During Akbar’s last decade, about a hundred metric tons of silver flowed annually into the Empire—mostly originating in the Americas or Japan and imported via European merchants purchasing Indian hand-manufactures and natural resources. Imperial mints accepted any amount of bullion and, for a fee, coined silver (or gold or copper) currency of uniform purity and weight, standardized throughout the Empire (with some special exceptions). This silver inflation lowered interest rates and raised prices for producers, stimulating the Empire’s economy, enhancing the dynamic innovations by Akbar’s administration.
During the early 1580s, Akbar’s officials also worked to develop and implement a standard model for provincial governance. They divided the territories currently under imperial authority into 12 geographically well-defined subas (‘provinces’)—in many cases simply adopting traditional provincial divisions. Later in Akbar’s reign, three more subas were created from conquered Deccani sultanates. Each suba in principle had a subadar (‘governor’), diwan (‘chief revenue official’), faujdar (‘military commandant’), chief qazi (‘head of the judicial establishment’), sadr (‘manager of revenue-grants’) and staff of newswriters. During Akbar’s early years, some posts were shared between two officials, but thereafter only one man generally held one post. Each official reported independently to his counterpart at the imperial center, forming a system of checks and balances. Within each suba were sub-divisions—sarkars and, within them, parganas—with parallel administrative offices. Regular networks of runners and other communications systems, including carrier pigeons, linked the imperial bureaucracy into an effective information order.8 In actual practice, however, there remained wide variation by province (particularly those outside Hindustan) in the duties and powers of all these officials. Further, in order to function, officials negotiated pragmatically with local magnates and revenue payers.9 An official’s inflexible demand, overruling local custom, or other perceived oppression, often led to rebellion that could be costly to suppress, both for the Empire and also the official’s career.
In principle (although not always in practice), the Mughal judicial system applied the Sharia of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, as interpreted by ‘ulama (and later by Akbar). This was the basis both of criminal law for all and also of civil law for Muslims. But Hindu and other religious communities often provided legal advisors to assist Muslim judges when their members were involved. Further, many matters internal to jatis or villages or other communities were settled by their own panchayats (councils conventionally composed of five male elders). Yet, the Mughal administration occasionally also chose to supervise some intra-community matters. They chose, for example, to determine the volition of a Hindu widow before she was permitted to demonstrate her fatal fidelity to her late husband as a sati (‘true wife’). In theory, at least, she had to appear personally before the emperor or his representative to seek permission, proving that her act of immolation was her own choice, rather than coerced.10
Akbar’s officials instituted the use of Persian language, script and technical terms to standardize records throughout the expanding empire. This spreading utilitarian use of Persian helped amalgamate society, as local accountants and officials learned this language in order to function within the Empire. Noted experts wrote numerous technical manuals, Dastur al-‘Amal, that provided guidance for scribes, with model templates for official documents and correspondence.11
Many middle- and lower-level administrators who joined the Empire were from Hindu Khatri and Kayastha jatis, with long traditions of state service. They worked in salaried positions, earned by merit or influence, subject to periodic performance reviews. While their profession was hereditary, the office they currently filled was not necessarily so. Even beyond the Empire, Persian terms and categories began to enter local revenue and other records of other kingdoms, although local languages might be retained as well in what often became bilingual or multilingual documents. Further, Persian learning by men in qasbas and even villages also focused widespread attention on the imperial court as the cultural exemplar for deportment, literature and other arts.12
As Akbar’s officials asserted imperial control down toward the local level, they used ‘political socialization’: converting zamindars into quasi-officials who routinely collected taxes for the Empire and maintained order in Akbar’s name.13 Indeed, as imperial service careers appeared more promising, zamindars and their sons sometimes aspired to enroll and to attend the imperial court. Given the relatively small number of Mughal officials compared to the vast subject population (roughly one high official per hundred thousand subjects), the imperial administration relied heavily on the willing or coerced cooperation of zamindars and other local elites in order to function.
THE MUGHAL MANSAB SYSTEM
Most earlier Indian rulers gave each commander titles, rewards and iqtas ad hoc according to the ruler’s personal assessment of his worth. Even while Akbar’s close courtiers were developing the combined land revenue, jagir and provincial administrative systems, they also innovatively created one integrated decimal hierarchy for top officer-administrators: the mansab (‘rank’) system. Four centuries earlier, Akbar’s distant ancestor Chingiz Khan and more recently Sher Shah had used a basic decimal organization for their armies, but this Mughal system became far more sophisticated and bureaucratic.14
From about 1574, Akbar assigned each of the top thousand or so Mughal appointees a numerical grade from 10 up to 5,000. Only about 33 numerical values were actually used, each with a specific income and required number of cavalrymen (or other soldiers) recruited and paid by the mansabdar (‘mansabholder’). Mansabdars of 500 or more ranked as amir (‘nobleman’). This mansab system thus created ranks through which a man could move during his career, which customarily combined administrative and military responsibilities (the judiciary was largely distinct in training and duties). A specific office did not have a fixed rank: a governor might hold one mansab but his successor a lower or higher mansab. However, officials often received temporary promotions when their current mansab was inappropriately low for their new office. Further, mansabdars had no fixed terms in office and often very varied careers—Akbar might transfer them suddenly in response to a campaign or crisis or else their reported misgovernance. Once the system was in place, this hierarchy provided the emperor with a finely regulated process for rewarding through promotion or punishing through stagnation or demotion in mansab.
While Akbar’s innovative mansab system had many new bureaucratic features, it also contained many personalistic and patrimonial characteristics. There was no entrance examination (unlike the contemporary Chinese imperial civil service). Rather, appointments and promotions were all (theoretically) based on Akbar’s personal inspection and superhuman insight about the man’s true worth, usually supported by recommendations from high officials whom Akbar trusted. When this system was first being implemented, many established commanders objected to their assigned rank as unworthy of them. Further, this hierarchy now put each mansabdar specifically and overtly above, equal to, or below every other one. Thereafter, rival mansabdars jostled for precedence and complained about their rank and promotion rate.
The mansab system was not routinely hereditary, although heredity clearly affected one’s initial ranking and subsequent career. By birthright, Mughal imperial princes usually held the highest mansabs (above the 5,000 cap for others) and thus the most income to support their households, military forces and political factions. But princes often held unequal ranks, reflecting their relative ages, mother’s status and their current esteem in the emperor’s mind. Defeated but now submissive rulers also usually received very high initial ranks.
The sons and grandsons of mansabdars often followed them into service, thereby becoming khanazad (‘house born,’ implying lifelong loyalty to the emperor). Customarily, sons initially held lower ranks than their fathers and had to earn promotions through battle and effective administration. However, sons of high mansabdars often
started with higher rank than other recruits and customarily had accelerated careers. Junior kinsmen often served their seniors as lower-ranked mansabdars with their own smaller military contingents—relatives often moved together from one region to another. Additionally, at a mansabdar’s death, the emperor might honor him by deeming a son worthy of appointment or promotion, sometimes to his late father’s mansab and titles.
Crucially, Akbar ritually bound each mansabdar to him personally. Each offered Akbar deep prostration and nazr (‘ritual presentation to a superior,’ usually of gold coins but sometimes jewels or other high-value items). Mansabdars (and also tributary rulers and landholders) also offered peshkash (‘presentation gift’ of money, valuable goods, or rare animals) when approaching the emperor, especially on special occasions like imperial birthdays or coronation anniversaries. Conversely, Akbar bestowed gifts, especially sets of khilat (‘robes of honor’) by which he clothed the recipient in a garment symbolically worn by Akbar and thus imbued with his bodily essence. This Mughal practice built upon Central Asian traditions, but achieved sophisticated gradations of qualities and quantities.15 Mansabdars aspired to attend personally on Akbar. Catching Akbar’s eye through distinguished deportment in court could garner a desirable appointment. However, incurring his displeasure from misbehavior could ruin a career.
The single mansab hierarchy incorporated officer-administrators of various ethnicities as Akbar’s direct servants—partially cross-cutting their other loyalties. Nonetheless, mansabdars also developed factions through long- or short-term alliances, often based on kinship, ethnic identity, compatible religious beliefs, and/or mutual interests. Akbar’s many wives and female kin participated in these factions, lobbying Akbar personally and his courtiers indirectly. But tensions arose among personal loyalty to the emperor, individual aspirations and factional solidarities.
The central administration assigned each mansabdar one or more jagirs (occasionally replaced or supplemented by cash from the treasury) that totaled his mansab’s official income. Mansabdars (except for the lowest-ranked) had their own agents collect the assessed revenue from their jagirs. These agents received payments from zamindars and provided written receipts, under the supervision of the Mughal provincial administration. To prevent abuses in revenue collection, mansabdars governing a territory were conventionally not the ones assigned jagirs there, although for practical reasons, jagir assignments were often located nearby or even within an official’s jurisdiction.16
Despite official policy for central administrators, in practice disparities between a jagir’s assessed value and its actual income occurred. Particularly prestigious mansabdars received more lucrative jagirs; mansabdars less respected by the central assigning officials received jagirs that sometimes generated less than the official revenue, or were expensive to extract revenue from. Additionally, actual expenditures incurred in different postings varied considerably; some mansabdars had surplus income, while others overspent. Over time, repeated modifications in the jagir system proved necessary to redress imbalances or address changing circumstances.
Either from inadequate income or self-interest, many mansabdars neither employed the number of cavalrymen specified by their rank nor provided adequate cavalry horses. Although the central administration calculated a fixed rate per man, mansabdars hired soldiers at negotiated salaries. To ensure that each mansabdar fulfilled his military obligations, the central administration from around 1574 instituted periodic inspections of each mansabdar’s inventory, with an official muster roll (describing each man’s appearance, domicile and ethnicity) and the branding (dagh) of each horse with an indelible mark of approval (and to prevent double counting). Further, there were general ethnic quotas, for instance Central Asian and Rajput mansabdars should only (or predominately) employ men of their own ethnicity. Such bureaucratic checks often evoked resentment, especially from mansabdars who either regarded themselves as entitled noblemen and resented administrative questioning of their honor or else were gaming the system.
Historian Badauni (who once held office as muster roll and horse inspector) described prevailing abuses:
… Amírs did as they pleased … [putting] most of their own servants and mounted attendants into soldiers’ clothes, brought them to the musters …. But when they got their jágírs they [dismissed them] and when a new emergency arose, they mustered as many ‘borrowed’ soldiers as were required, and sent them away again, when they had served their purpose. Hence, … a lot of low tradespeople, weavers and cotton-cleaners, carpenters, and green-grocers, both Hindú and Musalmán, … brought borrowed horses, got them branded, and were appointed to a command … and when a few days afterwards no trace was to be found of the imaginary horse and the visionary saddle, they had to perform their duties on foot. Many times it happened at the musters, before the Emperor [Akbar] himself … it was found that they were all hired, and that their very clothes and saddles were borrowed articles. His Majesty then used to say, ‘With my eyes thus open I must give these men pay, that they may have something to live on.’17
Indeed, Akbar’s administration recognized such disparities and inequities and in 1585 appointed an imperial commission to investigate abuses in the interconnected zabt, jagir and mansab systems. However, few substantial improvements ensued.
As mansabdars rotated among postings in the expanding Empire, their jagirs also moved. Early in his reign, Akbar celebrated as a major accomplishment his dislodging and dispersing to distant provinces some clans of mansabdars who had settled themselves in particular regions, forming deep connections there. But later, Akbar’s administration recognized that such locally knowledgeable mansabdars could be more effective in revenue collection, governance and territorial defense; so the pace of rotation diminished.
Furthering the Emperor’s control, he inherited by escheat each deceased mansabdar’s personal property. This discouraged mansabdars from building palaces, which, after their death, the Emperor would likely award to current favorites. Consequently, some mansabdars built religious buildings—tombs or mosques by Muslims and temples by Hindus—to perpetuate their legacy since the Emperor would not confiscate these.18 For a particularly favored mansabdar, however, the Emperor might restore much of his property to his family at his demise. All this reinforced the dependence of mansabdars on lifelong service to the Emperor. His regard, their martial and administrative skills, personal treasury, and support base of followers and allies were their major resources, rather than any territorial possession (as in a classically feudal context).
As a major variation from this system of temporary and rotating jagirs and escheat, starting around 1596, many royal Rajputs, a few Indianized Afghans and other former regional rulers, received recognition of their family estates or kingdoms as their permanent watan jagir (‘homeland jagir’). While nominally this land came under imperial authority and regulation and was only assigned back to the jagirdar, in practice, a watan jagir largely continued his pre-existing relationships, both cultural and fiscal, with local zamindars and cultivators. Further, as watan jagirdars rose in mansab (so their official income exceeded the revenue assessment of their watan jagir), they received additional temporary jagirs elsewhere.
The ruler of an expansion-dependent state, Akbar constantly sought to annex his neighbors by force or threat. He stated ‘A monarch should be ever intent on conquest, otherwise his neighbors rise in arms against him …. The army should be exercised in warfare, lest from want of training they become self-indulgent.’19 Conversely, various rulers on the Empire’s external and internal frontiers resisted its invasions or counterattacked.
Akbar expected virtually all mansabdars to perform military duties, often in addition to administrative ones. Some mansabdars clearly excelled in warfare, continuing their martial traditions as Central Asians, Rajputs, or Indian Muslims (most notably Mewatis and the Sayyids of Barha). Although some mansabdars specialized in administration, even these were most honored when they were ‘promoted from th
e pen to the sword …, masters both of peace and war …’20 For instance, Mahesh Das, a Brahmin poet (probably from the Bhat jati of genealogists and praise singers) was recruited by Akbar based on his literary reputation in other courts.21 Akbar, impressed by his artistry, entitled him Kavi Raj (Sanskritic ‘King of Poets’) in 1572. But he not only brilliantly composed Braj-language prose and poetry and enlivened the court with witticisms, he was also assigned as an administrator of cattle markets and a judge of civil disputes. Further, Akbar appointed him an officer in various military expeditions, bestowing on him the additional Sanskritic title Raja Birbal (‘King Renowned Warrior’). Birbal proved a competent military commander, reaching the high mansab 2,000. But in 1589, about age 60, he misguidedly led his troops into an ambush during a Yusufzai Afghan popular uprising on the northwest frontier. He and his 8,000 soldiers all died—arguably Akbar’s biggest military disaster.
Similarly, Raja Todar Mal earned repute as an expert civil administrator. But he also alternated as a military engineer and battlefield commander. He reached mansab 4,000, dying in office at age 66 (Akbar refused him retirement).22
However, as Akbar’s Empire expanded and his administration grew more complex, the divergence between non-military and military duties grew. Hence, around 1595 the central administration significantly modified the mansab system to allow personal rank to rise without necessarily increasing the mansabdar’s military obligations: assigning each mansabdar both a zat (‘personal’) rank and also a separate sawar (‘cavalry’) rank [hereinafter indicated, e.g., 3,000/2,500]. The latter specified the number of soldiers to be recruited, paid and commanded in the Emperor’s service. The two ranks were not always equal, with more martial appointments bringing a (sometimes temporary) increase in the sawar. But the zat determined the order of precedence among mansabdars and was never less than the sawar.
A Short History of the Mughal Empire (I.B.Tauris Short Histories) Page 12