Mansab

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The emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan on the throne with their most famous ministers before them

The Mansab system ( Persian منصبداری, DMG manṣabdārī , “rank ownership”, from Persian منصب, DMG manṣab , "rank") was the hierarchy of civil servants in the Indian Mughal Empire (1526–1757 / 1858). It determined both the position of a public servant in the empire and his pay. Every civil servant ( Persian منصبدار, DMG manṣabdār ) had a double rank expressed in numbers. The first number, called zat ( Persian ذات, DMG ẕāt , literally "essence", d. H. “Personal”), referred to personal rank and related salary. Public servants with a rank of 1000 zat and more were considered nobles ( Persian امراء, DMG umarā ' ). The second number, sawar ( Persian سوار, DMG savār , "cavalry") determined the number of riders that a public servant had to maintain and provide in the event of war. No distinction was made between civil and military offices; however, generals usually had higher ranks than ministers. Introduced by Emperor Akbar in 1566 and adapted to the circumstances by his successors, it formed the administrative mechanism of the Mughal Empire for 150 years . Under Emperor Aurangzeb, and especially after his death in 1707, the empire finally perished from the problems of the Mansab system.

introduction

The Mansab system goes back to the ranks of the Mongolian army, which was divided into ten thousands, thousands, hundreds and groups of ten. This organization was continued by Timur and his successors, so that the founder of the Mughal Empire, the Timuride Babur (1483-1530), organized his army in this way. However, at its time, designations such as “leader of a thousand” were only nominal. Babur reports in his autobiography that when two "tens of thousands" armies ( tumān ) met about 2000 men.

In his 11th year of reign (1566), Emperor Akbar (1556–1605) extended the title to a double designation, e.g. B. 1000 zat / 400 sawar. This means the nominal rank of a gentleman of 1000 riders who actually has to provide 400 riders. Akbar also introduced mandatory branding and registration of horses. Above all, Akbar undertook the reforms of his father Humayun 's opponent , Sher Shah Suri , such as the standardized rupee and payment of the army in cash instead of land. To do this, he had the country cadastrated as well as possible and a ten-year average ( Persian ده ساله, DMG dah-sāla ) calculate the tax revenue per province. For the first time, the state in India was able to collect taxes directly from the farmers instead of relying on local landlords ( zamindars ). In 1574 Akbar confiscated the real estate ( Iqta ) of the nobility, which had actually become hereditary , in order to give them all to crown land ( Persian خالصه, DMG khāliṣa ). Most of this crown land was then reassigned under the name Jagir . The difference was that the civil servants no longer had a claim to ownership of the land, but instead received a salary from tax revenue based on the income of their jagir. The income was composed of the salary according to Zat-Rang and the supplements per rider, which together made up much more. The owners of a jagir ( Persian جاگیردار, DMG jāgīrdār ) were transferred frequently, on average every three years. The long-established Rajput rulers , who mostly got their home country ( vaṭan ) as Jagir, were excluded . The jagirdars were checked by the local tax and information officers ( qānūngo ), and besieged subjects could complain to the court. In this way Akbar created an effective state apparatus which, through Akbar's successful conquests, had enough income to make the military and administration function well.

Further development under the emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan

Under Emperor Jahangir (1605–1627; it is not known when exactly) the Sawar rank was divided into "simple horsemen" ( Persian برآوردی, DMG barāvurdī , "set up") and "rider with two or three horses" ( Persian دو اسپه سه اسپه, DMG du-aspa-si-aspa ). For a "rider with two or three horses" the Mansabdar got double that. However, since Jahangir barely had the maintenance obligation for cavalry monitored, the Mansabdare saved on the actual number of cavalrymen and kept the money saved. This was all the more tempting since most of the salary was paid for the Sawar rank.

Emperor Shah Jahan (1628-1658) therefore inherited a heavily indebted state and tried to reform the Mansab system. In 1630 he reduced the salaries for Zat ranks by ⅓ and those for Sawar ranks by 1/6. This shifted the difference in salaries between the two ranks even further in the direction of Sawar salaries. To this end, he stipulated that every public servant had to actually entertain ⅓ of the riders designated in the Sawar rank when he lived in his Jagir, and ¼ if not. One can imagine what morality must have been like before. At first there was no further reform, as two great generals rebelled against the emperor one after the other and he had to take action against them. He was not allowed to anger his military through austerity measures. He also conquered the Sultanate of Ahmadnagar in 1633 , which had taken advantage of the change of government to regain lost territories. For this purpose, as was customary at the time, he recruited as many generals as possible from the enemy and had to hire them with an appropriate mansab.

Only after the end of these wars was Shah Jahan able to tackle the urgently needed reform in 1642 and to do this, he managed the monthly tables ( Persian ماهوار, DMG māhvār ). In this way, he made the income of a mansabdar directly dependent on the tax revenue of his jagir in addition to his rank. The civil servants were thus, in modern terms, part-time workers who were only paid for as many months as the tax revenue lasted. This meant an enormous loss of income for the nobility. In particularly poor areas such as the war-torn Dekkan , another quarter was withdrawn.

After Shah Jahan had signed a peace treaty for 20 years with the two remaining Dekkan sultanates and shared the area of ​​Ahmadnagar with them, he had to look for targets for further conquests elsewhere. He therefore tried 1645-47 to advance from Kabul into what is now northern Afghanistan and to conquer the area of ​​the city of Balkh . This campaign failed him completely. In the meantime, the Iranians had also recaptured the border fortress of Kandahar , and Shah Jahan tried in vain in three campaigns from 1648 to 1653 to regain it. For these wars Shah Jahan needed more soldiers again, so that the expenditure on the mansabdars increased significantly, although a single mansabdar earned much less.

Collapse under Emperor Aurangzeb

Emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707) therefore took over a financially strained empire. Although the wars in the early days of his reign were of no avail (especially the Assam War 1662–71) and he had to crush the revolts of the Jats, the Satnamis, the Afghans under Khushhal Khan Khattak , the Marathas under Shivaji , and those of his son Akbar, this held up Mansab system initially. However, the forgivable tax revenue ( Persian پیباقی, DMG paibāqī ) already scarce, especially because the emperors had steadily expanded their crown land, from 5% in 1625 to 20% in 1668. Aurangzeb's attempt in 1679 to exploit an inheritance dispute between the Maharajas of Jodhpur and to confiscate their land led to the Rajput revolt, which showed that the Hindu Rajputs' loyalty to the Nibelung had its limits. The morality of the mansabdare to fulfill their duties and to provide the fixed number of cavalrymen also deteriorated.

The Mansab system was finally overused by Aurangzeb's Deccan Wars from 1682 until his death in 1707, first against the Dekkan sultanates of Bijapur and Golkonda , then against the Marathas, whose generals fought on their own account. Aurangzeb practiced the customary practice of poaching generals from the opposing side on such a large scale that there was no more tax revenue left. To make matters worse, Aurangzeb had claimed the land of the conquered Dekkan sultanate as an inalienable crown land for himself, that the taxes from northern India, where the emperor was not, were often absent, and that Aurangzeb's generals dragged the war out and with him the Marathas secretly agreed truce for fear of being released after a peace. So the war finally emptied the treasury until the Mansab ranks had nothing to do with reality. Aurangzeb died in southern India at the age of 89. His son Bahadur Shah I , who was 63 himself, was unable to consolidate the empire, and after his death in 1712 it quickly fell apart.

literature

  • Alam, Muzaffar, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (Eds.): The Mughal State , Delhi (Oxford) 1998. ISBN 978-0-19-565225-3 .
  • Anwar, Firdos: Nobility under the Mughals, 1628-58 , Delhi: Manohar, 2001. ISBN 978-8-17-304316-1 .
  • Athar Ali, Muhammad: The Mughal nobility under Aurangzeb , 2nd ed. Delhi: Oxford 2001. ISBN 978-0-19-565599-5 .
  • Habib, Irfan: The Agrarian system of Mughal India , 2nd revised edition Delhi: Oxford, 1999. ISBN 978-0-19-565595-7 .
  • Richards, John F .: The Mughal Empire (The New Cambridge History of India I.5), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 81 ff. ISBN 978-0-52-156603-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Habib, Irfan: The Agrarian system of Mughal India , 2nd ed. Delhi: Oxford, 1999 pp. 298-316.
  2. ^ Richards, John F .: Power, Administration and Finance in Mughal India , Aldershot GB and Brookfield VT, USA: Variorum / Ashgate, 1993, p. 637.
  3. ↑ Moreland, William Harrison: "Rank (manṣab) in the Mughal State Service", in: Alam, Muzaffar, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (eds.): The Mughal State , Delhi (Oxford) 1998, p. 220.
  4. ^ Ibid. p. 214 f.
  5. ^ Richards, John F .: The Mughal Empire (The New Cambridge History of India I.5), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 81 ff.
  6. ↑ Moreland, William Harrison: "Rank (manṣab) in the Mughal State Service", in: Alam, Muzaffar, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (ed.): The Mughal State , Delhi (Oxford) 1998, p. 218.
  7. ^ Richards, John F .: The Mughal Empire (The New Cambridge History of India I.5), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 64 ff .; 84 ff.
  8. ↑ Moreland, William Harrison: "Rank (manṣab) in the Mughal State Service", in: Alam, Muzaffar, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (eds.): The Mughal State , Delhi (Oxford) 1998, pp. 213-233
  9. ^ Ibid.
  10. ^ Anwar, Firdos: Nobility under the Mughals, 1628–58 , Delhi: Manohar, 2001, p. 21.
  11. ^ Habib, Irfan: The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 2nd revised ed. New Delhi: Oxford, 1999, p. 307.
  12. ↑ Athar Ali, Muhammad: The Mughal nobility under Aurangzeb , 2nd ed. Delhi: Oxford 2001, pp. 38-73.
  13. ↑ The Shah Jahan nama of 'Inayat Khan: an abridged history of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, compiled by his royal librarian: the nineteenth-century manuscript translation of AR Fuller (British Library, add. 30,777) / edited and completed by WE Begley and ZA Desai, Delhi: Oxford, 1990.
  14. ^ Anwar, Firdos: Nobility under the Mughals, 1628–58 , Delhi: Manohar, 2001, p. 23.
  15. ↑ See Ahom-Mughal conflicts (Eng. WP)
  16. ^ Athar Ali, Muhammad: The Mughal nobility under Aurangzeb , 2nd ed. Delhi: Oxford 2001, p. 74.
  17. ↑ See Ajit Singh Rathore (English WP)
  18. ↑ Moreland, William Harrison: "Rank (manṣab) in the Mughal State Service", in: Alam, Muzaffar, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (eds.): The Mughal State , Delhi (Oxford) 1998, pp. 213-233
  19. ^ Athar Ali, Muhammad: The Mughal nobility under Aurangzeb , 2nd ed. Delhi: Oxford 2001, p. 92.
  20. ^ Ibid.