Mughal Lands, Peoples and Languages

Mughal rule linked river plains, dry farming districts, uplands, forests, coastal ports and mountain valleys. Babur’s Timurid dynasty, known in India as the Mughals, began its Indian conquests in 1526 and lost its final imperial role when the British removed Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1857. Its reach shifted along the way. The empire crossed parts of what are now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan; those present-day borders did not define its provinces or the lands claimed by its rulers. A court record, a local account and a household’s own language therefore offer different views of the same large, varied region.

On this page5 sections

Rivers, rainfall and cultivation

The Indus system linked Punjab’s river country with routes toward Kabul, in present-day Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Farther east, the Ganges and Yamuna ran through densely farmed plains and past major towns. The monsoon, the season of heavy rains, sustained cultivation across much of the subcontinent, while rivers carried water and freight. The Ganges and Yamuna flowed toward the Bay of Bengal; the Indus and the five rivers of Punjab ran toward the Arabian Sea. Navigable channels offered routes for bulky goods, though ferries and changing water levels affected movement.

Rainfall and water access helped create distinct working landscapes. In Bengal’s delta, sixteenth-century land reclamation and forest clearing opened new ground for wet-rice cultivation; its rivers also carried people and goods. Gujarat joined farming and manufacturing towns to ports on the Arabian Sea, including Surat. The Deccan plateau had different routes and conditions from the northern plains. Across these environments, rain and flood were supplemented by wells, tanks and canals. A well could feed field channels through water-lifting devices: the simplest, the wooden scoop, worked as a lever where water lay near the surface. Farmers planned sowing, transplanting, irrigation and harvest around local crops and water.

Cultivation also depended on households and service work. Many farming families used their own cattle and tools, paid rent or tax, kept part of the crop for food, and sold some produce to meet cash obligations. Larger landholders could hire workers, while village specialists supplied carpentry, smithing and pottery. A 1574 grant in the district of Dhar, in Malwa in central India, gave Jayanti Das and Narhar Das tax-free fallow land to bring under cultivation. In return they were expected to keep organizing the district and remain useful to the official who made the grant. The record shows how a right to farm could depend on cultivation and local service as well as on a written grant.

Provinces and shifting frontiers

Between 1580 and 1583, Emperor Akbar reorganized his empire into twelve ṣūbas, or provinces; later conquests added more. The Āʾīn-i Akbarī lists sarkārs, or districts, within provincial accounts and records parganas, revenue units, within provinces. Its instructions for a village accountant name the village, pargana, harvest, crops and land to be recorded, linking local production to provincial assessment. These divisions did not make the countryside uniform: an imperial revenue assignment, a hereditary landholder’s rights and a fortified chief’s local authority could occupy the same region.

The map changed with campaigns, alliances and contested routes. Akbar extended Mughal control east along the Ganges basin, incorporating Bihar in 1574 and Bengal in 1576, and gained Gujarat in 1572–73, joining a maritime province and the ports of Surat to northern agricultural centers. Kashmir came under Mughal control in 1586–87, followed by Sind in 1591–92 and parts of the Deccan from 1596 to 1601. Kabul and Kandahar connected the empire with contested routes to Central Asia and Iran; Kandahar changed hands between Mughal and Safavid rulers. In the Deccan, Mughal power grew through conflict with established sultanates, while Maratha forces from western India challenged it. Under Aurangzeb (1658–1707), decades of campaigns extended Mughal rule farther south but did not end Maratha resistance. After his death, governors of provinces including the Deccan, Bengal and Gujarat asserted greater autonomy while continuing to recognize the emperor at Delhi. By the mid-eighteenth century, Mughal territory had contracted sharply, although the dynasty remained on the throne until the British removed Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1857. A provincial label therefore describes a dated administrative claim, not an unchanging frontier.

Akbar’s court also tried to make this expanding territory legible on paper. His courtier and historian, Abu’l-Fazl, compiled the Āʾīn-i Akbarī around 1595. It combines accounts of the imperial household and army with provincial revenue systems, crops, geography and social organization. The work links information about land and crops to provincial revenue and the offices that administered it.

Population and the limits of counting

Population estimates must be read with their territory and method. Historian Shireen Moosvi estimated about 145 million people for all India within the borders that existed before the 1947 partition in 1601. Her calculation combined earlier estimates based on cultivated acreage with revenue statistics and comparisons of agricultural yields and consumption, refining assumptions in both approaches. The total describes a broader region than Mughal authority, including places outside the empire.

People, service and settlement

Mughal elites came from several backgrounds. Court histories and appointments describe Turani nobles associated with Central Asia, Irani nobles associated with Iran, Afghans, Indian Muslim officials and Rajput ruling lineages. Akbar recruited Rajput and other Hindu officials into imperial service. A provincial ruler or chief who entered the service establishment might provide troops and hold rank or a revenue assignment while maintaining links to a home territory. These court categories describe political connections and service, alongside local ties to villages, kin, occupations and religious communities.

Many people encountered imperial power through their work, local officials and revenue demands, while the court remained a distant political center. Rural households farmed, exchanged produce and depended on village craftspeople. Cities brought together soldiers, clerks, artisans, servants and merchants. Merchants might advance money or materials to a weaver in return for an agreed supply of cloth, linking household production to wider markets. The moving court also formed temporary settlements: its officials, artisans, suppliers, animals and guards created demand at successive halting places, and local markets responded to their arrival.

Mountain passes carried traffic between the northern plains and Central Asia, while rivers moved goods among towns and countryside. Provincial geography shaped the practical work of governing: roads and passes carried officials and troops, and distant settlements relied on local intermediaries to connect their affairs to the court.

Languages in government and everyday life

Persian was the main language of Mughal court history, upper administration and elite correspondence. Akbar’s choice of Persian gave officials from different linguistic backgrounds a shared medium for reports and orders, while households and local communities used regional languages. The Āʾīn-i Akbarī’s revenue descriptions, for example, organized information about local crops, land and assessment for readers working in a Persian-writing administration. Persian also carried literary conventions and helped officials communicate between the court and major provincial centers.

That written system depended on multilingual intermediaries. A Persian document could record an agreement among people who did not read Persian themselves. In Malwa, a deed recording compensation for a barber’s family pairs Persian text with witnesses’ signatures in Nagri, a script used for Indian languages, and graphic marks linked to their work. Such records show local participants using more than one language and script in the same transaction. Elsewhere, village accountants kept records in regional languages and scripts alongside Persian paperwork at higher levels of administration.

Babur wrote his memoirs in Chaghatay Turkish, a literary Turkic language of Central Asia. Arabic remained important in Quranic study, law and learned writing. Sanskrit continued in religious and other learned texts, while Braj, Bengali, Gujarati and many other regional languages served poetry, teaching and practical communication. These languages did not occupy interchangeable roles: one might appear in a court chronicle, another in a village account, and another in household conversation.

A manuscript commissioned by Diyanat Khan, a military commander and scholar serving Emperor Aurangzeb, shows how learned writing crossed languages and places. Scribes began copying Arabic and Persian works on music in Delhi in 1662, continued in Ambala and Lahore as the court travelled toward Kashmir, and completed the collection in Delhi in 1665. Diyanat Khan checked some Arabic texts in Lahore and Kashmir. Its colophons, the scribes’ closing notes, trace a particular commission through a moving court and the later work of copying and checking. Court and local records together show Persian administration operating across communities, workplaces and households that used many languages.