Uttar Pradesh is the fourth largest state in India. Located in northern India, it is bordered on the east by Bihar and on the north by Nepal.

The boundaries of the modern state of Uttar Pradesh date only from the late 19th century when the British created the United Provinces from the former princedom of Oudh, or Awadh, and the British province of Agra. Renamed Uttar Pradesh after the Independence in 1947, partially to retain the familiar UP abbreviation, Uttar means north, and Pradesh means state or region. The earliest recorded name of Uttar Pradesh is Aryavarta, or the abode of the Aryans. Other ancient names for the region were the Brahma Fishi Deshi, the land of sages and saints, and the Madhya Desh, the midlands.

Uttar Pradesh has three distinct geographical regions. In the north lies the rugged Himalayan region. The middle Gangetic plain is a fertile land of rich soil, well watered by many rivers and lakes. To the south lie the Vindhya Hills, a varied land of rocky hills and valleys with limited available water. The main rivers are the Ganga and the Yamuna, the largest tributary of the Ganga. The climate is tropical, with summer temperatures from March to June reaching a maximum of 45C (113F) and a minimum of 5C (40F) in the winter months, November to February. The monsoon season runs from June to October, producing an annual rainfall of 40-80 inches in a year in the east to 24-40 inches in the west.

Uttar Pradesh has always been an agricultural center and today is the largest producer of food grains and livestock in India. The main modern crops are potatoes, sugarcane, wheat, groundnuts, molasses, sugar and tobacco. Natural resources include copper, coal, limestone, bauxite, silica and phosphorite.

Uttar Pradesh has long been renowned for its arts and crafts, particular regions having their own specialties. Bhadohi and Mirzapur are known for carpet weaving, Moradabad for metal enameling, Varanasi for brocades and brassware, Nagina for ebony work, and Lucknow for chikan, a type of embroidery.


Early History
Human skeletons have been excavated in southern Uttar Pradesh which date back to 10,000 BCE, along with utensils, arms and copper articles. The region was inhabited by agricultural peoples who were called Dasas by the Aryans who moved into this area about 2000 BCE.

The beginnings of Hinduism can be found in Uttar Pradesh. Lord Rama of the Ramayana ruled the ancient kingdom of Kosala which is believed to have been in this area. Both of the important Hindu epic poems - the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were written in Uttar Pradesh during the Aryan period. The Ramayana is set in the west of Uttar Pradesh and the Mahabharata in the east. Lord Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu was born in Mathura.

Uttar Pradesh prospered under the peaceful Mauryan rule, which brought Buddhism and Jainism into the region. After the death of Ashoka, his kingdom was split between his sons who were followed by a succession of petty kings, the most important of which were the Kushanas who established one of their capitals at Mathura and held power over this region until 320 CE. During the rule of the Guptas, political unity returned and the people lived in peace and prosperity until the invasions of the Huns. After the decline of the Guptas, the Maukharis gained power, establishing their capital at Kannauj. Harshavardhana controlled Uttar Pradesh during his reign in the early sixth century. His reign again brought prosperity to the region though political chaos ensued after his death. Between 900 and 1100, there were thirty dynasties which rose and fell in northern India alone.


The Delhi Sultanates
Muslims from the north began their incursions into the Hindu Kush and northern India during the late tenth century, reaching Uttar Pradesh by 1016. Mahmud of Ghazni, followed by Mohammad Ghori, progressed throughout Northern India and the Deccan, sacking towns and killing the inhabitants despite local resistance, particularly by the Rajputs of Rajasthan. Many ancient temples and other elements of the Hindu culture were destroyed.

With the ascension of Qutub-ud-din Aybak to the throne of Delhi in 1206 and the establishment of the Slave Dynasty, Uttar Pradesh came under Muslim dominance. As the Muslim rulers conquered the existing Hindu kingdoms, they stripped them of anything of value and desecrated the Hindu temples and centers of learning. What was left was ceded back to the former rulers, who now were supposed to pay tribute to the sultanate, though this tribute was not always collected. The local populace continued to fight back, sometimes with great success, necessitating successive Muslim sultans to reconquer parts of Uttar Pradesh, as well as having to defend against rival Muslim groups from Bihar and Bengal. It was during this period too, that the Mongols began their raids into India.

The Muslims built elaborate mosques, often using parts of previous Hindu temples in their construction. They are thought to have introduced the spinning wheel into India. While India had long exported fine cotton textiles, this innovation gave rise to a broader cottage based cotton industry. The Muslims also brought paper to India which replaced the customary palm leaves and facilitated the keeping of government records and stimulated scholarship and the arts.

The Slave Dynasty was succeeded by the Khalji Dynasty in 1290. The third Delhi Sultanate, from 1320 to 1413, was under control of the Tughluq Dynasty. In 1398, the Mongols led by Timur, also known as Tamerlane, overran Delhi, sacking all but the Muslim quarters of the city. Timur withdrew and Mohammed Tughlaq returned to his devastated capital. Even before the coming of the Mongols, the Tughluq empire was disintegrating. In 1394 Malik Sarvar Khwajajahan, a rebel governor of the Tughlaq ruler, had founded the Sharqi dynasty and established an independent state in the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh with its capital at Jaunpur. For over eighty years the Sharqis warred with the Sultans of Delhi, a conflict which only ended when Jaunpur was conquered by Sikander Lodi in 1480.

After Mohammed Tughluq's death in 1412, the Saiyyids (1414-1451) and then the Lodis (1451-1526) ruled over the remnants of the Delhi empire, though Delhi's influence scarcely extended beyond the city's outlying villages. Sikander Lodi established his second capital at Agra in 1492. The rest of the territory was claimed by several Hindu and Muslim chieftains.


The Mughals
Babar was a Turk who could claim both Timur and Genghis Khan as his ancestors. He began his forays into India in the early 1500s, and occupied the cities of Delhi and Agra in 1525. Babar's son Humayun ascended the throne upon his father's death in 1530. Humayun was a weak king who spent much of his time enjoying life's pleasures. He was disposessed of his kingdom and sent into exile by Sher Shah, an Afghan, who was the only interruption to the Mughal rule in northern India. Sher Shah ruled the kingdom well during his five years in control, reorganizing the government and building roads, notably the Grand Trunk Road.

Humayun managed to regain control from Sher Shah's son in 1545 and by the end of the rule of Akbar, Humayun's son, almost all of northern India was once again under Mughal rule. From his capital at Agra, Akbar established an efficient bureaucracy and a fair system of taxation. To strengthen his relationship with his subjects, Akbar married a Hindu. He allowed the Hindus to remain under their own law, called the Dharmashastra, and to retain their own courts. About one third of his government officials were Hindus.

Akbar was followed by his son Jahangir (1605-1627). Ignoring military conquest, Jahangir was a great patron of the arts. Jahangir's term as Emperor is considered the richest period of Mughal culture, but he was an alcoholic and did not give his full attention to the administration of the empire. Within nine years of their marriage his favorite wife, Nur Jahan, was virtually running the empire.

Through the neglect of Jahangir, the empire was starting to disintegrate when his son Shah Jahan came to the throne in 1628. Shah Jahan moved his capital from Agra back to Delhi and by the end of his thirty year reign the boundaries of the empire had again expanded and Mughal control solidified. The Taj Mahal in Agra was built by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth in 1631.

The last great Mughal ruler was Aurangzeb who ruled from 1658 to 1707. A strict Muslim, Aurangzeb imposed Shari'a law, forbidding all drinking, gambling, music, dancing and singing, and outlawing many Hindu practices which had been tolerated during the reigns of the previous sultans. Hindus were now subject to Islamic courts of law, rather than their own Dharmashastra. He encouraged the destruction of Hindu temples and replaced Hindu government officials with Muslims. Aurangzeb repealed all taxes that were not specifically allowed by Islamic law or tradition, which left his treasuries depleted, a shortfall he made up by reinstituting the jizya, a tax on the non-Muslims. Since the majority of his subjects were Hindu, these changes produced great unrest throughout his kingdom.

During his reign, Aurangzeb was involved in almost constant warfare on multiple fronts. He undertook military campaigns north into Punjab and Afghanistan and south into Bijapur and Golconda, and his borders were constantly challenged by the Sikhs and the Marathas. His neglect of the administration of his empire allowed his provincial governors and generals to assume greater political power. After his death, Aurangzeb's successors fought among themselves, and Uttar Pradesh subsequently came under the influence of the Jats, the Rohillas, and the Marathas.


The British and Independence
European influence had been expanding in India since the late fifteenth century. The Portuguese were firmly entrenched at Goa by the early sixteenth century and the Dutch established trading posts in southern India during the early seventeenth century. But it was the British East India Company which gained the greatest advantage. By 1803 the British controlled the region including Uttar Pradesh and had annexed it by 1856. They moved the capital from Agra to Allahabad in 1858, and to the former Nawab capital of Lucknow in 1920, where it remains today. The inhabitants of Uttar Pradesh played a major role in India's struggle for independence. When India's constitution was officially adopted in 1950, Uttar Pradesh became a province of the Republic of India.


The first image is of the Chaukhandi Stupa, built at Sarnath during the Gupta period.
The second image is of the Taj Mahal at Agra.
Images from Wikimedia Commons

More photographs of Uttar Pradesh can be seen at Images of India



sources:
Danielou, Alain. A Brief History of India. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2003.
Keay, John. India: A History. New York: Grove Press, 2000.
Wikipedia - Uttar Pradesh
Profile of Uttar Pradesh
Destination Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh - History
The Mughal Legacy
The Mughal Empire

Photo of the sadhu by Juicyrai and modified by Shanti Ashoka under the Creative Commons Deed.