Mughal Administration

Mughal empire at its peak had huge amount of resources and the area under the control
was more than three fourth of the Indian subcontinent. The Mughal empire was efficient
and had a central system of control over administration and army. The Mughal empire
focused mainly its emperor and his aristocracy. Mughal empire was said to have been
founded in 1526 by Babur, a warrior chieftain. The empire began after defeating the Sultans
in the First Battle of Panipat. Though they heavily relied on military for administration of the
empire, they did not impose or supress the culture of their subjects. The main source of the
empire’s income came from agriculture tax which was started and established during Akbar’s
regime. One of the most important features of the Mughal empire would be its well organised
administration. The way Mughals administered their empire was quite different from the
previous rulers that is the Sultans. The Mughal empire was divided on three different types
and administered upon. The three different types are; Central administration, Military
administration, Revenue administration. According to historians it was divided into Subas
which was further divided three sub divisions, those are Sarkar, Pargana and Gram. Mughals
ruled the Indian subcontinent for 200 years, this is not only because of the political power but
also the well-planned administration.

Central administration

In central administration, enjoying absolutely the strength, the Emperor of the Mughal
Empire became usually the important administrative authority. A number of officers inside
the distinct government departments were appointed for the proper functioning of
transactions involving various affairs. Under the emperor were the ministers who were
appointed with various kingdom duties and they assisted the ruler. Each department had its
minister who became similarly the top of junior ministers and assistants. There changed into
the high minister who turned into accountable for the general state. Then there was a Mir
Bakhshi1 who is the chief of the army. He was purported to feature for the recruitment,
maintaining huliya, branding of the horses and supplies to the army. Then there has been a
minister referred to as Sadar-us-Sudur who became liable for religious subjects. Chief Qazi
changed into some other principal minister who was the very best judicial authority in the
kingdom. For preserving a moral fame of the society and to prevent social evils like ingesting

1
https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/mughal-administration-key-features-structure-
1445427511-1
and playing there was a minister known as the Muhtasib. For the fulfillment of the private
needs of the ruler and the royal family there was Khan-e-Saman. In the provincial
administration, the nation was divided into some provinces with the top of the province
referred to as the Nizam or the Subedar. The Subedar, the Diwan, the Sadar, the Qazi, the
Qotawal and the Waqiya Navis have been the essential officers in each province. The
Subedar had complete authority over the province because the emperor had over the
kingdom, he had a Mansab and a larger Jagir, stored a large navy at his deposal and was
responsible for the protection of law and order in the province. Then there has been a
provincial minister referred to as the Nizam who controlled the price range, the Bakhshi
turned into liable for the business enterprise of the royal navy. The Waqiya Navis was the top
of the spy system. The Kotawal was a keeper of peace inside the province, for the
maintenance of non-secular concord there were the Qazi and the Sadr.

Revenue adminstration

Revenue administration was another important aspect of the Mughal empire, the tax structure
of the Mughal empire was easy in its theoretical method. Both revenue and expenditure had
been divided among the primary and the provincial government. The vital authorities
reserved for itself land sales, customs, earnings from the mints, inheritance rights, and
monopolies. Land revenue become the most important source of income, because it has been
for the duration of Indian records, and more than doubled in cost among the reigns of Akbar
and Shah Jahan. The foremost items of expenditure for the main government had been
protection, the overall civil administration of the empire (inclusive of the religious
institutions), maintenance of the court and the royal palace, and the price of homes and other
public works. The provincial sources of earnings have been the assignments of land sales
granted to the provincial governor and his officials as a remuneration for their offerings, a
variety of local taxes and cesses, transit dues and obligations, and fines and provides.The
Mughal sales system become based totally at the division of the empire into subas or
governorships, sarkars or districts, and parganas, which include number of villages which had
been occasionally styled mahals. (These were replaced throughout British rule through the
fairly huge tehsils or talukas.) The revenue workforce had also to perform miscellaneous
administrative duties, including the keeping of the public peace, and recruitment of the
military forces. The suba turned into modelled after the relevant imperial structure. The
sarkar became within the fee of the faujdar, or army commander, who blended the
capabilities of the present-day district magistrate and superintendent of police. The revenue
paintings in the sarkar become sorted by way of the amalguzar, who might correspond to the
modern afsar-i-mal (sales officer).

Military administration

Military administration in the Mughal empire was known as the mansabdari system where
cavalry such as the horses and elephants along with the soldiers and the horsemen were
maintained and supplied by mansabdars. The number provided by a mansabdar depended on
the rank or position they held.

Troops under mansabdars2 were classified as follows:

1. Dakhils, which were the services paid by the state
2. Ahadis or the gentleman troopers who had a higher pay than an ordinary serviceman
3. The chiefs were allowed to hold autonomy while providing deputation to those under
their command

The Mughal army had the following units:

1. The cavalry consisted of two types of horseman, the bargir who were soldiers who
received arms, clothes and horses from the state and the siledar who had to buy horses
and arms for themselves
2. The infantry: this was classified into two units, the Bandukchi or the Rifleman and the
samshirbaz or the swordsmen
3. The war elephants which were used for warfare as well as for carrying goods and
loads
4. The artillery, the artillery of the Mughal empire reached its peak efficiency under the
regime of Akbar
5. The Navy, which was comparatively weaker unit as compared to their European
counter part

State funds and the imperial treasury were used to financially support the army, however the
army was not very organized and inefficiency of officers reduces the inefficiency of the entire
army while the lower ranked officials lacked discipline. The Mughals also had a sluggish and

2
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/ikram/part2_16.html#military
excessive group along with the army because of the imperial harem and the families of
soldiers.

Provincial Administration:

The provincial administration greatly improved under Akbar, and in this recognize the
Mughal duration differs considerably from the Sultan empire, and a uniform administrative
pattern, with minor changes to fit local situations, changed into developed for all parts of the
empire.Further, drawing upon the experiments added with the aid of Sher Shah, the
provincial management changed into reinforced, and each province changed into provided
with a fixed of officials representing all branches of the state. By the creation of a cadre of
mansabdars, the control over the provinces was made extra powerful.The main officer
became the governor, called Sipah Salar beneath Akbar and Nazim below his successors, but
popularly known as subahdar and later most effective as subah. Next to him in authentic rank,
but not in any way under his control, was the provincial. He was commonly a mansabdar,
having lesser power than the governor, however he became impartial of the governor’s
control and become immediately beneath the imperial diwan.The next provincial functionary
turned into the bakhshi. He performed a number of responsibilities, and also had the
capabilities of the provincial newswriter. The diwan-i-buyutat become the provincial
representative of the khan-i-saman, and sorted roads and authorities’ buildings, supervised
imperial stores, and ran nation workshops. The sadr and the qazi were entrusted with
religious, educational, and judicial duties. The faujdar, who was the executive head of the
sarkar (district), turned into appointed with the aid of the emperor but turned into beneath the
supervision and steering of the governor. The kotwals had been now not provincial officers,
but have been appointed through the critical authorities inside the provincial capitals and
other important cities.

Local Administration

There is a government head called faujdar to look after the protection of the territory and to
assist different officers to gather taxes. The amil changed into expected by the government to
set up direct relations with the farmers and take away probabilities of oppression by the
officers. He was additionally entrusted with the venture of encouraging cultivation and
improving the quality of the produce. He had to prepare month-to-month reports of each day
receipts and remit cash to the primary treasury as soon as a stipulated quantity become
col-lected. He had to file on marketplace fees, charge of tenements, the jagirdars, and the
circumstance of the people. He changed into in charge of supervision of the work of lower
sales officers. The sadr and the qazi administered the funds for non-secular purposes. While
the qazi had judicial responsibilities, such as solemnizing the marriage of Muslims, the sadr
sorted the gathering of different taxes and administration of public mosques.The kotwal had
magisterial duties of punishing miscreants and redressing grievances, and was additionally
answerable for policing the town. He had to keep himself informed approximately the human
beings coming into and leaving the metropolis, and had to save you hoarding. He additionally
needed to ensure observance of policies in social topics like sati, age of boys’ circumcision,
infanticide and the slaughter of animals. The next degree of administration was the pargana,
headed through a person known as the shiqdar, who mixed in him the obligations of revenue,
justice and magistracy. He supervised the amil and qanungo who attended to the survey,
assessment and series of revenue. Several villages made up a pargana. The village throughout
the Mughal Period become identified as a self-governing unit with rights and responsibilities.
It had its council this is the panchayat which settled disputes, completed comfort paintings
and accrued sales. The village headman-maintained information regarding holdings, styles of
vegetation and so forth. Those who did ‘watch and ward’ duties for the village were also
under the management of the village headman.3

Judicial Administration:

The judicial mechanism of the Mughals was very much like that of the sultanate. It was more
systematic, specifically beneath Aurangzeb, but in comparison with the judicial structure of
British India, it become very simple, being primarily based on a different technique to many
categories of disputes. Normally no legal professionals have been allowed to appear. The
disputes had been rapidly settled, frequently on the idea of equity and herbal justice, though
of route within the case of Muslims the injunctions and precedents of Islamic law carried out
where they existed. Many crimes such as murder had been dealt with as character grievances
rather than crimes in opposition to society. The court cases in such instances had been
initiated through the people aggrieved, as opposed to by the police, and might be.

3
Parmata Saran, The Provincial Governments of the Mughals ( Allahabad, 1941).
compounded on charge of repayment. The purpose of the judicial device was mostly to settle
character proceedings and disputes in place of to put into effect a felony code, as is indicated
by means of the reality that the crook court turned into generally known as the diwan-i-
mazalim, the courtroom of lawsuits. All overseas travelers have commented at the rapid
justice of the Mughal courts and the relatively few instances coming earlier than them. The
latter turned into partly because of the overall prejudice towards litigation, but even more to
the truth that a large quantity of disputes, particularly the ones affecting the Hindus, had been
settled by using the village and caste panchayats, and did no longer come earlier than the
reliable courts. The Hindus have been not debarred from taking cases earlier than the qazi or
the governor—and regularly did so where different preparations did no longer prove
powerful—however typically they had their own arrangements for settling their disputes.
Badauni has recorded that according to Akbar's orders the instances of Hindus have been to
be decided via the Hindu judges and now not by using the qazis. The Jesuit Father
Monserrate says that "Brachmane (Brahmans) ruled liberally thru a senate and a council of
the commonplace humans" —referring probably to the management of justice with the aid of
these businesses. Local utilization and custom dominated in most rural regions, and, in line
with one estimate, possibly now not one man or woman out of a hundred inside the Punjab,
for instance, changed into ruled by the provisions of either the traditional Hindu or Muslim
law. The Mughal judicial system was based on the Arabic jurisprudence. Defending upon
their nature, the cases were heard at specific levels. The qazi-ul-quzftt, the leader judicial
officer, turned into assisted by way of mufti, who might be a pupil of the Arabic
jurisprudence. In the Mughal length, judicial cases have been labelled into the subsequent 4
classes: (i) spiritual instances, (ii) diwani instances, (iii) fauzdari, and (iv) goods-related
cases. Religious cases were dealt with by using the office of the qazi and had been related
with the translation of Shariat. Diwani instances had been also neard by the qazi. Criminal
cases have been treated via the subahdar, fauzdar and shiqdar. These officers had their
personal courts. Cases related to items had been heard within the courts of amil. It is clear
that the qazi heard simplest diwani and spiritual instances.

Primary Sources:

Some of the important primary sources during the Mughal empire offering valuable insight
upon the Mughal empire’s admiration are as follows;
Akbar- Nama the professional records of the reign of the Mughal Emperor, which include a
statistical gazetteer of 16th century North India, compiled by means of Abu’l-Fażl ʿAllāmī.
One of the fundamental supply substances for the records of Mughal India, the Akbar-nāma
is split into 3 books. The first e-book provides Akbar’s horoscope and the Indian and Greek
astrological theories upon which it is primarily based, followed with the aid of a list of
eminent personalities of worldwide history starting with Adam and intending through the
Timurid line to Akbar himself. The Akbarnama is, in flip, divided into five sections: the
primary treats the divine supply of the Emperor’s royalty, the management of the imperial
family, the treasury, and minting procedures; the second one offers policies for the Empire’s
navy (Mansabadri) ; certain parts sets forth recommendations for the Empire’s civil
management, in particular the nearby, provincial, and vital revenue systems, and the revenue
settlements in keeping with diverse plants and areas of North India; the fourth offers a
geographic and ethnographic description of Mughal India, which includes a dialogue of
Hindu philosophy and social agency; and the fifth book consists of numerous sayings of
Akbar as gathered through the compiler. The style of the Akbarnma , self-consciously ornate
and regularly bombastic, become considered the acme of historic prose writing in Abu’l-
Fażl’s very own day, and was imitated for generations after him.4

The "Memoirs of Babur" or Baburnama is the work of Timur (Tamerlane), Zahiruddin

Muhammad Babur (1483-1530). Babur's memoirs, are the simplest genuine autobiography in
Islamic literature." The Baburnama tells the story of the prince's first war and protect his
claim to the throne of Samarkand. After being pushed out of Samarkand in 1501 through the
Uzbek Shaibanids, he in the end sought greener pastures, first in Kabul after which in
northern India, where his descendants had been the Moghul (Mughal) dynasty ruling in Delhi
till 1858.The memoirs offer a pretty knowledgeable Central Asian Muslim's observations of
the arena in which he moved. There are tons on the political and army struggles of his time
but also extensive descriptive sections at the physical and human geography, the plant life
and fauna, nomads of their pastures and urban environments enriched by the structure, tune
and Persian and Turkic literature patronized by the Timurids.

4
Illustration from the Akbarnama
by Katrina Klaasmeyer.
The decline of the Mughal empire was during the eighteenth century. It argues that this
decline was manifested in Awadh and Punjab in a sort of political transformation, within the
emergence and configuration of the factors of the brand new subadari. The Mughal centre
had transformed from a stabilizing force to a destabilizing arena with the weakening of
imperial authority, management and wrangling on the court docket. However, because the
beginnings of the brand new subadari are to be visible more inside the context of the history
of the region, the traits in and round Awadh and the Punjab offer cause of its balance or
weakness in the provinces.
Bibliography:
1. www.indiaolddays.com
2. www.historydiscussion.net
3. www.britannica.com
4. www.jagranjosh.com
5. www.thehindu.com
6. www.bl.uk
7. www.jstor.org