Abdul Muzaffar Muhi –ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb, (14 october 1618 -3 March 1707) popularly known as Aurangzeb Alamgir was the 6th Mughal Emperor and ruled over the most of the Indian Subcontinent. He reign lasted for 49 years from the 1658 until his death in 1707.
Aurangzeb was a notable expansionist and during his reign, the Mughal Empire reached its greatest extent. During his lifetime, victories in the south expanded the Mughal Empire to more than 3.2 million square kilometres and he ruled over a population estimated as being in the range of 100–150 million subjects.
Aurangzeb's policies partly abandoned the legacy of pluralism, which remains a very controversial aspect of his reign. Rebellions and wars led to the exhaustion of the imperial Mughal treasury and army. He was a strong and effective ruler, but following his death the expansionary period of the Mughal Empire came to an end, and centralized control of the empire declined rapidly.
Aurangzeb was known to be of a more austere nature than his predecessors. Being religious he encouraged Islamic calligraphy. His reign also saw the building of the Lahore badshahi Mosque, and Bibi ka Maqbara in Aurangabad.
Death and Legacy
By 1689, almost all of Southern India was a part of the Mughal Empire and after the conquest of Golconda; Aurangzeb may have been the richest and most powerful man alive. Mughals victories in the south expanded the Mughal Empire to 3.2 million square kilometres, with a population estimated as being between 100 million and 150 million. But this supremacy was short-lived.
Aurangzeb's vast imperial campaigns against rebellion-affected areas of the Mughal Empire caused his opponents to exaggerate the "importance" of their rebellions. The results of his campaigns were made worse by the incompetence of his regional Nawabs.
Muslim views regarding Aurangzeb vary. Most Muslim historians believe that Aurangzeb was the last powerful ruler of an empire inevitably on the verge of decline. The major rebellions organized by the Sikhs and the Marathas had deep roots in the remote regions of the Mughal Empire.
Unlike his predecessors, Aurangzeb considered the royal treasury to be held in trust for the citizens of his empire. He made caps and copied the Quran to earn money for his use. He did not use the royal treasury for personal expenses or extravagant building projects excepting perhaps the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, which for 313 years was the world's largest mosque. Aurangzeb constructed a small marble mosque known as the Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) in the Red Fort complex in Delhi. However, his constant warfare, especially with the Marathas, drove his empire to the brink of bankruptcy just as much as the wasteful personal spending and opulence of his predecessors. Aurangzeb knew he would not return to the throne after his final campaign against the Marathas in 1706, in which he was joined by newly emerging commanders in the Mughal army such as Syed Hassan Ali Khan Barha,Saadat Ali Khan and Asaf Jah I, and Daud Khan.
Even when ill and dying, Aurangzeb made sure that the populace knew he was still alive, for if they had thought otherwise then the turmoil of another war of succession was likely. He died in Ahmednagar on 20 February 1707 at the age of 88, having outlived many of his children. His modest open-air grave in Khuldabad expresses his deep devotion to his Islamic beliefs.
Resources:
https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Mughals/Aurang.html
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