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Government of the Mughal Empire
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The government of the Mughal Empire was the centralised administrative system that governed the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent from 1526 until 1857. Most of its classic institutions took shape under the third emperor, Akbar (r. 1556-1605), and were refined under his successors Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb.[1][2]
 Flag and Seal of the Mughal Empire | |
| Overview | |
| Established | 21 April 1526 |
| Dissolved | 21 September 1857 |
| State | Mughal Empire |
| Leader | Mughal emperor |
| Main organ | Durbar |
| Ministries | Vakil / Grand vizier Diwan (finance and revenue) Mir Bakhshi (military) Sadr as-sudur (law and religious patronage) Khan-i-saman (imperial household and public works) |
| Headquarters | Agra Fatehpur Sikri (1571-1585) Lahore (1585-1598) Shahjahanabad / Delhi (from 1648) Aurangabad (1681-1707) |
Authority radiated from the emperor, who combined Timurid royal charisma with Perso-Islamic ideals of sovereignty and, from Akbar onwards, a set of sacral claims expressed through court ritual and the cult of sulh-i-kul (universal peace).[3][4] Immediately beneath the emperor were four great ministries: the diwan for finance and revenue, the mir bakhshi for the military and the mansabdari service ranks, the sadr as-sudur for religious patronage and judicial appointments, and the khan-i-saman for the imperial household and public works.[2][5]
The imperial service was organised through the mansabdari system, in which every officer held a dual numerical rank of zat (personal dignity and salary) and sawar (cavalry obligation).[6][7] Revenue was drawn mainly from a standardised land tax, the zabt system, fixed over a ten-year average of yields and prices under the finance minister Todar Mal in the 1580s, and was paid out to most officers through jagir assignments rather than direct cash salaries.[8][9]
Territorially the empire was divided into subahs (provinces), which were further broken into sarkars and parganas.[1] Judicial authority drew on Hanafi fiqh administered by qadis, but ran alongside the jurisdictions of faujdars, kotwals, and the emperor himself.[10] Modern historiography has argued over whether the Mughal polity is best characterised as a centralised bureaucracy or as what Stephen P. Blake called a "patrimonial-bureaucratic empire".[11]
Imperial authority and central government
The emperor
The Mughal emperor (padshah) stood at the apex of the political, military, and symbolic order. His legitimacy combined three traditions: descent from Timur and Genghis Khan, which gave the dynasty Sahib-i-Qiran ("Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction") credentials; Perso-Islamic kingship, which framed him as the "shadow of God" (zill Allah) and dispenser of justice; and, under Akbar, a universalising ideology of sulh-i-kul that drew Hindu, Jain, and other non-Muslim subjects into the imperial fold.[3][1][4]
Public rituals reinforced this authority. Akbar instituted the jharokha-i darshan, a balcony appearance each dawn at which the emperor showed himself to subjects below, and the durbar audience hall at which nobles performed prostration (sijda) or, later, the more restrained tasleem salute.[4][12]
The four ministries
Beneath the emperor four senior offices shared executive responsibility. The arrangement became standard after Akbar split the earlier unified office of wakil in 1564-65 into functional portfolios.[1][2]
- The diwan' (also diwan-i-kul, "revenue minister") managed assessment, collection, and disbursement of state income, and supervised the jagir assignments through which most officers were paid. Todar Mal held this office under Akbar and is credited with the zabt settlement.[8][9]
- The mir bakhshi was the paymaster-general of the armed forces and the head of military intelligence. He maintained the mansabdari rolls, inspected jagirdar contingents at the annual muster (dagh branding of horses), and directed the imperial news and posting system.[7][13]
- The sadr as-sudur (also sadr-i-jahan) oversaw religious endowments (waqf), the madad-i-maʿash revenue-free grants to scholars and shrines, and appointments of qadis and muftis. He stood at the head of the empire's judicial hierarchy.[10][1]
- The khan-i-saman was the high steward of the imperial household, responsible for the workshops (karkhanas), stables, treasury of goods, and royal construction projects. The office was consistently held by trusted intimates of the emperor.[2][12]
A fifth figure, the vakil or grand vizier, continued to exist as a senior advisor but lost most of its executive authority after Akbar's reorganisation; under Aurangzeb it was frequently left vacant or held alongside the diwani.[1][7]
Succession and princely households
Unlike the Ottomans, the Mughals never institutionalised primogeniture. Princes held their own jagirs, mansabs, and large retinues, and open contests between them before or after an emperor's death were a regular feature of political life. Munis Faruqui has argued that this "open-ended" succession, expressed in the phrase takht ya takhta ("throne or coffin"), actually extended Mughal power by embedding princely networks of patronage across the empire, until Aurangzeb's long reign and his confinement of his own sons broke that circulation.[14]
Revenue administration
Land revenue (mal or kharaj) was the main source of imperial income. Under Akbar, the finance minister Todar Mal completed a comprehensive settlement, sometimes called the dahsala or zabt system, between about 1580 and 1582.[8][1]
The zabt and dahsala systems
In zabt-assessed provinces the state fixed a cash demand per unit area for each crop, based on the average yield and the average market price over the previous ten years (dahsala). The demand was set at one-third of the gross produce and was calibrated separately for each revenue circle. The system covered much of North India from Lahore and Multan in the west to Allahabad and Awadh in the east, and the provinces of Malwa and Gujarat.[8][9] Parallel systems remained in use elsewhere: galla-bakhshi (crop-sharing) in parts of the Deccan and the north-west, and nasaq (a rough appraisal on past records) in frontier and tribal tracts.[8]
The cultivator's individual agreement with the state was recorded in two documents: the patta, which specified the area and the assessment, and the qabuliyat, the counter-agreement accepting the demand. Collection at the village level was carried out by the headman (muqaddam) and the accountant (patwari) and passed up through the pargana officers to the diwan.[8]
Jagir and khalisa lands
The empire's revenue was divided between khalisa lands, whose receipts went directly to the imperial treasury, and jagir lands, assigned to mansabdars in lieu of salary. The ratio fluctuated substantially: under Akbar perhaps one-fifth of the total demand was khalisa, rising under Shah Jahan and falling again late in Aurangzeb's reign as new conquests were rapidly parcelled out to officers.[9][1] Late in the seventeenth century Irfan Habib argued that a structural jagirdari crisis developed, in which there was not enough assessed revenue (jama) to meet the accumulated claims of the expanding noble corps, contributing to administrative breakdown.[8]
Religious and charitable grants
Alongside jagirs the state maintained madad-i-maʿash (or suyurghal) grants: revenue-free assignments to scholars, sufi lineages, shrines, and temples, administered by the sadr as-sudur. These grants, though small in aggregate, were politically important in binding religious networks to the state.[1][10]
Provincial and local administration
![](#/media/File:Hindoostan,_divided_into_Soubahs_according_to_the_Ayin_Acbaree,"_a_historical_map_of_Akbar's_India_from_Wilkinson's_Atlas,_1815_North_max_size.jpg)
The empire was divided into provincial-level units called subahs. Akbar's A'in-i Akbari (c. 1595) enumerated twelve, and later conquests in the Deccan and the east raised the number to around twenty-one by the end of Aurangzeb's reign.[1][15] Each subah was headed by a subahdar (also nazim) as governor, with his own provincial diwan, bakhshi, sadr, and qadi who corresponded directly with their counterparts at court and served as a check on the governor's authority.[1][2]
- the sarkar, a district under a faujdar (military-administrative officer) and an amalguzar (revenue collector);
- the pargana, a sub-district with a qadi, a shiqdar (executive officer), an amin (assessor), and a karkun or patwari (accountant);
- the village, managed by its muqaddam (headman), patwari, and a council (panchayat) whose operation is sparsely documented.[10]
Administrative boundaries were not static. Sarkars could be raised to subah status and parganas shifted between sarkars as revenue surveys and political conditions changed. The state lacked the resources for systematic cartographic surveys and relied on written schedules of village names, areas, and assessed revenue rather than on maps.[16]
Below the formal imperial hierarchy stood the zamindars, a broad category of hereditary local magnates whose cooperation, or suppression, was essential to revenue collection. Irfan Habib estimated that roughly half of the empire's jama flowed through their hands at one stage or another, and that the management of zamindars was a constant political problem for the Mughal state.[8][1]
Military organisation
The Mughal armed forces were a composite of contingents raised by mansabdars under their sawar obligations, a royal bodyguard (ahadi), standing infantry and artillery (topkhana), and allied contingents supplied by subordinate rulers. There was no standing national army in the European sense; most fighting men were recruited, paid, and commanded through the jagirdari system.[13][1]
At the annual muster the mir bakhshi inspected each contingent and branded its horses (dagh) to prevent fraud; a physical description of each trooper (chehra) was also recorded.[7] The cavalry was the core arm, with heavy bargir horses and lighter mounted archers. Gunpowder weapons, deployed from the time of Babur's victory at Panipat in 1526, were organised in a separate imperial park of siege and field artillery. Jos Gommans has emphasised that Mughal warfare was shaped by the logistical needs of moving large cavalry forces across the subcontinent's horse-breeding zones and overland trade routes.[13]
Alongside imperial troops a large militia component was furnished by zamindars and tribal chiefs under revenue-contingent obligations. Moosvi's estimate from the A'in-i Akbari puts this provincial militia at over four million men in arms in the late sixteenth century, many more than the paid imperial service itself.[9][1]
Intelligence and communications
The central government depended on a dense intelligence and postal service run under the mir bakhshi. Its principal officers were:[1][7]
- the waqiʿa-navis, the official news-writer posted at every subah capital and major camp, who compiled regular written reports of local events;
- the sawanih-nigar, whose remit covered longer analytical dispatches on incidents and conditions;
- the khufia-navis, a parallel confidential reporter whose letters circulated only to the emperor and the mir bakhshi;
- the harkara, a combined courier and scout corps attached to both court and provinces.
The physical post was organised through the dak chauki, relay stations at approximately fixed intervals along the imperial highways with horses or runners always on standby. Reports from across the empire converged daily on the darogha-i dak chauki, the superintendent of posts and intelligence, who forwarded them sealed to the diwan or mir bakhshi and ultimately to the emperor.[1][4]
Court, capitals and camp
The seat of government was wherever the emperor and his court happened to be, and in practice the Mughal state had several capitals in rotation. Agra was the primary imperial seat under Babur, Humayun and most of Akbar's reign. Akbar built the new city of Fatehpur Sikri (1571-85) as a symbolic imperial centre before abandoning it, partly on water-supply grounds. Lahore served as the imperial capital under Akbar from 1585 to 1598 and again under Jahangir for extended periods. Shah Jahan founded Shahjahanabad (modern Old Delhi) in 1639-48 as a planned sovereign city; after Aurangzeb it became the permanent capital.[17][12] Certain cities also served as temporary political centres, as when Aurangzeb shifted his working government to Aurangabad in the Deccan from 1682 until his death in 1707.[17]
Equally important was the imperial camp (urdu or lashkar), which functioned as a mobile capital on campaign and royal progress. From Akbar's time the camp was laid out on a fixed grid, with the emperor's tents at the centre and the pavilions of nobles disposed by rank around them; a full camp could enclose several hundred thousand people, including soldiers, administrators, traders, and their households. All routine administrative business, including jharokha audiences and darbar sessions, continued within the camp, and Mughal emperors spent long stretches of their reigns on the move.[17][12][13]
The walled city of Shahjahanabad, begun by Shah Jahan in 1639, combined palace (Qila-i Mubarak), great mosque (Jama Masjid), and noble mansions (havelis) in a planned layout that Stephen Blake has called the archetype of the Mughal sovereign city, in which the imperial household and its dependents dominated both the landscape and the urban economy.[12][18][19]
Law
The Mughal Empire's legal system was context-specific and evolved over the course of the empire's rule. Being a Muslim state, the empire employed fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and therefore the fundamental institutions of Islamic law such as those of the qadi (judge), mufti (jurisconsult), and muhtasib (censor and market supervisor) were well-established in the Mughal Empire. However, the dispensation of justice also depended on other factors, such as administrative rules, local customs, and political convenience. This was due to Persianate influences on Mughal ideology, and the fact that the Mughal Empire governed a non-Muslim majority.[10]
Legal ideology
The Mughal Empire followed the Sunni Hanafi system of jurisprudence. In its early years, the empire relied on Hanafi legal references inherited from its predecessor, the Delhi Sultanate. These included the al-Hidaya (the best guidance) and the Fatawa al-Tatarkhaniyya (religious decisions of the Emire Tatarkhan). During the Mughal Empire's peak, the Al-Fatawa al-'Alamgiriyya was commissioned by Emperor Aurangzeb. This compendium of Hanafi law sought to serve as a central reference for the Mughal state that dealt with the specifics of the South Asian context.[20]
The Mughal Empire also drew on Persianate notions of kingship. Particularly, this meant that the Mughal emperor was considered the supreme authority on legal affairs.[10]
Courts of law
Various kinds of courts existed in the Mughal empire. One such court was that of the qadi. The Mughal qadi was responsible for dispensing justice; this included settling disputes, judging people for crimes, and dealing with inheritances and orphans. The qadi also had additional importance with regards to documents, as the seal of the qadi was required to validate deeds and tax records. Qadis did not constitute a single position, but made up a hierarchy. For example, the most basic kind was the pargana (district) qadi. More prestigious positions were those of the qadi al-quddat (judge of judges) who accompanied the mobile imperial camp, and the qadi-yi lashkar (judge of the army).[10] Qadis were usually appointed by the emperor or the sadr-us-sudr (chief of charities).[10][21] The jurisdiction of the qadi was availed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.[22]
The jagirdar (local tax collector) was another kind of official approached, especially for high-stakes cases. Subjects of the Mughal Empire also took their grievances to the courts of superior officials who held more authority and punitive power than the local qadi. Such officials included the kotwal (local police), the faujdar (an officer controlling multiple districts and troops of soldiers), and the most powerful, the subahdar (provincial governor). In some cases, the emperor themself dispensed justice directly.[10] Jahangir was known to have installed a "chain of justice" in the Agra fort that any aggrieved subject could shake to get the attention of the emperor and bypass the inefficacy of officials.[23]
Self-regulating tribunals operating at the community or village level were common, but sparse documentation of them exists. For example, it is unclear how panchayats (village councils) operated in the Mughal era.[10]
Mansabdari and the nobility
The mansabdari system
The imperial service was organised through the mansabdari system, introduced by Akbar in the 1570s and fully articulated by the 40th regnal year (1595-6). Every officer of state, whether civilian or military, was a mansabdar ("holder of a rank") and held two linked numerical ranks:[citation needed][7][24]
- Zat ("personal"), which fixed the officer's dignity in the hierarchy and his personal pay entitlement.
- Sawar ("trooper"), which fixed the number of cavalry he was required to maintain and for which he drew an additional allowance.
Ranks ran nominally from 10 to 10,000, though figures above 5,000 were in practice reserved for imperial princes.[7] From the reign of Shah Jahan a further refinement, the du-aspa sih-aspa ("two-and-three-horse") grade, doubled the cavalry obligation of the sawar rank for specially favoured officers.[24] The rank-number was converted into actual monetary claims through schedules known as dastur al-ʿamals issued by the diwan's office.[6][9]
Payment was almost never made in cash from the central treasury. Instead, most mansabdars were assigned a jagir, a right to the land revenue of a specified territory calculated to yield a sum equal to their salary claim. Jagirs were frequently rotated, which prevented officers from building hereditary power bases.[8][25]
Composition of the nobility
The Mughal nobility (umara) was a deliberately cosmopolitan body recruited from across the Persianate world and the Indian subcontinent. Athar Ali's prosopographical survey of 1574-1658 and Shireen Moosvi's statistical work on the A'in-i Akbari agree on the broad pattern: at all times a large share of high-ranking officers were first- or second-generation immigrants from Iran or Central Asia, while Indian-born Muslims, Rajputs, and other Hindu officers made up the rest.[24][9]
In 1595, among mansabdars of rank 500 zat and above, roughly 61 per cent were ethnic Iranians or Turks who had migrated from Iran and Central Asia.[26][27] Under Akbar's policy of sulh-i-kul the Rajput share of high mansabs rose steadily, and Aurangzeb further expanded recruitment of Maratha and Deccani nobles after 1679, though the shift generated friction with the older Turkic-Persian bloc.[7][1]
Ethnic faction labels used in contemporary Persian sources included Turani (Central Asian Turks), Irani (Shia Iranians), Shaikhzada (Indian-born Muslims), and Rajput (Hindu Rajput rulers and their kin), with smaller groups such as Deccanis and Afghans.[7]
Decline of the administrative system
The classical Mughal administrative system began to strain in the late seventeenth century and broke down over the first half of the eighteenth. Modern historians have identified several interlocking pressures:[1][8][7]
- A growing jagirdari crisis, in which the assessed revenue available for assignment could not keep pace with the expanding numbers of mansabdars absorbed during the Deccan wars, producing delays, short assignments (be-jagiri), and bitter competition between factions.[8]
- Over-extension during Aurangzeb's prolonged Deccan campaigns (1681-1707), which exhausted the imperial treasury and tied down the mobile court for a generation.[1]
- Factional rivalry between Turani, Irani, and new Deccani and Maratha blocs of the nobility, sharpened after Aurangzeb's death and the series of succession wars of 1707-20.[7][14]
- Rising regional autonomies: subahdars in Awadh, Bengal, and Hyderabad turned their offices into hereditary successor states while still using Mughal titles and revenue vocabulary.[1][27]
After Nader Shah's sack of Delhi in 1739 and Ahmad Shah Durrani's raids in the 1750s-60s, the imperial government's effective writ contracted to the region around Delhi, though the dynasty remained legally sovereign until 1857, when the British East India Company deposed Bahadur Shah II after the uprising and abolished the Mughal state.[1][27]
Historiography
The nature of Mughal government has been a sustained historiographical debate. The Aligarh school, built around Irfan Habib, Athar Ali, and Shireen Moosvi, has emphasised the empire's centralisation, statistical reach, and extractive capacity, and explained its eighteenth-century breakdown largely in fiscal-structural terms.[8][7][9]
A revisionist strand, beginning with Stephen P. Blake's 1979 article on the "patrimonial-bureaucratic empire", stressed that Mughal administration always ran alongside, and through, a deeply personal household and patronage system, and drew on Max Weber's typology to frame it as a hybrid rather than a textbook bureaucracy.[11] Later work by Muzaffar Alam, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, C. A. Bayly, and André Wink has pushed further, re-describing the empire as a negotiated order built on overlapping sovereignties with zamindars, regional elites, and commercial networks.[28][1] Munis Faruqui's reassessment of princely succession has more recently argued that what older historians read as dynastic dysfunction was in fact a politically productive feature of Mughal state formation.[14]
Comparative work by Douglas E. Streusand places the Mughal state alongside the Ottoman and Safavid systems as one of the three early-modern "gunpowder empires", sharing Turco-Persian institutional patterns while adapting them to Indian conditions.[3]