The agrarian system of Moslem India

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1804119261

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-188010

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Moreland, William Harrison http://d-nb.info/gnd/172263670

Title:: The agrarian system of Moslem India

Edition:: 2. ed. Reissue (d. Ausg. Cambridge) 1929; [Reprint]

Place of publication:: Delhi

Publisher:: Oriental Books, Munshiram Manoharlal

Year of publication:: 1968

Scope:: XVII, 296 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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222 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA wilayats; but this view is not borne out by detailed analysis of the language of the chronicles. Looking at the words them- selves, it is clear that Walt is the correct Islamic term for a bureaucratic Governor; it was used in this sense by Abi Yisuf (e.g. pp. 161, 163) in Baghdad, in the eighth century, and it is still familiar in the same sense in Turkey at the present day. I have not traced the terms Iqta or Muqti in the early Islamic literature to which I have access through translations, but taking the sense of Assignment in which the former persisted in [ndia, we may fairly infer that the application of iqti to a province meant originally that the province was assigned, that is to say, that the Governor was under obligation to maintain a body of troops for the king’s service. It is possible then that, at some period, the distinction between Wali and Muqti may have lain in the fact that the former had not to maintain troops, while the latter had; but, if this was the original difference, it had become obsolete, at any rate, by the time of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, whose orders regarding the troops applied equally to both classes, to ““ the nobles to whom he gave iqtas and wildyats.” The chronicles indicate no other possible distinction between Wali and Mugqti, and the fact that we occasionally read! of the Muqti of a Wildyat suggests that the terms were, at least prac- tically, synonymous. The possibility is not excluded that there were minor differences in position, for instance, in regard to the accounts procedure of the Revenue Ministry, but these would not be significant from the point of view of agrarian adminis- tration. In my opinion, then, we are justified in rejecting absolutely the view that the kingdom of Delhi contained any element to which the terminology of the feudal system can properly be applied. Apart from the regions directly under the Revenue Ministry, the entire kingdom was divided into pro- vinces administered by bureaucratic Governors; possibly there may have been differences in the relations between these Governors. and the Ministry, but, so far as concerns the agrarian administration of a province, it is safe to treat Wali and Mugqti as practically, if not absolutely, synonymous. It may be added that the latter term did not survive for long. In the Tarikh-i Mubarakshahi, written about the middle of the fifteenth century, the title is preserved in summaries of earlier 1 For instance, T. Nisiri; Muqti of the Wildyat of Awadh (246, 247); Mugqti of the Wildyat of Sarsuti (p. 256). As has been said above, Barni (06) describes the duties of a Muati by the term Wildivatdari.

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