Raqami

Extract

In chapter 15 of the Ain-i-Akbari (translation, ii, p. 88), Abul Fazl says that when Khwaja Abdul Majid Asaf Khan was Vazir the jama-i-witayat was raqami. The late Mr. Moreland in The Agrarian System of Moslem India (App. E, pp. 238 sqq.) came to the conclusion that jama-i-witayat meant the valuation of land revenue, but he was unable to explain the term raqami with certainty. Its meaning here is of importance in the history of land revenue assessment, and various guesses had been made to explain it. Jarrett (Ain., trs., ii, p. 88) thought it meant “estimated”, while Beveridge (Akbarnama, trs., ii, p. 402, n. 2) suggested that it might refer (a) to the system of arithmetical notation known in India as raqam or siyāq which is based on contractions of Arabic names of numbers, or (b) to assessment depending on the kind of produce, raqam being used in the sense of description.