THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRELike all great land powers of Asia, the Mughal empire was an agrarian
state which essentially depended on the land revenue. The intensity of
central rule in such a state directly depended on the accurate assessment of
this revenue and on its cash transfer to the centre. For this a stable
currency was a necessary prerequisite. Sher Shah had put the revenue
administration on a solid footing in this respect. He had introduced an
assessment based on an accurate measurement (zabt) of the fields; he had
put a good silver currency in circulation; and he had adjusted the revenue
collection to the annual price level. The annual decision on the revenue
demand based on this price information was of such importance that only
the ruler himself could arrive at it. Akbar was faced with this annual
decision, even if he were on a distant battlefield and could hardly devote
much thought to it. With the expansion of the empire it became almost
impossible to take the regional variations in the price level into
consideration. Furthermore, large areas had been granted to military
officers and administrators as fief (jagir). These officers had to recover
their own salary as well as the expenses for their troops and military
establishment from the income derived from these fiefs. Unless they had
complaints about the inadequacy of their fiefs these officers had no motive
to inform the central government about the actual yield of the assigned
revenue.
Akbar solved all these problems with one fundamental reform of the
revenue system. To begin with he cancelled all fiefs and paid the salaries
and expenses of the officers from the central treasury. He then got all land
measured and instructed the district revenue officers to compile all data on
crops, prices and revenue collections for a period of ten years. After this
period was over he fixed an average demand based on the data collected
during one decade. In this way he took account of regional differences and
also could do without the rather arbitrary annual decision on the rate of
revenue. Moreover, when now granting fiefs again he knew exactly the
value of each fief. He also adopted a system of hierarchical classification
(mansab) of all military and civil officers. This classification took account
of the salary scale (zat) as well as of the size of the cavalry contingents
(sawar) which the officer had to maintain in keeping with his rank. This
system was flexible enough to take into account various combinations—
e.g. high salary, but only a small or no cavalry contingent at all in the case
of civil officers at the imperial court—and it also enabled the ruler to
match the promotion to a higher office with the size of the fief. This system
provided a high degree of rationality for the prevailing practice of moving
officers frequently from one fief to another in order to prevent them from
entrenching themselves somewhere. The system worked to a large extent
automatically: detailed adjustments could be left to the administrators at
various levels and the Great Mughal would interfere only in case of major
appointments and transfers.