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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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VC. The seventeenth century

Collection:: Economics Books

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 139 . THE APPLICATION OF ISLAMIC IDEAS In the preceding section the general situation in the early part of Aurangzeb’s reign has been described with the aid of both the extant farmans issued under his authority. [t remains to examine those provisions of the later order which relate specifically to Islamic law, and in doing this, it is necessary to realise the position of the ecclesiastical jurists on whose pronouncements ( fatwa) the order is obviously based. There is no reason to suppose that the jurists were in touch with the actual working of the Revenue Ministry; their authorities consisted, not of rules and orders issued by Sher Shah or Akbar, but of law-books and com- mentaries written, for the most part, in other parts of Asia, in Arabia, Syria, or Iraq. The authorities are duly quoted in the extant fatwas, and we find among them such names as Abd Hanifa, Muhit, or Abi Yiisuf, men whose experience had been gained long before, and in countries altogether different from India. The officials who drafted the farman obviously followed the fatwas closely; and the result was necessarily to import into the Indian system terms, ideas, and institutions, which are not easily brought into ac- cordance with the facts of Indian life. As an example of exotic terminology, we may take the description of the peasant as malik, a word which originally denoted a king, but in process of time has come to mean an owner. The anonymous commentator whose observa- tons are included in Professor Sarkar’s translation of the farmin was obviously puzzled by the unfamiliar term, for he suggested that the word must refer to the owner of the crop, implying that there could not be an owner of the soil; but the fact is that malik was the term used, no doubt appropriately, in other Islamic countries, and it was carried over to India, where it was not applicable to the local con- ditions. Similarly as regards ideas, the force of parts of the farmin is distorted by the conception of land devoted permanently to a particular crop. We are given detailed rules for land under dates and almonds, which were almost irrelevant in India, but we find nothing about the par- ticular difficulties connected with characteristic Indian

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