4 the mughals

(16th TO 17th CENTURY)

R uling as large a territory as the Indian subcontinent

with such a diversity of people and cultures was an
extremely difficult task for any ruler to accomplish in
the Middle Ages. Quite in contrast to their predecessors,
the Mughals created an empire and accomplished what
had hitherto seemed possible for only short periods
of time. From the latter half of the sixteenth century,
they expanded their kingdom from Agra and Delhi,
until in the seventeenth century they controlled nearly
all of the subcontinent. They imposed structures of
administration and ideas of governance that outlasted
their rule, leaving a political legacy that succeeding
rulers of the subcontinent could not ignore. Today
the Prime Minister of India addresses the nation on
Independence Day from the ramparts of the Red Fort
in Delhi, the residence of the Mughal emperors.
Fig. 1
The Red Fort.

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 Who were the Mughals?
The Mughals were descendants
of two great lineages of rulers.
From their mother’s side they were
descendants of Genghis Khan (died
1227), the Mongol ruler who ruled
over parts of China and Central
Asia. From their father’s side, they
were the successors of Timur (died
1404), the ruler of Iran, Iraq and
modern-day Turkey. However,
the Mughals did not like to be
called Mughal or Mongol. This was
because Genghis Khan’s memory
Fig. 2
was associated with the massacre
Mughal army on
campaign. of innumerable people. It was also
linked with the Uzbegs, their Mongol
competitors. On the other hand, the
Mughals were proud of their Timurid
ancestry, not least of all because
their great ancestor had captured
Delhi in 1398.
They celebrated their genealogy
pictorially, each ruler getting a
picture made of Timur and himself.

Mughal Military Campaigns

Babur, the first Mughal emperor
(1526 –1530), succeeded to the
throne of Ferghana in 1494 when
he was only 12 years old. He
was forced to leave his ancestral
throne due to the invasion of
Fig. 3 another Mongol group, the Uzbegs.
Cannons were an After years of wandering, he
important addition
seized Kabul in 1504. In 1526 he
in sixteenth-century
warfare. Babur used defeated the Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim
them effectively in the Lodi, at Panipat and captured Delhi
first battle of Panipat. and Agra.

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 Map 1
Military campaigns
under Akbar and
Aurangzeb.

Mughal Traditions of Succession

The Mughals did not believe in the rule of primogeniture,
where the eldest son inherited his father’s estate.
Instead they followed the Mughal and Timurid Mughal marriages
custom of coparcenary inheritance, or a division of with the Rajputs
the inheritance amongst all the sons. Which do you
The mother of
think is a fairer division of inheritance: primogeniture Jahangir was
or coparcenary? a Kachhwaha
princess, daughter
of the Rajput
Mughal Relations with Other Rulers ruler of Amber
(modern- day
The Mughal rulers campaigned constantly against
Jaipur). The
rulers who refused to accept their authority. But as mother of Shah
the Mughals became powerful many other rulers Jahan was a Rathor
also joined them voluntarily. The Rajputs are a good princess, daughter
example of this. Many of them married their daughters of the Rajput
ruler of Marwar
into Mughal families and received high positions. But (Jodhpur).
many resisted as well.
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 The Sisodiya Rajputs of Mewar refused to accept
Mughal authority for a long time. Once defeated,
however, they were honourably treated by the Mughals,
given their lands (watan) back as assignments
(watan jagir). The careful balance between defeating
but not humiliating their opponents enabled the
Mughals to extend their influence over many kings and
chieftains. But it was difficult to keep this balance all
the time.

Mansabdars and Jagirdars

As the empire expanded to encompass different
regions, the Mughals recruited diverse bodies of
people. From a small nucleus of Turkish nobles
(Turanis) they expanded to include Iranians, Indian
Muslims, Afghans, Rajputs, Marathas and other
groups. Those who joined Mughal service were
enrolled as mansabdars.
The term mansabdar refers to an individual who
holds a mansab, meaning a position or rank. It was
a grading system used by the Mughals to fix (1) rank,
(2) salary and (3) military responsibilities. Rank
Zat ranking
and salary were determined by a numerical value
Nobles with a called zat. The higher the zat, the more prestigious
zat of 5,000 was the noble’s position in court and the larger
were ranked his salary.
higher than
The mansabdar’s military responsibilities
those of 1,000.
required him to maintain a specified number of
In Akbar’s reign
there were 29
sawar or cavalrymen. The mansabdar brought his
mansabdars cavalrymen for review, got them registered, their
with a rank of horses branded and then received money to pay them
5,000 zat; by as salary.
Aurangzeb’s Mansabdars received their salaries as revenue
reign the number assignments called jagirs which were somewhat like
of mansabdars iqtas. But unlike muqtis, most mansabdars did not
had increased to actually reside in or administer their jagirs. They only
79. Would this had rights to the revenue of their assignments which
have meant more was collected for them by their servants while the
expenditure for
mansabdars themselves served in some other part of
the state?
the country.
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 In Akbar’s reign, these
jagirs were carefully assessed
so that their revenues were
roughly equal to the salary
of the mansabdar. By
Aurangzeb’s reign, this was
no longer the case and the
actual revenue collected was
often less than the granted
sum. There was also a huge
increase in the number of
mansabdars, which meant a Fig. 4
long wait before they received a jagir. These and other A mansabdar on
march with his
factors created a shortage in the number of jagirs. sawars.
As a result, many jagirdars tried to extract as much
revenue as possible while they had a jagir. Aurangzeb
was unable to control these developments in the Fig. 5
Details from a
last years of his reign and the peasantry therefore miniature from
suffered tremendously. Shah Jahan’s reign
depicting corruption
in his father’s
Zabt and Zamindars administration:
(1) a corrupt officer
The main source of income available to Mughal receiving a bribe and
rulers was tax on the produce of the peasantry. In (2) a tax-collector
punishing poor
most places, peasants paid taxes through the rural peasants.
elites, that is, the headman or the local chieftain. The
Mughals used one term – zamindars – to describe all
intermediaries, whether they were local headmen
of villages or powerful chieftains.
Akbar’s revenue minister, Todar Mal, carried
out a careful survey of crop yields, prices
and areas cultivated for a 10-year period,
1570 –1580. On the basis of this data, tax
was fixed on each crop in cash. Each province
was divided into revenue circles with its own
schedule of revenue rates for individual crops.
This revenue system was known as zabt. It
was prevalent in those areas where Mughal
administrators could survey the land and keep
very careful accounts. This was not possible in
provinces, such as Gujarat and Bengal.
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 In some areas, the zamindars exercised a great deal
of power. The exploitation by Mughal administrators
could drive them to rebellion. Sometimes zamindars
and peasants of the same caste allied in rebelling
against Mughal authority. These peasant revolts
challenged the stability of the Mughal Empire from
the end of the seventeenth century.

Akbar Nama and Ain-i Akbari

Akbar ordered one of his close friends and
courtiers, Abul Fazl, to write a history of
his reign. Abul Fazl wrote a three-volume
history of Akbar’s reign, titled Akbar
Nama. The first volume dealt with Akbar’s
ancestors and the second volume recorded
the events of Akbar’s reign. The third
volume is the Ain-i Akbari. It deals with
Akbar’s administration, household, army,
the revenues and the geography of his
empire. It also provides rich details about
the traditions and culture of the people
living in India. The most interesting aspect
about the Ain-i Akbari is its rich statistical Fig. 6
details about things as diverse as crops, Akbar recieving the Akbar Nama
yields, prices, wages and revenues. from Abul Fazl.

Nur Jahan’s influence in Jahangir’s court

Mehrunnisa married the Emperor Jahangir
in 1611 and received the title Nur Jahan. She
remained extremely loyal and supportive
to the monarch. As a mark of honour,
Jahangir struck silver coins bearing his
own titles on one side and on the other
the inscription “struck in the name of the
Queen Begum, Nur Jahan”.
The adjoining document is an order
(farman) of Nur Jahan. The square seal
states, “Command of her most Sublime and
Elevated Majesty Nur Jahan Padshah Begum”.
Fig. 7 The round seal states, “by the sun of Shah
Nur Jahan’s farman. Jahangir she became as brilliant as the moon; may Nur
Jahan Padshah be the lady of the age”.

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 Sulh-i kul
Jahangir, Akbar’s son, described his father’s policy of
sulh-i kul in the following words:
As in the wide expanse of the divine compassion there is room
for all classes and the followers of all creeds, so … in his
Imperial dominions, which on all sides were limited only by
the sea, there was room for the professors of opposite religions,
and for beliefs, good and bad, and the road to intolerance was
closed. Sunnis and Shias met in one mosque and Christians
and Jews in one church to pray. He consistently followed the
principle of “universal peace” (sulh-i kul).

The Mughal Empire in the Seventeenth

Century and After
The administrative and military efficiency of the
Mughal Empire led to great economic and commercial
prosperity. International travellers described it as the
fabled land of wealth. But these same visitors were
also appalled at the state of poverty that existed side
by side with the greatest opulence. The inequalities
were glaring. Documents from the twentieth year of
Shah Jahan’s reign inform us that the highest-ranking
mansabdars were only 445 in number out of a total
of 8,000. This small number – a mere 5.6 per cent of
the total number of mansabdars – received 61.5 per
cent of the total estimated revenue of the empire as
salaries for themselves and their troopers.
The Mughal emperors and their mansabdars spent
a great deal of their income on salaries and goods.
This expenditure benefited the artisans and peasantry
who supplied them with goods and produce. But the
scale of revenue collection left very little for investment
in the hands of the primary producers – the peasant
and the artisan. The poorest amongst them lived
from hand to mouth and they could hardly consider
investing in additional resources – tools and supplies –
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 to increase productivity. The wealthier peasantry and
artisanal groups, the merchants and bankers profited
in this economic world.
The enormous wealth and resources commanded
by the Mughal elite made them an extremely powerful
group of people in the late seventeenth century. As the
authority of the Mughal emperor slowly declined, his
servants emerged as powerful centres of power in the
regions. They constituted new dynasties and held the
command of provinces like Hyderabad and Awadh.
Although they continued to recognise the Mughal
emperor in Delhi as their master, by the eighteenth
century the provinces of the empire had consolidated
their independent political identities.

Imagine
You have inherited a kingdom. (Remember
Babur and Akbar were about your age
when they became rulers). How would
you make your kingdom stable and
prosperous?

Let’s recall

1. Match the following:

mansab Marwar
Mongol Uzbeg
Sisodiya Rajput Mewar
Rathor Rajput rank
Nur Jahan Jahangir

2. Fill in the blanks:

(a) The five Deccan Sultanates were Berar, Khandesh,

Ahmadnagar, ____________ and ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_________________.

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 (b) If zat determined a mansabdar’s rank and salary,
sawar indicated his ____________ .

(c) Abul Fazl, Akbar’s friend and counsellor, helped

him frame the idea of ____________ so that he
could govern a society composed of many religions,
cultures and castes.

3. What were the central provinces under the control of

the Mughals?

4. What was the relationship between the mansabdar and Keywords

the jagir?

Mughal

mansab
Let’s understand
jagir
5. What was the role of the zamindar in Mughal
administration? zat

sawar
6. How were the debates with religious scholars important
in the formation of Akbar’s ideas on governance? sulh-i kul

primogeniture
7. Why did the Mughals emphasise their Timurid and not
their Mongol descent? coparcenary

zabt

zamindar
Let’s discuss

8. How important was the income from land revenue to
the stability of the Mughal Empire?

9. Why was it important for the Mughals to recruit

mansabdars from diverse backgrounds and not just
Turanis and Iranis?

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 10. Like the Mughal Empire, India today is also made up
of many social and cultural units. Does this pose a
challenge to national integration?

11. Peasants were vital for the economy of the Mughal

Empire. Do you think that they are as important today?
Has the gap in the income between the rich and the
poor in India changed a great deal from the period of
the Mughals?

Let’s do

12. The Mughal Empire left its impact on the different

regions of the subcontinent in a variety of ways. Find
out if it had any impact in the city, village or region in
which you live.

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