THEME 8

PEASANTS, ZAMINDARS AND THE STATE

THEME 8

PEASANTS, ZAMINDARS AND THE STATE

AGARRIAN SOCIETY AND THE MUGHAL EMPIRE (AD 16^TH TO 17^TH CENTURIES)

Agrarian Society

• 10^th to 16^th Century – 85% of Rural people depends on agriculture.
• Surplus Production – Major share goes as Taxes to the Rulers.
• Land- Income and Tax : Right of rulers
• In addition to rulers there are intermediaries – Drain of agricultural surplus from the Peasants.
• Peasants and landlords – mutual relation in the agricultural sector- sharing and confrontations.
• At the same time coming of external agencies for protecting their interest- for eg: The Mughal State.

Agrarian society

• Major source of Mughal revenue from agricultural sector.
• The rural society was controlled by revenue assessment officers, revenue collectors, record and account keepers

– They ensured that all the agricultural operations done smoothly and ensure the payment of taxes to the state.

• Importance to cultivate Commercial crops- so trade, money and market reached in the rural areas- naturally agricultural sector linked with cities.

PEASANTS AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

• All agricultural operations done by the rural peasantry.
• They also produced agri-related products such as Sugar, oil etc..
• Difference in the method of cultivation- related with the nature of land- dry land, fertile land etc

Looking of sources

• Naturally, Tillers of the soil keep no written records.
• Depends on Mughal court records and chronicles.
• Friend and Court Historian of Akber, Abul fazl wrote Akbernama and

Ain-i-Akbari.

• These works gives a detailed information about the administration and other features of the Mughal period.
• The records of EEIC also supplemented our knowledge.

Peasants and their Lands

• The term which Indo-Persian sources of the Mughal period most frequently used to denote a peasant was raiyat (plural, riaya) or muzarian. In addition, we also encounter the terms kisan or asami.
• Sources of the seventeenth century refer to two kinds of peasants – khud-kashta and pahi-kashta. The formerwere residents of the village in which they held their lands. The latter were non-resident cultivators who belonged to some other village, but cultivated lands elsewhere on a contractual basis.
• People became pahi-kashta because of many reasons – for example, when terms of revenue in a distant village were more favourable – or out of compulsion – for example, forced by economic distress after a famine.

Peasants and their Lands

• An average peasant of north India possess a pair of bullocks and two ploughs; most possessed even less.
• In Gujarat peasants possessing about six acres of land were considered to be affluent; in Bengal, on the other hand, five acres was the upper limit of an average peasant farm; 10 acres would make one a rich asami.
• Cultivation was based on the principle of individual ownership. Peasant lands were bought and sold in the same way as the lands of other property owners.

Irrigation and Technology

There were three factors that contributed for the expansion of agriculture.

• Abundance of land
• Available labour
• Mobility of peasants.
• Since the primary purpose of agriculture is to feed people, basic staples such as rice, wheat or millets were the most frequently cultivated crops.
• Monsoons remained the backbone of Indian agriculture, as they are even today. But there were crops which required additional water. Artificial systems of irrigation had to be devised for this.

Irrigation and Technology

Irrigation projects received state support as well.

For example, in northern India the state undertook

digging of new canals (nahr,

nala) and also repaired

old ones like the shahnahr in the Punjab during Shah Jahan’s reign.

Irrigation and Technology

• Though agriculture was labour intensive, peasants did use technologies that often harnessed cattle energy. One example was the wooden plough, which was light and easily assembled with an iron tip.

Irrigation and Technology

• A drill, pulled by a pair of giant oxen, was used to plant seeds, but broadcasting of seed was the most prevalent method.

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• Hoeing and weeding were done simultaneously using a narrow iron blade with a small wooden handle.

An abundance of Crops

• Agriculture was organised around two major seasonal cycles, the kharif (autumn-Sarathkal) and the rabi (spring-Vasanthkal).
• This would mean that most regions, except those terrains that were the most arid or inhospitable, produced a minimum of two crops a year (do-fasla), whereas some, where rainfall or irrigation assured a continuous supply of water, even gave three crops. This ensured an enormous variety of produce.
• For instance, we are told in the Ain that the Mughal provinces of Agra produced 39 varieties of crops and Delhi produced 43 over the two seasons. Bengal produced 50 varieties of rice alone.

An abundance of Crops

• However, the focus on the cultivation of basic staples did not mean that agriculture in medieval India was only for subsistence. We often come across the term jins-i kamil (literally, perfect crops) in our sources.
• The Mughal state also encouraged peasants to cultivate such crops as they brought in more revenue.
• Crops such as cotton and sugarcane were jins-i kamil par excellence. Cotton was grown over a great swathe of territory spread over central India and the Deccan plateau, whereas Bengal was famous for its sugar.

An abundance of Crops

• Such cash crops would also include various sorts of oilseeds (for example, mustard) and lentils. This shows how subsistence and commercial production were closely intertwined in an

average peasant’s holding.

Lentils

An abundance of Crops

• During the seventeenth century several new crops from different parts of the world reached the Indian subcontinent.
• Maize (makka), for example, was introduced into India via Africa and Spain and by the seventeenth century it was being listed as one of the major crops of western India.
• Vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes and chillies were introduced from the New World at this time, as were fruits like the pineapple and the papaya.

The Village Community

• We have seen that peasants held their lands in individual ownership. At the same time they belonged to a collective village community as far as many aspects of their social existence were concerned.
• There were three constituents of this community –the cultivators, the panchayat, and the village headman (muqaddam or mandal).

Caste and Rural Background

• Deep inequities on the basis of caste and other caste-like distinctions meant that the cultivators were a highly heterogeneous group. Among those who tilled the land, there was a sizeable number who worked as menials or agricultural labourers (majur).
• Despite the abundance of cultivable land, certain caste groups were assigned menial tasks and thus relegated to Poverty, much like the Dalits of modern India.
• In Muslim communities menials like the halalkhoran (scavengers) were housed outside the boundaries of the village; similarly the mallahzadas (literally, sons of boatmen) in Bihar were comparable to slaves.

Caste and Rural Background

• There was a direct correlation between caste, poverty and social status at the lower strata of society.

Panchayats and Headmen

• The village panchayat was an assembly of elders, usually important people of the village with hereditary rights over their property.
• In mixed-caste villages, the panchayat was usually a heterogeneous body. An oligarchy, the Panchayat represented various castes and communities in the village, though the village menial-cum-agricultural worker was unlikely to be represented there.
• The decisions made by these panchayats were binding on the members.

Panchayats and Headmen-Functions

• The panchayat was headed by a headman known as

muqaddam or mandal.

• Some sources suggest that the headman was chosen through the consensus of the village elders, and that this choice had to be ratified by the zamindar.
• Headmen held office as long as they enjoyed the confidence of the village elders, failing which they could be dismissed by them.
• The chief function of the headman was to supervise the preparation of village accounts, assisted by the accountant or patwari of the panchayat.

• The panchayat derived its funds from contributions made by individuals.
• These funds were used for defraying the costs of entertaining revenue officials who visited the village from time to time.
• Expenses for community welfare activities such as tiding over natural calamities (like floods), were also met from these funds.
• These funds were also deployed in construction of a bund or digging a canal which peasants usually could not afford to do on their own.

• One important function of the panchayat was to ensure that caste boundaries among the various communities inhabiting the village were upheld. In eastern India all marriages were held in the presence of the mandal.
• In other words one of the duties of the village headman was to oversee the conduct of the members of the village community “chiefly to prevent any offence against their caste”.

• Panchayats also had the authority to levy fines and inflict more serious forms of punishment like expulsion from the community.
• It meant that a person forced to leave the village became an outcaste and lost his right to practice his profession.
• Such a measure was intended as a deterrent to violation of caste norms.

• In addition to the village panchayat each caste or jati in the village had its own jati panchayat.
• These panchayats wielded considerable power in rural society.
• In Rajasthan jati panchayats arbitrated civil disputes between members of different castes. They mediated in contested claims on land, decided whether marriages were performed according to the norms laid down by a particular caste group.
• In most cases, except in matters of criminal justice, the state respected the decisions of jati panchayats.

• Archival records from western India – notably Rajasthan and Maharashtra – contain petitions presented to the panchayat complaining about high taxation or the demand for unpaid labour (begar) imposed by the “superior” castes or officials of the state. These petitions were usually made by the lower section of the rural society.
• Often petitions were made collectively as well, by a caste group or a community protesting against what they considered were morally illegitimate demands on the part of elite groups.
• These included excessive tax demands which, especially in times of drought or other disasters, endangered the peasants’ subsistence. They regarded the village panchayat as the court of appeal that would ensure that the state carried out its moral obligations and guaranteed justice.

• The decision of the panchayat in conflicts between “lower-caste” peasants and state officials or the local zamindar could vary from case to case.
• In cases of excessive revenue demands, the panchayat often suggested compromise. In cases where reconciliation failed, peasants took recourse to more drastic forms of resistance, such as deserting the village.
• The relatively easy availability of uncultivated land and the competition over labour resources made this an effective weapon in the hands of cultivators.

Village Artisans

• Another interesting aspect of the village was the elaborate relationship of exchange between different producers. Documents of that period have revealed the existence of substantial numbers of artisans, sometimes as high as 25% of the total households in the villages.
• The distinction between artisans and peasants in village society was a fluid one, as many groups performed the tasks of both. Cultivators and their families would also participate in craft production – such as dyeing, textile printing, baking and firing of pottery, making and repairing agricultural implements.

Village Artisans

• Cultivators could engage in artisanal production during the intervals of the different agricultural operations.
• Village artisans – potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, barbers, even goldsmiths – provided specialized services in return for which they were compensated by villagers by a variety of means. The most common way of doing so was by giving them a share of the Harvest, or an allotment of land (Miras or Watan in Maharashtra).
• 18^th Century records tell us of zamindars in Bengal who remunerated blacksmiths, carpenters, even goldsmiths for their work by paying them “a small daily allowance and diet money”. This later came to be described as the jajmani system.

A “Little Republic”

• Some British officials in the 19^th century saw the village as a “little republic” made up of fraternal partners sharing resources and labour in a collective.
• However, this was not a sign of rural egalitarianism. There was individual ownership of assets and deep inequities based on caste and gender distinctions.
• A group of powerful individuals decided the affairs of the village, exploited the weaker sections and had the authority to dispense justice.

A “Little Republic”

• More importantly, a cash nexus (money related relation) had already developed through trade between villages and towns. In the Mughal heartland too, revenue was assessed and collected in cash.
• Artisans producing for the export market (for example, weavers) received their advances or wages in cash, as did producers of commercial products like cotton, silk or indigo.

Women in Agrarian Society

• the production process often involves men and women performing certain specified roles. In the contexts that we are exploring, women and men had to work shoulder to shoulder in the fields. Men tilled and ploughed, while women sowed, weeded, threshed and winnowed the harvest (separate chaff- waste from grain).
• The basis of production was the labour and resources of the entire household. Naturally, a gendered segregation between the home (for women) and the world (for men) was not possible in this context.

Women in Agrarian Society

• Even though biases related to women’s biological functions did continue. Menstruating women, for instance, were not allowed to touch the plough or the potter’s wheel in western India, or enter the groves where betel-leaves (paan) were grown in Bengal.
• Artisanal tasks such as spinning yarn, sifting and kneading clay for pottery, and embroidery were among the many aspects of production dependent on female labour. The more commercialised the product, the greater the demand on women’s labour to produce it.
• In fact, peasant and artisan women worked not only in the fields, but even went to the houses of their employers or to the markets if necessary.

Women in Agrarian Society

• Women were considered an important resource in agrarian society also because they were child bearers in a society dependent on labour.
• At the same time, high mortality rates among women – owing to malnutrition, frequent pregnancies, death during childbirth – often meant a shortage of wives.
• This led to the emergence of social customs in peasant and artisan communities that were distinct from those prevalent among elite groups.
• Marriages in many rural communities required the payment of bride-price rather than dowry to the bride’s family.
• Remarriage was considered legitimate both among divorced and widowed women.

Women in Agrarian Society

• The importance attached to women as a reproductive force also meant that the fear of losing control over them was great. According to established social norms, the household was headed by a male.
• Thus women were kept under strict control by the male members of the family and the community.
• They could inflict harsh punishments if they suspected infidelity on the part of women.

Women in Agrarian Society

• Documents from Western India – Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra – record petitions sent by women to the village panchayat, seeking redress and justice.
• Wives protested against the infidelity of their husbands or the neglect of the wife and children by the male head of the household, the grihasthi.
• While male infidelity was not always punished, the state and “superior” caste groups did intervene the matters.
• In most cases when women petitioned to the panchayat, their names were excluded from the record: the petitioner was referred to as the mother, sister or wife of the male head of the household.

Women in Agrarian Society

• Amongst the landed gentry, women had the right to inherit property. Instances from the Punjab show that women, including widows, actively participated in the rural land market as sellers of property inherited by them.
• Hindu and Muslim women inherited zamindaris which they were free to sell or mortgage.
• Women zamindars were known in 18^th century Bengal.

FOREST AND TRIBES

• Apart from the intensively cultivated provinces huge swathes of forests – dense forest existed all over India.
• Though it is nearly impossible to set an all-India average of the forest cover for this period, informed conjectures based on contemporary sources suggest an average of 40 per cent.
• Forest dwellers were termed jangli in contemporary texts. Being jangli, however, did not mean an absence of “civilisation”, as popular usage of the term today seems to connote. Rather, the term described those whose livelihood came from the gathering of forest produce, hunting and shifting agriculture.

Forests and Tribes

• These activities were largely season specific. Among the Bhils, for example, spring was reserved for collecting forest produce, summer for fishing, the monsoon months for cultivation, and autumn and winter for hunting. Such a sequence presumed and perpetuated mobility, which was a distinctive feature of tribes inhabiting these forests.
• For the state, the forest was a subversive place – a place of refuge (mawas) for troublemakers. Once again, we turn to Babur who says that jungles provided a good defence “behind which the people of the pargana become stubbornly rebellious and pay no taxes”.

Inroads into forests

• External forces entered the forest in different ways. For instance, the state required elephants for the army. So the taxes (peshkash) levied from forest people often included a supply of elephants.
• In the Mughal political ideology, the hunt symbolised the overwhelming concern of the state to ensure justice to all its subjects, rich and poor.
• Regular hunting expeditions, so court historians tell us, enabled the emperor to travel across the extensive territories of his empire and personally attend to the grievances of its inhabitants. The scenes of hunting was a main subject for the painters or court artists.

Inroads into forests

• The spread of commercial agriculture was an important external factor that effected the lives of those who lived in the forests.
• Forest products – like honey, beeswax and gum lac – were in great demand. Some, such as gum lac, became major items of overseas export from India in the 17^th century.
• Elephants were also captured and sold.

Inroads into forests

• Trade involved an exchange of commodities through barter as well. Some tribes, like the Lohanis in the Punjab, were engaged in overland trade, between India and Afghanistan.
• Social factors too wrought changes in the lives of forest dwellers. Like the “big men” of the village community, tribes also had their chieftains.
• Many tribal chiefs had become zamindars, some even became kings. For this they required to build up an army. They recruited people from their lineage groups.

Inroads into forests

• Tribes in the Sind region had armies comprising 6,000 cavalry and 7,000 infantry.
• In Assam, the Ahom kings had their paiks, people who were obliged to render military service in exchange for land. The capture of wild elephants was declared a royal monopoly by the Ahom kings.
• Though the transition from a tribal to a monarchical system had started much earlier, the process seems to have become fully developed only by the 16^th century.

Inroads into forests

• Though the transition from a tribal to a monarchical system had started much earlier, the process seems to have become fully developed only by the 16^th century.
• This can be seen from the Ain’s observations on the existence of tribal kingdoms in the north-east.
• War was a common occurrence. For instance, the Koch kings fought and subjugated a number of neighbouring tribes in a long sequence of wars through the 16^th and 17^th centuries.
• New cultural influences also paved the way for inroads into forests. Sufi saints (pirs) played a major role in the slow acceptance of Islam among agricultural communities emerging in the forest zones.

THE ZAMINDARS

• The word Zamindar was derived from two Persian words, Zamin (Land) and Dar (Owner)
• Our story of agrarian relations in Mughal India will not be complete without referring to a class of people in the countryside that lived off agriculture but did not participate directly in the processes of agricultural production.
• These were the zamindars who were landed proprietors who also enjoyed certain social and economic privileges by virtue of their superior status in rural society.

THE ZAMINDARS

• Caste was one factor that accounted for the elevated status of zamindars; another factor was that they performed certain services (khidmat) for the state.
• Zamindars also derived their power from the fact that they could often collect revenue on behalf of the state, a service for which they were compensated financially.
• Control over military resources was another source of power. Most zamindars had fortresses (qilachas) as well as an armed contingent comprising units of cavalry, artillery and infantry.

THE ZAMINDARS

• Abu’l Fazl’s account indicates that an “upper - caste”, Brahmana-Rajput combine had already established firm control over rural society.
• Zamindars were also emerged from the so-called intermediate castes(average) and Muslims.
• Contemporary documents give an impression that conquest may have been the source of the origin of some zamindaris.
• The dispossession of weaker people by a powerful military chieftain was quite often a way of expanding a zamindari.

THE ZAMINDARS

• More important were the slow processes of zamindari consolidation, which are also documented in sources. These involved colonisation of new lands, by transfer of rights, by order of the state and by purchase.
• Zamindars lead the colonisation of agricultural land, and helped in settling cultivators by providing them with the means of cultivation, including cash loans.
• The buying and selling of zamindaris accelerated the process of monetization in the countryside. In addition, zamindars sold the produce from their own lands. There is evidence to show that zamindars often established markets (haats) to which peasants also came to sell their produce.

The Zamindars

• Although there can be no doubt that zamindars were an exploitative class, their relationship with the peasantry had an element of protection and patronage.
• Two aspects reinforce this view. First, the bhakti saints, who strongly condemned caste-based and other forms of oppression did not portray the zamindars (or, interestingly, the moneylender) as exploiters or oppressors of the peasantry. Usually it was the revenue official of the state who was the object of their criticism.
• Second, in a large number of agrarian uprisings which broke out in north India in the 17^th century, zamindars often received the support of the peasantry in their struggle against the state.

LAND REVENUE SYSTEM

• Agriculture was the major means of livelihood of the people of Medieval India and Land revenue was the major source of income of the government.
• It was therefore vital for the state to create an administrative system to ensure control over agricultural production, and to fix and collect revenue from all over the empire.
• This system included the office of the diwan who was responsible for supervising the revenue collection.
• Thus revenue officials and record keepers get an opportunity to increase their influence in the agricultural sector and became a decisive agent in shaping agrarian relations.

LAND REVENUE SYSTEM

• The Mughal state tried to first acquire specific information about the extent of the agricultural lands in the empire and what these lands produced before fixing the burden of taxes on people. The land revenue arrangements consisted of two stages – first, assessment and then actual collection.
• The jama was the amount assessed and Hasil was the amount collected.
• In his list of duties of the amil-guzar or revenue collector, Akbar decreed that while he should strive to make cultivators pay in cash, the option of payment in kind was also to be kept open.
• While fixing revenue, the attempt of the state was to maximise its claims. The scope of actually realising these claims was, however, sometimes obstructed by local conditions.

LAND REVENUE SYSTEM

• Both cultivated and cultivable lands were measured in each province.
• The Ain compiled the aggregates of such lands during Akbar’s rule.
• Efforts to measure lands continued under subsequent emperors. For instance, in 1665, Aurangzeb expressly instructed his revenue officials to prepare annual records of the number of cultivators in each village.
• Yet not all areas were measured successfully. As we have seen, forests covered huge areas of the subcontinent and thus remained unmeasured.

LAND REVENUE SYSTEM

Classification of lands under Akber

• During Akber’s period the land was classified into four;
• Polaj: Land suitable for cultivation throughout the year.
• Parauti: Land left out of cultivation for a time that it may recover its strength.
• Chachar: Land that was lain fallow for 3 or 4 years.
• Banjar: Land uncultivated for 5 years or more.
• One-third part of the average produce was fixed as the land tax during that period.

THE FLOW OF SILVER

• The Mughal Empire was among the large territorial empires in Asia that had managed to consolidate power and resources during the 16th and 17^th centuries. These empires were the Ming (China), Safavid (Iran) and Ottoman (Turkey).
• The political stability achieved by all these empires helped create vibrant networks of overland trade from China to the Mediterranean Sea.
• Voyages of discovery and the opening up of the New World resulted in a massive expansion of Asia’s (particularly India’s) trade with Europe.

THE FLOW OF SILVER

• An expanding trade brought in huge amounts of silver bullion into Asia to pay for goods procured from India, and a large part of that bullion gravitated towards India.
• This was good for India as it did not have natural resources of silver. As a result, the period between the 16^th and 18^th centuries was also marked by a remarkable stability in the availability of metal currency, particularly the silver rupya in India.

THE FLOW OF SILVER

• This facilitated an unprecedented expansion of minting of coins and the circulation of money in the economy as well as the ability of the Mughal state to extract taxes and revenue in cash.
• The testimony of an Italian traveller, Giovanni Careri, who passed through India

c. 1690, provides a graphic account about the way silver travelled across the globe to reach India.

• It also gives us an idea of the cash and commodity transactions in 17^th C. India.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• The Ain- i Akbari was the culmination of a large historical, administrative project of classification undertaken by Abu’l Fazl at the order of Emperor Akbar. It was completed in 1598, after having gone through five revisions.
• The Ain was part of a larger project of history writing commissioned by Akbar.
• This history, known as the Akbar Nama, comprised three books. The first two provided a historical narrative. The Ain- i Akbari, the third book, was organized as a brief sketch of imperial system and geography of the empire.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• The Ain gives detailed accounts of the organization of the court, administration and army, the sources of revenue and literary, cultural and religious traditions of the people.
• Along with a description of the various departments of Akbar’s government and elaborate descriptions of the various provinces (subas) of the empire, the Ain gives us a detailed information of those provinces.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• Collecting and compiling this information systematically was difficult task.

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• It informed the emperor about the varied and diverse customs and practices prevailing across his extensive territories.

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• The Ain is therefore a mine of information for us about the Mughal Empire during

Akbar’s reign.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• The Ain is made up of five books (daftars), of which the first three books describe the administration. The first book, called manzil-abadi, concerns the imperial household and its maintenance.
• The second book, sipah-abadi, covers the military and civil administration and the establishment of servants.
• This book includes short biographical sketches of imperial officials (mansabdars), scholars, poets and artists.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• The third book, mulk-abadi, is the one which deals with the fiscal side of the empire and provides information on revenue rates and details of the “Account of the Twelve Provinces”.
• This section has detailed statistical information, which includes the geographic and economic profile of all subas and their administrative and fiscal divisions (sarkars, parganas and mahals), total measured area, and assessed revenue ( jama ).

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• The Ain gives us a detailed picture of the sarkars below the suba.
• This it does in the form of tables, which have eight columns giving the following information:
• (1) parganat/mahal; (2) qila (forts); (3) arazi and zamin-i paimuda (measured area); (4) naqdi, revenue assessed in cash; (5) suyurghal, grants of revenue in charity; (6) zamindars; columns 7 and 8 contain details of the castes of these zamindars, and their troops including their horsemen (sawar), foot-soldiers (piyada) and elephants ( fil ).
• The mulk-abadi gives a detailed view of highly complex agrarian society of northern India.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• The fourth and fifth books (daftars) deal with the religious, literary and cultural traditions of the people of India and also contain a collection of Akbar’s “auspicious sayings”.
• Ain-I Akbari was much more than a reproduction of official papers. That the manuscript was revised five times by the author would suggest a high degree of caution on the part of Abu’l Fazl and a search for authenticity.
• For instance, oral testimonies were cross-checked and verified before being incorporated as “facts” in the chronicle. In the quantitative sections, all numeric data were reproduced in words so as to minimise the chances of subsequent transcriptional errors.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• Historians who have carefully studied the Ain point out that it is not without its problems.
• Numerous errors in totaling have been detected. These are ascribed to simple slips of arithmetic or of transcription by Abu’l Fazl’s assistants.
• These are generally minor in consideration of the big size and knowledge provided by this monumental work.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• Another limitation of the Ain is the method of data collection adopted. Data were not collected uniformly from all provinces.
• For instance, while for many subas detailed information was compiled about the caste composition of the zamindars, such information is not available for Bengal and Orissa.
• Further, while the fiscal data from the subas is remarkable for its richness, some equally vital parameters such as prices and wages from these same areas are not as well documented.
• The detailed list of prices and wages that the Ain does provide is mainly derived from data pertaining to areas in or around the imperial capital of Agra, and is therefore of limited relevance for the rest of the country.

THE AIN-I AKBARI OF ABU’L FAZL ALLAMI

• These limitations are very negligible. By providing fascinating glimpses into the structure and organisation of the Mughal Empire and by giving us valuable information about its products and people the Ain-I Akbari remains a land mark in the historiography of medieval India.

THE MANSABDARI SYSYTEM

• The Mughal administrative system was basically a military-cum-bureaucratic which was responsible for looking after the civil and military affairs of the state.
• Each officer of the state had a designation(Mansab) which indicate their position and salary. In order to their position they bound to provide a particular number of soldiers to the state army. Thus the mansabdars became the official nobility of the state.
• Some Manabdars were paid in cash(naqdi), while the majority of them were paid through assignments revenue(jagirs) in different regions of the empire. They were transferred periodically.

TIME LINE

LANDMARKS IN THE HISTORY OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE

• 1526 Babur defeats Ibrahim Lodi, the Delhi Sultan, at Panipat, becomes the first Mughal emperor
• 1530-40 First phase of Humayun’s reign
• 1540-55 Humayun defeated by Sher Shah, in exile at the Safavid court
• 1555-56 Humayun regains lost territories
• 1556-1605 Reign of Akbar
• 1605-27 Reign of Jahangir
• 1628-58 Reign of Shah Jahan
• 1658-1707 Reign of Aurangzeb
• 1739 Nadir Shah invades India and sacks Delhi
• 1761 Ahmad Shah Abdali defeats the Marathas in the third battle of Panipat
• 1765 The diwani of Bengal transferred to the East India Company
• 1857 Last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah II, deposed by the British and exiled to Rangoon (present day Yangon, Myanmar)

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