Administration of Akbar / Mughuls Administration

The administrative machinery of the Mughuls, which functioned throughout the Mughuls rule, was introduced by Akbar and that is what, we mean Akbars Administration. Akbar was not only a brave soldier, a successful leader and a great religious reformer but also a great administrator. He introduced various reforms in all the branches of the administration, whether central, provincial, revenue, military or judicial.

Gate of Akbar's 1795

mausoleum at Sikandra, Agra,

Central Administration: Akbar was the overall in-charge of the central government. All the executive, judicial and legislative powers of the state were combined in him. There were no limitations on his despotism and his word was law. But Akbar had always the welfare of his people in his mind and so his was a benevolent despotism. He himself supervised all the branches of his administration and worked hard to discharge his manifold duties. He would hold an open court, listen to the complaints of his subjects and try to pacify them. Provincial Administration: Akbar divided his vast empire into fifteen provinces. He enjoyed vast powers and was in-charge of the provincial military, police, judiciary and the executive. The provincialDiwan was in-charge of the provincial finance and all bills of payments were signed by him. The Bakshi looked after the management of the provincial army. The Sadar was in-charge of the judicial charity department. The Qazi was in-charge of the judicial department of his province. He supervised the work of Qazis in the districts and towns. The Kotwal was the supreme administrator of all the thanas of the province and was responsible for the maintenance of law and order in all the cities. The Mir Bahr was in-charge of customs and taxation department. The Waqa-i-Nawis was in charge of the secret service of the province. Military Administration: Akbar paid much attention towards the organization, equipment and discipline of the army. For efficient military administration he introduced a new system known as the Mansabdari System. The Mansabdars had to maintain soldiers according to his grade There were thirty three grades of these Mansabdars who maintained soldiers ranging from 10 to 10,000. They were paid salaries in cash and the system of assignments of lands was discouraged. They were directly under the charge of the emperor and were promoted, degrade or dismissat his will. He also revived the practice of taking the descriptive rolls of the soldiers and branding the horses. A large number of troops were, no doubt, supplied by these Mansabdars but Akbar had maintained a standing army of his own. The Mughul army consisted of infantry, cavalry,

artillery, elephants, and navy. The cavalry was the most important wing of the army and special attention was paid towards its organization and equipment. Judicial Administration or Judicial Reforms: Akbar introduced various reforms in the administration of justice. Before him almost all the cases were decided according to the Islamic law. But now, for the first time, Hindu law was administered in deciding the cases where the parties Hindus, but Islamic law continued to function where the parties involved were Muslims. The king was the highest court of appeal. Capital punishment was given only in extreme cases and that too by the emperor alone. Social Reforms: Akbar had the welfare of his people always in his mind. He had taken several measures to improve the general condition of his subjects. In 1563, the Pilgrim Tax, which was a great burden on the Hindus, was abolished. In 1564, Jaziya, a tax which was imposed on nonMuslims, was also abolished. Akbar tried to stop the practice of Sati. Child marriage was discouraged and female-infanticide was forbidden. Widow-marriage was encouraged. From the above account it is quite clear that Akbar was a great administrator and the administrative machinery that he set up continued to function throughout the Mughul period.

Taxation Akbar set about reforming the administration of his empire's land revenue by adopting a system that had been used by Sher Shah Suri. A cultivated area where crops grew well was measured and taxed through fixed rates based on the area's crop and productivity. However, this placed hardship on the peasantry because tax rates were fixed on the basis of prices prevailing in the imperial court, which were often higher than those in the countryside. Akbar changed to a decentralized system of annual assessment, but this resulted in corruption among local officials and was abandoned in 1580, to be replaced by a system called the dahsala. Under the new system, revenue was calculated as one-third of the average produce of the previous ten years, to be paid to the state in cash. This system was later refined, taking into account local prices, and grouping areas with similar productivity into assessment circles. Remission was given to peasants when the harvest failed during times of flood or drought. Akbar's dahsala system is credited to Raja Todar Mal, who also served as a revenue officer under Sher Shah Suri, and the structure of the revenue administration was set out by the latter in a detailed memorandum submitted to the emperor in 1582-83.

. Din-i-Ilahi

Akbar holds a religious assembly of different faiths in the Ibadat Khana in Fatehpur Sik Akbar was deeply interested in religious and philosophical matters. An orthodox Muslim at the outset, he later came to be influenced by Sufi mysticism that was being preached in the country at that time, and moved away from orthodoxy, appointing to his court several talented people with liberal ideas, including Abul Fazl, Faizi and Birbal. In 1575, he built a hall called the Ibadat Khana at Fatehpur Sikri, to which he invited theologians, mystics and selected courtiers renowned for their intellectual achievements and discussed matters of spirituality with them These discussions, initially restricted to Muslims, were acrimonious and resulted in the participants shouting at and abusing each other. Upset by this, Akbar opened the Ibadat Khana to people of all religions as well as atheists, resulting in the scope of the discussions broadening and extending even into areas such as the validity of the Quran and the nature of God. This shocked the orthodox theologians, who sought to discredit Akbar by circulating rumours of his desire to forsake Islam. Akbar's choices, decisions, decrees, discussions and regulations on religious matters even caused some of his brilliant courtiers like Qutb-ud-din Khan Koka and Shahbaz Khan Kamboh to criticize the emperor in the court. The Divine Faith of Akbar the Great

Religion is one of my interests, despite not being religious myself. I'm familiar with the basic philosophies and beliefs of the world's major religions, and also with many minor faiths.

One belief system I wasn't aware of until recently was the Divine Faith of Akbar the Great. That's mainly because it never took off; it probably never had more than a dozen adherents, and died with its founder. It must surely rank as one of the least successful religions ever founded. Presumably inspired by being exposed to two religions as different as Islam and Hinduism, Akbar decided to resolve the whole 'religion' issue once and for all, by encouraging debates between different religious authorities to try and resolve the differences. He built a meeting house called the Ibadat Khana, and invited religious leaders to debate each other there. Initially only Islamic leaders participated, but after a series of debates turned violent, other faiths were encouraged to participate. Why, exactly, Akbar thought inviting more religions to participate in a debate would result in increased civility is a mystery... Akbar made efforts to hear from holy men of all religions. In addition to Muslims and Hindus, he also spoke with Jesuit missionaries, Jews, Zoroastrians and Jains. After discussions between all these people had mysteriously failed to resolve all religious differences once and for all, Akbar came to the obvious conclusion: he'd have to found his own religion. Founded in 1581, Akbar's religion was known as Din-i-Ilahi, or the "Divine Faith". Fittingly for such a generically named religion, it was a synthesis of practically every religion Akbar had been exposed to. Religious policy Akbar, as well as his mother and other members of his family, are believed to have been Sunni Hanafi Muslims. His early days were spent in the backdrop of an atmosphere in which liberal sentiments were encouraged and religious narrow-mindednness was frowned upon. From the 15th century, a number of rulers in various parts of the country adopted a more liberal policy of religious tolerance, attempting to foster communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims.These sentiments were earlier encouraged by the teachings of popular saints like Guru Nanak, Kabir and Chaitanya, the verses of the Persian poet Hafez which advocated human sympathy and a liberal outlook, as well as the Timurid ethos of religious tolerance that persisted in the polity right from the times of Timur to Humayun, and influenced Akbar's policy of tolerance in matters of religion. Further, his childhood tutors, who included two Irani Shias, were largely above sectarian prejudices, and made a significant contribution to Akbar's later inclination towards religious tolerance Relation with Jains

Akbar regularly held discussions with Jain scholars and was also greatly impacted by some of their teachings. His first encounter with Jain rituals was when he saw a Jain shravika named Champa's procession after a six month long fast. Impressed by her power and devotion, he

invited her guru or spiritual teacher AcharyaHiravijaya Suri to Fatehpur Sikri. Acharya accepted the invitation and began his march towards the Mughal capital from Gujarat. Relations with Shias and Islamic clergy During the early part of his reign, Akbar adopted an attitude of suppression towards Muslim sects that were condemned by the orthodoxy as heretical. In 1567, on the advice of Shaikh Abdu'n Nabi, he ordered the exhumation of Mir Murtaza Sharifi Shirazi - a Shia buried in Delhi because of the grave's proximity to that of Amir Khusrau, arguing that a "heretic" could not be buried so close to the grave of a Sunni saint, reflecting a restrictive attitude towards the Shia, which continued to persist till the early 1570s He suppressed Mahdavism in 1573 during his campaign in Gujarat, in the course of which the Mahdavi leader Bandagi Miyan Shiek Mustafa was arrested and brought in chains to the court for debate and released after eighteen months However, as Akbar increasingly came under the influence of pantheistic Sufi mysticism from the early 1570s, it caused a great shift in his outlook and culminated in his shift from orthodox Islam as traditionally professed, in favor of a new concept of Islam transcending the limits of religion Consequently, during the latter half of his reign, he adopted a policy of tolerance towards the Shias and declared a prohibition on Shia-Sunni conflict, and the empire remained neutral in matters of internal sectarian conflict. In the year 1578, the Mughal Emperor Akbar famously referred to himself as:

Silver coin of Akbar with inscriptions of the Islamic declaration of faith, the declaration reads: "There is none worthy of worship but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." .

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History Project Name; M. Abdullah Mehmood Class; 7th (B)

Bloom Field Hall Sahiwal