Mughal Empire: Mughal administration basics

How the Mughal state was run

The Mughal emperor had the final word on everything, but he could not run a huge empire alone. He needed officers to collect taxes, keep order and lead armies. Akbar built the system that later emperors kept: a single ladder of ranked officers, a careful land tax, and provinces run on a common pattern. Think of a large company with one owner, a ranked staff, and branch offices that all follow the same rule book.

Ministers at the centre

Splitting money (the diwan) from soldiers (the bakhshi) was a deliberate check. No single officer controlled both the treasury and the army.

What UPSC asks

Prelims: match the officer to the job. Mains: how the Mughals kept nobles in check. Next likely: Akbar’s reforms.

Mansabdars and jagirdars

A mansab means a position or rank, and a mansabdar was a person holding one. NCERT explains that the rank fixed three things: the officer’s rank, his salary and his military duty. Nobles came from many groups: Turanis, Iranians, Indian Muslims, Afghans, Rajputs, Marathas and others.

A jagir was like being told to collect your salary from the rent of a named building. You took the rent, but you did not own the building, and you could be moved to another one. Most mansabdars did not live in their jagirs; their servants collected the money while the mansabdar served elsewhere.

The numbers grew. In Akbar’s reign there were 29 mansabdars with a rank of 5,000 zat; by Aurangzeb’s reign there were 79. Under Akbar, jagirs were assessed so that their revenue roughly matched the salary. By Aurangzeb’s time the real income was often less, and officers waited a long time for a jagir. This shortage of jagirs pushed many jagirdars to squeeze as much as they could while they held one, and the peasants suffered.

What UPSC asks

Prelims: zat vs sawar, jagir vs khalisa. Mains: the jagir crisis and Mughal decline. Next likely: the 18th-century successor states.

Land revenue: zabt and the provinces

The main income of the state was a tax on what peasants grew. Peasants usually paid through zamindars, the Mughal word for every rural intermediary, from a village headman to a powerful chief. Akbar’s revenue minister, Todar Mal, surveyed crop yields, prices and areas cultivated over ten years, 1570–1580. On that basis tax was fixed in cash for each crop. Each province was split into revenue circles with their own rate lists. This was the zabt system, and the ten-year averaging behind it is called the dahsala. It worked where officials could survey the land, mainly in the north Indian heartland.

The provincial diwan reported to the central diwan, not to the governor. So a governor could not freely spend the province’s money. When later governors took over the diwan’s office too, as in Bengal, Awadh and Hyderabad, the empire began to break into regional states.

What UPSC asks

Prelims: Todar Mal and zabt; officers by level. Mains: strengths and weaknesses of Mughal administration. Next likely: comparing the iqta and the jagir.