THE OUTLYING REGIONS 181 
arms across the Narbada, and, during a portion of the 
fourteenth century, there were Deccan provinces subject to 
Delhi. Alauddin did not introduce his distinctive revenue- 
system in this tract, and practically all we know about it is 
that the practice of Farming existed. Judging by the 
particular instances recorded, the farms were given for 
large areas, entire provinces or groups of provinces; and, 
in the reign of Muhammad Tughlaq, they were held, some- 
times at least, by mere speculators. 
The disintegration of the Delhi kingdom resulted in the 
formation of two Moslem States in the Deccan, Khandesh 
in the North, and beyond it the Bahmani kingdom. About 
the end of the fifteenth century the latter broke up into 
five units, Berar, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, Bidar, and 
Bijapur, so that in the sixteenth century there were six 
powers in all, which were reduced to three by Akbar’s 
annexation of Berar and Khandesh, and the absorption of 
Bidar by its neighbours. For the history of these two 
centuries we are dependent almost entirely on the chronicle 
written by Muhammad Qasim Firishta,! whose work 
suggests that he was not interested in agrarian questions. 
We learn from it incidentally that Assignments were com- 
mon, and that Reserved areas existed, in the Bahmani 
kingdom (320,356); but there is nothing to show what 
share of the produce was ordinarily claimed by the king, 
or how it was assessed and collected, nor are there any 
details of interest relating to the organisation of the village 
or the other topics at present under our consideration. We 
have seen, however, that assessment by nasag had been the 
rule for a long time in Berar when it was annexed by Akbar, 
and that probably the same system prevailed at the same 
period in Khandesh: for the kingdoms further to the South 
[ have found no similar information. The exact meaning 
of the term nmasaq in this connection is uncertain, as has 
already been explained, It points definitely to assessment 
on a village (or a larger area), not on individual peasants; 
t The references to Firishta are to the Cawnpore lithographed text of 
1873; I have checked the relevant passages by the Bombay edition giving 
Briggs’ text, and found no material difference. Briggs’ translation is 
juite useless for administrative details owing to the looseness of the 
rerminology employed by him.