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

46 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA inconsistencies, and the final position of the chronicler is not one of uncritical eulogy, nor yet of prejudiced detrac- tion, but of astonishment and perplexity. He tells us that he had never heard or read of such a character, he could not place it in any known category, and, more than once, he takes refuge in the view that the King was one of the wonders of creation, in fact, a freak of nature. In such a position, it is safe tc assume that the chronicler’s language is exaggerated in both directions: he was striving to em- phasise the contrasts presented by the reign—the King’s brilliant gifts and his practical incompetence, or his sub- servience to the Khalifa and his disregard of Islamic law, and both sides of the case are inevitably overstated. It is advisable then to discount the chronicler’s superlatives, but there is, so far as I can see, no reason to distrust his state- ments of fact regarding the King’s agrarian measures, the only topic with which I am at present concerned. For this reign we have no formal statement of agrarian policy, and no direct indication of the King’s ideals; but we have a series of episodes which fall into two groups, the treatment of the provinces generally, and the special mea- sures taken in the River Country. One of the King’s earliest measures was an attempt to assimilate the ad- ministration of the outlying provinces to that of Delhi and the River Country, which were, it will be recalled, directly ander the Revenue Ministry The chronicler gives a caustic description of this attempt at centralisation, which is closely in accordance with his picture of the King as a brilliant but unpractical man; he tells us of detailed accounts being submitted from the most distant provinces, and of the uttermost penny in them being wrangled over by the audit staff at the capital; and he mentions that the ex- periment lasted only for a few years. The sequel is not formally recorded, but two episodes show that the specula- tive Farmer supervened in the provinces. One episode (p. 488) is that of a man who had taken a three-year farm of Bidar, in the Deccan, for a payment of a kror of tankas. The chronicler describes him as “by occupation a corn- merchant, timorous, incompetent”; he was a stranger to the locality; and, when he found that he could not realise

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