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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Appendix B. PROVINCIAL GOVERNORS IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES1 THE words “Province” and “Governor” are used in Chapter II to represent two groups of terms, which I take to be either precisely synonymous, or else distinguished only by minor differences, of no practical importance for our present purpose. The first group is wilayat, wali. The word wildyat is used in the chronicles in various senses, which can almost always be recog- nised with certainty from the context : it may mean (I) a definite portion of the kingdom, that is, a province; (2) an in- definite portion of the kingdom, that is, a tract or region; (3) the kingdom as a whole; (4) a foreign country; (5) the home-country of a foreigner (in which last sense a derived form has recently become naturalised in English as ““ Blighty”). Wali occasionally means the ruler of a foreign country, but the ordinary sense is Governor of a province of the kingdom, that is to say, a localised officer serving directly under the orders of the King or his Ministers. So far as I know, it has never been suggested that the Wali held anything but a bureaucratic position at this period, and the word Governor represents it precisely, as is the case throughout the history of Western Asia. The position is different in regard to the second group of terms, igid, muqti (more precisely, 1qta‘’, mugti’). Various translators in the nineteenth century rendered these terms by phrases appropriated from the feudal system of Europe; their practice has been followed by some recent writers, in whose pages we meet “fiefs,” “feudal chiefs,” and such entities; and the ordinary reader is forced to conclude that the organisation of the kingdom of Delhi was heterogeneous, with some provinces ruled by bureaucratic Governors (Wali), but most of the country held in portions (iqtd) by persons (Miiqti), whose position resembled that of the barons of con- temporary Europe. It is necessary, therefore to examine the question whether these expressions represent the facts, or, in 1 The substance of this Appendix was printed in the Journal of Indian History. April, 1028.

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