The Ain-i Akbari of Abu’l Fazl Allami

The Ain-i Akbari is the third and final book of the Akbar Nama, the official history of Akbar’s reign commissioned by the emperor himself. While the first two books of the Akbar Nama are a historical narrative (which you will study in Chapter 9), the Ain-i Akbari is something entirely different: a detailed compendium of imperial regulations and a gazetteer of the empire. Completed in 1598 — the forty-second year of Akbar’s reign — it went through five revisions before Abu’l Fazl considered it finished.

The Ain is organised into five books, called daftars. The first three deal with administration. The first book, manzil-abadi, covers the imperial household and its maintenance. The second, sipah-abadi, covers the military and civil administration, including short biographical sketches of imperial officials (mansabdars), learned men, poets, and artists. The third book, mulk-abadi, is the most important for understanding agrarian society. It deals with the fiscal side of the empire and provides rich quantitative information on revenue rates. This is followed by the “Account of the Twelve Provinces” (subas).

The mulk-abadi section gives a detailed, highly complex view of agrarian society in northern India. For each suba, it provides geographic, topographic, and economic profiles, along with total measured area and assessed revenue (jama). It then breaks down each suba into its sarkars (administrative divisions below the suba), and presents information in tables with eight columns:

1. Parganat / mahal (the revenue unit)
2. Qila (forts)
3. Arazi and zamin-i paimuda (measured area)
4. Naqdi (revenue assessed in cash)
5. Suyurghal (grants of revenue in charity)
6. Zamindars
7. Caste of these zamindars
8. Their troops: horsemen (sawar), foot-soldiers (piyada), and elephants (fil)

The fourth and fifth daftars deal with the religious, literary, and cultural traditions of the people of India, and also contain a collection of Akbar’s “auspicious sayings”.

How Abu’l Fazl collected his information

Abu’l Fazl describes his method in detail. He interrogated servants of the state and old members of the imperial family. Royal commands were issued to the provinces asking those who remembered past events to copy out their notes and send them to court. The collected materials were then recited in the royal hearing, and any additions were inserted later. He obtained the chronicle of events from the Record Office, established in the nineteenth year of Akbar’s reign. He also procured copies of orders issued to the provinces from the Accession onward, and incorporated reports submitted by ministers and high officials. He collected rough notes and memoranda from sagacious and well-informed men. In short, he built a “reservoir” of information from multiple sources — oral testimonies, official records, provincial reports, and private notes.

Authenticity and limitations

The Ain was not a mere reproduction of official papers. It was revised five times, suggesting a high degree of caution. Oral testimonies were cross-checked and verified before being accepted as facts. In the quantitative sections, all numeric data were reproduced in words to minimise the chances of transcriptional errors.

However, historians have pointed out several problems. Numerous errors in totalling have been detected, ascribed to simple slips of arithmetic or transcription by Abu’l Fazl’s assistants. These are generally minor and do not detract from the overall quantitative veracity of the manual.

A more significant limitation is the skewed nature of the quantitative data. Data were not collected uniformly from all provinces. For instance, detailed information about the caste composition of zamindars is available for many subas but not for Bengal and Orissa. Further, while fiscal data from the subas is remarkably rich, equally vital parameters such as prices and wages from these same areas are not as well documented. The detailed list of prices and wages that the Ain does provide is mainly derived from data pertaining to areas in or around the imperial capital of Agra, and is therefore of limited relevance for the rest of the country.

Why the Ain is extraordinary …