Mughal administration: mansabdari, jagirdari and revenue

The Mughal empire at its height governed perhaps a hundred million people or more across most of the subcontinent. It did so not through a huge bureaucracy of salaried clerks in every village but through a clever combination: a hierarchy of ranked nobles, paid by assignments of land revenue, collected through a detailed assessment system. Understanding how these three pieces fitted together — and how they eventually jammed — is the core of Mughal administration for UPSC.

The central structure

Akbar deliberately divided power among several ministers so that no single noble could dominate.

Provinces (subas) were governed by a subedar, with a provincial diwan, bakhshi and other officers reporting separately to the centre. Subas were divided into sarkars, and sarkars into parganas, where officials such as the qanungo kept revenue records.

The mansabdari system

Introduced in a systematic form by Akbar, the mansabdari system ranked every officer — civil or military — in a single hierarchy.

• A mansab was a rank, expressed as a number.
• From around the 1590s, each mansab had two components:
  • Zat — the personal rank, determining status and personal salary.
  • Sawar — the number of cavalrymen the mansabdar was required to maintain.
• Mansabs ranged from very small numbers to thousands; the highest ranks were reserved for princes and the most senior nobles.
• Mansabs were not hereditary. Appointments, promotions and dismissals depended on the emperor.
• To prevent fraud, the Mughals revived dagh (branding of horses) and chehra (descriptive rolls of soldiers) from the Sultanate period.

The nobility included Turanis, Iranis, Afghans, Indian Muslims and, notably, Rajputs — whose inclusion was central to Akbar's policy of integrating powerful regional elites into the empire.

The jagirdari system

Most mansabdars were paid not in cash but through a jagir — an assignment of the land revenue of a specified territory, equal in estimated value to their salary.

• The jagirdar had the right to collect revenue, not ownership of the land.
• Jagirs were regularly transferred, usually every few years, to prevent jagirdars from building local roots.
• Khalisa land was reserved for the imperial treasury directly.
• Some areas remained with hereditary chiefs as watan jagirs, especially Rajput homelands.

The frequent transfers had a side effect: a jagirdar with a short tenure had little interest in the long-term prosperity of the peasants and every incentive to extract as much as possible quickly.

Land revenue: Todar Mal and the zabt

Land revenue was the empire's financial foundation. Under Akbar, Raja Todar Mal developed the system known as zabt.

• Land was measured, and categorised by how regularly it was cultivated:

• In the dahsala system (introduced around 1580), the average produce and average prices of the previous ten years were used to fix a cash revenue rate for each crop in each area.
• Revenue was generally set at about one-third of the average produce, payable in cash.
• Other methods continued in some regions — crop-sharing (batai) and estimation (kankut).

The zabt system required detailed measurement and records, and it was most fully applied in the core northern provinces.

Sources worth knowing

• Ain-i-Akbari, part of the Akbarnama by Abul Fazl — the most detailed account of Akbar's administration, including revenue statistics.
• Accounts by European travellers such as François Bernier, who described the Mughal system — and, some argue, exaggerated the absence of private property in land.

The jagirdari crisis

Historians such as Satish Chandra have argued that a crisis of the jagirdari system contributed significantly to the empire's decline in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

The argument in brief:

1. The number of mansabdars grew rapidly, especially under Aurangzeb's Deccan campaigns, which brought in many Deccani and Maratha nobles.
2. The revenue-yielding land available for jagirs did not grow at the same pace.
3. This led to be-jagiri — nobles holding ranks without jagirs — and fierce competition for good jagirs.
4. Jagirdars on short, uncertain tenures pressed peasants harder, contributing to agrarian distress and revolts.
5. The nobility split into factions, weakening the centre.

Other historians emphasise the agrarian crisis, regional assertions (Marathas, Sikhs, Jats), and the growing autonomy of provincial governors. A balanced answer shows how these factors interacted.

Continuities and legacy

• The idea of assessing land revenue on measured land and average produce influenced later British revenue settlements.
• District-level record-keeping (qanungo, patwari) continued in adapted forms.
• The ranking of officials in a single hierarchy anticipated later bureaucratic grading.

Practice questions

1. Prelims-type: What did the terms zat and sawar denote? Who is associated with the dahsala system?
2. Mains-type (150 words): How did the mansabdari and jagirdari systems work together? What were their weaknesses?
3. Mains-type (250 words): "The crisis of the jagirdari system was central to the decline of the Mughal empire." Discuss.