Sarkar (administrative division)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Sarkar was the administrative backbone of the Mughal Empire, a tier of governance so embedded in the system that its name persists in the word for government across South Asian languages today. Spelled sometimes as Circar, the sarkar sat between two other layers of authority: above it was the Subah, or province, and below it were smaller units called Mahallas or Parganas. What does it mean for an empire to divide its territory this way? And what happened when that system finally gave way?

• 2. Layers of Mughal Rule

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  Mughal administration worked through a nested hierarchy, and the sarkar occupied the middle rung. A Subah, or province, was too large to govern directly at the local level. So each Subah was carved into sarkars, and each sarkar was then divided further into Mahallas or Parganas. The Pargana level was where taxation, land records, and local dispute resolution actually happened. The sarkar sat above that granular work, coordinating across parganas and reporting upward to provincial authority.

• 3. Successor System

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  The Mughal sarkar system did not last indefinitely. In the early 18th century, it was replaced by the Chakla system. This shift marked a reorganization of how territory was divided and administered, though the Chakla drew from the same tradition of nested governance the Mughals had developed over generations.

• 4. Named Sarkars Across the Subcontinent

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  Specific sarkars left concrete marks on the map. The Northern Circars were five individual districts that together formed a former division of British India's Madras Presidency, carrying the alternate spelling circar into the colonial record. Among the Northern Circars stood the Rajamundry Sarkar. In what is now Pakistan, Pakhli was an ancient sarkar in territory that became part of Hazara. The Pakhal Sarkar covered an area of Mansehra district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a region where the administrative label survived long past the empire that created it.