Description: The Mughal Empire of the great Mughals always evoked stock images of splendour, and scores of authors wrote volumes on it. But only a dedicated few like Dr. Noman Ahmad Siddiqi took enormous pains to analyse and interpret the infrastructure of the Mughal Empire-the contemporary land administration and agrarian institutions. In this book, Dr. Siddiqi probes into the conflicting, but not mutually exclusive, rights and interests involved in the landholdings under the Mughals. With Clarity and understanding, he analyses the administrative practices of the Mughals. Referring to a mass of patiently collated data, Dr. Siddiqi shows how the Mughal administration sought to lessen or resolve the contradictions inherent in the land-revenue system. The stability of the Mughal government, the oriental extravaganza of power and the magnificence of the successive emperors, all, Dr. Siddiqi holds, rested on the success of agrarian administration-the base of the many-splendoured Mughals. This well-documented study delineates the decline of the Mughal opulence that came in the wake of a breakdown in the land administration. The overwhelming increase in the number of jagirdars, who claimed shares in the surplus produce, accelerated the pace of disintegration. Dr. Siddiqi's treatment of the working of the institutions of the zamindari, revenue-assignments and revenue-free-grants is characterised by the unyielding objectivity of a trained historian. His exposition of the social and economic role of the zamindars and madad-maash holders is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the land-relationship in the Mughal Empire.

This traces the history of the Mughal empire from its creation in 1526 to its breakup in 1720. It stresses the quality of Mughal territorial expansion, their innovation in land revenue, military organization, and the relationship between the emperors and I

This book presents an exploratory study of the Mughal state and its negotiation with local power relations. By studying the state from the perspective of the localities and not from that of the Mughal Court, it shifts the focus from the imperial grid to the local arenas, and more significantly, from 'form' to 'process'. As a result, the book offers a new interpretation of the system of rule based on an appreciation of the local experience of imperial sovereignty, and the inter-connections between the state and the local power relations. The book knits together the systems- and action-theoretic approaches to power, and presents the Mughal state as a dynamic structure in constant change and conflict. The study, based on hitherto unexamined local evidence, highlights the extent to which the interactions between state and society helped to shape the rule structure, the normative system and 'the moral economy of the state'.

Dr Hardy has attempted a general history of British India's Muslims with a deeper perspective. He shows how the interplay of memories of past Muslim supremacy, Islamic religious aspirations and modern Muslim social and economic anxieties with the political needs of the alien ruling power gradually fostered a separate Muslim politics. Dr Hardy argues (contrary to the usual view) that Muslims were able to take political initiatives because, in the region of modern Uttar Pradesh, British rule before 1857 and even the events of the Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857-8 had not been economically disastrous for most of them. He stresses the force of religion in the growth of Muslim political separatism, showing how the 'modernists' kept the conversation among Muslims within Islamic postulates and underlining the role of the traditional scholars in heightening popular religious feeling. Regarding any sense of Muslim political unity and nationhood as an outcome of the period of British rule, Dr Hardy shows the limitations and frailty of that unity and nationhood by 1947.

A comprehensive chronological analysis of India's vibrant and diverse history.

The first edition of this book, published in 1963, presented a mass of critically analyzed material on the agrarian condition of pre-colonial India--a subject which until then had received little attention. Many of its key findings, particularly those concerning administrative institutions and the position of the zamindars, have become standard tools in the field. This revised and updated edition draws on extensive new research by the author and others, and it presents much that is new in both description and perception. It also includes an expanded bibliography, a new descriptive index, and new illustrations and maps.