Seeds of decline

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Delhi sultans (pre-Mughal): average reign about 9 years. Short reigns mean frequent coups, disputed successions and weak control.
Mughal emperors up to Aurangzeb (1526–1707): average reign about 27 years — three times the Sultanate figure. Long reigns gave time to build systems: the mansabdari (a ranking system in which nobles got a rank, and pay or revenue rights, in return for supplying horsemen), the zabt revenue method, and a stable coinage.
All Mughal rulers up to the empire's end in the 19th century: average drops to about 16 years. The drop is the decline itself shown in numbers — the later emperors were made and unmade by their own nobles.
How to read the index: long reigns = consolidation. Falling average reign = the court, not the frontier, is now the danger.
Aurangzeb died in 1707; by 1719, when Muhammad Shah came to the throne, the empire had already begun to break up, pushed along by dynastic war and factional fights at court [3].

Aurangzeb spent the last 25 years of his reign in the Deccan — the emperor himself, plus his army and treasury, parked far from the northern heartland [2].
He annexed the two Muslim Deccan kingdoms — Bijapur in 1686 and Golconda in 1687 — pushing the empire to its largest size ever [2].
Biggest map, weakest grip. Three reasons:
The new land was far from Delhi and Agra, so orders and revenue moved slowly.
The war never ended. Even after 25 years Aurangzeb had failed to crush the Marathas, and at his death his authority was disputed across his own dominions [2].
While the emperor was in the south, north Indian provinces were left to governors who grew used to acting on their own.

The cost of putting down the many rebellions of Aurangzeb's reign emptied the imperial treasury [2][3].
Heavy taxes, including the re-imposition of the jizyah (a tax on non-Muslims), slowly made the farming population poorer [2].
Poorer peasants → less land revenue → the state squeezes harder → more revolt. A loop that feeds itself.

Too many mansabdars for too little land. Mughal rulers kept handing out mansabs faster than the empire's area or revenue grew [2].
Result: a jagir crisis — more claimants than there were revenue assignments to give them. Nobles fought each other for the good ones and squeezed the peasants on whatever they got.
The quality of Mughal government decayed in step with this economic decline [2].
Under Aurangzeb's successors the imperial administration broke down, and later emperors found it increasingly hard to keep a check on their powerful mansabdars [3].
The successors also failed as individuals: Jahandar Shah lacked dignity, Farrukh-Siyar was fickle-minded, Muhammad Shah was fond of ease and luxury [3].

The empire was not killed by one enemy in one battle. It was worn away at the edges, by many groups at once.
Jat peasants — armed cultivators of the Agra–Delhi–Mathura belt, the very core region, revolting against revenue demands.
Tribal groups — Bhils, Gonds, Santhals, Kochs — forest and hill people who resisted Mughal revenue officials entering their lands.
Rajputs — earlier allies under Akbar's marriage-and-mansab policy; later turned into opponents.
Ahoms — the kingdom of the Brahmaputra valley in the north-east.
Sikhs — organised resistance in Punjab (see regional-powers topic). Punjab lay on the road between Delhi and Kabul, so trouble there cut the empire's spine.
Marathas — the most serious of all (see marathas topic). They were the reason for the 25-year Deccan war and they survived it.
By 1707 the threats from the peripheries had started to make the problems at the core worse — edge and centre failing together [3].
Aurangzeb's religious and political intolerance is also counted among the seeds of decline [2].
After Muhammad Shah's death in 1748, the Marathas overran almost all of north India, and Mughal rule shrank to a small area around Delhi [3].
Nadir Shah's invasion of north India in 1739 was short but it sped up the break-up [3].

Note: the 1719, 1739, 1748 events lie after 1707, outside this topic's era. They are given only to show where the seeds led [3].

Average reign of Delhi sultans: about 9 years; Mughal emperors up to Aurangzeb: about 27 years; all Mughal rulers to the 19th century: about 16 years.
Aurangzeb spent the last 25 years of his reign in the Deccan [2].
Bijapur annexed 1686; Golconda annexed 1687 — the empire's greatest extent [2].
Aurangzeb died in 1707, having failed to crush the Marathas [2].
Tribal groups named as resisting the Mughals: Bhils, Gonds, Santhals, Kochs.
Jats were peasant rebels in the Agra–Delhi region; Ahoms resisted in the north-east.
Aurangzeb re-imposed the jizyah, adding to the tax burden on the peasantry [2].
The number of mansabdars grew faster than the empire's area and revenue — the root of the jagir crisis [2].
Nadir Shah invaded north India in 1739 [3].
Muhammad Shah took the throne in 1719; by then the break-up had started [3].

Overstretch argument: the empire reached its largest size and its weakest control at the same moment. Territorial gain in the Deccan (1686–87) bought no revenue security, because 25 years of war against the Marathas drained the treasury faster than Bijapur and Golconda could refill it [2]. Useful for any "was Mughal decline military or structural?" question.
Centre vs periphery debate: the older view blames weak successors after 1707. The NCERT framing plus Britannica both show the rot was earlier and structural — jagir crisis, over-commissioned mansabdars, falling peasant income — with edge resistance (Jats, Sikhs, Marathas, Rajputs, Ahoms, tribal groups) making core problems worse by 1707 itself [2][3]. Argue both, prefer the structural reading.
Reign length as evidence: the 9 → 27 → 16 year sequence lets you argue with numbers, not adjectives. Long reigns built institutions; the fall back to 16 shows those institutions stopped producing stable successions once nobles became kingmakers.
Linkage: the groups listed here are not just rebels — they become the 18th-century regional states (Marathas, Sikhs, Jats, Awadh, Bengal, Hyderabad). Mughal decline and regional state formation are one process, not two. Use this to link to the eighteenth-century political formations topic.