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 II. The 13th and 14th centuries

Collection:: Economics Books

42 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA essentials the position they had held in the thirteenth century, but—where the Governor was sufficiently strong— with less freedom in regard to their treatment of their peasants. A third element in the policy of Ghiyisuddin was his insistence on the dignity of provincial Governors, and on a correspondingly high standard of conduct on their part. [t is clear that, at his accession, speculative farming of the revenue was common; and the Ministry was crowded with touts and pests of various kinds, whose functions have to be guessed from the designations applied to them,—“spies,” “farmers,” ‘“enhancement-mongers,”” and “wreckers.” The King put a stop to the activities of these pests, and chose his Governors from the nobility; he ordered that they were to receive all due consideration from the audit-staff of the Ministry; but he made it clear that their position and dignity would depend on their own conduct. They might honourably take the ordinary perquisites of the post, described as “a half-tenth or half-eleventh, and the one- tenth or one-fifteenth of the revenue’; while their sub- ordinates were allowed to appropriate “a half or one per cent.” in addition to their salaries; but exactions were to be limited to these figures, which we may assume were already traditional! and any substantial misappropriations were to be sternly punished. These orders call for a few words of explanation regarding the relations which subsisted between the provincial execu- tive and the audit staff of the Revenue Ministry. The audit was periodical, not continuous. An official was left at work for some time, and then called to the Ministry for the two-fold process denoted audit (muhdsaba) and recovery »mutdlaba); the auditors, as might be expected, strove to bring out a balance due, and payment of this balance was enforced by torture. The first mention I have found of recovery by torture is in the proceedings of Sharaf Qai, which have been referred to under the reign of Alauddin (Barni, 288). There is no suggestion in that passage that officers of the rank of Governor were tortured, but the orders ! Ibn Batiita, who was in India during the next reign, raentions (iii. 112] that Governors received a half-tenth on the revenue as a regular thing,

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