556-1605), and Akbar's grandson Shah Jehan (1628-58). This dynasty is popularly called Mughal, though Babur descended as a Miranshahi-Timurid and, racially, he was a Chaghtai-Turk. Their architectural style also bears the dynastic nomenclature: Mughal.

     With its own constructional and ornamental techniques, norms and concepts, grown from a sound historico-cultural and geophysical background, and a transparent evolutionary process, Mughal Architecture was a fully developed style and a perfect discipline, as none was prior to it in medieval India. It had a time-span of 132 years, practically from 1526 to 1658, and Agra-Fatehpur Sikri, Lahore-Kashmir-Kabul, Delhi, Allahabad, Ajmer, Ahmedabad, Mandu and Burhanpur are its major centres. Nearly 400 first class monuments of this style have survived, including forts, palaces, tombs, mosques, gates, minarets, tanks, step-wells, sarais, bridges, kos-minars and, of course, the Taj Mahal which marks that zenith of an art from where it could only decline. A scientific historical appraisal of this art, in the context of the country's vast cultural heritage, over and above the romantic tales largely coined by film story-writers; fanciful anecdotes circulated
by over-zealous guides and guide-books; and popular misnomers which are at present associated with it and which have much blurred its real significance and historical importance, is much needed.

                              
     It is noteworthy that Mughal Architecture was the dominant and the most important architectural style of India, of the medieval period (c. AD 1000-1803). Like the Gupta art, the Pratihara art, the Chandela art, the Chalukya art, the Pallava art and the Chola art, it was also deeply rooted in the soil like a tree and, after the decline of the dynasty and dwindling of the State patronage, it developed, on the strength of its own inherent vigour and vitality, into a National style of architecture in which buildings of all denominations: city-walls, palaces, houses, public structures, chhatris, gateways, tombs, mosques, and even temples were raised, from Kashmir to Kanya-Kumari and Assam to Okha and, truly, it is this Legacy of art, rather than the art of the Mauryas or the Guptas, that has come down to us, as a living phenomenon in modern times.

     It is a vast subject and only a few of its distinctive characteristics, with landmark examples, can be elucidated here.