This chapter examines agrarian society in the Mughal empire between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on the relationships between peasants, zamindars (landed intermediaries) and the state. The agrarian system of the Mughals was one of the most productive in the world at the time, supporting a huge population, vast cities and a flourishing long-distance trade in textiles and other goods. The chapter stresses that this system rested not on a single model of land ownership but on a complex web of rights, obligations and power relations.
The core of the chapter is the idea that the Mughal state was an agrarian state, one whose revenue and authority were drawn from the land. To understand it, historians use the rich crop of official documents, especially the Ain-i-Akbari of Abul Fazl, which provides detailed information about revenue, cultivation, prices and administration, as well as the accounts of European travellers and the records of later revenue settlements. The chapter shows how the Mughal state organised revenue collection, and how peasants and zamindars shaped and resisted that system.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the Mughal empire covered a vast and diverse territory, and its rural economy varied from region to region. Yet across this expanse, the basic unit of production was the peasant household, which combined cultivation of the land with a range of subsidiary crafts and activities. Peasants grew a wide variety of crops: food grains such as wheat, rice and millets, and cash crops such as cotton, sugarcane, indigo and oilseeds, whose cultivation was encouraged by the growing demand from trade.
The chapter stresses that villages were not self-sufficient communities cut off from the world. Rather, they were connected to markets, the state and the wider economy. Peasants sold part of their produce in local and long-distance markets, and the state's demand for revenue in cash and kind pulled the countryside into the networks of trade and money. This rural commercialisation was one of the most striking features of the agrarian economy of the Mughal period.
The village community was the basic social unit of the countryside, but it was not an undifferentiated mass. Historians like Irfan Habib have shown that the village was marked by internal divisions based on caste and class. At the top were the substantial peasants who owned their land and ploughs and could employ labourers; below them were the poorer peasants, sharecroppers and landless labourers, many of whom were from lower castes and often in debt.
The chapter stresses that a typical village contained a range of occupational groups - artisans, carpenters, weavers, potters, blacksmiths and oil pressers - alongside the cultivators. The headman (muqaddam or chaudhuri) and the village accountant (patwari) played important roles in local administration and revenue collection. Caste determined occupation to a great extent, and the dominant landowning caste in a village often controlled access to land and labour.
The term "zamindar" literally means "landholder." Zamindars were powerful rural intermediaries who controlled land and collected revenue in their localities on behalf of the state. Their power rested on a combination of factors: they had hereditary rights over land and village, they commanded armed retainers and fortified houses, and they dominated the peasantry and the artisans of their area. The zamindars' position was thus both a right under the state and a claim maintained through force and influence.
The zamindars were drawn from the upper castes, especially the Rajputs, and they enjoyed a share of the revenue (often about ten per cent of the total) as their due. Their hereditary rights were recognised and recorded in the revenue system, and they were a crucial link between the village and the state. Yet the zamindars could also be a source of trouble: when the state was weak, zamindars withheld revenue and rose in revolt, and the Mughals spent considerable energy trying to control them through negotiations, appointments and, when necessary, military action.
The Mughal revenue system was one of the most sophisticated of its time. The emperor Akbar, with the help of his finance minister Todar Mal, introduced a uniform system of land revenue known as the dahsala (or zabt) system. Under this system, the revenue was fixed on the basis of the average produce of the past ten years, and each revenue unit was to pay its revenue in cash, based on the prevailing market prices. The crop areas were measured, the produce assessed, and the revenue demand set at about one-third of the produce.
The revenue demand was collected through a hierarchy of officials: at the local level by the amils (revenue collectors), supported by the qanungo (who maintained land records) and the patwari (the village accountant), and at the higher levels by the jagirdars, mansabdars and provincial governors (subadars). The state also attempted to control the revenue through periodic surveys and by setting fair prices. The dahsala system was designed to be predictable and regular, though in practice collection was often harsh.
The Mughal state distributed the revenue of the empire, not in cash salaries, but in the form of assignments of revenue called jagirs, granted to officers known as jagirdars. A jagirdar was entitled to collect the revenue of a specified area (the jagir) as his salary, and he was expected to maintain troops and to serve the state from this income. The system enabled the state to reward its nobles and officials without raising cash, and it bound the military-administrative elite to the emperor.
However, the jagirdari system had serious weaknesses. Jagirs were frequently transferred, so jagirdars had little long-term interest in the prosperity of their assignments, and they often extracted as much as possible. The system also created tension between the jagirdars and the zamindars, who resented the intrusion of these outsiders into their areas. Over the seventeenth century, the scramble for jagirs and the pressure of revenue demands contributed to the agrarian crisis that weakened the empire.
The Ain-i-Akbari, the third volume of Abul Fazl's monumental Akbarnama, is the single most important source for the agrarian system of the empire. Written in Persian, it describes in remarkable detail the revenue system introduced by Akbar, the measurement of land, the classification of soils, the fixing of revenue rates and the functioning of the imperial administration. For example, the Ain records the revenue rates for different crops and the prices prevailing in the market.
Yet the Ain-i-Akbari must be used with caution. It was written as an idealised account of the empire, praising Akbar and his system, and it describes the situation at one particular moment, the 1590s, which may not reflect conditions elsewhere or later. Moreover, it records rates and categories that may have been administrative ideals rather than actual practice. Historians therefore use the Ain alongside other documents, such as the records of later provincial revenue settlements and the accounts of travellers, to arrive at a more balanced picture.
The burden of revenue demand, combined with the extraction by zamindars and jagirdars, weighed heavily on the peasantry. In many areas the peasants were subjected to forced labour, excessive assessments and the exactions of officials. The chapter describes the resistance of the peasants, who refused to pay, fled to other areas, attacked the revenue officials, and, at times, rose in larger revolts. The uprising of the Jats, the Satnamis and the Sikh revolts of the seventeenth century were partly agrarian movements against the exactions of the state.
Peasant resistance could take many forms, from the sullen refusal to cultivate to open rebellion. The state responded with force, but it also recognised the danger of over-taxation, and administrators were repeatedly reminded to assess revenues at moderate levels so as not to "ruin" the peasants. The history of the peasantry is thus a history of both production and protest, of villages that sustained the empire and of peasants who resisted its demands.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Mughal agrarian system began to break down. Historians such as Satish Chandra and Irfan Habib have analysed the crisis. The jagirdari system faced a shortage of jagirs as the number of nobles grew, while the demand for revenue increased. The pressure on the peasants intensified, leading to desertion of land, decline in cultivation and widespread distress. The state, struggling to raise resources for its long wars, resorted to increasingly heavy exactions.
At the same time, the zamindars, who were being squeezed between the state and the peasants, often joined the revolts against the empire, as in the Jat and Maratha uprisings. The agrarian crisis, combined with the wars of succession and the military campaigns of Aurangzeb, fatally weakened the Mughal state in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The chapter stresses that the decline of the empire cannot be understood without understanding the crises of its agrarian base.
Historians have debated several questions about the Mughal agrarian system. One key debate is about the nature of land ownership: did the state own all the land, as some scholars argued, or did zamindars and peasants have significant rights, as more recent research shows? The evidence suggests that the Mughal state claimed a share of the produce, not absolute ownership of all land, and that zamindars held hereditary rights over their areas.
Another debate concerns the impact of the system on the peasantry: was the Mughal agrarian system exploitative and ruinous, or did it allow a degree of prosperity? The answer lies somewhere in between: the system was productive and sustained a rich economy, but its benefits were unevenly distributed, and the burden on the peasantry grew over time. The chapter teaches that the Mughal state was fundamentally an agrarian state whose rise and fall were tied to the fortunes of its peasants and zamindars.
| Term | Meaning | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Peasant | Cultivator of land | Produced crops; paid revenue; sometimes resisted |
| Zamindar | Hereditary landholder | Collected revenue, controlled locality, held armed power |
| Jagirdar | Revenue assignee of the state | Collected revenue of a jagir as salary; maintained troops |
| Muqaddam / Chaudhuri | Village headman | Local leadership and revenue functions |
| Patwari | Village accountant | Kept land and revenue records |
| Amil | Revenue collector | Collected the revenue assessed |
| Source / Text | Author | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Ain-i-Akbari | Abul Fazl | Detailed revenue rates, prices, administration |
| Akbarnama | Abul Fazl | Official history of Akbar's reign |
| European accounts | e.g., Bernier | Foreign observations of the economy |
| Later revenue records | Provincial settlements | Check on the Ain's ideal picture |
The Mughal empire was, above all, an agrarian state. Its armies, cities, arts and administration all rested on the surplus extracted from the countryside, and its history is inseparable from the history of its peasants, zamindars and revenue officials. The system was ingenious - the dahsala assessment, the jagirdari assignments and the hierarchy of amils, qanungos and patwaris created one of the world's most productive agrarian economies - but it was also fragile. When revenue demands pressed too hard, peasants deserted their fields and rose in revolt, and zamindars, squeezed between state and village, turned against the empire. The agrarian crisis of the seventeenth century, therefore, was not merely an economic difficulty: it was the cracking of the very foundation on which the Mughal edifice had been built.