Peasants, Zamindars and the State

About this unit

This unit looks at agrarian society in the Mughal empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most people lived in villages and depended on agriculture, so understanding peasants, village communities, zamindars and land revenue is central to understanding the empire itself. The chapter relies heavily on the Ain-i-Akbari of Abu'l Fazl, along with revenue records from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan and the documents of the East India Company.

Key ideas

• The Ain-i-Akbari is the main source, but it reflects the viewpoint of the state.
• Peasants (raiyat, muzarian, kisan, asami) were of different kinds, such as khud-kashta and pahi-kashta.
• Agriculture had two main seasons, kharif and rabi, and included cash crops (jins-i kamil).
• Village panchayats, headed by a muqaddam or mandal, regulated village life.
• Women, forest dwellers and tribes were important parts of rural society.
• Zamindars and the land revenue system linked villages to the Mughal state; silver flowed in through world trade.

How to prepare

Learn the Persian terms with their meanings, the classification of land, and the difference between jama and hasil. Practise questions that ask what a source can and cannot tell us, and be ready to explain how the global flow of silver affected the Mughal economy.