The Mughal Economy

From Babur’s conquest in 1526 to the dynasty’s end in 1857, Mughal South Asia connected cultivation, craft work and exchange to the demands of households, towns and imperial service. Land revenue supported officers and armies, while merchants moved food and goods between producers, markets and ports. These connections did not make local economies identical: crop cycles, water rights, officials and payment practices differed among regions and changed over time.

On this page5 sections

Fields, water and layered rights

Cultivation began with household labor, animals and tools, but busy seasons also brought hired workers. Abu’l Fazl’s late-sixteenth-century Ain-i Akbari lists wheat, barley, gram, lentils and mustard under the spring harvest, and rice, pulses and sesame under the autumn harvest. The seasonal lists show why agricultural work and the movement of grain came in different waves. Women also worked in fields and processing: historians record weeding, transplanting, grain husking and grinding, as well as cotton ginning and spinning.

Water and land claims shaped what could be grown and who could use a resource. In Malwa, a region of central India, a 1653 dispute concerned villagers from Tornod drawing pond water for their fields. A jagirdar, an official holding an assignment of revenue, ordered them not to interfere with the older users from Navgaon and Khilchipur. His order recognized existing rights rather than treating the pond as an unclaimed resource. Another Akbar-era grant, in 1574, rewarded Jayanti Das and his associates with tax-free fallow land on condition that they bring it under cultivation and help maintain order in the district. A cultivator’s use of a field, a local landholder’s claims and the state’s revenue demand could therefore sit within the same countryside.

Craft work, advances and court supply

Cloth production required several linked tasks. Workers first separated cotton seeds from the fiber, then twisted the fiber into yarn; weavers crossed lengthwise threads with crosswise threads on a loom, and other workers could wash, dye or print the finished cloth. Shireen Moosvi’s study of Mughal labor notes women’s work in ginning and spinning, alongside men’s more frequent work as weavers. A merchant might provide dadani, an advance of money before delivery. That advance gave a producer funds to work with, while an agreement could require the weaver to sell to the advancing merchant at a fixed price.

Rulers and nobles also maintained karkhanas, workshops and stores for their households and service establishments. Abu’l Fazl’s account describes the imperial wardrobe receiving purchased, commissioned and gifted textiles, recording them, storing pieces by value and issuing cloth for tailoring or presentation. Court demand was one part of a wider market. In 1620, English East India Company agents set up a temporary silk-winding workshop in Patna, in eastern India, that employed nearly one hundred people for an export order. Merchant shops, home-based artisans, court departments and temporary workshops thus organized production in different ways.

Assessing and collecting revenue

Akbar’s revenue administration used several ways to turn cultivation into a state demand. In areas using zabt, officials measured land and set cash rates for crops. The dahsala, or ten-year settlement, drew on recorded crop yields and prices to establish rates for the period; it made an expected cash obligation more predictable than a fresh estimate after each harvest. Other regions used crop-sharing or estimates. Abu’l Fazl, for example, records one-third of the crop as the state’s share in Tatta, in Sindh, while in rain-dependent Ajmer he gives a much smaller share of one-seventh or one-eighth. The difference reflects local arrangements, not a single rate applied everywhere.

Assessment and collection were separate stages. The jama was the assessed amount due; the hasil was what officials actually collected. Village record keepers and headmen supplied information about fields and crops, while local landholders or contractors could help collect dues. Revenue assigned as a jagir supported an imperial servant’s household and service obligations; khalisa revenue went to the imperial treasury. Because the assigned or assessed figure could differ from receipts, an officer’s income depended on local harvests, collection and intermediary work, not just the figure written in a schedule.

Coins, wages and written obligations

Silver rupees, gold mohurs and copper dams served different payment scales. Abu’l Fazl’s account describes mint workers testing metal, weighing it and turning ingots into coin blanks. An assayer, a worker who tested metal purity, compared streaks of gold on a touchstone, a dark stone used to compare metal streaks, with reference samples of known fineness. A cutter then sheared round pieces from the ingot; an engraver cut the design into steel dies; and workers placed each blank between two dies for a hammerer to strike. The account also records fees for these tasks, showing a mint as a staffed workplace with specialized roles.

Coin value also depended on how a payment was reckoned. Akbar’s administration counted a full-weight rupee at forty dams for salaries, even though the market price could vary. Town wages were often paid in coin, while some revenue districts accepted produce; village service could also be compensated through claims on harvests. Money changers helped test or exchange coins. Credit filled gaps between income and payment dates. A written acknowledgment could preserve a debt, while a later release could record that some or all of it had been repaid.

Grain routes, merchants and urban trade

Banjaras, mobile pastoralist traders, carried grain over long distances to towns and armies. Their work joined transport with finance. In 1660, Purshottam Das of a Malwa landholding family repaid debts his father had incurred from banjara traders; the release listed the payments and noted a remaining bond of twenty-five rupees. Other banjara leaders received a sealed pass allowing them to buy grain without specified taxes. The pass connected an official’s permission with the practical movement of food along a route.

Ports connected regional production to ocean trade. Gujarat’s ports sent indigo, textiles and silk toward Persian Gulf and Red Sea markets; bullion and horses arriving from Basra, Hormuz and Mocha moved inland toward northern Indian markets. In Bengal, the Ganges served as a river highway, and boats carried bulky merchandise between inland markets and ports. Built in Dhaka between 1644 and 1646, Bara Katra enclosed shops and lodging around a courtyard. Its endowment assigned income from twenty-two shops to repairs and charitable aid, and allowed deserving travelers to lodge without rent. Merchants needed places to store goods and stay, while rents helped maintain the institution. A 1711 deed from Malwa shows another side of commercial exchange: the heirs of a Hindu lender and his Afghan associate settled a debt through the local judge’s court, recording payment and acknowledgment. Trade depended on routes and working capital, but also on written agreements and institutions that made obligations recognizable.