Property has always been a matter of dispute in every age. Do you think it was the same in the Mughal era? How did the Mughals resolve their conflicts of sharing paternal property? Was it any different or the same?
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Answer:
Within the first three decades of Akbar’s reign, the imperial elite had grown enormously. As the Central Asian nobles had generally been nurtured on the Turko-Mongol tradition of sharing power with the royalty—an arrangement incompatible with Akbar’s ambition of structuring the Mughal centralism around himself—the emperor’s principal goal was to reduce their strength and influence. The emperor encouraged new elements to join his service, and Iranians came to form an important block of the Mughal nobility. Akbar also looked for new men of Indian background. Indian Afghans, being the principal opponents of the Mughals, were obviously to be kept at a distance, but the Sayyids of Baraha, the Bukhārī Sayyids, and the Kambūs among the Indian Muslims were specially favoured for high military and civil positions.
More significant was the recruitment of Hindu Rajput leaders into the Mughal nobility. This was a major step, even if not completely new in Indo-Islamic history, leading to a standard pattern of relationship between the Mughal autocracy and the local despotism. Each Rajput chief, along with his sons and close relatives, received high rank, pay, perquisites, and an assurance that they could retain their age-old customs, rituals, and beliefs as Hindu warriors. In return, the Rajputs not only publicly expressed their allegiance but also offered active military service to the Mughals and, if called upon to do so, willingly gave daughters in marriage to the emperor or his sons. The Rajput chiefs retained control over their ancestral holdings (watan jāgīrs) and additionally, in return for their services, often received land assignments outside their homelands (tankhwa jāgīrs) in the empire. The Mughal emperor, however, asserted his right as a “paramount.” He treated the Rajput chiefs as zamindars (landholders), not as rulers. Like all local zamindars, they paid tribute, submitted to the Mughals, and received a patent of office. Akbar thus obtained a wide base for Mughal power among thousands of Rajput warriors who controlled large and small parcels of the countryside throughout much of his empire.