Mughal Administration and Mansabdari

Prerequisites

• Foundation: Babur, Humayun and Sher Shah — Sher Shah’s sarkar–pargana units, patta–qabuliyat and dagh–chehra are the raw material of Akbar’s system.
• Akbar to Aurangzeb — the political story behind the institutions.
• The Delhi Sultanate — the iqta system, which the jagir resembles.

The Hook: Words Still Spoken at the Tehsil Office

Why it matters: Prelims loves “match the officer with the function” (Mir Bakhshi, Sadr, Mir Saman), zat vs sawar, and the land classes (polaj, parauti, chachar, banjar). Mains asks about the mansabdari system’s merits and defects and the jagirdari crisis.

The Nature of the Mughal State

• Centralised monarchy: the Padshah was the source of all authority, head of the army, the law and the administration. There was no fixed law of succession (all sons had a claim), which led to wars of succession.
• Theory of kingship: Abul Fazl described sovereignty as farr-i-izidi (फ़र्र-ए-इज़ीदी), a divine light passed from God to the king, which placed the emperor above sectarian divisions. This underpinned sulh-i-kul.
• Bureaucracy: almost every official held a mansab (rank). Civil and military service were not separate.
• Checks and balances: in the provinces the diwan (revenue) reported to the central diwan, not to the governor; news-writers reported independently to the court.

Central Administration

Other central officers: Diwan-i-Khalisa (crown lands), Diwan-i-Tan (salaries and jagirs), Mustaufi (auditor), Daroga-i-Dak Chauki (post and intelligence).

Provincial and Local Administration

Subas (provinces)

• Akbar created the suba (सूबा) system in 1580, with 12 subas: Kabul, Lahore, Multan, Delhi, Agra, Awadh, Allahabad, Bihar, Bengal, Malwa, Ajmer and Gujarat.
• After the Deccan conquests he added Berar, Khandesh and Ahmadnagar, making 15 by the end of his reign.
• The number grew under his successors; counts for Aurangzeb’s reign vary between about 20 and 22, depending on the date and source, after Bijapur and Golconda became subas.

The chain of units

graph TD
    A["Empire
Padshah"] --> B["Suba - province
Subedar, Diwan, Bakhshi,
Sadr, Qazi, Waqia-navis"]
    B --> C["Sarkar - district
Faujdar, Amalguzar"]
    C --> D["Pargana - group of villages
Shiqdar, Amil, Qanungo, Fotedar"]
    D --> E["Village - gaon
Muqaddam, Patwari"]
    B --> F["City
Kotwal"]

The Mansabdari System (मनसबदारी)

What a mansab was

A mansab was a numerical rank given to every officer, civil or military. It fixed his status, his pay, and the number of cavalry he had to maintain for the emperor. A holder was a mansabdar.

Zat and sawar

From about 1595–96, each mansab was expressed as two numbers:

Three classes within each zat rank:

Controls against fraud

• Dagh (दाग़): branding of horses with the imperial mark, so the same horse could not be shown twice at muster.
• Chehra (चेहरा): descriptive roll of each trooper.
• Regular musters before the Bakhshi.

Later changes

Jagirdari (जागीरदारी)

Mansabdars were paid in one of two ways:

1. Naqdi: in cash from the treasury.
2. Jagir: the right to collect revenue from an assigned area equal to the salary. The holder was a jagirdar.

Key principle: the jagirdar got only the right to revenue, not ownership of the land or judicial power over it. Frequent transfers stopped nobles from building local power bases, but also gave them no reason to invest in the land, encouraging short-term squeezing of peasants.

Land Revenue: From Sher Shah to Todar Mal

Akbar’s experiments

The dahsala / zabti system

• Land was measured (the measurement-based method is called zabt). Akbar replaced the hemp rope with a bamboo tanab joined with iron rings, which did not shrink or stretch, and standardised the Ilahi gaz.
• The average produce of each crop over the previous ten years (and average prices) was worked out.
• The state’s share, generally one-third of the average produce, was fixed as a cash rate per bigha for each crop.
• Areas with similar productivity were grouped into assessment circles (dasturs) with their own cash rates.
• Applied in the core provinces (Lahore to Allahabad, Malwa, Gujarat); other areas used other methods.

Land classes (by continuity of cultivation)

Polaj and parauti were further graded as good, middling and bad.

Other methods in use

Peasant support: taccavi (तक़ावी) loans for seed, cattle and wells; remissions in years of drought or flood.

Zamindars: hereditary local rights-holders who collected revenue from peasants and kept a share; a powerful intermediate class that sometimes led revolts against the Mughals.

Coinage: the rupaya (silver), dam (copper; 40 dams = 1 rupee in Akbar’s accounts) and the gold mohur. Revenue was assessed in dams.

Chhattisgarh Angle

• Chhattisgarh was not under direct Mughal revenue administration; the Kalachuris of Ratanpur and Raipur and the forest chiefdoms remained in place. But Mughal institutions reached the region through its later rulers.
• The Marathas took Ratanpur in 1741 (variously 1740). From 1787 to 1818 the Bhonsles of Nagpur governed Chhattisgarh as a suba through a subedar, the same Mughal-derived title, and later subedars introduced a pargana system. The British then built their settlement records on these layers. See the Maratha suba system in Chhattisgarh.
• That is why the patwari, qanungo, tehsildar and kotwal of today’s administration have Mughal-era names. For the modern structure, see Formation of the State and Administrative Structure.

Memory Tricks

Don’t Confuse

Common Mistakes

Practice

All questions below are original practice questions written in CGPSC style. They are not previous-year questions.

Level 1: Foundation

1. Under the Mughals, land left fallow for five years or more was called ______.
2. The officer in charge of the imperial household and karkhanas was the ______.
3. A mansabdar of 3,000 zat and 3,000 sawar belonged to the ______ class.

Level 2: Prelims MCQs

Q1. Consider the following statements about the Mughal mansabdari system:

1. The zat rank indicated the personal status and salary of the mansabdar.
2. A mansabdar whose sawar rank was less than half of his zat rank belonged to the second class.
3. Jahangir’s du-aspa sih-aspa arrangement raised a noble’s sawar obligation without raising his zat.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) 1 only
• (b) 1 and 3 only
• (c) 2 and 3 only
• (d) 1, 2 and 3

Q2. Match List I (Officer) with List II (Function):

• (a) A-4, B-2, C-1, D-3
• (b) A-4, B-1, C-2, D-3
• (c) A-1, B-4, C-2, D-3
• (d) A-4, B-1, C-3, D-2

Q3. The Ain-i-Dahsala introduced in 1580 fixed the revenue on the basis of:

• (a) the actual crop shared at the threshing floor each year
• (b) an estimate of the standing crop by inspection
• (c) the average produce and prices of the previous ten years, converted into cash rates
• (d) the amount the village had paid in the previous year

Q4. Which of the following pairs is not correctly matched?

• (a) Polaj — land cultivated every year
• (b) Parauti — land left fallow for a year or two
• (c) Chachar — land left fallow for five years or more
• (d) Banjar — the lowest-assessed class of land

Level 3: Mains Answer Writing

Q1. (150–200 words) Explain the main features of the Mughal mansabdari system. How did its weaknesses contribute to the decline of the empire?

Q2. (60 words) Distinguish between the zabti and batai systems of land revenue.

Quick Revision Table

Key Takeaways

What’s Next

• Art and Architecture — what the surplus of this system paid for
• Later Mughals and Decline — how the jagirdari crisis played out after 1707
• Maratha Rule in Chhattisgarh — the suba system in our own state
• Public Administration — modern administrative concepts for GS-I answers