A Short History of the Mughal Empire (I.B.Tauris Short Histories)

by Fisher, H, Michael

  Among the leading Rajput clans longest to fight against the Empire were the Sisodias of Mewar. They suffered a major military defeat by Babur in 1527, lost their stronghold of Chittor to Akbar in 1568, and received devastating battlefield losses in 1576 from an imperial army commanded by Raja Man Singh. (Man Singh won the battle, but did not capture the Sisodia ruler nor allow Mughal forces to pillage Mewar, leading to temporary disfavor by Akbar.) Thereafter, the Sisodias resisted from their Mewar base until 1614. Even after they finally perforce submitted to Akbar’s successor, they negotiated that their clan would never provide a bride to the Mughal family and that the reigning Sisodia Rana would not personally serve in the Mughal army or administration (although other Sisodias did). Especially after the power and prestige of the Mughal Empire declined during the eighteenth century, the Sisodias celebrated their resistance to the Mughals as indicating cultural superiority over other Rajput clans who had hypergamously given their womenfolk as imperial brides.

  Significantly, Akbar and his strong successors never gave their womenfolk as brides to Rajputs or any other non-Muslims. Instead, Akbar informally adopted some daughters of close Rajput courtiers and arranged their marriages with Rajput royal houses.24 Later, Emperor Jahangir, although himself the son of Akbar’s first Rajput wife and having many Rajput brides of his own, wrote condemning Muslim clans which reciprocated by giving brides to Hindus: ‘They ally themselves with Hindus, and both give and take girls. Taking them is good, but giving them, God forbid! I gave an order that hereafter they should not do such things, and whoever was guilty of them, should be capitally punished.’25 Moreover, regardless of the mother, Mughal emperors raised their sons and daughters as Muslim Timurids.

  Akbar also made many political marriage alliances with high-born and strategically placed Muslim rulers, preferring but not limited to Timurids. For instance, during imperial campaigns to conquer Upper Sind and Thatta (Lower Sind), the two competing Muslim royal families each offered Akbar a bride.26 Rejecting one offer and accepting the other, Akbar was also choosing which family to accept as subordinate ally.

  But even such intra-Muslim marriages did not necessarily produce lasting amity between the dynasties. For example, Khandesh Sultanate stood strategically between Akbar’s Hindustan and the Deccani sultanates he distantly coveted. In 1564, Khandesh Sultan Miran Mubarak Shah II of the Faruqi dynasty (claiming prestigious descent from the second Sunni Caliph, ‘Umar) gave his daughter as a bride to Akbar. Despite this marriage, Mughal relations with the Khandesh dynasty remained fraught and they fought periodically for four decades.

  In sharp contrast to Akbar’s marriages with Rajputs (where only Rajputs provided brides), Akbar gave his sisters and daughters as wives to Timurids and other high-born Central and west Asian Muslims. In Islam, Muslim men can take nikah wives from non-Muslims (if they are People of the Book) but Muslim women cannot legitimately marry outside the faith. Further, giving brides hypergamously had more cultural force in Indic than in Timurid Islamic traditions (although in most cultures, families customarily feel degraded when their womenfolk are taken by an enemy). Thus, Babur and Humayun had married their womenfolk to Timurids without acknowledging those men’s superiority.

  Akbar intended giving his sisters and daughters as brides to advance the Mughal agenda, but in practice, these political marriage alliances did not ensure that these in-laws proved useful or loyal to Akbar. Around 1561, Akbar had married his full sister, Bakhshi Banu Begum, to a close Timurid relative, Mirza Sharaf-ud-Din Husain. But this brother-in-law had his own imperial ambitions and alternately led Mughal armies against their mutual enemies and conspired with Akbar’s foes, before fleeing for his life to Mecca. Further, in 1564, one of Sharaf-ud-Din’s freed slaves shot Akbar in the back—the arrow wounding but not killing. Akbar’s courtiers suspected but could not prove Sharaf-ud-Din’s instigation. But, such was the prestige of Timurids that Sharaf-ud-Din, after a decade away and a period of imprisonment, eventually received imperial forgiveness and returned to Akbar’s service. Likewise, around 1593 Akbar married a daughter to Mirza Muzaffar Husain Khan, a Timurid former ruler of Gujarat who subsequently spent his life alternately in Akbar’s service and in Mughal prisons for rebellion. Then, Akbar married another daughter, Shakr-un-Nissa Begum, to Mirza Shahrukh, the Timurid deposed ruler of Badakhshan; but Shahrukh never recovered Badakhshan nor proved especially useful to Akbar.

  Similarly, Akbar gave a daughter in marriage to his own brother-in-law Raja Ali Khan of Khandesh. Raja Ali Khan reciprocally gave a daughter to Salim, Akbar’s eldest son. Despite these three political marriages, Raja Ali Khan only accepted incorporation into the Mughal hierarchy after being forced militarily to submit.

  Akbar’s many marriages produced a vast women-centered world: the imperial harem containing thousands of women. Each of the hundreds of imperial wives had a separate sub-household, filled with female attendants and supported by a salary appropriate to her status. The harem also contained eunuchs as attendants, guards and intermediaries with the outside world. Akbar’s closest male companions, particularly senior relatives by birth or marriage, might receive the honor of visiting parts of his harem. Through the personal influence of some imperial womenfolk over the emperor and through other indirect interventions into imperial affairs, the harem penetrated the Empire’s public space.

  Beyond relatives by marriage, Akbar also worked to recruit diverse loyal and effective officials who enabled him to manage and expand his Empire. He and his core officials built on the work of Sher Shah to create a more efficient and stable system of land revenue extraction. They created a unified military-administrative hierarchy focused on Akbar himself. These elevated the Mughal Empire to levels of power and authority unprecedented in India. But the Mughal armed forces and administration had to struggle to penetrate north India’s multi-layered and deeply entrenched economic, political and social systems, and to expand beyond Hindustan.

  5

  EMPEROR AKBAR AND HIS CORE COURTIERS BUILD THE MUGHAL ADMINISTRATION AND ARMY

  In the profession of fighting, a defeat is not considered to be a dishonor.

  Emperor Akbar consoling a defeated imperial commander1

  Emperor Akbar and his close advisors were dedicated to expanding the Mughal Empire through territorial conquest and through the imposition of what they proclaimed to be his righteous regime. The Empire was primarily a military-fiscalist state that required a vast and growing army and administration in order to extract tribute and revenues from the diverse areas they kept conquering. That income then supported the imperial army and administration, as well as Akbar’s household and court. Under Akbar’s close direction, Mughal armies attacked neighboring states and suppressed popular rebellions and resistance by landholders and other local magnates in newly acquired territories as well as the imperial heartland. Simultaneously, Akbar and his central courtiers innovatively strove to create stable, efficient and uniform administrative processes throughout the Empire. Despite their overarching imperial models, however, in practice there was much regional and local variation since officials had to adjust pragmatically in order to both satisfy their superiors and yet economically maintain order and collect revenues. Crucially, out of the diverse body of mainly immigrant followers whom Akbar inherited, he and his key courtiers synthesized a single, largely integrated Mughal hierarchy of soldier-administrators with a balance of ethnic origins and overriding devotion to the Emperor himself. Thereby, Akbar’s regime created processes and procedures that empowered the Mughal Empire for over a century.

  THE RURAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

  Historically, most states in India lacked the administrative manpower, expertise, and coercive or cultural force to extract the maximum revenues. Rather, many rulers of conquest states, like Babur, Humayun and many of their predecessors and contemporaries, seized the treasuries of defeated enemies and coerced regional rulers and landholders into paying whatever tribute could be economically extracted for the expenses of their roya
l household and to reward their commanders. If initially predatory conquerors remained to rule, which not all did, many awarded each commander with an appanage (often called an iqta) whose estimated revenues generally seemed to accord with his status. Each military governor had charge over that territory and often appropriated its resources largely in his own short-term interest. Sometimes (as in Japan and feudal Europe) these appanages became hereditary fiefdoms. Some became autonomous kingdoms. But such conquest states and appanage-holders often had trouble penetrating below the upper levels of regional rulers and landholders to deal directly with cultivators and other primary producers.

  Throughout Akbar’s reign (and those of his successors), Mughal commanders struggled to defeat or incorporate regional rulers. With few exceptions, every north Indian ruler who persisted in overt resistance was eventually displaced since concentrated Mughal forces could eventually overpower any one of them. Many defeated rulers either had their domains taken under direct imperial administration or were replaced by more compliant relatives. Some submitted to Mughal sovereignty but retained a degree of local autonomy, like the many royal Rajputs who served Akbar. Thereafter, Mughal emperors arbitrated their dynastic successions but also provided cooperative ruling families with protection and opportunities for advancement. Even in those regions where Mughal forces did displace regional rulers, imperial officials encountered various levels of zamindars, who dominated the rural economy.

  Often, zamindars belonged to locally powerful martial clans holding one, a few, hundreds, or perhaps thousands of villages, acquired as original settlers or subsequent conquerors.2 Akbar, and his successors, also granted uncultivated lands, especially on external and internal frontiers, to zamindars (and to holy men and other notables) at concessional revenue rates until the lands became fully productive. Most zamindars lived as warrior-aristocrats, albeit locally based ones, with long traditions of armed and other resistance to outside revenue collectors. Since the Mughal Empire never established a monopoly over coercion or the military labor market within its conquered territories, it often faced overt resistance. By one count, there were 144 armed revolts by landholders during Akbar’s reign that were large enough to be recorded by his central administration; additionally, lesser conflicts were frequent, particularly after each harvest (but often unreported by local officials concerned about their own reputations and careers).3

  THE MUGHAL LAND REVENUE AND PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION

  Throughout Akbar’s reign, as during those of his predecessors and contemporary Indian rulers, his commanders seized enemy treasuries to help fund the Mughal army, administration and court. But Akbar also supervised the innovative development of a more centralized and bureaucratized model of revenue extraction that was not predatory, but rather had explicit rules and records for revenue payers and collectors both. In addition to Akbar’s inherited supporters, his administration also recruited new Hindu and Muslim officials with local administrative experience and knowledge, often having already established links with landholders. Whenever possible, the Mughal administration constrained the authority of zamindars, striving to turn them into functionaries of the Mughal state.

  During Bairam Khan’s regency, the Mughal administration had largely used land revenue information from Sher Shah’s earlier reign, which was often outdated and inflated. These inefficiencies weakened the state’s finances while Bairam Khan disbursed resources lavishly to gain support. Hence, when Akbar emerged from regency, his treasury was severely depleted. To improve the land revenue system, he assembled a growing body of officials, most prominently Khwaja Muzaffar Khan Turbati (a Shi‘i Iranian who had served Bairam Khan) and Raja Todar Mal (a Hindu Khatri who had served Sher Shah).

  From around 1566, Akbar’s revenue officials began reaching below zamindars to measure and assess individual fields in those areas where land revenue collection was under direct imperial management, khalisa. Information there was more accessible than from territories already assigned as iqtas or other revenue grants. However, this was still a lengthy and contested process; only after a decade had the imperial administration actually measured and accurately assessed substantial amounts of land even in the most secure khalisa territories.

  Even this limited local information, however, enabled the administration to tap into the agricultural economy more systematically. The administration strove to produce an official record for each village, listing its arable, inhabited, forested, pasturage and uncultivated lands, and exactly who was responsible for paying revenues for each. Akbar’s officials classified each field into one of three categories of revenue rates, depending on the degree of fertility and value of crop. This produced that field’s assessed demand. Groups of villages formed a pargana (‘district’). But powerful zamindars sometimes proved able to obscure these details for unsurveyed villages under their control and themselves pay the revenues as tribute or at rates they negotiated with imperial officials.

  As richly but over-optimistically described by Akbar’s publicist, Abu-al-Fazl, this revenue system was objective, standardized and smoothly effective across the Empire. In contrast, a contemporary critic described both the theoretical model and also the haphazard and exploitive practice:

  … [in 1574] an order was promulgated for improving the cultivation of the country, and for bettering the condition of the raiyats [cultivators]. All the parganas of the country … were all to be measured, and every such piece of land as, upon cultivation, would produce one kror of tankas [10,000,000 copper coins] was to be divided off, and placed under the charge of an officer to be called Krorí …. Officers were appointed, but eventually they did not carry out the regulations as they ought to have done. A great portion of the country was laid waste through the rapacity of the Krorís, the wives and children of the raiyats were sold and scattered abroad and everything was thrown into confusion … many good men died from the severe beatings which were administered, and from the tortures of the rack and pincers [and] from protracted confinement in the prisons of the revenue authorities …4

  A Jain merchant confirmed how kroris simply confiscated his cash.5

  The imperial administration evidently had even more difficulty getting accurate information about lands already distributed as iqta or other revenue assignments. In order to gain more direct data about actual yields, around 1575, the central administration resumed most such grants, with the former grantee receiving in lieu a cash salary from the imperial treasury. Many former grant holders objected, particularly those whose incomes actually exceeded their official grant. About five years later, after the central administration had secured more accurate agricultural productivity figures and, if the former grantee could provide documentary proof of his rights, it reissued most of the reassessed revenue assignments as jagirs—the term henceforth widely used for the temporary assignment of land revenue and other taxes from a designated territory. Jagirdars (‘jagirholders’) then collected these revenues or parceled them out among their followers.

  Not all lands were reassigned to jagirdars. A varying proportion remained khalisa—supporting the imperial administration itself, the emperor and his household, the special branches of the military including the imperial artillery and ahadis (4,000–5,000 elite cavalry reporting directly to the emperor), to replenish the imperial treasury reserves and to pay salaries to officials not currently holding a jagir or needing supplements to bring their income to its official level. The central administration evidently selected khalisa lands from those most productive and trouble-free in the imperial heartland. The proportion of land revenues in khalisa (versus those assigned as jagirs) reflected a measure of the emperor’s own consolidated control over land revenues and provided him with a fiscal buffer. Under Akbar, between a quarter and a third of the Empire’s total assessed revenue remained in khalisa.6

  For the Mughal revenue system to function effectively, the central administration had to judge accurately the maximum proportion of the actual crop to demand. Eventually, under the z
abt (‘regulation’) system, Akbar’s administrators systematically calculated the average production of each measured field over the past ten years and settled its revenue demand on that basis. These Mughal revenue extractions absorbed a significant share of the GDP (historians differ about the proportion of the harvest demanded under zabt; reasonable estimates range from a third to half, with the proportion varying in practice among territories).7

  Eventually up to ninety per cent of territories in Hindustan were reportedly under zabt. In more recently conquered or less fully controlled territories, none or little land was under zabt. Instead, the revenues actually extracted seem to have been annually negotiated between collection agents and local revenue payers—either zamindars or cultivators. Armed confrontation, while expensive to both sides, frequently remained a seasonal event. Revenue collectors needed to extract as much as they could with the minimum of costly enforcement. Conversely, revenue payers had to balance resistance costs against what they kept. Nonetheless, zabt—in contrast to tribute-paying by semi-autonomous chiefs and zamindars to semi-autonomous iqta holders which had earlier prevailed—reflected the novel degree of centralized control exerted (or claimed) by Akbar’s administration.

  Imperial officials increasingly demanded that land revenues be paid in cash at fixed times with written accounts kept by village and provincial accountants, rather than in kind as had often prevailed earlier. This monetized the rural economy; wholesalers based in qasbas purchased local crops so revenue payers would have money for taxes. These wholesalers transported the crop to towns and cities, imperial armies, or markets in food-deficit regions. Large banking houses also transferred considerable amounts of capital throughout the Empire through hundis (an early form of cashier’s check).