The agrarian system of Moslem India

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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

THE 13ta AND 1l4tH CENTURIES 43 of Ghiyasuddin indicate that they had not been exempt, since he found it advisable to prohibit anything of the kind. The prohibition was renewed (574) by Firiiz, so it may be assumed that torture had been practised under Muhammad Tughlaq. The next chronicler, Shams Afif, also records (341) the friendly nature of the audit of Governors’ accounts under Firiiz; but elsewhere (488 ff.) he tells how a high officer was flogged periodically for some months in order to recover what he had embezzled when Deputy-Governor of Gujarat. We may infer then that, while torture was an ordinary incident in the case of officials, it might be applied under some kings, or in exceptional cases, even to an officer of the rank of Governor. The subject recurs in the sixteenth century, when, as we shall see in a later chapter, some of Akbar’s officers practised recovery ‘‘after the ancient fashion”; and the flogging of defaulting Governors is recorded in the seventeenth century in the kingdom of Golconda! It is necessary therefore, in trying to realise the position of revenue-payers, to bear in mind that a Governor or other official might have a very strong motive for oppressive conduct in cases where the choice lay between torturing defaulters and being tortured himself. Apparently the Governors appointed by Ghiyasuddin, while they were to be men of rank, were to hold their posts on farming-terms, that is to say, the surplus-revenue, to be remitted to the treasury, was to be a stated sum, and not a matter to be settled by annually balancing accounts of actual receipts and sanctioned expenditure. This seems to me to be the most reasonable interpretation of the orders that the Ministry should not make ‘an increase of more than one-tenth or one-eleventh on the provinces and country by surmi.c a. gu: s-werk or on the reports of spies and the reoresenta.on oI enhancement-mongers.” The Demand on the peasants was, as we have seen, to be assessed by Sharing, and would therefore depend on the seasons: the Ministry would not be in a position to vary the amount of revenue, except by varying the share which 1 See Methwold’s Relations of the Kingdom of Golckonda, in Purchas His Pilgrimage, 4th edition, p. 996. A Governor of Masulipatam ‘for defect of ful payment. was beaten with canes upon the back, feet, and belly.

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