Question

Land grants made to the scholarly men during the mughal period

Answer 1

Land Revenue Systems – Akbar was the founder of the Mughal revenue system, which he evolved through experiments that continued till 1585. In the beginning, he adopted Sher Shah’s system in which the cultivated area was measured and a central schedule was drawn up fixing the dues of peasants cropwise on the basis of the productivity of the land. The state’s share was one-third of the produce; the produce under the schedule being valued at prices fixed by the emperor. In fixing the prices, the rates current in the vicinity of Delhi were probably taken as the basis. This arrangement created difficulties, because one uniform schedule of prices of crops could not reasonably be applied to the whole empire. Prices were lower in rural areas which were far away from the urban centres and the cultivators found it difficult to pay in cash at the official rate.  In the tenth year of his (Akbar’s) reign, prices of crops prevailing in different regions were substituted for the uniform schedule and the emperor reverted to a system of annual assessment. In 1573, the annual assessment was given up and karoris were appointed all over North India to collect a crore of dams as revenue and to check the facts and figures supplied by the qanungos regarding the actual produce, state of cultivation, local prices etc. These karoris were also known as amils or amialguzars. On the basis of the above facts and figures, a new system was development in 1580 called the dahsala system. This system was an improved version of the zabti system which was the standard system of revenue assessment during the greater part of the Mughal empire. The credit for developing this system goes to Todarmal who became the head of the wizarat or revenue ministry.