Roads, Couriers and Information in the Mughal Empire

During Akbar’s reign (1556–1605), Mughal officials carried provincial intelligence toward a court that often moved through northern India. News writers, foot and horse couriers, and palace clerks each handled a different part of the process, from reporting events to recording decisions.

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Roads and messengers

The imperial postal service was called dāk, or post. Under Akbar, news reports from the provinces traveled in bamboo tubes carried by couriers on foot and horseback. At court, reports were summarized, read aloud and discussed; the emperor could issue orders on matters that required action.

Abu’l Fazl’s late-sixteenth-century Ain-i Akbari identifies Mewṛahs, runners from Mewat south of Delhi, as fast messengers who carried orders and gathered intelligence. Ordinary travelers also used the roads, but these runners had specific government assignments.

In 1574 Akbar ordered buildings at each stage of the Agra–Ajmer road, linking Agra in northern India with Ajmer in Rajasthan. Pillars marked each kos, a traditional measure of distance; travelers could stop at roadside quarters used by ordinary visitors and the imperial household. At the northwestern Indus crossing in present-day Pakistan, construction of Akbar’s Attock Fort began in 1581 and continued into 1583.

Provincial reports and court writers

Reports needed writers as well as carriers. A waqia-navis was a government news writer who recorded events and information. In the twenty-fourth regnal year, corresponding to 1579–80, Abu’l Fazl says each of the empire’s twelve provinces, or subahs, was to have one.

At court, news writing involved a sequence of checks and copies. Abu’l Fazl describes recorders noting the emperor’s orders and actions, reports from department heads, appointments, troop numbers, revenue changes and arrivals. A servant corrected the daily record before it went to the emperor for approval. A clerk then copied and signed a report; this yaddasht, or memorandum, could serve as proof. Copyists made a shorter digest called a taʿliqa, which officials signed and sealed.

Turning information into orders

In 1576, while at Ajmer, Akbar received news of resistance by Bengal’s ruler Daud Khan Karrani and sent a farman, a written imperial order, to commanders there.

The Ain-i Akbari also explains sealed dispatches. For urgent orders or those whose contents should remain restricted, the paper was folded and sealed so its writing could not be seen; reports could be secured in the same way to prevent alteration. A messenger carried the packet to its recipient as an imperial command.

In Malwa, a region of central India, documents also helped families defend local offices and grants. Historian Nandini Chatterjee describes how a copy of a Prince Khurram order confirmed Mohan Das in the post of qanungo, a keeper of local tax records in Dhar. A local Islamic judge authenticated that copy with a seal dated 1690. A separate family-held document preserved the claim that a grant had been issued in 1617, although its surviving copy was made much later. By copying and confirming such orders, family members kept older grants available as evidence for present claims.

Later channels of intelligence

By the late seventeenth century, secret reporters and couriers worked alongside the older channels. News writing also shaped historical works: Kamwar Khan, a former news reporter, wrote an Account of the Chaghatai Rulers around 1724 by recasting news reports into a historical narrative.