Mughal Armies and Military Service

From the Mughal dynasty founded by Babur in 1526 through its final years in 1857–58, emperors organized cavalry, infantry and artillery through ranked officers and local service. Abu’l Fazl describes the system under Akbar (r. 1556–1605); The French physician François Bernier’s account of Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) follows the moving court on a Kashmir campaign in the 1660s. Their examples show how inspection, local armed service and transport supported different operations.

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Command and ranked service

A mansab was an imperial rank held by a mansabdar, an officer in civil or military service. Under Akbar, the ranking system placed officials in a hierarchy whose nominal basis was the number of cavalry they were associated with. The zat rank expressed an officer’s personal standing, while sawar specified the mounted service expected of him. The emperor appointed and reviewed officers, and could raise or lower their rank. At muster, officials recorded the men and horses actually presented against that stated service.

An officer needed resources to meet that obligation. Many mansabdars received a jagir, an assignment of revenue from specified districts, to fund their household and service; it did not make them owners of all the land there. Collection still depended on local officials and landholders. Akbar’s effort to pay salaries in cash met resistance, and he returned to jagirs as the basis of much noble remuneration.

Mansabdars commonly gathered followers through clan and household ties, bringing men who trusted a commander into imperial service. Akbar also drew Rajput rulers and other Indian officers into the court hierarchy, while nobles of Central Asian and Iranian origin remained important.

Muster, inspection and the cavalry obligation

Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari, a late-sixteenth-century account of Akbar’s administration, describes how officials checked a stated establishment against the men and horses presented at muster. Clerks recorded each trooper’s identifying marks, age, father’s name, residence and community. Five experienced officers inspected the men, horses and stipulated pay; they entered and countersigned the amount on the descriptive roll. After the roll received further official certification, a branding officer marked the horse. The certified record and brand tied a named soldier to a particular mount and pay claim.

A translator’s note in the digital volume, quoting chronicler Badauni, describes commanders who released their usual mounted attendants after receiving a jagir and then presented borrowed soldiers at a muster; traders also brought borrowed horses to be branded. This account explains why officials matched names and horse brands against the muster roll.

The horse itself affected an officer’s costs and a trooper’s pay. Abu’l Fazl’s schedule differentiates rates by horse type and describes officials assessing quality before recording a trooper’s establishment. Horses needed fodder, water, grooms and replacement when lost. At Akbar’s imperial stables, a larger service staff included accountants and inspectors as well as saddlers, trainers, grooms, veterinary workers and water carriers. The Ain assigns one groom to every two horses. Elephants also had formal ranks, keepers and food allowances; Abu’l Fazl says they were inspected for riding or burden-carrying. These court arrangements show how much service work supported mounted and transport animals.

The Ain also describes ahadis, individually enrolled imperial troopers who served directly under the state. At their four-month muster, a certificate signed by finance and military officers authorized a treasury receipt. Each trooper received one month’s salary in advance; over the year, he was paid cash for ten months, after a one-twentieth deduction for his horses and other expenses. This payment chain joined muster to treasury records. Cavalry serving through mansabdars followed a different arrangement. Under Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658), a mansabdar mustered one-third of his stated cavalry requirement when his service posting and revenue assignment lay in the same province and one-quarter when they lay in different provinces. For the campaign toward Balkh in northern Afghanistan and Samarqand in Uzbekistan, the order temporarily reduced the share to one-fifth.

Infantry, firearms and specialist work

Mughal forces also included foot soldiers and people whose work supported fighting. Abu’l Fazl’s account of dakhili infantry says that a fixed number of state-paid foot soldiers was assigned to each mansabdar. One quarter carried matchlocks and the others bows; carpenters, ironworkers, water carriers and pioneers, military workers assigned to engineering tasks, were also listed among the supporting personnel. The roster combined fighting units with technical and transport support.

A matchlock was a shoulder-fired gun whose lock lowered a smouldering cord into a small pan of priming powder. The flash passed through a touchhole into the barrel and ignited its main charge. Akbar’s Ain lists separate pay grades and responsible officers for imperial matchlock troops. Other infantry categories guarded the palace or carried loads. Bernier describes two kinds of artillery in Aurangzeb’s Kashmir campaign: heavy cannon and smaller “artillery of the stirrup.” He says two to three hundred light camels carried small field pieces, while fifty or sixty additional brass pieces travelled on wheeled carriages with ammunition chests.

Local armed service and campaign supply

Imperial commanders did not draw every soldier from a central roster. Zamindars, a varied category of local landholders and chiefs, maintained armed followers, mostly foot soldiers with smaller numbers of horsemen and some elephants. Historian Nandini Chatterjee cites Abu’l Fazl’s figures for the sarkar (administrative division) of Mandu in central India: its zamindars were reported to maintain 1,180 horsemen and 2,526 foot soldiers. Within that division, the district of Dhar had 120 horsemen and 150 foot soldiers.

A mansabdar could call on zamindars for additional troops, especially to suppress a rebellion. The same retainers could fight rival landholders or hold off imperial tax officials. This placed local armed power inside the empire’s military system while giving chiefs forces to defend their own interests.

Food and transport posed another recurring problem. A 2024 study by R. B. Azad Choudhary argues that Mughal expeditions relied on Banjaras, mobile grain traders who carried provisions to towns and armies, because the state lacked a dedicated department to deliver all army rations and fodder. In a Malwa record discussed by historian Nandini Chatterjee, a sealed dastak, or travel pass, allowed named Banjara traders to buy grain without specified taxes. Such permission helped traders move provisions through checkpoints; supplies depended on their caravans and the availability of animals and routes.

Campaign baggage could also be moved through begar, forced unpaid labor imposed for particular tasks on some rural communities. Historian Shireen Moosvi notes that Akbar in 1597 and Shah Jahan in 1641 ordered an end to specified forms of this labor in Kashmir, while an inscription at Akbar’s fort in Srinagar, built in 1598, states that workers there were paid. These dated cases show both the use of compelled carrying work and rulers’ efforts to prohibit it in particular settings.

Bernier’s account of Aurangzeb’s 1660s journey through Kashmir, a Himalayan valley north of the Mughal heartland, describes how terrain shaped the travelling force. To limit pressure on local provisions, the emperor restricted each attending noble to twenty-five troopers for every hundred normally available. At a mountain pass an officer counted those entering; camels were left on steep paths, and porters carried baggage. Some porters came from the governor and neighbouring rajas, local rulers, while others worked for wages set by the weight carried.

Bernier also describes the camp’s night security. Nobles kept watchmen around their quarters, guards stood at intervals around the army, and the grand provost, the senior officer overseeing camp order, sent patrols through the bazaars. During a large river crossing, the emperor kept the camp back from the boat bridges and allowed several days for the army to pass.

Siege work and the cost of taking a fort

At Chittor in Rajasthan, India, Akbar’s army besieged the fort from 1567 to 1568. Abu’l Fazl’s court chronicle says defenders reinforced the walls and stored provisions. Imperial troops opened several breaches and advanced toward the principal gap, where defenders packed cloth, cotton and oil-smeared faggots, bundles of sticks, ready to set them alight as attackers entered. After Jaimal, the fort’s commander, was killed, the defenders abandoned that breach; imperial troops entered at dawn on 23 February 1568.