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Towards an interpretation of the Mughal Empire1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

M. Athar Ali
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Extract

It is nowadays common for Indian history textbooks to treat the various “empires” that successively occupied the stage of Indian history, with their respective “administrations”, as so many successive repetitions with merely different names for offices and institutions that in substance remained the same: namely, the King, the Ministers, the Provinces, the Governors, the Taxes, Landgrants, and so on. But D. D. Kosambi, in his Introduction to the study of Indian history (Bombay, 1975), rightly observed that this repetitive succession cannot be assumed, and that each regime, when subjected to critical study, displays distinct elements that call for its analysis in the context of “relations of production” (as he put it) existing at that time.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 110 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 38 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1978

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References

NOTES

2 Havell, E. B., A history of Aryan rule in India, London, n.d., 520–1.Google Scholar

3 Barthold, V. V., “Irān”, tr. Nariman, G. K., in Posthumous works of G. K. Nariman, ed. Jhabvala, S. H., Bombay, 1935, 142–3.Google Scholar

4 “It will thus be seen that Babur had not merely to conquer a kingdom; he had to create a theory of kingship. He was determined to be no sultan, hampered by all limitations which had beset the Lodi dynasty; but a pādshāh, looking down upon even his highest amīrs from the towering eminence upon which the divine right of Timur's blood had placed him” (An empire builder of the sixteenth century, London, 1918, 161).Google Scholar

5 “The Chaghatai conqueror Bābar came to India with ideas (of Sovereignty) that were not quite similar to those of either the early Turkish rulers of Delhi or the Afghans” (Some aspects of Muslim administration, Allahabad, 1936, 105, et seq.).Google Scholar

6 Khan, Iqtidar Alam, “The Turko-Mongol theory of kingship”, in Medieval India: A miscellany, II, 1972, 8–18.Google Scholar

7 Siddiqi, Iqtidar Husain, Some aspects of Afghan despotism in India, Aligarh, 1971, 1–60.Google Scholar

8 “Sher Shāh Afghān was not a king (malik) but an angel (malak). In six years he gave such stability to the structure that the foundations still survive”(B.M. MS Add. 16859, f. 19a).

9 This curious fact is not mentioned in the Indian chronicles. But it is the title Dāwar Bakhsh assumes in his farmān of 1627 to Rāja Jai Singh (Bikaner, old serial No. 176, New S.021). This is corroborated by the Tārīkh-i 'ālam ārā-i 'Abbāsī, Tehran ed., A.H. 1314, 750.

10 Qaisar, A. J., Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Delhi Session, 1961, 155–7.Google Scholar

11 Siyāsatnāma, ed. Scheffer, C., Paris, 1891–1893, 28.Google Scholar

12 cf. Habib, Irfan, Argarian system of Mughal India, 1556–1707, London, 1963, 256 ff.Google Scholar

13 cf. Moreland, W. H., “Rank (Mansab) in the Mughal state service”, JRAS, 1936, 641–65;Google ScholarHabib, Irfan, “The Mansab system, 1595–1637”, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Patiala Session, 1968, 221 ff.Google Scholar

14 cf. Hasan, S. Nurul, “The mahzar of Akbar's reign”, Journal of U.P. Hist. Soc., XVI, 1968, 126.Google Scholar

15 cf. Khan, Iqtidar Alam in JRAS, 1968, 34–5.Google Scholar

16 A'īn-i akbarī, 3Google Scholar

17 For the text of the nīshān, see Shyamaldas, Kaviraj, Vir Vinod, 11, 419–20 note.Google Scholar

18 Dabistān-i mazāhib, ed. Ashraf, Nazar, Calcutta, 1809, 432.Google Scholar

19 See my article, “Foundations of Akbar's organization of the nobility: An interpretation”. Medieval India Quarterly, III, Nos. 3 and 4, 1958, 80–7.Google Scholar

20 ‘Iṣāmī, Futūh al-salāṭfn, ed. Usha, , 515.Google Scholar

21 cf. Habib, Irfan, “Social distribution of landed property in pre-British India”, Enquiry, old series No. 12, 54–6.Google Scholar

22 Dr. Ahsan Raza Khan in his unpublished thesis on the chiefs under Akbar has collected interesting data about the chiefs (high zamīndārs) who were granted manṣabs under Akbar.

23 Lāhorī, , Bādshāhnāma, I, 139–40.Google Scholar

24 Tehran ed., A.H. 1214.

25 e.g. in his 17th regnal year.

26 These data are based (a) on the Ā'īn-i akbarī's list of manṣabdārs; (b) on Irfan Habib's list (unpublished) of manṣabdārs under Jahāngīr, mainly based on the Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī, and (c) on Wāriṣ, Bādshāhnāma, Ethe, 329, for the list of manṣabdārs in 1656. The racial composition has been established by detailed checking with the biographical information in the chronicles (e.g. Lāhorī) as well as the Zakhirat al-khawānān and the Ma'āṣir al-‘umarā’. (d) and (e) are based on the list of manṣabdārs of Aurangzeb's reign given in my book, The Mughal nobility under Aurangzeb, London, 1966.Google Scholar

27 cf. Wright, H. N., The Coinage and metrology of the Sultans of Delhi, Delhi, 1936, 260–1;Google ScholarHabib, Irfan, IESHR, IV, 1967, 217–9.Google Scholar

28 Lāhorī, , Bādshāhnāma, II, 715.Google Scholar

29 See my Mughal nobility under Aurangzeb, 154 ff.Google Scholar

30 Ā 'īn-i akbarī, III, 22.

31 Bernier, , Travels in the Mogul Empire, Bombay, 1934, 324, 339.Google Scholar

32 Ā'īn-i akbarī, I, 24.

33 Kishmī, Muḥammad Hāshim, Zubdat al-Maqāmāt, Mahmud Press, Lucknow, A.H. 1302, 131.Google Scholar

34 cf. Qanungo, , Dara Shukoh, Calcutta, 1935–, 78 ff.Google Scholar

35 Muḥammad Baqa, Miāt al- 'ālam, MS Aligarh; ‘Abd al-Salām, 84/314, Pairaish III.

36 Rizvi, S. A., Muslim revivalist movements in northern India in the 16th and 17th centuries, Agra, 1965, 268–70.Google Scholar