India The reign of Akbar the Great

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » Extension and consolidation of the empire

Akbar (ruled 1556–1605) was proclaimed emperor amid gloomy circumstances. Delhi and Agra were threatened by Hemu—the Hindu general of the Sūr ruler, ʿĀdil Shah—and Mughal governors were being driven from all parts of northern India. Akbar’s hold over a fraction of the Punjab—the only territory in his possession—was disputed by Sikandar Sūr and was precarious. There was also disloyalty among Akbar’s own followers. The task before Akbar was to reconquer the empire and consolidate it by ensuring control over its frontiers and, moreover, by providing it with a firm administrative machinery. He received unstinting support from the regent, Bayram Khan, until 1560. The Mughal victory at Panipat (November 1556) and the subsequent recovery of Mankot, Gwalior, and Jaunpur demolished the Afghan threat in upper India.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » Extension and consolidation of the empire » The early years

Until 1560 the administration of Akbar’s truncated empire was in the hands of Bayram Khan. Bayram’s regency was momentous in the history of India. At its end the Mughal dominion embraced the whole of the Punjab, the territory of Delhi, what are now the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal in the north (as far as Jaunpur in the east), and large tracts of what is now Rajasthan in the west.

Akbar, however, soon became restless under Bayram Khan’s tutelage. Influenced by his former wet nurse, Maham Anaga, and his mother, Ḥamīdah Bānū Begam, he was persuaded to dismiss him (March 1560). Four ministers of mediocre ability then followed in quick succession. Although not yet his own master, Akbar took a few momentous steps during that period. He conquered Malwa (1561) and marched rapidly to Sarangpur to punish Adham Khan, the captain in charge of the expedition, for improper conduct. Second, he appointed Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Atgah Khan as prime minister (November 1561). Third, at about the same time, he took possession of Chunar, which had always defied Humāyūn.

The most momentous events of 1562 were Akbar’s marriage to a Rajput princess, daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber, and the conquest of Merta in Rajasthan. The marriage led to a firm alliance between the Mughals and the Rajputs.

By the end of June 1562, Akbar had freed himself completely from the influence of the harem party, headed by Maham Anaga, her son Adham Khan, and some other ambitious courtiers. The harem leaders murdered the prime minister, Atgah Khan, who was then succeeded by Munʿim Khan.

From about the middle of 1562, Akbar took upon himself the great task of shaping his policies, leaving them to be implemented by his agents. He embarked on a policy of conquest, establishing control over Jodhpur, Bhatha (present-day Rewa), and the Gakkhar country between the Indus and Beas rivers in the Punjab. Next he made inroads into Gondwana. During this period he ended discrimination against the Hindus by abolishing pilgrimage taxes in 1563 and the hated jizyah (poll tax on non-Muslims) in 1564.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » Extension and consolidation of the empire » Struggle for firm personal control

Akbar thus commanded the entire area of Humāyūn’s Indian possessions. By the mid-1560s he had also developed a new pattern of king-noble relationship that suited the current need of a centralized state to be defended by a nobility of diverse ethnic and religious groups. He insisted on assessing the arrears of the territories under the command of the old Tūrānī (Central Asian) clans and, in order to strike a balance in the ruling class, promoted the Persians (Irānī), the Indian Muslims, and the Rajputs in the imperial service. Akbar placed eminent clan leaders in charge of frontier areas and staffed the civil and finance departments with relatively new non-Tūrānī recruits. The revolts in 1564–74 by the members of the old guard—the Uzbeks, the Mirzās, the Qāqshāls, and the Atgah Khails—showed the intensity of their indignation over the change. Utilizing the Muslim orthodoxy’s resentment over Akbar’s liberal views, they organized their last resistance in 1580. The rebels proclaimed Akbar’s half-brother, Mirzā Ḥakīm, the ruler of Kabul, and he moved into the Punjab as their king. Akbar crushed the opposition ruthlessly.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » Extension and consolidation of the empire » Subjugation of Rajasthan

Rajasthan occupied a prominent place in Akbar’s scheme of conquest; without establishing his suzerainty over that region, he would have no title to the sovereignty of northern India. Rajasthan also bordered on Gujarat, a centre of commerce with the countries of western Asia and Europe. In 1567 Akbar invaded Chitor, the capital of Mewar; in February 1568 the fort fell into his hands. Chitor was constituted a district, and Āṣaf Khan was appointed its governor. But the western half of Mewar remained in the possession of Rana Udai Singh. Later, his son Rana Pratap Singh, following his defeat by the Mughals at Haldighat (1576), continued to raid until his death in 1597, when his son Amar Singh assumed the mantle. The fall of Chitor and then of Ranthambor (1569) brought almost all of Rajasthan under Akbar’s suzerainty.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » Extension and consolidation of the empire » Conquest of Gujarat and Bengal

Akbar’s next objective was the conquest of Gujarat and Bengal, which had connected Hindustan with the trading world of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Gujarat had lately been a haven of the refractory Mughal nobles, and in Bengal and Bihar the Afghans under Dāʾūd Karrānī still posed a serious threat. Akbar conquered Gujarat at his second attempt in 1573 and celebrated by building a victory gate, the lofty Buland Darwāza (“High Gate”), at his new capital, Fatehpur Sikri. The conquest of Gujarat pushed the Mughal Empire’s frontiers to the sea. Akbar’s encounters with the Portuguese aroused his curiosity about their religion and culture. He did not show much interest in what was taking place overseas, but he appreciated the political and commercial significance of bringing the other gateway to his empire’s international trade—namely, Bengal—under his firm control. He was in Patna in 1574, and by July 1576 Bengal was a part of the empire, even if some local chiefs continued to agitate for some years more. Later, Man Singh, governor of Bihar, also annexed Orissa and thus consolidated the Mughal gains in the east.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » Extension and consolidation of the empire » The frontiers

On the northwest frontier Kabul, Kandahār, and Ghaznī were not simply strategically significant; these towns linked India through overland trade with central and western Asia and were crucial for securing horses for the Mughal cavalry. Akbar strengthened his grip over these outposts in the 1580s and ’90s.

Following Ḥakīm’s death and a threatened Uzbek invasion, Akbar brought Kabul under his direct control. To demonstrate his strength, the Mughal army paraded through Kashmir, Baluchistan, Sindh, and the various tribal districts of the region. In 1595, before his return, Akbar wrested Kandahār from the Ṣafavids, thus fixing the northwestern frontiers. In the east, Man Singh stabilized the Mughal gains by annexing Orissa, Cooch Behar, and a large part of Bengal. Conquest of Kathiawar and later of Asirgarh and the northern territory of the Niẓām Shāhī kingdom of Ahmadnagar ensured a firm command over Gujarat and central India. At Akbar’s death in October 1605, the Mughal Empire extended to the entire area north of the Godavari River, with the exceptions of Gondwana in central India and Assam in the northeast.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » The state and society under Akbar

More than for its military victories, the empire under Akbar is noted for a sound administrative framework and a coherent policy that gave the Mughal regime a firm footing and sustained it for about 150 years.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » The state and society under Akbar » Central, provincial, and local government

Akbar’s central government consisted of four departments, each presided over by a minister: the prime minister (wakīl), the finance minister (dīwān, or vizier [wazīr]), the paymaster general (mīr bakhshī), and the chief justice and religious official combined (ṣadr al-ṣudūr). They were appointed, promoted, and dismissed by the emperor, and their duties were well defined.

The empire was divided into 15 provinces (subahs)—Allahabad, Agra, Ayodhya (Avadh), Ajmer, Ahmedabad (Ahmadabad), Bihar, Bengal, Delhi, Kabul, Lahore, Multan, Malka, Qhandesh, Berar, and Ahmadnagar. Kashmir and Kandahār were districts of the province of Kabul. Sindh, then known as Thatta, was a district in the province of Multan. Orissa formed a part of Bengal. The provinces were not of uniform area or income. There were in each province a governor, a dīwān, a bakhshī (military commander), a ṣadr (religious administrator), and a qāḍī (judge) and agents who supplied information to the central government. Separation of powers among the various officials (in particular, between the governor and the dīwān) was a significant operating principle in imperial administration.

The provinces were divided into districts (sarkārs). Each district had a fowjdār (a military officer whose duties roughly corresponded to those of a collector); a qāḍī; a kotwāl, who looked after sanitation, the police, and the administration; a bitikchī (head clerk); and a khazānedār (treasurer).

Every town of consequence had a kotwāl. The village communities conducted their affairs through pancayats (councils) and were more or less autonomous units.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » The state and society under Akbar » The composition of the Mughal nobility

Within the first three decades of Akbar’s reign, the imperial elite had grown enormously. As the Central Asian nobles had generally been nurtured on the Turko-Mongol tradition of sharing power with the royalty—an arrangement incompatible with Akbar’s ambition of structuring the Mughal centralism around himself—the emperor’s principal goal was to reduce their strength and influence. The emperor encouraged new elements to join his service, and Iranians came to form an important block of the Mughal nobility. Akbar also looked for new men of Indian background. Indian Afghans, being the principal opponents of the Mughals, were obviously to be kept at a distance, but the Sayyids of Baraha, the Bukhārī Sayyids, and the Kambūs among the Indian Muslims were specially favoured for high military and civil positions. More significant was the recruitment of Hindu Rajput leaders into the Mughal nobility. This was a major step, even if not completely new in Indo-Islamic history, leading to a standard pattern of relationship between the Mughal autocracy and the local despotism. Each Rajput chief, along with his sons and close relatives, received high rank, pay, perquisites, and an assurance that they could retain their age-old customs, rituals, and beliefs as Hindu warriors. In return the Rajputs not only publicly expressed their allegiance but also offered active military service to the Mughals and, if called upon to do so, willingly gave daughters in marriage to the emperor or his sons. The Rajput chiefs retained control over their ancestral holdings and additionally, in return for their services, received watans (land assignments outside their homelands) in the empire. The Mughal emperor, however, asserted his right as a “paramount.” He treated the Rajput chiefs as zamindars (landholders), not as rulers. Like all local zamindars, they paid tribute, submitted to the Mughals, and received a patent of office. Akbar thus obtained a wide base for Mughal power among thousands of Rajput warriors who controlled large and small parcels of the countryside throughout much of his empire.

The Mughal nobility came to comprise mainly the Central Asians (Tūrānīs), Iranians (Irānīs), Afghans, Indian Muslims of diverse subgroups, and Rajputs. Both historical circumstances and a planned imperial policy contributed to the integration of this complex and heterogeneous ruling class into a single imperial service. The emperor saw to it that no single ethnic or religious group was large enough to challenge his supreme authority.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » The state and society under Akbar » Organization of the nobility and the army

In order to organize his civil and military personnel, Akbar devised a system of ranks, or manṣabs, based on the “decimal” system of army organization used by the early Delhi sultans and the Mongols. The manṣabdārs (rank holders) were numerically graded from commanders of 10 to commanders of 5,000. Although they fell under the jurisdiction of the mīr bakhshī, each owed direct subordination to the emperor.

The manṣabdārs were generally paid in nonhereditary and transferable jāgīrs (assignments of land from which they could collect revenues). Over their jāgīrs, as distinct from those areas reserved for the emperor (khāliṣah) and his personal army (aḥadīs), the assignees (jāgīrdārs) normally had no magisterial or military authority. Akbar’s insistence on a regular check of the manṣabdārs’ soldiers and their horses signified his desire for a reasonable correlation between his income and obligations. Most jāgīrdārs except the lowest-ranking ones collected the taxes through their personal agents, who were assisted by the local moneylenders and currency dealers in remitting collections by means of private bills of exchange rather than cash shipments.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » The state and society under Akbar » Revenue system

A remarkable feature of the Mughal system under Akbar was his revenue administration, developed largely under the supervision of his famed Hindu minister Todar Mal. Akbar’s efforts to develop a revenue schedule both convenient to the peasants and sufficiently profitable to the state took some two decades to implement. In 1580 he obtained the previous 10 years’ local revenue statistics, detailing productivity and price fluctuations, and averaged the produce of different crops and their prices. He also evolved a permanent schedule circle by grouping together the districts having homogeneous agricultural conditions. For measuring land area, he abandoned the use of hemp rope in favour of a more definitive method using lengths of bamboo joined with iron rings. The revenue, fixed according to the continuity of cultivation and quality of soil, ranged from one-third to one-half of production value and was payable in copper coin (dāms). The peasants thus had to enter the market and sell their produce in order to meet the assessment. This system, called ẓabṭ, was applied in northern India and in Malwa and parts of Gujarat. The earlier practices (e.g., crop sharing), however, also were in vogue in the empire. The new system encouraged rapid economic expansion. Moneylenders and grain dealers became increasingly active in the countryside.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » The state and society under Akbar » Fiscal administration

All economic matters fell under the jurisdiction of the vizier, assisted principally by three ministers to look separately after the crown lands, the salary drafts and jāgīrs, and the records of fiscal transactions. At almost all levels, the revenue and financial administration was run by a cadre of technically proficient officials and clerks drawn mainly from Hindu service castes—Kayasthas and Khatris.

More significantly, in local and land revenue administration, Akbar secured support from the dominant rural groups. With the exception of the villages held directly by the peasants, where the community paid the revenue, his officials dealt with the leaders of the communities and the superior landrights holders (zamindars). The zamindar, as one of the most important intermediaries, collected the revenue from the peasants and paid it to the treasury, keeping a portion to himself against his services and zamindari claim over the land.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » The state and society under Akbar » Coinage

Akbar reformed Mughal currency to make it one of the best known of its time. The new regime possessed a fully functioning trimetallic (silver, copper, and gold) currency, with an open minting system in which anyone willing to pay the minting charges could bring metal or old or foreign coin to the mint and have it struck. All monetary exchanges, however, were expressed in copper coins in Akbar’s time. In the 17th century, following the silver influx from the New World, silver rupee with new fractional denominations replaced the copper coin as a common medium of circulation. Akbar’s aim was to establish a uniform coinage throughout his empire; some coins of the old regime and regional kingdoms also continued.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » The state and society under Akbar » Evolution of a nonsectarian state

Mughal society was predominantly non-Muslim. Akbar therefore had not simply to maintain his status as a Muslim ruler but also to be liberal enough to elicit active support from non-Muslims. For that purpose, he had to deal first with the Muslim theologians and lawyers (ʿulamāʾ) who, in the face of Brahmanic resilience, were rightly concerned with the community’s identity and resisted any effort that could encourage a broader notion of political participation. Akbar began his drive by abolishing both the jizyah and the practice of forcibly converting prisoners of war to Islam and by encouraging Hindus as his principal confidants and policy makers. To legitimize his nonsectarian policies, he issued in 1579 a public edict (maḥẓar) declaring his right to be the supreme arbiter in Muslim religious matters—above the body of Muslim religious scholars and jurists. He had by then also undertaken a number of stern measures to reform the administration of religious grants, which were now available to learned and pious men of all religions, not just Islam.

The maḥẓar was proclaimed in the wake of lengthy discussions that Akbar had held with Muslim divines in his famous religious assembly ʿIbādat-Khāneh, at Fatehpur Sikri. He soon became dissatisfied with what he considered the shallowness of Muslim learned men and threw open the meetings to non-Muslim religious experts, including Hindu pandits, Jain and Christian missionaries, and Parsi priests. A comparative study of religions convinced Akbar that there was truth in all of them but that no one of them possessed absolute truth. He therefore disestablished Islam as the religion of the state and adopted a theory of rulership as a divine illumination incorporating the acceptance of all, irrespective of creed or sect. He repealed discriminatory laws against non-Muslims and amended the personal laws of both Muslims and Hindus so as to provide as many common laws as possible. While Muslim judicial courts were allowed as before, the decision of the Hindu village pancayats also was recognized. The emperor created a new order commonly called the Dīn-e Ilāhī (“Divine Faith”), which was modeled on the Muslim mystical Sufi brotherhood. The new order had its own initiation ceremony and rules of conduct to ensure complete devotion to the emperor; otherwise, members were permitted to retain their diverse religious beliefs and practices. It was devised with the object of forging the diverse groups in the service of the state into one cohesive political community.

History » The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761 » The reign of Akbar the Great » Akbar in historical perspective

By 1600 the Mughals in India had achieved a fairly austere and efficient state system, for which Akbar’s genius deserves much credit. However, the Mughal system must be studied in the context of broad historical developments of the 16th and 17th centuries. Long before Akbar’s schemes, Sher Shah of Sūr’s short-lived reforms had included demand for cash payment from the peasants, surveys of agricultural lands and of crops grown, and a reliable, standardized, and high-quality coinage. The Sūr ruler insisted on a uniform rate for the entire empire, which was certainly a major flaw in contrast to Akbar’s consideration for regional variations. It is striking, however, that the chief ẓabṭ territories under Akbar were largely made up of the provinces already controlled by Sher Shah.

Another major development of Sher Shah’s brief period—namely, the building of a network of roads to improve the connections already started by Bābur between Hindustan and the great trading routes extending into central and western Asia via Kabul and Kandahār—foreshadowed in a measure the later imperial edifice and economy. By laying a road between Sonargaon (in Bengal) and Attock (near present-day Rawalpindi, Pak.), the Sūr ruler had made a first attempt at bringing the economy of Bengal into closer contact with that of northern India. The expansion under Akbar followed in logical sequence what had already occurred. The network based on Sher Shah’s routes had extended considerably by 1600. Agra came to be linked not only to Burhanpur but also to Cambay, Surat, and Ahmedabad. Lahore and Multan were now the gateway to Kabul as well as to the ports of the mouth of the Indus. The link with Sonargaon became a far more secure control over the ports of Bengal. Many other changes initiated in the late 16th century were to be consolidated only later, in conjunction with further political unification.