Compare the economic status of the Mughal Rulers by analyzing their Monuments.
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The Mughal, Mogul or Moghul Empire, was an early modern empire in South Asia.[9] For some two centuries, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan plateau in south India.[
Answer:
Tax revenue was major source of income for Mughals which constituted more than 90% of revenue, as per historian Jadunath Sarkar. The other minor revenue streams were Jijya and custom duty.
The taxation system is well detailed in Abul Fazal’s A’in-I Akbari. It is probably the most authentic document of Akbar’s time as it was written during his lifetime by Fazal, who was part of Akbar’s court. A scholar Shireen Moosvi, has done a detailed research on A’in-I Akbari in 1987 for her doctoral studies supervised by famous historian Irfan Habib. She has used estimates of the size of agricultural production, distribution of surplus, total value of external trade, price and wage structure and population in India as detailed in the A’in-I Akbari.
As per Shireen, Abu’l Fazl provided a formula for taxation, which represented one third of the agricultural yield, payable in cash at the prices prevailing locally. This gives a tax demand for kharif crops of 44.4% and for rabi crops of 38.3%. She assumes a difference in retail and farmer’s prices to be 10% thus lifting the rates to 48.9% and 42.1% respectively, concluding that the Akbar administration flatly laid claim to one half of the produce. One can assume the hardship on farmers with this kind of draconian taxation. With taxation at this rate and need of saving grains for seed (global benchmark for medieval world was around 15%), farmers would get only about 35% of what they produced.
In terms of expenses, more than 60% was spent on maintaining huge Mughal army and 5-10% was spent on royal household. Remaining 30% was used for salary of ministers and nobles, construction of monuments etc. There was hardly any public spending by the state. Most villages were self-sustaining economies and looked at state help only in case of bad monsoon.
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