Ain-i-Akbari

• 1. Introduction

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  The Ain-i-Akbari, whose title translates as "Administration of Akbar", was composed in Persian between 1589 and 1596 by Abu'l Fazl, the court historian of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. It is a document that catalogues an entire empire in the form of administrative reports. What did salaries for men from Iran, Turkey, Europe, Hindustan, and Kashmir look like under a single monarch? How did one empire record the recipes of an imperial kitchen alongside the branding of royal elephants? And what happens when a nineteenth-century scholar finishes editing this vast document and brings it to one of the greatest Urdu poets of the age, only to be told he has wasted his talent on dead things?

• 2. Part of a Larger Chronicle

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  Abu'l Fazl placed the Ain-i-Akbari as Volume III and the concluding portion of a longer work called the Akbarnama, meaning "Account of Akbar". The Akbarnama was itself Abu'l Fazl's major project of chronicling Akbar's reign. Within that framework, the Ain-i-Akbari served a distinct purpose: where the earlier volumes told events, this one recorded systems. As the scholar Blochmann described it, the document contains the mode of governing of Emperor Akbar, functioning as the administrative report and statistical return of his government as it stood around 1590. The result is something closer to a modern gazetteer than a narrative history. Abu'l Fazl's fifth book within the Ain-i-Akbari turned inward, gathering moral sentences, observations, and rules of wisdom that Akbar himself had spoken, along with an account of the author's own ancestry and biography.

• 3. Five Books, One Empire

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  Across five books, the Ain-i-Akbari divided Akbar's administration into its constituent parts. The first book, called Manzil-Abadi or "place establishment", covered the imperial household and contained a total of 90 regulations. Among them, Ain 15 addressed the Imperial Harem, Ain 20 the royal seals, Ain 23 the imperial kitchen, and Ain 26 the rules relating to days of abstinence. Ain 35 detailed the use and maintenance of artillery, the upkeep and branding of royal horses, camels, mules, and elephants, and even specified the food given to those animals. Laborers' wages and housebuilding estimates appear alongside descriptions of fruits, vegetables, perfumes, and carpets. The second book, called Sipah-Abadi or "military establishment", described the civil and military services and gave a detailed account of the functioning of the Mansabdari System, the ranked hierarchy by which Mughal nobles and officers received their titles. The third book, Mulk-Abadi or "government establishment", was devoted to judicial and executive regulations, the survey of land, and the rent-roll of the finance minister.

• 4. Land, Revenue, and Hindu Society

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  Raja Todar Mal's name appears in the Mulk-Abadi volume in connection with one of the most consequential features of Akbar's rule: the land revenue system known as Raja Todar Mal's Bandobast. Organized jointly by Akbar and his finance minister Raja Todar Mal, the system is explained in detail in the third book. The document records the administration and tribal divisions of each of the 15 provinces, called Subhas or Subas, that made up Akbar's empire. The fourth book shifted terrain entirely, describing the social conditions, philosophy, law, and literary activity of the Hindus, who formed the bulk of the population. Abu'l Fazl framed their political advancement as something Akbar regarded as a guarantee of the stability of his realm. The book also included chapters on foreign invaders, on distinguished travelers, and on Muslim saints and the sects to which they belonged.

• 5. Akbar's Own Words

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  Ain 76 of the first book, titled "The Mustard of Man", gives a glimpse into the variety of demands Akbar handled at his assemblies. According to the text, a large number of men were appointed on the days when an assembly of expenditure was announced: some asked the emperor to remove religious doubts, others sought worldly advice, and others wanted medicines. Salaries were proposed by officers who brought men before the emperor from Iran, Turkey, Europe, Hindustan, and Kashmir. The account notes that the salary was generally increased rather than decreased, because, as the document states, the market of His Majesty is never dull. Akbar also gave a present of two dams to each officer for every horseman brought before him, with the stated aim of increasing the army and the zeal of officers. Ain 25 of the second book recorded Akbar's own instructions on education: each schoolboy was first to learn the shape and name of every letter over two days, then proceed to joined letters for a week, then memorize prose, poetry, and moral sentences, while the teacher assisted only a little.

• 6. Translation and Legacy

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  The Ain-i-Akbari was among the first Persian texts to be translated into English. The translation appeared in three volumes under the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, published as part of their Bibliotheca Indica series. Heinrich Blochmann translated Books I and II in his volume of 1873. Colonel Henry Sullivan Jarrett translated Book III in 1891, then completed Books IV and V in 1896. Long before those translations, in 1855, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan finished a scholarly, illustrated edition of the original Persian text. After completing that edition, he brought it to the poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, hoping Ghalib would write a taqriz, the conventional laudatory foreword of the era. Ghalib did oblige, but the short Persian poem he wrote took an unexpected turn: he castigated the Ain-i-Akbari and, by extension, the sumptuous literate Mughal culture that produced it, and praised instead the "sahibs of England" who then held power. Ghalib's poem rebuked Syed Ahmad Khan for spending his talent on dead things. Syed Ahmad Khan appears to have recognized the political forces Ghalib was pointing to. He gave up an active interest in history and archaeology, and though he edited two further historical texts in the following years, neither matched the scope of the Ain-i-Akbari.