Did the Mughals invent the mango?

No, mango cultivation predates them by 2,000 years. The Mughals industrialised grafting and created most named cultivars.

Which cultivars are oldest?

Langra and Chaunsa both trace named recognition to the 1500s. Sindhri is more recent, a 1940s graft from older stock.

Are there any Mughal-era orchards still operating?

Several in Multan and Bihar trace continuous family operation to grants made by Aurangzeb in the 1670s.

The Mughal history of the Pakistani mango, from Babur to Aurangzeb

Babur's first impression, and his complaints

Babur, the first Mughal emperor, arrived in the Subcontinent from Ferghana (modern Uzbekistan) in 1526 and wrote in his memoirs that the mango was 'the best of the fruits of Hindustan', but also that the fruit he tasted was inconsistent, with great variation tree-to-tree.

This single observation set the entire Mughal agronomy programme in motion. If a single mango tree could produce world-class fruit while its neighbour produced poor fruit, the difference was reproducible, and reproducible meant graftable.

Akbar and the Lakh Bagh

Babur's grandson Akbar (reigned 1556-1605) was the emperor who industrialised mango cultivation. His court chronicle, the Ain-i-Akbari, records the establishment of the Lakh Bagh, literally 'orchard of a hundred thousand', at Darbhanga in 1583.

The Lakh Bagh was the largest single-species mango plantation in the world at the time and the breeding ground for many of the named cultivars we still grow. Hundreds of grafted varieties were trialled side-by-side.

Jahangir and the named cultivars

Jahangir, Akbar's son, was the connoisseur. His memoirs name dozens of mango cultivars by their grower, their region and their year of first fruit, and several of those names, Langra, Chaunsa, Dussehri, are still in use today.

Chaunsa specifically gets its name from a battle at Chausa in Bihar in 1539, but the cultivar as we know it was perfected at Jahangir's orchards in Multan a century later.

Aurangzeb's expansion into Sindh

Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal, extended imperial orchards into Sindh and the southern Punjab in the 1670s. The Mirpur Khas and Hyderabad mango belts trace their commercial origins to his expansion grants.

Sindhri, the bright yellow variety that dominates Pakistan's early-season exports today, was grafted from Aurangzeb-era stock as recently as the 1940s.

What survived the empire's collapse

The Mughal Empire ended in 1857, but the orchards continued, many under the same families, generation after generation. Several PakMango.Com grower families can trace their orchard lineage to grants made by Aurangzeb himself.

When you eat a Chaunsa or a Sindhri, you are tasting four centuries of patient grafting. The varieties are functionally unchanged since Jahangir's time.

Frequently asked

Did the Mughals invent the mango?: No, mango cultivation predates them by 2,000 years. The Mughals industrialised grafting and created most named cultivars.
Which cultivars are oldest?: Langra and Chaunsa both trace named recognition to the 1500s. Sindhri is more recent, a 1940s graft from older stock.
Are there any Mughal-era orchards still operating?: Several in Multan and Bihar trace continuous family operation to grants made by Aurangzeb in the 1670s.