222 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
wilayats; but this view is not borne out by detailed analysis of 
the language of the chronicles. Looking at the words them- 
selves, it is clear that Walt is the correct Islamic term for a 
bureaucratic Governor; it was used in this sense by Abi Yisuf 
(e.g. pp. 161, 163) in Baghdad, in the eighth century, and it is 
still familiar in the same sense in Turkey at the present day. I 
have not traced the terms Iqta or Muqti in the early Islamic 
literature to which I have access through translations, but 
taking the sense of Assignment in which the former persisted in 
[ndia, we may fairly infer that the application of iqti to a 
province meant originally that the province was assigned, that 
is to say, that the Governor was under obligation to maintain a 
body of troops for the king’s service. It is possible then that, 
at some period, the distinction between Wali and Muqti may 
have lain in the fact that the former had not to maintain troops, 
while the latter had; but, if this was the original difference, it 
had become obsolete, at any rate, by the time of Ghiyasuddin 
Tughlaq, whose orders regarding the troops applied equally to 
both classes, to ““ the nobles to whom he gave iqtas and wildyats.” 
The chronicles indicate no other possible distinction between 
Wali and Mugqti, and the fact that we occasionally read! of the 
Muqti of a Wildyat suggests that the terms were, at least prac- 
tically, synonymous. The possibility is not excluded that there 
were minor differences in position, for instance, in regard to the 
accounts procedure of the Revenue Ministry, but these would 
not be significant from the point of view of agrarian adminis- 
tration. In my opinion, then, we are justified in rejecting 
absolutely the view that the kingdom of Delhi contained any 
element to which the terminology of the feudal system can 
properly be applied. Apart from the regions directly under the 
Revenue Ministry, the entire kingdom was divided into pro- 
vinces administered by bureaucratic Governors; possibly there 
may have been differences in the relations between these 
Governors. and the Ministry, but, so far as concerns the 
agrarian administration of a province, it is safe to treat Wali 
and Mugqti as practically, if not absolutely, synonymous. 
It may be added that the latter term did not survive for long. 
In the Tarikh-i Mubarakshahi, written about the middle of the 
fifteenth century, the title is preserved in summaries of earlier 
1 For instance, T. Nisiri; Muqti of the Wildyat of Awadh (246, 247); 
Mugqti of the Wildyat of Sarsuti (p. 256). As has been said above, Barni 
(06) describes the duties of a Muati by the term Wildivatdari.