Transport and Travel in Mughal South Asia

From the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, journeys across Mughal South Asia carried people, baggage and supplies between towns, rivers and mountain passes. Routes were shaped by purpose and terrain: a pilgrim might walk to a shrine, while an imperial court brought servants, animals, tents and markets with it. At Dhaka, in present-day Bangladesh, an endowed lodging complex welcomed travellers in the Mughal province of Bengal.

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Pilgrimage gave walking a public meaning

In 1568, Emperor Akbar walked from Chitor, in present-day Rajasthan, India, to Ajmer, also in Rajasthan, fulfilling a vow made before the siege of Chitor. In 1570 he walked from Agra to Ajmer after the birth of his first son. From 1572 onward, he regularly walked at least the final stage of the route to the shrine of Muinuddin Chishti, a Sufi teacher whose tradition emphasizes spiritual devotion within Islam. In 1574 he rode from Fatehpur Sikri to a camp outside Ajmer, then continued on foot; a contemporary chronicler suggests nobles were expected to walk with him. By walking the final stretch before reaching the shrine, Akbar made the journey’s devotional purpose visible to the nobles and other travellers who accompanied him.

Other court travellers could be carried. Abu’l Fazl’s late-sixteenth-century Ain-i Akbari, an account of Akbar’s government and household, describes specialized foot bearers carrying palanquins, covered litters held on poles, and other seats on their shoulders. The bearers could keep a passenger’s ride steady through mountains and valleys. The account says that several thousand served at court; carrying a passenger shifted the effort of the journey from the rider to the bearers.

Mountains changed the loads and the workforce

During Emperor Aurangzeb’s 1663 march to Kashmir, the French traveller François Bernier describes spending more than two months in Lahore, in present-day Pakistan, waiting for snowmelt. He bought a smaller Kashmir tent because his larger tent would be costly to carry and difficult to place in the mountains. On the steep, rocky route, the emperor left most camels behind. A few elephants carried baggage and the women of the court, while mules and human porters took other loads. A royal order set porters’ pay at ten crowns for every hundred pounds of baggage.

River crossings could delay a whole procession. Bernier describes an army crossing on two bridges made from boats, with planks forming the walkway. Earth and straw covered the boards to help cattle keep their footing. At the banks, loose sand broke into pits under the crowd of animals, and horses and laden oxen fell. The emperor spread the crossing over several days so the army could reach the far bank in sequence.

Bernier notes that Bengal rice travelled up the Ganges to Patna; he separately reports that rice from Bengal was exported by sea.

Bernier reports that heavy rains damaged houses in Lahore and floods shifted the river beside the city. He also describes the monsoon, the seasonal rains, as lasting for several months in Bengal but more briefly around Delhi and Agra, with timing that varied by year and region.

Moving camps depended on workers and markets

Akbar’s camp required a second stream of movement ahead of the emperor. Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari describes a staggered arrangement: Farrashes, or tent workers, pitched one camp at a site selected by Mir Manzils, while the furnishings of another were sent ahead to await the emperor. For each encampment, the account lists one hundred elephants, five hundred camels, four hundred carts and one hundred bearers. It also assigns hundreds of workers to prepare the ground, carry water, build or repair equipment and keep the camp clean. The arrangement made tent transport a coordinated operation: animals and carts moved equipment while workers erected, supplied and maintained it.

In Bernier’s account of a later imperial camp, shopkeepers and their families moved with the army. Camels browsed at the end of a march, while traders searched nearby villages for fodder and sold what they collected in the camp. Prices changed with what the sellers could find and what the travelling market needed. The court’s movement thus brought demand for animal feed and food into the villages along its route.

Lodging, permissions and carrying

A sarai was a lodging place where travellers could rest and shelter their animals and goods. In Dhaka, in present-day Bangladesh, the seventeenth-century Bara Katra was endowed for travellers. Its inscription assigned income from twenty-two shops to the building’s upkeep and allowed deserving guests to stay without rent.

In 1663, an order addressed to Nayak Singha and other Banjara traders, mobile grain and cattle merchants, allowed them to buy grain in pargana Dhar, a district of Malwa in central India. The 1663 order stated that villages could not tax these purchases and instructed local officials to follow its terms.

Carriage was also imposed as unpaid service. Begar meant compulsory unpaid labour; the historian Shireen Moosvi notes that it could involve carrying baggage, often demanded for occasional tasks from particular rural communities. Mughal emperors issued orders against begar in Kashmir: Akbar in 1597 and Shah Jahan in 1641 prohibited unpaid work that included carrying timber and firewood.