Mughal Court and Provincial Government

Babur established Mughal rule in northern India in 1526; his grandson Akbar ruled as emperor from 1556 to 1605. Abu’l Fazl, Akbar’s court historian, wrote the A’in-i Akbari, an administrative account of Akbar’s court procedures. Records from Dhar in Malwa, central India, show how a local family’s cultivation grant and revenue office were recognized in later imperial paperwork.

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The emperor and court offices

The emperor appointed senior officials and approved decisions recorded in the court diary, including appointments, salaries and revenue assignments. At Akbar’s court, the diwan managed financial accounts, the mir bakhshi handled military personnel and musters, and the khan saman oversaw the imperial household’s stores and workshops. These were administrative offices; a mansab was a service rank an official could hold alongside such a job. The same senior servant could therefore be described by both his responsibility and his rank.

For land or subsistence grants, an experienced sadr, or grants officer, examined applicants’ circumstances and considered their petitions. A clerk handled the financial records, while Akbar’s servants introduced those judged worthy to the emperor. Abu’l Fazl says many received the assistance they sought.

Abu’l Fazl describes a daily reporting chain. Fourteen experienced clerks shared the recorder’s duty, with two writing each day in rotation. They recorded imperial orders, department heads’ reports, appointments, salaries, revenue assignments, contracts and payments. A supervisor corrected the diary before it went to the emperor for approval. A clerk then made a signed memorandum for the relevant officer; copyists prepared a shorter summary that officials signed and sealed. Abu’l Fazl also records how a formal order was sealed: the vakil, a chief representative, placed a seal on the first fold, followed by the finance accountant and grants officer, with other officials’ seals arranged on later folds.

The A’in also describes written vouchers called sanads. An officer recorded an account or agreement in writing, and the document served as proof for the treasurer to release a claim. Separate registers tracked revenue, household spending and army pay. The division made different kinds of imperial expenditure legible to officials who reviewed, paid and countersigned them.

Mansab, muster and payment

A mansab ranked an imperial servant and organized service obligations. By the later sixteenth century, the zat component indicated personal rank and pay, while sawar specified the mounted contingent to be maintained. These measures were related but not interchangeable: a man’s service rank did not by itself describe the number of horsemen he presented at every inspection.

Akbar’s regulations describe how a muster tested the claim. Clerks listed each trooper’s identifying details, including age, father’s name, home and distinguishing marks. Men and horses assembled in an open place; five experienced officers checked their condition and the stipulated pay, then countersigned the amount on the descriptive rolls. Other officials certified the roll before the branding officer marked the horses. Repeated inspection and distinctive brands were intended to expose borrowed or substituted mounts, while the signed entries linked the checked contingent to its pay.

A jagir was an assignment of specified revenue that helped meet an officer’s salary and service costs. The assignment was therefore a revenue right, not a transfer of the land itself. Abu’l Fazl’s procedure sends a military jagir paper for further inspection by the bakhshis; after the horses are mustered and branded, the bakhshi-general keeps the earlier paper and issues a signed and sealed statement of monthly salary. A cash grant followed a similar paperwork route but was issued as a payment order.

Provincial and local offices

A subah was a province, a sarkar a district, and a pargana a smaller revenue unit. A subahdar governed a province, while its diwan kept a distinct financial office and transmitted accounts toward the imperial center. Below them, a faujdar exercised military authority in a district, a kotwal supervised town security and markets, a qanungo kept local revenue records and customary information, and a village patwari recorded cultivation.

Historian Nandini Chatterjee’s study of records from Dhar in Malwa describes Jayanti Das and four associates as a local group of zamindars, powerholders whose land and revenue rights were tied to service. A 1574 parwana, or official order, issued by an unidentified noble or officer addressed Jayanti Das and Narhar Das and recorded their earlier work settling and regulating pargana Dhar. The order granted the two men 200 bighas (a land-area unit) of fallow land tax-free as inam, a land grant, so they could cultivate it and live from its produce. They were to continue settling and regulating the district, and tax officials were barred from collecting levies on the granted land.

By the early seventeenth century, Jayanti Das’s descendants served as qanungos, local keepers of revenue records and customary information. Prince Khurram, later Shah Jahan, confirmed Mohan Das in the Dhar post, and the official was later reappointed after demonstrating loyalty. The order assigned him a village as an inam. Its revenue was excluded from the local jagirdar’s salary account, so the written grant defined Mohan Das’s benefit in relation to the revenue assigned to the imperial officer who held the jagir. A district qazi, or judge, authenticated a later copy whose seal records 1103 AH, a late seventeenth-century date in the Islamic calendar.

Agra’s court and fort

Akbar rebuilt the red-sandstone Agra Fort from 1565. It housed the government, treasury and mint alongside the royal residence. Its Diwan-i-Am served public audiences, while the Diwan-i-Khas received high-ranking visitors.