Subah

• 1. Introduction

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  Subah is a word used across several South Asian languages for a province or a state. The Mughal Empire introduced the term to label its own subdivisions, and other South Asian polities later adopted it too. Akbar's administrative reforms, carried out between 1572 and 1580, first split the empire into twelve subahs. By the end of his reign, conquest had pushed that number to fifteen. Each subah split further into sarkars, or districts, and each sarkar split again into parganas or mahals. The governor of a subah held the title subahdar, sometimes written subeh. That title later became subedar, the rank still used by officers in the Indian and Pakistani armies today. The word itself traces back to Arabic and Persian roots. How far did later emperors push that number, and why does the word still label provinces in Pakistan today?

• 2. Akbar's Original Provinces

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  Kabul, Lahore, Multan, Delhi, Agra, Avadh, Illahabad, Bihar, Bangal, Malwa, Ajmer and Gujarat became the founding subahs carved out of Akbar's empire. After conquering the Deccan, he added three more provinces: Berar, Khandesh and Ahmadnagar. Khandesh briefly bore the name Dandesh, a change made in 1601. Ahmadnagar went through two renamings of its own, becoming Daulatabad in 1636 and later Aurangabad. Bengal Subah's capital moved four times, from Tanda to Rajmahal, then to Dhaka, and finally to Murshidabad.

• 3. The Empire Multiplies

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  Orissa became its own subah in 1607, sliced out of Bangal under Jahangir. Jahangir's changes brought the total to seventeen subahs during his reign. Shah Jahan then pushed the number to twenty-two. In his eighth regnal year, Shah Jahan split the sarkar of Telangana away from Berar to form a new subah. By 1657, Telangana had merged into the Zafarabad Bidar subah. Agra was renamed Akbarabad in 1629, and Delhi became Shahjahanabad in 1648. Kashmir was carved out of Kabul, Thatta out of Multan in Sindh, and Bidar out of Ahmadnagar. Qandahar held separate subah status for a time, until Persia captured it in 1648. Aurangzeb folded Bijapur into the empire as a subah in 1686. Sira and Golkonda followed in 1687, with Golkonda later known as Hyderabad. By his reign the empire counted twenty-two subahs once again. Arcot joined the list in 1692, becoming a Mughal subah in its own right. Balkh and Badakhshan marked the empire's brief reach into the north, with Balkh falling to Abd al-Aziz Khan in 1647.

• 4. Punjab and a Sikh Successor

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  Lahore, Multan and parts of Delhi subah together made up the Punjab region under Mughal rule. The Sikh Empire rose from this same Punjab region between 1799 and 1849. It adopted the term Suba for its own administrative provinces. Under Sikh rule, the empire's territory was divided into five subas. Awadh Subah's capital moved from Faizabad to Lucknow before the province seceded in 1722 under Saadat Ali Khan I.

• 5. Fragmentation and the Word's Afterlife

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  By the early 18th century, the Mughal Empire had begun to break apart. Many subahs slipped into de facto independence, or fell under Maratha influence, or the suzerainty of the East India Company. Kabul Subah, established in 1580, held out until Nader Shah captured it on the 26th of November 1738 following the Battle of Khyber Pass. Lahore Subah fell next, captured by Ahmad Shah Durrani on the 15th of September 1758. Delhi Subah endured the longest of all, falling to George Anson on the 21st of September 1857. In modern Urdu, subah now means province, while riyasat is reserved for a princely state. This vocabulary comes from British India's administrative structure, itself partly inherited from the Mughal system. Punjabi, Balochi and Urdu speakers in Pakistan still call each of the country's four provinces a Subah.