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 217 other words, whether the kingdom contained any element to which the nomenclature of the feudal system can properly be applied. The question is one of fact. The nature of the European feudal system is tolerably well known to students: the position of the Mugqtis in the Delhi kingdom can be ascer- tained from the chronicles; and comparison will show whether the use of these archaic terms brings light or confusion into the agrarian history of Northern India. The ordinary meaning of Iqta in Indo-Persian literature is an Assignment of revenue conditional on future service. The word appears in this sense frequently in the Mogul period as a synonym ‘along with tuyiil) of the more familiar jagir; and that it might carry the same sense in the thirteenth century is established, among several passages, by the story told by Barni (60, 61) of the 2000 troopers who held Assignments, but evaded the services on which the Assignments were conditional. The villages held by these men are described as their iqtds, and the men themselves as iqtadars. At this period, however, the word iqtd was used commonly in a more restricted sense, as in the phrase ‘““the twenty iqtds,” used by Barni (50) to denote the bulk of the kingdom. [t is obvious that “the twenty iqtds” points to something of a different order from the 2000 iqtds in the passage just quoted; and all through the chronicles, we find particular iqtas referred to as administrative charges, and not mere Assignments. The distinction between the two senses is marked most clearly by the use of the derivative nouns of possession; at this period, iqtddar always means an assignee in the ordinary sense, but Mugqti always means the holder of one of these charges. The question then is, was the Mugqti’s position feudal or bureaucratic? To begin with, we may consider the origin of the nobility from whom the Muqtis were chosen. The earliest chronicler gives us the biographies! of all the chief nobles of his time, and we find from them that in the middle of the thirteenth century practically every man who is recorded as having held the position of Muqti began his career as a royal slave. Shamsuddin [ltutmish, the second effective king of Delhi, who had himself been the property of the first king, bought foreign slaves in great numbers, employed them in his household, and promoted them, according to his judgment of their capacities, to the highest i T. Nasir, book xxii., p. 229 ff. I follow the Cambridge History in ising the form Iltutmish for the name usually written Altamsh.

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